FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
KLMNO OBITUARIES
CHARLES MACKERRAS, 84 Electrifying, and eclectic, Australian conductor by Anne Midgette Charles Mackerras, 84, the
maverick Australian conductor whose interests led him across the whole spectrum of opera, pi- oneering in areas as far removed as period-instruments perform- ance and the works of Leos Jana- cek, died July 14 at a hospital in London. He had cancer, accord- ing to his management firm. Among his greatest achieve- ments was bringing Janacek (1854-1928) into the Western canon. When he conducted “Kat’a Kabanova” in 1951 at Sa- dler’s Wells (the company that later became the English Nation- al Opera), Janacek’s operas were virtually unknown outside what was then Czechoslovakia. Even in the composer’s native
country, the scores were heavily adapted as conductors and pub- lishers smoothed over innova- tions that they perceived as mis- takes. Mr. Mackerras, however, rec- ognized that these quirky works, with often angular music based heavily on patterns of conversa- tional speech and with eccentric choices of subject matter — in- cluding one adaptation of a newspaper comic strip, “The Cunning Little Vixen” — were modern masterpieces. Going back to the original manuscripts in many trips to Czechoslovakia, and learning to speak fluent Czech in the proc- ess, he helped to produce defini- tive editions, then recorded them in the first complete cycle of Ja- nacek operas on record outside of Czechoslovakia; his cycle re- mains a benchmark. His interests were by no means restricted to Czech opera. He was an early advocate of the English composer Benjamin Britten; one of the first conduc- tors to explore what perform- ances of the music of Handel and Mozart might have sounded like in the composers’ day; and a great devotee of the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Rise as oboeist Alan Charles MacLaurin
Mackerras was born Nov. 19, 1925, in Schenectady, N.Y., where his Australian father was work- ing with General Electric. When the boy was 2, his family
returned to Australia, where the father worked on electrifying New South Wales and the son — one of five boys — developed his love of music to a point where he became the principal oboist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra immediately upon graduating from the New South Wales Con- servatorium in 1943. Inspired by some of the great
conductors who came through Sydney to guest conduct with the orchestra, Mr. Mackerras went on to England to continue his conducting studies. He took a job as second oboe with the opera company at Sa- dler’s Wells; studied with the conductor of the company, Mi- chael Mudie; and met a young clarinetist in the orchestra, Hele- na Judith Wilkins, who became his wife. She survives, along with two daughters.
Seeking additional training,
Mr. Mackerras applied for a scholarship to study in Prague under the conductor Vaclav Tal- ich, an experience that was to shape him for life. His work with Janacek’s op-
eras was only the most obvious manifestation of a lifelong in-
JAMES B. BOOE, 83 Top official with Communications Workers union by Matt Schudel
James B. Booe, 83, a top official with the Communications Work- ers of America, who also was a member of the Democratic Na- tional Committee, died July 9 at a hospital in Pleasanton, Calif. He had congestive heart failure. Mr. Booe spent 46 years as a union activist and came to Wash- ington in 1976 as an assistant to the CWA president. In 1980, Mr. Booe (pronounced
BOO-ee) was elected executive vice president of the union, which had about 500,000 mem- bers at the time. He served as sec- retary-treasurer from 1985 until retiring in 1992.
