A. Nicholas Vardac – Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy

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From a contemporary press report:

Dr. A. Nicholas Vardac, 86, a retired executive film producer for the Department of the Interior, died of cancer at Mount Vernon Inova Hospital on August 6, 2001.

Dr. Vardac was a native of Boston and graduated with a BA with honors from Harvard in 1935 and a Ph.D. in fine arts in 1941 from Yale School of Drama. In 1942 to 1943, he completed a crash course in Japanese Language at Colorado University which led to a commission in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant Commander. During WW II he served in a special intelligence unit in the Pacific decoding Japanese communications traffic.

After the war, he served with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan documenting wartime damage in Nagasaki and completing several documentary films there including, ”Japan Today, 1946”. While working with the USIA in Vietnam making films in support of the Diem Government, he met his future wife whose father was running the railroads for the French Army. Later, back in the States, he was a professor of drama at Stanford, Boston and Michigan State Universities.

From 1960 to 1984, he worked at the U.S. Department of Interior. There he was engaged in the conduct of an industry-sponsored program in which he produced documentary motion pictures covering the full range of mining activities in North America. Many of these won awards both here and abroad.

Survivors include his wife, Janine P. Vardac; two children, Michael A. Vardac and Eric A. Vardac and two grandchildren, Graham and Easton.

A Memorial Service will be conducted on Saturday at 11 a.m. in the DEMAINE FUNERAL HOME, Alexandria Chapel, 520 S. Washington St., Alexandria. Rev. W.T. Reynolds, officiating. Inurnment on August 23, 2001 at 11 a.m. at Arlington National Cemetery Columbarium, (meet at the Administration Building C at 10:30 a.m.).

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