Henry Luther Pitts Jr. ’41

Henry died May 6, 2005.

Son of a Navy admiral, Henry grew up on a variety of bases and graduated from San Diego High School.

He majored in politics at Princeton and graduated with honors. He was on the freshman soccer team, the JV badminton team, and joined Dial Lodge.

Joining the Foreign Service after graduation, Henry was posted to Mexico City in 1942, where he met and married his first wife, Josephine Frey. From 1943 to 1947 he was assigned to Panama. From 1943 to 1948 he was acting consul general in Buenos Aires, and in 1948, he was transferred to the U.S. Consulate in Porto Alegre as principal officer.

Two years later Henry was named consul general in Venice, where he remained for five years (living in a 480-year-old palace on the Grand Canal).

In 1958 he was assigned as officer-in-charge for Bolivia and in 1960 he went to Madrid as commercial attache. In 1965, back at the State Department, he was chief of the International Business Protection Division and then returned to his first post, Mexico City, as counselor for commercial affairs before retiring in 1974.

Henry's second wife, Barbara Nance Pitts, predeceased him. He is survived by sons James and John '67; his daughter, Sandra; four stepchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

The Class of 1941