Described in the New York Times as “an easygoing man who sports a crew cut and cowboy boots,” Mr. Booe was responsible for the CWA’s governmental and political activities and often tes- tified on Capitol Hill about labor issues. In the 1980s, he was a leader in efforts to preserve workers’ pensions during the
breakup of telephone conglomer- ate AT&T. Mr. Booe served on the Demo-
James B. Booe
cratic National Committee in the 1980s and was a member of its platform committee. In 1988, four years af- ter presiden- tial candidate Walter F. Mondale lost 49 states while pledg- ing to raise taxes, Mr. Booe de- scribed the difficulties of drafting the party’s plat-
form. “We have to present a respon- sible platform, not just a bunch of pie-in-the-sky things that everybody would recognize can’t be paid for,” he told The Washing- ton Post. “But I’m not sure that coming right out of the starting blocks with the idea of tax in- creases is the answer. Four years ago, we had what I thought was a
very honest candidate who talked along those lines and he was brutalized as a result of that.” When the Reagan administra- tion passed income tax cuts in 1985, Mr. Booe was among sever- al leading union officials who de- nounced the policy, saying bil- lions of dollars for schools and government services would be lost. “President Reagan himself re-
portedly will get $28,000 in tax relief, meaning he will receive more in tax benefits than half of America earns,” Mr. Booe told the Associated Press. “This, quite simply, is not fair tax reform.” James Brazier Booe II was born Oct. 3, 1926, in Pensacola, Fla., and spent much of his youth on a Navy base in Southern Cali- fornia. His father, the bandmaster of
the USS Oklahoma, was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Har- bor on Dec. 7, 1941. After high school, Mr. Booe joined the Navy, served in World War II and was recalled during the Korean War. He began his
union activities in 1946 while working for an electrical com- pany, and later a telephone com- pany, in California. After the Ko- rean War, he became a leading of- ficial in his union and stayed in California until moving to the Communications Workers’ na- tional office in Washington in 1976. Mr. Booe, who started a retiree group for CWA workers, lived in Annandale before moving to Las Vegas in 2000 and later to Cali- fornia. His marriage to Lily Giesick Booe ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 36 years, Judi Walmsley Booe of Pleasanton; three children from his first marriage, James B. Booe III of San Lorenzo, Calif., Carol Mott of San Carlos, Calif., and Er- ic Booe of Pleasanton; three step- children, Denise H. Pallatino of Potomac Falls, Toby Hardwick of Bristow and E. Keith Walmsley of Santa Rosa, Calif.; a sister; 12 grandchildren; and three great- grandchildren.
schudelm@washpost.com
volvement with Czech music in particular and Eastern Europe in general. His work there enabled him to establish the foundations of an impressive orchestral li- brary, full of editions not avail- able in the West. He was known in the business for bringing his own parts, complete with mark- ings, when he conducted an or- chestra. Returning to England, he got a
conducting position at Sadler’s Wells, where his 1951 “Kat’a Ka- banova,” 30 years after the work’s premiere, was the beginning of a Janacek renaissance. It wasn’t a quick sell; it’s only in the past couple of decades that the works have truly entered the canon. Mr. Mackerras also conducted the Metropolitan Opera’s first per- formance of the work, in 1991. Mr. Mackerras’s work in the
United States was as wide-rang- ing as his interests. He had a close relationship with the San Francisco Opera, worked at the Met in everything from Gluck to Meyerbeer to Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and led the Or- chestra of St. Luke’s, a first-rate chamber orchestra in New York, which, like Mr. Mackerras him- self, specializes in excellent per- formances of core repertory from a slightly outsider standpoint.
Two Grammy Awards But it was in England that Mr.
Mackerras was a true fixture, starting in the 1950s, when he conducted at Sadler’s Wells, the BBC Symphony and Britten’s English Opera Group, which Britten founded to promote op- era in English. Mr. Mackerras’s arrangement of some Gilbert and Sullivan mu- sic into a symphonic score, “Pineapple Poll,” later used as a ballet, became his first recording and remained one of his greatest hits. In 1963, he debuted at Lon-
don’s Covent Garden with Sho- stakovich’s “Katarina Ismailov- na” (also known as “Lady Mac- beth of Mtsensk”). In 1970, he became music director of what is now the English National Opera after a four-year stint at the Hamburg Opera. He also led the Welsh National Opera and, back home, the Sydney Symphony. Some of these posts allowed him leeway to experiment with new ways of performing Handel and Mozart in a style that might have been closer to what the composers heard, such as Han- del’s original instrumentation for the “Royal Fireworks Music,” which he recorded in 1959. “The original has 24 oboes,
METROPOLITAN OPERA ARCHIVES Among Mr. Mackerras’s main achievements was bringing Leos Janacek’s works into the Western canon.
