After almost 20 years in the House, Mr. Poff, was appointed to the Virginia State Supreme Court in 1972 and served there until his retirement in 1988. Richard Harding Poff was born on Oct. 19, 1923, the son of a railroad worker and part-time barber, in Radford, a small town in southwest Virginia. He graduated from Roanoke College and received his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School. During World War II, he flew 35 missions as a B-24 bomber pilot and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Undergraduate work at Roanoke College, Salem, Va, University of Virginia at Charlottesville, LL.B., 1948; was admitted to the bar in June 1947, and commenced practice in Radford, Va., in 1948; delegate Republican National Convention, 1968; elected as a Republican to the Eighty-third Congress; reelected to the nine succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1953, until his resignation August 29, 1972 Mr. Poff and his first wife, the former Jo Ann Topper, were married in 1948. They had three children. She died in 1978. In 1980, he married Jean Murphy, who died in 2007. Complete information about his survivors was not available.