Harold Light, 86; FBI agent was a trick shot
WASHINGTON - Harold Light, 86, a retired FBI special agent who oversaw the construction of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., died Dec. 18 of complications from cancer surgery and a stroke at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del.
A former Fairfax, Va., resident, he also was the agent tapped by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to manage the extradition of James Earl Ray to the United States from London, where he had been arrested as the alleged assassin of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Light carried with him that day in 1968 an international warrant signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk authorizing him and two fellow agents to take charge of Ray. He recalled in later years his concern on the flight back about whether rioting or other civil disturbances might break out when they landed in Memphis, where King had been assassinated a few months earlier. The arrival was uneventful.
Mr. Light was born in Plainfield, Ind., and grew up in Indianapolis. He graduated with a business administration degree from Butler University in 1942 and attended Indiana Law School in Indianapolis. He served in the Army during World War II and was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone.
He joined the FBI in 1948 and worked in the Indianapolis, Atlanta, and New York field offices before being assigned to the Washington area in 1956.
An expert marksman and initially a firearms instructor at the FBI Academy, he once split a bullet on the blade of an ax on a children's TV show. During shooting demonstrations at FBI field days at Quantico, he was one of the instructors who would borrow a diamond ring from a member of the audience and use it as a mirror to shoot with his back turned to the target. He later designed the firing range at the FBI Academy, as well as the first Hogan's Alley, the mock streetscape used as a training facility.
Appointed special agent in charge at the FBI Academy, he was responsible for supervising the design and construction of the new facility at Quantico. Work began in the late 1960s; the academy was dedicated in 1972.
He retired from the FBI in 1972 and moved to Newark, where he became associate director of the Delaware Museum of Natural History in Wilmington. He retired again in 1978.
