William Carter Burdett Jr. ’41

Bill Burdett, a distinguished Foreign Service officer, died of malignant melanoma in a hospital near his Gloucester, Mass., home on Mar. 11, 1995. His wife, Marlys Maxine Hanson, survives. During his retirement, she and Bill did two years of ocean sailing aboard their 41-foot ketch before coming home from the sea to a place on a Cape Ann granite bluff high above the Atlantic.

Born in Knoxville, Bill was a history major at Princeton and served in the Marine Corps in WWII. His 33-year career with the State Dept. included a pose in Jerusalem from 1948-50, during Israel's war for independence; liaison with the British in London for the collapse of the Baghdad Pact and our Lebanon landings; and serving in Ankara during the Cyprus confrontation. He retired in 1975 as ambassador to Malawi. On Cape Ann, Bill wrote monthly columns for the opinion page in the Gloucester Daily Times.

Other survivors include two sisters, a sister-in-law, and several nieces and nephews. A brother, Brigadier General Edward B., U.S.A.F., was killed in Vietnam. We mourn the passing of a classmate truly "in the Nation's service."