Russell L. Hawes, a retired federal government economist and a World War II veteran, died July 25 of pneumonia at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. He was 93.

The son of Russell C. Hawes, a marketing professor in the agricultural extension service of the University of Maryland, and Amey M. Peck, a homemaker, Russell Llewellyn Hawes was born in East Providence, R.I., and raised in Cumberland, R.I., where he graduated from Cumberland High School.

His college studies at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston were interrupted when he entered the Army Air Forces in 1943. Trained as a pilot, he was sent to navigation school and completed training as a bomber navigator.

Commissioned a second lieutenant in 1944, Mr. Hawes joined the 484th Bomb Group of the 15th Air Force in Cerignola, Italy. As a navigator aboard Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers, he flew nine combat missions over Axis-held territory in Italy, Austria and other Central European countries.

Illness forced Mr. Hawes to miss a mission in which his plane and its crew were shot down over Yugoslavia. The crew was later rescued by partisans loyal to the Allies.

β€œHe often joked of his time in the service that he was one of the few soldiers who liked Army food, due to the somewhat limited culinary arts of his native New England upbringing,” wrote his son, George W. Hawes of Ruxton.

After earning a bachelor's degree in 1947 and a master's degree in 1948, both in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, he began his career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

During the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Hawes worked in the executive office, specializing in civil emergency preparedness. He later returned to the Department of Agriculture, working there until retiring in 1985.

He was active in his son's Cub Scout pack and also in his church, First Lutheran Church in Ellicott City. He was also a member of the Society of Colonial Wars and the Sons of the Revolution.

His was married 57 years to the former Shirleymarie Wieland, who died in 2005.

Mr. Hawes was a member of Ascension Lutheran Church, 7601 York Road, Towson, where a memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. today.

In addition to his son, he is survived by a granddaughter.

β€”?Frederick N. Rasmussen