Nonie Condray

Worked at NSA, Army intelligence

— Standing less than 5 feet tall, Nonie Condray was petite but packed a lot of punch, whether she was sharing her conservative political views or refusing to discuss her 35-year career with the National Security Agency in Washington.

“She was just a little feisty woman ... one of the last Southern ladies,” said friend Darleen Frizzell. “I kept asking her questions about what all she did [in Washington]. She just said, ‘You just don’t discuss it.’ I would just embellish her to my kids that she was a double-spy for someone.”

Condray died Sunday atBaptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock from cancer complications.

She was 92.

Born in DeWitt, Condray grew up around politics, with her father serving as a prosecutor and in the Arkansas Legislature before his death in 1932.

After college, Condray moved east and became a research librarian for U.S. Army Intelligence in the early 1940s. This morphed into a career with the National Security Agency, said her nephew, Patrick Condray.

Condray worked in cryptography, the study of secret codes and deciphering, as what the agency calls a cryptanalyst.

Even though her work had long been declassified, Condray never shared any government secrets.

“Unfortunately, they have a very strict, need-toknow criteria,” her nephew said. “And I never needed to know.”

One story Condray did share was when her colleagues received a note from the Soviet Embassy to take out a large encyclopedia entry about the “hero” of the Soviet Union, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, known as a merciless killer and a close ally to communist dictator Josef Stalin,Patrick Condray said.

After Beria bragged about being the one behind Stalin’s death, the government requested the entry be substituted with “a little bitty article on the ‘traitor to Stalin,’” with the rest of the space filled with a longer entry on the Bering Strait, her nephew said.

“That wasn’t Nonie, she wouldn’t do anything like that,” Patrick Condray said. “She didn’t care what the Soviet government told her.”

After retiring in the mid-1970s, Condray moved back to DeWitt to live with her sister.

“They wouldn’t let her have a dog [in her Washington apartment] and thefamily is dog crazy,” her nephew said. “Right after retiring, the next thing she did was go out and adopt ... a purebred cairn terrier.”

An avid reader and a devoted Republican, Condray wasn’t afraid tovoice her opinions to city leaders.

“She would write letters on city projects that she didn’t feel were appropriate or that she thought were a waste of money and it would turn things around,” Patrick Condray said.

Last year, Condray had a hand in changing the city’s mind about building a new middle school in DeWitt, which she didn’t believe was fiscally responsible since the school could simply be repaired, her nephew said.

“She had opinions on all kinds of issues,” Patrick Condray said. “Sometimes they prevailed and sometimes they didn’t. She was kind of crusty, as you might imagine.”

However, it was her sharp attitude and pride in both her family and hometown that made her DeWitt’s “darling,” Frizzell said.

“She was just a sweet lady,” Frizzell said. “She never imposed on you ... If you’d go to visit her, she’d say, ‘Only come back when you feel like you have the time.’”

Arkansas, Pages 12 on 09/27/2012

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