Douglas F. Perthel ’52

Douglas F. Perthel ’52 passed away on February 25 at the Southern Nevada State Veterans Home in Boulder City, Nevada. Doug was born in Concord, New Hampshire, on July 2, 1930, and graduated from Concord High School. He majored in history at Dartmouth and was a member of Kappa Kappa Kappa. He then served in the U. S. Army Security Agency at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, where he studied Russian; at Columbia University and its Russian institute (Soviet studies and history); and at Middlebury College (Russian). He gave 43 years of service to the country’s intelligence community in support of cryptology. Doug was also a program manager with the information systems division at General Electric in Bethesda, Maryland, overseeing information technology contracts for Army intelligence. In 1956 he married Bessie Stavros, also from Concord, and they lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for more than 30 years. Upon retirement in 1995 he and Bessie moved to Boulder City. They enjoyed many years of travel in the West, especially California and Arizona, and internationally. He was a member of the Masons and the Rosicrucians. Bessie predeceased him in July 2019. He is survived by children Carl, Mark, Karen and Eric and their families, including seven grandchildren.