and all those bassoons and horns,” he told an interviewer. “We got every wind player in London to come in for one ses- sion, in the middle of the night.” Mr. Mackerras won two Gram-
my Awards for best opera record- ing: in 1981 for Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” and in 2007 for Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.” In 1978, he was knighted. In the last years of his career, he held a number of honorary positions as conductor emeritus of orchestras and opera houses but swore off music director- ships. He was also no friend of interpretive stage productions. He decided at a certain point that he would rather only lead operas in existing productions. “With revivals, you know what
you’re getting,” he said. He remained active virtually until his death. His final appear- ances were in Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen,” which the Royal Opera House put on at his request in March. He was frail and ailing, but, the critic James Inverne reported in Gramo- phone magazine, “the energy and life in his conducting has surely never burned brighter.”
midgettea@washpost.com
S
B7
Lucian Bauman OPHTHALMOLOGIST
Lucian Bauman, 96, who prac- ticed ophthalmology in Washing- ton for more than four decades, died July 9 at a rehabilitation center in Roslindale, Mass. He had pneumonia. He was born in Paris and moved as an infant with his family to Chicago. As a young man, he worked as a licensed op- tometrist while attend- ing night school at the University of Illi- nois, from which he earned a bachelor’s and medical degree. After a general internship at a hospital in San Francisco, Dr. Bauman joined the Navy in 1944 and served as a medical officer aboard a ship stationed near Omaha Beach during the Nor- mandy invasion. He was transferred stateside to
Lucian Bauman
Washington in 1945 and trained in ophthalmology at the old Gall- inger Hospital. He remained ac- tive in the Navy Reserve until 1953, serving during the Korean War and at the Naval Gun Facto- ry.
Dr. Bauman had a private
practice for more than 40 years on 16th Street before retiring to Florida in the mid-1990s. He had moved to Massachusetts recently after a hip injury. “Lu,” as friends called him, loved the National Zoo. Around 1960, he offered to perform cat- aract surgery on a hippopotamus that was slowly going blind, hav- ing done the same operation for a monkey, but the anesthesia was deemed too risky at the time. Dr. Bauman enjoyed playing piano and running in Rock Creek Park. His wife of 48 years, the for- mer Augusta Shulman, died in 1994. Survivors include two chil- dren, Sherry Bauman of Newton, Mass., and Jeffrey Bauman of Wendell, Mass.; and two grand- daughters.
—Emma Brown
Bruce L. Boxwell BUS DRIVER
Bruce L. Boxwell, 75, a retired
Prince George’s County school bus driver, died July 12 of respi- ratory failure at Cranberry Cot- tage assisted-living facility in Glen Burnie. Bruce Lee Boxwell, a Washing-
ton native, was a graduate of Mc- Kinley High School and served in the National Guard. He was a de- livery truck driver for Wonder Bread for many years before be- coming a bus driver. He retired in about 2000. Mr. Boxwell was a longtime resident of what is now Riverdale Park and a member of St. Ber- nard Catholic Church there. His wife of 52 years, Dolores Stoddard Boxwell, died in 2009. Survivors include four chil- dren, Bruce L. Boxwell Jr. of Sev- ern, Sherry Hawkins of Charlotte Hall, and Billy Boxwell and Mary Frances Boxwell, both of Crof- ton; two sisters, Nancy Koawl of Pasadena and Evelyn Boxwell of Severn; a brother, Nicholas Box- well of Damascus; and four grandchildren.
—Matt Schudel
Vincent A. Brooks Jr. FEDERAL OFFICER
Vincent A. Brooks Jr., 70, who
retired from the Energy Depart- ment in 2008 as a transportation and safety officer, died July 11 at Washington Hospital Center. He had lung cancer. Mr. Brooks started his federal career as a facilities manager with the Commerce Department from 1974 to 1980. Before joining the Energy De-
partment in the early 1990s, he was the chief of space manage- ment with the Small Business Administration. A native Washingtonian, Vin- cent Anthony Brooks Jr. was a 1958 graduate of St. John’s Col- lege High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1963 from Syracuse University, where he played lacrosse. He served in the Army during
Vietnam and received the Bronze Star Medal and Army Commen- dation Medal. He later served with the D.C.
