Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....LaVean, Gilbert Earl February 16, 2020
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Pat Currigan currigan1932@comcast.net February 13, 2021, 10:31 am

Ionia Sentinel Standard-Sat. April 25, 2020

GILBERT EARL LAVEAN, 86
Gilbert Earl LaVean passed away in Berryville, VA, 16 February 2020, at the 
age of 86.

LaVean was born in Saranac, MI, in 1933, the son of Marion Gilbert LaVean 
and Lucy Hanna LaVean. He graduated from Saranac High School in 1952 along 
with his soon to be wife Barbara Cowels. They married in Clarksville on 12 
September 1953.

He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Michigan 
State University in 1955 and maser degree in electrical engineering from 
Drexel Institute of Technology in 1961, and was commissioned into the 
Ordnance Corps in 1955. In 1975 he graduated from the Industrial College of 
the Armed Forces and in 1979, with the creation fo the Senior Executive 
Service, was in the first class of SES member of the Department of Defense.

Gilbert LaVean was one of the founding officers of the Defense Communication 
Agency, now Defense Information Systems Agency-DISA, and retired as 
Associate Director. During his tenure of DCA he was responsible for many 
innovations in secured communications and is the listed patentee on numerous 
patents. Some of his patents became fundamental to CDMA architecture and 
secured data and voice transmission.

Some projects that LaVean became involved in a supervisory role included the 
guidance systems for Talos Missiles, the communication architecture for Air 
Force One and Looking Glass, as well as NATO interoperability. He was also 
on the negotiating team for SALT II, specifically for frequency allocation 
and Satellite Positioning. His ICAF paper on the survivability of the 
communications systems after a Soviet Nuclear Strike was ordered to be 
printed and circulated DOD wide.

One o his favorite early stories was about testing for EMP which in the '60s 
could only be done by flying into a thunderstorm After a particularly bumpy 
flight he noticed there were some anomalies so he wanted to make another 
pass through the storm. The pilot in command said "no sir we are not going 
back in there." He always smiled when he finished this story by saying that 
the Army was willing but the Air Force wasn't.

After his retirement he was a vice president at International Mobile Machine 
where he continued his work on development of communication infrastructure 
and adding to his patent portfolio. His insight also made him a highly 
sought after expert trial witness as a number of the communications patents 
that were issued in the cold war were declassified and became the subject of 
litigation.

He was active in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) of the 
United Nations and was a life member of Institute of Electrical and 
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) American Institute of Aeronautics and 
Astronautics (AIAA) and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association. He was also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and 
the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and three children, Michael LaVean, 
Sherry Oliverez (Manny), and Shawnn Morgan (Monte); eight grandchildren, 
Madeleine LaVean, Manny Oliverez, Steve Oliverez, Nickki Hendrix (Sam) Tom 
Oliverez, Jessie Morgan, Jamie Morgan and Jordan Morgan, as well a seven 
great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his brother Duane LaVean, (interred in Saranac) 
and his son, Major Mitchell Craig LaVean, USAF (interred in Arlington 
National Cemetery).

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