Gordon Benson Ramsey
April 11, 1926 - June 19, 2006

Distinguished career Foreign Service officer, accomplished composer and jazz musician, Gordon Benson Ramsey died June 19, 2006 of natural causes. A resident of Reston and Herndon Virginia since 1978, Mr. Ramsey, 80, also made the DC area his home between overseas postings.

Born in Bingham Canyon, Utah, the youngest of six children, Ramsey graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1944 and subsequently joined the U.S. Army where he served for two years, playing trumpet with an army band and writing shows for troops in Hawaii. At the end of his military service, Mr. Ramsey enrolled in the University of Utah and continued to play music, playing trumpet in local jazz bands and sitting in with several of the big bands that came through town such as Glen Gray, Glen Miller, Tex Beneke and others. During this time he met his future wife, Nathalie Hubbard, also attending the University, and they were married in 1948. Gordon received a B.A. Music in 1949 and an M.A. in Classical Composition with a minor in Philosophy in 1950 from the University of Utah.

To further his studies in music composition, Gordon used his WWII GI Bill funds to move his family to Paris, France where he attended L'Ecole Normale de Musique and studied with composer Arthur Honegger. In 1952, Gordon joined the United States Agency for International Development (then known as the Marshall Plan in Europe). In 1956 he was transferred to Djakarta, Indonesia. He also served in Ethiopia, the Philippines, Laos (where, as acting USAID director, he oversaw the closing of the USAID mission at the end of the Vietnam War), Syria (as USAID director) and finally Washington, D.C. where he served as USAID Personnel Director for two years before retiring in 1980. For his dedicated service, Gordon was awarded the Distinguished Honor Award and the Distinguished Career Service Award. After retirement, Gordon continued until 1992 to work as a consultant for Development Associates, designing and leading project implementation trainings for USAID missions throughout the world.

Throughout his life, music remained a priority and a great passion with Gordon. In each country he lived in, he organized musical groups (both jazz and classical), wrote shows and continued to compose "serious music" (as he called it). In Addis Ababa in 1958 he taught the emperor Haile Selassie's bodyguard band to play jazz and wrote arrangements for them. The Los Angeles Symphony, the Portland Symphony, the Birmingham Symphony, and the Utah Symphony as well as various chamber music groups have also performed his "serious" compositions. In addition, Orion records produced two albums of his music.

In 1978, shortly after returning from overseas, Ramsey co-founded, directed and wrote arrangements for a 21-piece band of local musicians, The Difficult Run Jazz Band (DRJB). The Loudon campus of the Northern Virginia Community College, where the band rehearsed and where Gordon was an instructor, supported the band for many years. DRJB still plays for local fairs and other events though Gordon retired from the band in 1997.

Preceded in death by his son Marc in 1988, Gordon is survived by his wife of 58 years, Nathalie Hubbard Ramsey of Herndon, VA; two daughters Brinton Ramsey of Seattle, WA and Moira Ramsey of Philomont, VA; and one granddaughter, Larissa.

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