On Feb. 5, Thomas Laurence Farmer, 91, of Washington, D.C. His Washington career in public service and private law practice spanned 63 years. Farmer worked at the CIA, the New York law firm of Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett and the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development. Appointed by President Kennedy as chairman of the advisory board of the National Capital Transportation Agency from 1961 to 1964, he helped lead a crucial battle that prevented interstate highways from bisecting Washington. Born in 1923 in Berlin to an American father and a German Jewish mother, Farmer came with his parents to New York City in 1933. He graduated from Great Neck High School in 1940 and from Harvard College (A.B. 1943), where he was a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson. Farmer was deeply involved in developing relations between the United States and Germany in the Postwar era. He is survived by his wife, Wanda Walton, his three children: Daniel, Sarah and Elspeth, and five grandchildren.
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