THOMAS C. SORENSEN, RETIRED EXECUTIVE & 
                       UNIVERSITY BENEFACTOR, DIES AT 71

       Thomas C. Sorensen, 71, a retired investment executive and a former 
Deputy Director of the U.S. Information Agency, died on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 
his home in Albemarle County, Virginia.   He had a rare form of abdominal 
cancer.  A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, at the 
University of Virginia Chapel in Charlottesville.
        Tom Sorensen analyzed American and world political trends for 50 
years as a journalist, U.S. Government official, and investment analyst.  
From 1980 until retiring in 1996, he was associated with The Capital Group 
Companies of Los Angeles, one of the nation's largest investment management 
firms.  Both with the U.S. government and later in business, he specialized 
in Middle Eastern affairs, but he was also a frequent speaker on U.S. and 
international politics.
        From 1981 to 1990, he was in his firm's London office, and since then 
had lived near Charlottesville, where for a time he was a visiting lecturer 
in the University of Virginia's Department of Government and Foreign Affairs 
and a member of the Arts & Sciences Advisory Council.
       After six years as a newspaper and radio journalist in Lincoln, 
Nebraska, where he was born on March 31, 1926, Sorensen joined the U.S. 
Information Agency in 1951.  Following assignments in Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo 
and Washington, he was appointed deputy director of the Agency, where he 
received the Jaycees Award in 1962 as "One of the 10 Outstanding Young Men in 
the Federal Government."
       Subsequently, after a stint as a vice president of the University of 
California, Sorensen spent 10 years in New York City with The Advest Group 
Inc., a regional securities brokerage firm, before joining The Capital Group 
Companies.  He was the author of the book "The Word War," and chapters in 
"The World's Emerging Stock Markets" and "Propaganda and the Cold War."
       Sorensen was a 1947 graduate of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 
which in 1996 conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.  
At UNL, he endowed a professorship in American History, established an annual 
award for distinguished Nebraska journalism, created a scholarship program 
for intercollegiate debaters, and endowed an award in Women's Studies 
memorializing his mother, Annis Chaikin Sorensen.  He was a member of UNL's 
Arts & Sciences advisory Council of Visitors.
       At the University of Virginia, he endowed what became the Thomas C. 
Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, and a professorship in Political 
and Social Thought, currently filled by his boyhood friend William Lee Miller.  
He also endowed a program for training child psychotherapists at U.Va.'s 
Under Fives Study Center, which was established and is directed by his wife, 
Professor Pamela Berse Sorensen.  He created the Craig L.Slingluff Jr. Award 
for the Most Compassionate Resident of the Year  in honor of his surgeon and, 
to honor his oncologist, the William W. Grosh Cancer Research Fund.
       He was a member of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, 
Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma Rho, and Kappa Tau Alpha.
       His marriage to Mary Barstler Sorensen ended in divorce.
       In addition to his wife, survivors include: three children by his 
first wife -- Mrs. Ann Sorensen Ketter of Katonah, NY, Alan T. Sorensen of 
Fincastle, Va., and J. Christian Sorensen of Boston -- and two sons by his 
second wife, Matthew and Adam, both of Charlottesville; four granddaughters; 
a sister, Ruth Singer of Arlington, Va., and three brothers, Robert and 
Theodore of New York City, and Philip of Columbus, Ohio.  Theodore was 
special counsel to President John F. Kennedy.  Philip, now a retired Ohio 
State law professor, was lieutenant governor of Nebraska.
        In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be sent to the 
Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia, 
P.O. Box 5627, Charlottesville, Va. 22905, or the Under Fives Study Program, 
Boar's Head Lane, Charlottesville, Va. 22903
                                     ###
                                                            Noveember 5, 1997

Contacts:
William Lee Miller, at work  804-982-2335; at home 804-971-3682
Ted Sorensen, at work 212-373-3790
William H. Wood, director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, 
       at work 804-982 5698, at home 804-979-4194
Leigh B. Middleditch, at work 804-977-2543
Hill & Wood is handling funeral arrangements, 804-296-7110