Merrill Mayhall Blevins, U.N. Protocol Chief, 90

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Merrill Mayhall Blevins, a Foreign Service officer who for 12 years was
chief of protocol with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (UN) in Rome, Italy, died August 27, 2006, of congestive
heart failure at the Forum at Memorial Woods in Houston, Texas, having
been a former resident of Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 90.

Mr. Blevins was born in Somerset, Kentucky, and grew up in Harlan,
Kentucky. He graduated from the University of Kentucky and received a
master's degree in international studies from the University of
Chicago, Illinois.

During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces in Europe and
spent five years in the Air Force Reserve. From 1947 to 1968, he was in
the Foreign Service.

He retired from the Food and Agriculture Organization in 1980.

Mr. Blevins was a licensed lay reader at Christ Church in Alexandria,
Virginia, and through his church he played an important role in
rehabilitating the Mengo Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. He visited the
area several times, helped raise money and acquired medicines for the
church-sponsored effort that he directed.

In 1992, Mr. Blevins moved from Alexandria, Virginia, to Taos, New
Mexico. He had lived in Houston since March.

His first wife, Esther Blevins, died in 1968.

Survivors include his wife, Susan P. Blevins, whom he married in 1972,
of Houston, Texas; two daughters from his first marriage, Karen Roden
of Douglasville, Georgia, and Mary Anne Becker of Houston, Texas; and
two grandsons.

Washington Post

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