GEORGE R. BICKELL SR.,

71, a retired Air Force colonel who had been a fighter pilot in Europe during World War II and later a faculty member at the National War College in Washington and a NATO staff officer in Italy, died of cancer Oct. 4 at his home in Brewster, Mass.

Col. Bickell was born in Passaic, N.J. He attended Drew University and New York University.

He joined the Army Air Corps in 1939 and was assigned at Wheeler Field in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, when it was attacked by Japanese planes during the raid on Pearl Harbor. Later in the war, he was a fighter pilot and group commander, and he escorted U.S. bombers on raids over Germany.

After the war, he was a fighter wing commander in West Germany, a student and later a faculty member at the National War College in Washington, a NATO officer in Italy, vice commander of the Air Defense Command at Hancock Field in Syracuse, N.Y., and director of a reserve unit at Andrews Air Force Base.

Col. Bickell retired from the Air Force in 1969. He moved to this area in 1963, and lived in Alexandria and Fairfax before he moved to Brewster in 1986.

Survivors include his wife, Nancy A. Sprague Bickell of Brewster; two sons, George R. Bickell Jr. of Boston and Thomas N. Bickell of Anchorage; two daughters, Robin E. Bickell of Los Angeles and Judith A. Olson of Montclair, N.J.; one sister, Lois Schoenfeldt of Escondido, Calif.; and four grandchildren.

George Ross Bickell