Richard Purington Mallett ’30 died on November 16, 2005, in Farmington, Maine.

Born on December 5, 1908, he prepared for college at Farmington High School and became a member of Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in 1930 he did graduate work in English and history at Washington and Lee University in Virginia and received his master of arts degree there.

He returned to what was then Farmington State Normal School to teach until 1940, when he started graduate school at Yale University, completing all of the requirements for his doctorate there except for the dissertation. He also taught at Belmont Hill School in Massachusetts and at Jersey State College before becoming a foreign service officer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Twenty years later, in 1968, he returned to what by then had become the University of Maine at Farmington, where he taught until his retirement in 1975. He wrote four books on the history of Farmington schools and the University in that town, which honored him in 1975 with a Distinguished Scholar Award.

He was married in 1938 to Helena Long, who died in 1992, and is survived by three sons, Richard P. Mallett, Jr. of Los Angeles, California, Stephen L. Mallett of Topsham, and Grant Mallett of Harpswell; a daughter, Anne Mallett of Farmington; and two grandsons.