Applewhite, E(dgar) J(arratt), (Jr.) 1919-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born April 24, 1919, in Newport News, VA; died of multiple myeloma February 10, 2005, in Georgetown, VA. Intelligence officer and author. Applewhite was a career Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who was known for his later collaborative writings with R. Buckminster Fuller. Graduating from Yale University in 1941, he joined the U.S. Navy, became a code breaker and achieved the rank of lieutenant commander. Applewhite first worked with Fuller, an inventor best known for developing the geodesic dome, when Fuller was attempting to start a company called Dymaxion Dwelling Machines, Inc., which was meant to create machines that could cheaply manufacture homes. The idea never became successful and Applewhite pursued work elsewhere. Looking for an interesting job that would provide him opportunities for travel, he joined the CIA during the height of the cold war. Applewhite found himself working in Germany and Lebanon, among other locales, and rose to the post of deputy inspector general and chief of inspection by the mid-1960s. From 1966 to 1967 he also worked for the secretary of defense as an intelligence assistant, and in 1970 he retired from the CIA. Applewhite next decided to begin a writing career. He was fascinated with many topics, and the first subject he wrote about was his friend Fuller. The inventor's mind was full of complex theories and philosophies, and Applewhite felt it was important to get them down on paper. Collaborating with Fuller, he produced Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) and Synergetics Two (1979). Applewhite also wrote the solo effort Cosmic Fishing: An Account of Writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller (1977). He would go on to complete two more books, Washington Itself: An Informal Guide to the Capital of the United States (1981) and Paradise Mislaid: Birth, Death, and the Human Predicament of Being Biological (1991).

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Washington Post, February 15, 2005, p. B6.