Retired Rear Admiral Henry Marshall, 90

Henry Marshall, a decorated naval officer who retired as a rear admiral after 31 years of service, did not want to be called "sir."

"He was not the typical military officer. He did not want to be called `sir' so we would call him that whenever we wanted to tease him," recalls one of his sons, Mark, a Seattle attorney.

Mr. Marshall, 90, died last Thursday "in his own home in his own bed, just the way he wanted," said his widow, Eleanor, of Mercer Island.

He had already beaten cancer twice, she said. "I think he was just worn out. He had a serious infection this time and was bedridden, so he just went to sleep," she said.

Mr. Marshall brought his family to Seattle in 1958 when the Boeing Co. offered him a job following his retirement from the Navy. But he made sure his family's ties to the area of Civil War battlegrounds of rural northern Virginia stayed strong. Each year the family visited Markham, Va. - a small suburb of Marshall, Va., which was named for their ancestors, said his son.

Mark remembers that one of his dad's favorite humorous descriptions of his early years was that "the family had a large farm and in two generations of hard drinking and careful mismanagement - lost it."

With only eight years of formal education in the local school, Mr. Marshall applied for admission to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. One of the family tales is that Mr. Marshall was accepted in 1922 when a vacancy resulted because Wisconsin failed to nominated anyone.

While taking post-graduate courses at Annapolis, he met Eleanor, who was visiting a sister.

When their marriage was announced, according to family lore: "Everyone in the officers club had a pool on how long it would last because there was a 10-year age difference," Mark Marshall said. "I think the longest bet was three months." The couple would have celebrated their 58th anniversary later this month.

Assigned as engineering officer aboard the destroyer Cassin, Mr. Marshall made a little history. "Dad was on board, . . . someone threw the wrong valve and the boilers blew up," said Mark Marshall.

Two men were killed. Mr. Marshall, a lieutenant junior grade, was given the Navy Cross for saving some of the men on board. Then, said his son, the Navy court-martialed him because as the engineering officer, he was responsible.

His only penalty was dropping 25 positions on the list of officers, a ruling that meant he dropped behind his classmates from the academy.

It did not seem to harm Mr. Marshall's career. He went on to serve as engineering officer on the battleship South Dakota for much of World War II, including numerous runs escorting convoys of military supplies through northern waters filled with German submarines to Murmansk, Russia.

Later, he was promoted to captain and commanded the Hydrus, an attack transport, before being assigned as executive officer for the Naval Air Station at San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Mr. Marshall worked for Boeing after his retirement from the Navy.

In addition to his son Mark, Mr. Marshall is survived by his son John, two daughters, Susan Mishalani and Betsy Sutherland, and four grandchildren.

A memorial service was held yesterday at St. Mark's Cathedral. Burial will be in Leeds Episcopal Church Graveyard, Markham, Va. The family suggests memorials be contributions to a favorite charity.