Harlan Durell Thombs ’38 died on February 9, 2006, in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Born on June 9, 1915, in Portland, he prepared for college at Freeport High School and became a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity at Bowdoin, which he attended in 1933-34 and again from 1935 to 1938, graduating cum laude as a member of the Class of 1938. He taught forayearattheTowerSchoolinNarragansett Pier, RI, was a hospital aide in the Hartford Retreat in Connecticut, and was a teacher at the Wassokeag School in Dexter for a year. After a year as a paper tester with the S. D. Warren Company in Westbrook, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1945 in World War II, attaining the rank of technical sergeant.After the war he became a supervisory analyst with the Veterans Administration in NewYork City from 1946 to 1951 and in Washington, D.C., from 1951 to 1975. Surviving are his wife, Patricia Cole Thombs, whom he married in 1944; a daughter, Elizabeth LaNier of Fairfax,VA; and a sister, S. Mabell Bates of Bridgewater, MA.