Albert Samuel "Bert" Fraleigh

Albert Samuel "Bert" Fraleigh, 93, a retired career USAID officer, died January 10, 2014, in Sequim.

Fraleigh was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1920, became a U.S. citizen and joined the Navy in World War II.

He later joined the United Nations relief program in China, where he organized the evacuation of critical materiel to Taiwan. After the communist takeover, he was detained in China and harshly interrogated for several months.

A fluent writer and speaker of Chinese, Bert joined the U.S. assistance mission to Taiwan in 1952 and eventually served as the personal adviser to Taiwan's future president. In 1957, he was named one of the 10 outstanding young men in federal service.

Fraleigh subsequently rose to senior field positions with USAID in Laos and South Vietnam, where he became legendary for helping local farmers earn more money by raising pigs, corn and soybeans than they could by raising traditional rice.

He shaped an unconventional program, sending teams of young civilians, many of them volunteers on contract, to live and work in the provinces under sparse and sometimes dangerous circumstances.

Often a thorn in the side of deskbound Saigon bureaucrats, Fraleigh later wrote, "We would have prevailed in Vietnam if the bureaucracy would have allowed it." He later had special assignments in the Philippines, Korea, Indonesia and Okinawa, Japan.

After leaving federal service in 1976, Fraleigh ran companies in Singapore, Taiwan, Hawaii and Seattle, Washington. He also taught international business and found time to get a doctorate at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

He later retired to Sequim, where he competed in many senior track and tennis competitions.

He is survived by his wife of many years, the former Jean Liu, a noted Chinese artist and art collector.