Thomas M. Ballentine, Sr., an urban planning consultant and U.S. representative to an international maritime engineering association dies.

Thomas McClellan Ballentine, Sr., an urban planning consultant and career employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute of Water Resources at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, died Dec. 23 of complications from Parkinson's disease at Edenwald Senior Living in Towson, Maryland. The former longtime resident of Alexandria, Virginia was 90.

Thomas McClellan Ballentine, Sr., son of Robert Taylor Ballentine, a farmer and business owner and Ruth McClellan Ballentine, a homemaker and playwright, was born in Port Chester, New York. He spent his formative years in Sardis, Mississippi, near the family farm.

He attended the Sardis School and graduated from Sewanee Military Academy, Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1951.  In 1956, he graduated from the University of Virginia. He served for six months in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps at the end of the Korean War and remained in the active reserves for ten years, attaining the rank of Captain. In 1964, he earned a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Oklahoma.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s he was employed as an urban planning consultant by the State of North Carolina, and later by the architectural and engineering firm of Lyles, Bissett, Carlisle and Wolff in Columbia, South Carolina.

He was then employed for 27 years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Institute for Water Resources at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. During that time, he served as Secretary of the U.S. Section of the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congresses (PIANC), an international engineering society dedicated to waterborne transportation, infrastructure and navigation.

Upon his retirement in 2002, and in recognition of his work, he was made an Honorary Member of PIANC by the international secretariat. In 2006, he was invited to serve as the U.S. representative of the International History Commission of PIANC, which prepared a volume on the 125-year history of the navigational association. The history was published in 2010. While collecting information for this international project, he wrote a history of the 100 years of activities of the U.S. Section of PIANC. In 2009, he was made an Emeritus Member of the U.S. Section which had been re-named PIANC USA.

Pursuing an intense life-long interest in architecture, throughout his life he read extensively and traveled to visit buildings and architectural sites all over the world. In a related hobby, he collected biographies of American architects who worked in the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries.

Throughout his adult life he was involved in volunteer activities. He served as Chairman of the Board of the Columbia Literacy Council in Columbia, South Carolina. He was President of the Board of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association in Alexandria, Virginia. He was a docent at the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the American Institute of Architects Foundation Octagon House in Washington, D.C. He was a docent at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., starting in the early 1980s soon after the museum opened. In addition, he served on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Fessenden Ensemble in Washington, D.C.

His memberships included PIANC, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Victorian Society in America and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Late in life, his love of music led him to learn to play the clarinet. After moving to Edenwald he discovered he could sing and talk-sing in the manner of Rex Harrison, which he greatly enjoyed. He appeared in three shows at Edenwald during his time living there. He also loved books - reading them, collecting them and looking through second-hand bookstores for books to acquire. In a "book of books" he kept a log and memorable quotes from more than 800 books he read from December 1977 to at least 2018.

He is survived by his son, Thomas M. Ballentine, Jr. and daughter-in-law Jane Ballentine, of Baltimore, and grandson Henry Ballentine, of Houston, Texas, as well as several nieces and nephews. His marriage to Barbara Beckwith Ballentine ended in divorce.

At Mr. Ballentine's request, no services will be held. He will have a headstone placed in the Ballentine family section of the Rose Hill Cemetery in Sardis, Mississippi.