PRISCILLA F. WENTZ

WENTZ PRISCILLA F. WENTZ Bristish SOE, Navy Wife Of McLean, Virginia, died at the Arleigh Burke Pavilion nursing home on Thursday, September 11, 2014 from the effects of dementia. Priscilla was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 19, 1924, the daughter of Dr. Robert Muir MacGregor and Dr. Phyllis MacGregor-Brown. She was educated at St. Serf's girl's academy in Edinburgh and later as a librarian. During WWII, she volunteered for duty with the British military and was detailed to the FANYs (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), with further assignment to the elite SOE (Special Operations Executive) group. SOE detailed intelligent young women to maintain communications with resistance movements in occupied Europe, as volunteers to train as wireless operators, and as coders. Priscilla served as a communications coding cryptographer until discharge in 1945. Some of her military time was spent at the famed British communications and intelligence center at Bletchley Park in England. In 1946, she married Tadeusz Olsza Blomberg, recently discharged from the wartime Polish free forces, who had been stationed in Britain. Using the stage name of Tadeusz Olsza, he was well known in Poland as a dramatic actor in films, theatrical producer, cabaret performer and a singer of multi-national reputation. Olsza was dubbed "the Maurice Chevalier" of Poland. Priscilla and he lived in Warsaw until his retirement in the late 1960s, during which time she was employed in the cultural attache's office of the American embassy. The couple relocated back to Britain in 1969. Tadeusz died in 1975. Priscilla supported herself as a librarian at U.S. Naval Headquarters in London and at the American (high) school in St. Johns Wood, London. In 1980, she married Captain James E. "Gene" Wentz, USN, in Toronto, Canada. She traveled with him to assignments at the Pentagon, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, and the Naval War College in Newport, RI. After retirement from the Navy, the couple lived in London from 1984-88 before returning to the Washington area where they have made their home ever since. Mrs. Wentz was an avid reader and follower of world politics. She worked in the London political headquarters of British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s and, in Washington, served the staff of Richard Allen, national security advisor to the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign. She has a daughter and son-in-law, Bronislawa and Lesek Tyburski of Clinton Township, MI, two grandchildren, and one great grandson. Services will be private. www.demainefunerals.comwww.demainefunerals.com