Muriel Lacey Hartley
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Muriel Lacey Hartley, 85, who served as executive secretary to Alexander M. Haig Jr. and other government officials, died Nov. 12 of a heart attack at her   son's home in Monroe, N.C. She was a longtime resident of Bethesda.
Mrs. Hartley was born in the District and graduated from  Woodrow Wilson High School in 1939 and Strayer Business College in 1941.
She began her government career at the Air Transport Command in 1941 and held several positions with the Air Force, eventually rising to administrative assistant to the deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs. She received the Defense Department's Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1966.
She was detailed to the White House staff in 1967 and served as secretary to Joseph A. Califano, special assistant to the president.
In 1969, Mrs. Hartley became secretary to Haig, a job that -- with few interruptions -- spanned 25 years and included his tenures as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, Army vice chief of staff, White House chief of staff under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, presidential candidate and international consultant.
Mrs. Hartley traveled to China in advance of Nixon's historic trip to that country in 1972. She told a Washington Sunday Star interviewer, "I'd say to myself," Here I am in China -- my family's 15,000 miles away -- and I'm probably only the fifth or sixth American woman to have been here in 20 years.
On her 50th birthday, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger praised her in a cable from Moscow as "the real power behind the scenes."
She also served as confidential assistant to Califano during his tenure as secretary of health, education and welfare (now health and human services) and to Shirley Hufstedler, the first secretary of education. She retired from government service in 1982 and continued to work until 1995 as Haig's executive secretary at his international consulting firm.
Mrs. Hartley's husband, Robert Warren Hartley, died in 2004.
Survivors include two children, Robert W. Hartley of Monroe and Margaret H. Gervasi of Silver Spring; two sisters, Dorothy Bowles of Brandywine and Patricia Coan of Falls Church; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
-- Joe Holley