EX-CONGRESSMAN W.S. COLE, ATOMIC ENERGY EXPERT, DIES

W. Sterling Cole, 82, an area lawyer and consultant who was a former New York congressman and who was the first director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, died of cancer March 15 at George Washington University Hospital. He lived in Arlington.

Mr. Cole, who was a Republican, served in the House of Representatives from 1935 to 1957. He was named to the old Joint Committee on Atomic Energy when it was formed in 1946. He was its chairman from 1953 to 1955. He resigned from Congress on Dec. 1, 1957 to take up a four-year term as director general of the IAEA in Vienna. After that, he returned to Washington. From 1969 to 1981, he was a federal representative on the Southern Interstate Nuclear Board.

During his years in Congress, Mr. Cole served on the Naval Affairs Committee and then the Armed Services Committee in addition to the Joint Atomic Energy Committee. He became an authority on nuclear weaponry and atomic power, and a proponent of both the peaceful use of nuclear power and the need for nuclear weapons. He gained a reputation as one of the more astute students of nuclear matters on Capitol Hill.

The IAEA was set up as part of the machinery to implement President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous "atoms-for-peace" proposals. It called for international supervision of programs to bring nuclear power for peaceful purposes to nations around the world. Such "nuclear powers" as the United States and the Soviet Union would supply expertise, training and raw fuels, and an international body would supervise reactor construction and operation.

As director general, Mr. Cole voiced some disappointment. Both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to deal largely on a bilateral basis with other nations on nuclear matters rather than use the Agency machinery. But Mr. Cole said that he felt the day would come when the world public would want international supervision of nuclear power, both to ensure that reactors were being used for peaceful purposes and to make sure that they were being operated safely.

Mr. Cole was born in Painted Post, N.Y. He was a 1925 graduate of Colgate University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his law degree in 1929 at the Albany Law School of Union University in Schenectady, N.Y. He taught public school in Corning, N.Y., in 1925 and 1926, then entered the private practice of law in Bath, N.Y., in 1930.

Elected to the House in 1934, he was named to the District of Columbia and education committees, and later was named to the Interior Committee. He was the ranking Republican member of the Naval Affairs Committee when in 1946 it merged with the Military Affairs Committee to form the Armed Services Committee.

Upon becoming chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee for a two-year term, he announced that the first order of business was consideration of changes in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to allow for private atomic power development for peacetime industrial uses in this country.

Mr. Cole was a member of the American, Federal, New York, Virginia and D.C. bar associations. He held awards from the governments of Italy and Austria and had served as a trustee of Colgate University, Elmira College in New York and the Woodlawn Foundation Inc. He was a Mason and a Shriner.

Survivors include his wife of 57 years, the former Mary Elizabeth Thomas, of Arlington; two sons, Thomas E., of Potomac, and David A., of Arlington; a brother, James P., of Buffalo; 10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

JAMES F. WRIGHT, 63, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for more than 20 years before retiring in 1974 as a security officer, died of cancer March 14 at Anne Arundel General Hospital in Annapolis. He lived in Galesville, Md.

He joined the CIA in the early 1950s and was stationed in the Far East before moving here in the mid-1960s. After retiring from the Agency, he was a security officer with MRJ Inc. in Fairfax until retiring a second time in 1984 and moving to Anne Arundel County.

Mr. Wright was a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y. After serving with the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, he was a radio announcer in Florida and North Carolina and a New York City police officer.

He was a 1959 recipient of the Agency's Intelligence Medal of Merit. He was a member of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in West River, Md., the West River Sailing Club and the Herington Harbour Sailing Association.

Survivors include his wife of 39 years, the former Doris Marie Scully of Galesville; three sons, James F. Jr., of Arlington, Daniel W., of Sterling and Thomas M., of Palo Verde, Calif.; four daughters, Mary W. Smith of Grosse Pointe, Mich., Susan A. Zeller of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, Doris M. Borland of Great Falls and Nancy M. Sherrod of Statesville, N.C.; his mother, Catherine F. Wright of Brooklyn; three brothers, John J., of Rye, N.Y., Walter H., of Brooklyn and Robert C., of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., and 13 grandchildren.

ISADORE G. ALK, 81, a retired Washington attorney and a former chief counsel of the foreign funds control section of the U.S. Treasury Department, died of cancer March 13 at his home in Pompano Beach, Fla., where he had lived since 1979.

Mr. Alk was born in Green Bay, Wis. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, where he also earned a law degree. He moved to the Washington area in 1942.

He went to work for the Treasury Department in 1943. Much of his work, for which he received the United States Medal of Freedom, concerned the Philippines and Japan.

In 1946, he began a private law practice in Washington, specializing in international law. He was a special legal assistant to the Thai government for many years and received Thailand's Order of the Crown and the Order of the White Elephant. He retired in 1979.

Mr. Alk was a member of B'nai B'rith, the American Society of International Law, the National Press Club and the Woodmont Country Club. He had served on the board of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington.

Survivors include his wife, Marion Segal Alk of Pompano Beach; two daughters, Barbara A. Berman and Benita A. Lubic, both of Washington; a brother, Lewis, of Laguna Hills, Calif.; three sisters, Ruth Hulbert of Racine, Wis., Jean Biller of Milwaukee, and Esther Kaplan of Madison, Wis.; nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

MYER BASSIN, 79, the founder, owner and operator of Buckingham Florists in Arlington, died of a kidney ailment March 12 at Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital. He lived in Falls Church.

Mr. Bassin was a native of Baltimore and a graduate of the old Baltimore City College. He moved to the Washington area in 1935 and founded Buckingham Florists in 1942.

Survivors include his wife, the former Jean Tucker, whom he married in 1927 and who lives in Falls Church; a son, Neil E.; three sisters, Mary Friedman, Bertha Denaburg and Ida Bassin, all of Rockville; four grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.