http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103291_5.html

**Adelaide M. Hawkins **OSS, CIA Analyst

Adelaide Mulheran Hawkins, 94, who was an analyst in the Office of Strategic Services and its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, died July 10 of renal and congestive heart failure at her son's home in Arlington.

Mrs. Hawkins, who also was an antiques dealer and volunteer, was born in Wheeling, W.Va., and came to Washington with her husband and three children in 1940.

While her husband worked in the temporary munitions building on Constitution Avenue as a cryptanalyst for the Army, Mrs. Hawkins began studying his cryptanalysis lessons. After learning of her studies, her husband's boss offered her a job.

She began working with Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's coordinator of information, in what became the Office of Strategic Services.

Mrs. Hawkins created the OSS message center and remained its deputy director throughout World War II. She oversaw the reception, processing and distribution of sensitive communications, and she trained agents in communicating from behind enemy lines in occupied Europe.

After the war, she was part of the greatly reduced staff known as the Central Intelligence Group until it was absorbed into the new Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. Mrs. Hawkins spent several years in London in the late 1950s, where she developed an interest in antiques. She retired from the CIA in 1974.

After retiring, Mrs. Hawkins entered the antique business and partnered at different periods with her brother, her daughter, her son and daughter-in-law, and with a CIA colleague.

She bought and restored an antebellum Methodist church in Hillsboro in Loudoun County, where she operated Stone Church Antiques in the 1990s.

From the 1970s to 1990s, she volunteered with the Treasure Trove Thrift Shop at Inova Fairfax Hospital and with the Opportunity Shop at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Washington.

In 1982, Mrs. Hawkins bought and restored a derelict but exotic Mayan-style house in Arlington where she cared for her mother. The extensive garden next to the house, with scores of goldfish in its ponds, became the site of many neighborhood gatherings.

When her mother died in 1992, Mrs. Hawkins moved to the Jefferson retirement condominium community in Arlington.

Her marriage to Edward Hawkins ended in divorce. Two of their children died: Edward J. Hawkins in 1975 and Shelia Van Vliet Beckner in 1990.

Survivors include a son, Don Alexander Hawkins of Arlington; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.