Nicholas G. Thacher, 86; U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 1970s

Nicholas Gilman Thacher, 86, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, died of pulmonary fibrosis March 11 in San Francisco.

Born in Kansas City, Mo., Tracher graduated from Princeton University in 1937 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. After college, he worked for Banker’s Trust Co. in New York.

He entered officer training school at the outset of World War II, and served four years in the South Pacific as an engineering officer on the cruiser Pensacola.

Thacher joined the foreign service in 1947. His first assignment was as vice consul at the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, capital of the newly independent nation of Pakistan. Thacher also spent two years in Calcutta as a vice consul. He then served as deputy chief of mission in Tehran, Iran, for five years, and as U.S. ambassador in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, from 1970 to 1973.

Thacher left the State Department and moved to San Francisco, where he served as vice president in Wells Fargo Bank’s international department and taught undergraduate seminars on the Middle East at Stanford University.