http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-05-15/news/01051500351lalich-oss-war-ii

May 15, 2001|By Greg Garland and Frederick N. Rasmussen | Greg Garland and Frederick N. Rasmussen,SUN STAFF

Nick A. Lalich, a retired U.S. Department of Commerce trade specialist who served with the Office of Strategic Services in Yugoslavia during World War II helping to rescue and evacuate downed Allied fliers, died Friday of esophageal cancer at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 85.

The former longtime Mount Washington resident had recently lived in the Orchards in North Baltimore.

He retired in 1984 from the Department of Commerce.

The son of Serbian immigrants, Mr. Lalich was born in Lorain, Ohio, and raised in Cleveland. He earned a bachelor's degree in industrial arts from Ohio State University in 1938 and a master's degree from Columbia University in New York. He was an industrial arts teacher in Cleveland shortly before America entered World War II.

He entered the Army as a Signal Corps officer, but his knowledge of the Serbian language attracted the attention of the OSS, the predecessor agency to the CIA, which recruited him.

Nick A Lalich