Garret Lenger Albert was born on May 1, 1937, at New York Hospital in New York City to Alfred and Helen Albert. He had an older sister named Helen.
The family lived in Yorkville, a German neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Throughout his life Garret felt a strong connection to New York City from the part of his childhood spent there and to his family's German heritage; he enjoyed his mother's German cooking, singing German music around the piano and all things German. There was a shared sense of community among the German families in New York then.
He remembered his father going to the Fulton Fish Market to talk with the German fishermen who spoke about seeing submarines off the coast, but these sightings were never mentioned in the newspapers.
He remembered nighttime blackouts during the war, when his father would light a cigarette and the blackout warden would shout up from the street below to put it out.
Garret's early years were also shaped by the Depression and World War II, and he carried memories from that time for the rest of his life. He remembered breadlines and horse-drawn wagons due to wartime gas shortages.
He recalled his father looking for work and finding none. He saw people gathering at the post office to collect their mail and breaking down in tears when they learned someone had died in the war.
He had strong memories of the Dodgers who were a favorite of his father.
When he was about eight years old, the family moved upstate to Cambridge, New York. Garret loved everything about Cambridge and New England: the people, the history and geology.
He liked spending time outdoors in the Adirondacks and exploring nature. He would return to those passions throughout his life, enjoying fishing, camping, tramping in the woods and hunting for pictures with a camera.
Also during his time growing up in Cambridge he started being interested in science and later math. His son remembered going down the Grand Canyon by muleback when his father brought along a notebook that he used in spare moments to do calculus problems.
He was curious about almost everything. Some of his interests were geology, science, music, photography, languages, fishing, history, philosophy, politics, guns, carpentry, tools, and anything else he encountered.
He could build or repair anything including cabinetry, plumbing, and wiring; he just liked to figure out how things worked. He finished the basement in their first house and rebuilt major parts of their second house.
When he was about twelve years old, he built a shortwave radio in the barn using tubes and coils.
But the thing he most enjoyed throughout his life was music and he would lose himself in making or listening to music. He studied piano and trombone and taught himself guitar. He also taught himself to play by ear. He could pick up any instrument and make good music with it.
During college he played piano at a fraternity house, sometimes played trombone in small groups for events, and performed as a pickup musician on weekends and during summers. Music remained one of the constants of his life, and he played the piano almost every day until shortly before his death.
He studied for two years at Heidelberg University in Ohio and then transferred to Bowling Green University to study geology, graduating with honors in 1959. He later attended the University of Maine, served in the Army, worked as a Maine State Geologist, and taught geology and math at Ricker College in Maine.
He loved his time in Maine and sort of adopted the state as his own. He had many different jobs while young. He cut brush for the county, worked as a draftsman for an architectural firm, drove trucks down into a quarry, worked in a mineralogy museum at the University of Maine, and even spent a short time working at a Maine state mental hospital.
Eventually he was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency Junior Officer Training program and moved south to Virginia. Then he transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency to workon military intelligence.
In Virginia he met Elizabeth Ann Barber, Betsy, and in 1968 they married. In 1970 they moved to Stuttgart, Germany for three years, where he worked at the United States European Command.
He was an analyst focusing particularly on Eastern European Intelligence and also worked on the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks. Those years were especially important to him because they gave him a chance to reconnect with his German heritage and to visit with some of his relatives.
In 1974 they returned to Northern Virginia and there had two children, Garret and Meredith. They lived in Fairfax for four decades and built a life filled with family, friends, music, many memorable vacations and they belonged to a dinner group for 25 years.
Also in 1983-84 he studied at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama and there he wrote a research paper on the Iran/Iraq war that won a prize and was published.
As a husband and father, he brought the same curiosity, humor, and wide-ranging interests to his family life. He loved animals and taught his children to notice the natural world, whether by turning over stones to look at insects or sharing some fact or observation often about rocks or geology.
Sometimes his way of connecting was unconventional — a sudden unexpected lecture about platectonics, the Burgess Shale, or Shay's rebellion, or information about weather patterns.
He would strike up a conversation with anyone anywhere, for example once talking to a woman at a vegetable bin at a local supermarket in Half Moon Bay California who turned out to be Charlie Bowler's daughter.
He had a gentle, whimsical nature, a strong dislike of cruelty, a way of helping those around him see the world with more attention and curiosity, and a strong sense of integrity.
After retiring from DIA in 1993 he continued exploring new interests throughout retirement.
For a period he wrote poetry and even appeared on a local television channel reading some of his work. Ultimately he self-published a book of poetry.
He also built large wooden sculptures and even did some painting. He needed a proper easel – so he built a massive wooden easel, which was a work of art in itself.
Garret also had a great sense of humor and enjoyed absurdity. One time in response to current debates at that time about treatment of animals he joked about forming an organization called "People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables," or PETV. He expanded the idea into "People for the Ethical Treatment of Life," which would include vegetables, fungi, bacteria, and ultimately even viruses. That mix of humor, silliness and sincerity was characteristic of him.
In 2015 the family moved to Walnut Creek, California to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
In the spring of 2025 he was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away peacefully at home on December 20, 2025. He is survived by his wife of fifty-seven years, Betsy; his children, Garret and Meredith; and grandchildren Evangeline, Maryanne, Isabelle, Nicolette and Hayden.
We were fortunate to know him, to hear his stories, to learn from him, and to share in the curiosity and generosity he brought to the world. He will be deeply missed and remembered.