Margaret S Nalle

Margaret S. (Peggy) Nalle (93), a writer/editor and the wife of retired foreign service officer David Nalle, died on December 13th of natural causes at Sibley Hospital in Washington. Mrs. Nalle, a native Washingtonian, was a graduate of the Potomac and Madeira schools and of Smith College where she majored in philosophy and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

From 1947 until 1952, Mrs. Nalle was a "copy boy" (sic) and a reporter for the Washington Evening Star and from 1952 to 1958 she worked as a writer/editor for the Central Intelligence Agency.

After her marriage in 1958, Mrs. Nalle accompanied her husband on his U. S. Information Agency assignments to Damascus, Syria; Tehran, Iran; and Amman, Jordan. In those days, wives of foreign service officers were not allowed to work and so she enjoyed herself playing bridge, thereby gaining entre to segments of female society otherwise largely inaccessible to foreigners. Other highlights of her early foreign service days included baking chocolate chip cookies to demonstrate the effectiveness of a solar oven on display in the U.S. pavilion at a trade fair in Damascus; writing a training manual on how to recruit and use volunteers for the Iranian social welfare organization, studying Islamic philosophy at Tehran University, and entertaining Duke Ellington at lunch during his USIA-sponsored visit to Jordan where he and his orchestra performed at the Roman amphitheater to great acclaim. During this time the Nalles' son was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and their daughter was born in Amman, Jordan.

After returning to Washington in 1967, Mrs. Nalle worked as publications director at the Madeira School. During this period, she also served on the board of Potomac School and edited the school's monthly journal.

In 1971, her husband was assigned as cultural attache to the Soviet Union, in preparation for the assignment, USIA enrolled both the Nalles in a 10-month intensive Russian language program at the Polytechnic of Central London. Not having studied an inflected language since high school Latin, and having no talent for languages in any case, Mrs. Nalle struggled. But she persevered, knowing that if she were to drop out it might ruin the chances for language study for other more talented wives.

During their three years in the Soviet Union, thanks to being able to speak Russian, Mrs. Nalle was able to make contact with a wide variety of cultural figures, including the group of dissident Soviet painters who organized what became known as the "bulldozer" exhibit (because the KGB sent bulldozers to destroy the paintings). She and her husband attended the exhibit and were able to help two of the exhibit organizers escape the scene unhurt.

On her return to the United States in 1975, Mrs. Nalle worked briefly for the Fund for Peace helping to organize the Pacem in Terris conference and edited the Foreign Affairs Newsletter, a publication of the Center for East-West Accord.

From 1976 until 1986, she was editorial director and speechwriter for Senator Charles McC Mathias, Jr. (R-MD) and from 1983-1986 she also acted as his administrative assistant. During this period she made two trips to the Soviet Union with the senator as his foreign affairs adviser. On the second trip she fell of the ice while en route to visit a group of Soviet "refuseniks' and broke her leg. As recorded in the March 2, 1985 edition of ROLL CALL, "Because of a nasty fall on some ice, Margaret was rushed off to the American Embassy where her leg was swaddled in plaster of Paris. Ever since that fateful day she's been swinging a cast around while keeping up her usual routine here in The Hill." She was also a member of a Congressional staff delegation to the People's Republic of China in 1986.

When Senator Mathias retired, Mrs. Nalle served for two years as Washington representative for the American University in Cairo. From 1986 to 2002 she edited a quarterly newsletter for the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships. During that same period, she was copy editor of Middle East Policy, the journal of the Middle East Policy Council. Other publications she worked on include Authoritarian Regimes in Transition, published in 1987 by the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, and The Gulf Cooperation and the Council by Ambassador Joseph Wright Twinam, published by the Middle East Policy Council.

From 1995 until 2006, Mrs. Nalle volunteered as an evaluator for the FLEX program (Future Leaders Exchange) run by the American Councils for International Exchange which brings high school students from Russia and the former Soviet republics to the United States to study for a year. Her other volunteer activities included copy editing at Dumbarton Oaks for the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium and serving on the boards of the St. Francis Center, which does bereavement counseling, and the American School in Moscow. During World War II, she volunteered as a nurse's aid at Doctors' Hospital and danced with servicemen at the USO on Farragut Square.

Mrs. Nalle was predeceased by her husband of 56 years, David. She is survived by a son, David Fleming Nalle of Austin, TX; a daughter, Susan Tilghman Nalle of Hoboken, NJ, and two granddaughters, Caroline and Catherine Nalle. Her marriage to the late Basil Gordon Dickey ended in divorce.

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