Arthur H. Page III

Arthur H. Page III, 89, died from complications of pancreatic cancer on July 25 in Washington, D.C.

A native-born Washingtonian, Mr. Page had a colorful early childhood as the son of Capt. Arthur Page Jr. USMC, a pioneer aviator. Capt. Page's assignments in the 1920's took the family overseas to Santa Domingo, Guam, Haiti and China. When the air squadron was assigned to Shanghai to protect U.S. facilities, the young Page became fluent in Mandarin, and he saw firsthand the country's internal strife. Page watched his father win air races, including the Bromberg Trophy and the Curtiss Marine Trophy at the Anacostia Air Races. Sadly, at age ten, he witnessed his father die in the crash of his experimental mono-wing Curtiss Hawk in Chicago's 1930 Thompson Trophy Race, the pre-eminent national air race of the time.

In the 1930s, he spent his teenage summers in Nantucket with his grandmother and his step-grandfather, Jerry Jerome, who was Winston Churchill's first cousin. Page raced and won the Rainbow Class sailing trophy in 1935 and 1936 at the Nantucket Yacht Club.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Page traveled to the Marine Corps' new Camp Lejeune, N.C. and was the first enlistee. Trained as a radioman and tail gunner for dive bombers, he was deployed to New Caledonia in 1942-43. He was recalled to Quantico, Va. to attend Officer Candidate School in 1943 and then sent back to Pacific duty in Hawaii. He was seriously injured in an accident during blackout conditions in Hawaii, and again at Quantico during equipment tests on an airboat. Mr. Page retired from active duty USMC in 1948 and USMC Reserves in 1957.

As a Marine first lieutenant, he met his future wife Katherine Kayser at a tea dance at the Shoreham Hotel in 1944. Upon her 1945 graduation from the National Cathedral School, the couple was wed in Bethlehem Chapel in the National Cathedral. The bride's father reportedly bartered gas rations to supply Heller's Bakery with the sugar for the wedding cake.

After WWII, he attended the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute and began his career in radio and television at NBC. He was a radio and television engineer for more than three decades with NBC's Washington affiliate WRC. During his career, he served as radio engineer for many Washington celebrities, including Willard Scott and Ed Walker on WRC's popular Joy Boys of Radio. He was part of the NBC teams covering numerous presidential inaugurals and White House events. He was also a ham radio operator with the call sign W3PPK.

Widowed in 1980, he retired from NBC in 1982, and moved from Washington to Edgewater, where he enjoyed boating daily and was an active member of the Anne Arundel Radio Club. Using his boat and radio, he provided safety rescue for the annual Chesapeake Bay Swim.

Survivors include son, Arthur H. Page IV; grandchildren, Arthur H. Page V and Katherine Wallace Stephens Page; and great-grandson Cary Grant Page.