Tom Leavitt, 82, led FBI intelligence office

Tom Leavitt ran FBI field offices in South Carolina and Connecticut and eventually directed the agency’s entire Intelligence Division, leading counterespionage and antiterrorism efforts.

Though he came close to the pinnacle of FBI hierarchy, Mr. Leavitt is remembered for his humility. “You would never know what Tom did for a living if someone didn’t tell you,” said former neighbor and longtime friend Roy Wrenn of Glastonbury, Conn. “He was the type of person where I don’t think it mattered what he did for a living, he was going to do it incredibly well.”

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Tom Leavitt was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal in 1978.

Thomas William Leavitt, 82, of Roswell died Saturday of Parkinson’s disease at the Court at Sandy Springs assisted living facility. The funeral is 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church in Atlanta. H.M. Patterson and Son is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Leavitt was raised in Wollaston, Mass., a suburb of Boston. He was off to the Navy at age 17, graduated from Boston College and, in 1951, started his career with the FBI. He was a father of seven children, raised with his wife, Elizabeth, including a daughter, Jean, who died of cancer in 2005.

He moved to Atlanta after he retired from the FBI in 1978. He worked at Delta Air Lines, advancing to director of corporate security before he retired in 1992. He volunteered at the St. Vincent de Paul Society and at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“He just was a perfect gentleman,” said friend Jim Dunn, who ran Atlanta’s FBI field office in the mid-1970s. “He was a guy that you ran into and started talking to and in 10 seconds you liked.”

Friends and family say Mr. Leavitt was a completely reliable, even-tempered, honest man whose FBI assignments ranged from trailing Soviet spies to solving extortion cases. In 1978, he was awarded the agency’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.

One of Mr. Leavitt’s many commendation letters came from Birch Bayh, then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. Bayh lauded his effort to strengthen the FBI’s counterintelligence capability and said Mr. Leavitt’s cooperation with the committee had “contributed significantly to the establishment of effective Congressional oversight.”

“I believe at a time in the 1970s when the FBI badly needed credibility, but also needed experience and talent, he was an invaluable asset,” said son Paul Leavitt of Atlanta. “They saw the same qualities in my father that we in the family all came to know over a lifetime of just calling him Dad.”

Additional survivors include two daughters, Clare Leavitt of Oak Park, Ill., and Ann Evans of Glen Ellyn, Ill.; three sons, Thomas Leavitt Jr. of Greenville, S.C., John Leavitt of Gainesville, Va., and Mark Leavitt, stationed in Jacksonville; and a sister, Joanne Barron of Portland, Maine.