National Guard. Mr. Brooks was a member of the Energy Department chapter of Blacks in Government and helped found the Amyloidosis Support Group’s D.C.-Baltimore chapter after doctors found that he had the rare organ and tissue disease in 2004. He had been a Hyattsville resi- dent since 1979. A son, Mark D. Brooks, died in 1976 as an infant. Survivors include his wife of 48 years, Geneva Cunningham Brooks of Hyattsville; three chil- dren, Renee B. Catacalos of Uni-
versity Park, Vincent A. Brooks III of Hyattsville and Stacy E. Brooks of Lanham; and two grandchildren.
—Lauren Wiseman
Lena E. ‘Becky’ Calkins EDUCATION ADMINISTRATOR
Lena E. “Becky” Calkins, 86, who worked for the Education Department reviewing grant proposals, died June 29 at Char- lotte Hall Veterans Home, an as- sisted-living community in Char- lotte Hall. She had Alzheimer’s disease. From the late 1950s to the ear- ly 1960s, Mrs. Calkins taught fourth grade and reading at Sid- well Friends School in Washing- ton. She then worked at the Edu- cation Department until her re- tirement in the late 1970s. Lena Eloise Owens was born in Ada, Okla., and served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1957 and a master’s degree in 1961, both in education from George Washing- ton University.
She was a member of Congres- sional Country Club in Bethesda, where she lived until the late 1990s, when she moved to Fred- erick. Her marriages to Robert Beck,
James Grear and George B. Cal- kins ended in divorce. Survivors include a son from her second marriage, Michael J. Grear of Columbia; a son from her third marriage, Anthony J. Calkins of Olney; and five grand- children.
—Lauren Wiseman
David P. ‘Durbs’ Durbin LAWYER
David P. “Durbs” Durbin, 62, a
partner with the Washington law firm Jordan, Coyne & Savits since 1983, died July 4 at his home in Falls Church. He had brain can- cer.
Mr. Durbin joined the firm in 1978 and was its managing part- ner in the early 2000s. David Patrick Durbin, a native
of Detroit, received a bachelor’s degree in 1970 and a law degree in 1978, both from Georgetown University, where he was a mem- ber of the Georgetown Chimes, a male singing group. He was a member of Our Lady
of Victory Catholic Church in Washington and a past president of the John Carroll Society, a Catholic professional organiza- tion in Washington. He volunteered as a tutor with
the Washington Literacy Coun- cil.
Survivors include his wife of 37 years, Annie Weitzel Durbin of Falls Church; his mother, Bar- bara Durbin of Scottsdale, Ariz.; three children, Colleen E. Tabori and William Y. Durbin, both of Washington, and Katherine D. Coho of Arlington; two brothers; and two sisters.
—Lauren Wiseman
Marcelin R. Goldberg SYNAGOGUE MEMBER
Marcelin R. Goldberg, 81, a member for 25 years of Temple Sinai, a Reform synagogue in Washington, died July 7 at George Washington University Hospital of cardiac arrest. Marcelin Phyllis Rinis was a lifelong resident of Washington and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1946. She enjoyed gardening and visiting the beach. Her husband of 25 years, Paul
Goldberg, died in 1979. Survivors include a daughter, Bette Denis- ton of Alexandria; and two grandsons.
—Alison Lake
Peter A. Greenlee APPEALS JUDGE
Peter A. Greenlee, 69, a retired appeals judge for the Social Secu- rity Administration, died of car- diac arrest June 18 at his home in Bellevue, Wash. He lived in the District from for more than 35 years before moving to the Seat- tle area in 2005. Mr. Greenlee received a law de- gree from Howard University in the mid-1960s. His work as a lawyer included
service with the Energy Depart- ment, Neighborhood Legal Ser- vices and the D.C. redevelopment land agency. He served on the bench for 17 years before retiring from the So- cial Security Administration in 2004. Peter Anthony Greenlee, a na- tive of Des Moines, was an Eng- lish graduate of the University of Washington. After receiving his law degree,
Mr. Greenlee served with the Peace Corps for two years in Ethiopia. He was a past president of a
D.C. chapter of Kiwanis Interna- tional. Survivors include his wife of 45 years, Marcia McAdoo Green- lee of Bellevue; and six brothers. —T. Rees Shapiro
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116