SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2010


KLMNO OBITUARIES


HARRY T. ALEXANDER, 85 D.C. judge, defense lawyer championed rights, invited controversy by Adam Bernstein Harry T. Alexander, 85, a char-


ismatic and controversial D.C. Su- perior Court judge who became a criminal defense lawyer and rep- resented a leader of the Hanafi Muslim sect on murder and kid- napping charges, died July 8 at Washington Hospital Center. He had had several strokes in recent years, but the cause of death was cardiopulmonary ar- rest, his family said. Judge Alexander, one of seven children born to a New Orleans shoemaker and seamstress, sup- ported himself in menial jobs be- fore completing Georgetown Uni- versity’s law school as one of its first black graduates. He went to work for the Justice Department and became a trial lawyer in the criminal division. In 1966, President Lyndon B.


Johnson appointed him to the D.C. Court of General Sessions, which became D.C. Superior Court, a trial court of general ju- risdiction. In the turbulent civil rights era and its aftermath, Judge Alexan- der was one of the District’s most polarizing leaders. He said that he embraced a reputation as a civil and judicial activist and that his approach was important at a time when the legacy of racial segregation was still felt keenly in school districts, courts and police stations. “People complained that I


didn’t have tact,” he told The Washington Post in 1977. “What is tact? What good has tact wrought for the masses of blacks? Only when the system feels pressured does it release some of the peo- ple’s rights.”


A battle over ‘Mrs.’ During his 10-year term, Judge


Alexander’s courtroom became the center of a judicial storm. His detractors, who included police groups and members of the city’s legal and political establish- ments, called his comments and rulings from the bench “frivo- lous” and “capricious.”


BUFF COBB, 83


around the city to make civil rights speeches. When he arrived at the steps of


the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Al- exander was confronted by a po- lice officer and said: “Sir, arrest me. I feel like Dr. Martin Luther King.” The officer demurred, but


Chief Justice Warren E. Burger did not and told Judge Alexander that he risked being arrested if he ever again gave a speech on the court steps without a permit.


Hanafi trial


In 1976, hearing that his reap- pointment would probably be an uphill battle, Judge Alexander withdrew from consideration and set up a practice as a criminal de- fense lawyer. He often arrived in court wear- ing tapered three-piece suits, felt fedoras and necklaces. One neck- lace carried a slave identification tag that read “sold,” and another displayed the image of two clasped hands. His highest-profile client was


Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, who in March 1977 led 11 other heavily armed Hanafi Muslims in a siege of three downtown Washington buildings. The standoff lasted 39 hours. Dozens of hostages were taken. One person was killed. In the D.C. Superior Court trial,


DOUG CHEVALIER/THE WASHINGTON POST


Harry T. Alexander talks to reporters outside D.C. Superior Court in 1977, when he was defending the leader of the Hanafi Muslim sect on murder and kidnapping charges.


In 1972, a judicial commission censured Judge Alexander in an unusually public way. Although noting his early achievements and “conscientious and effective judicial service” in hundreds of cases, the five-member, biracial commission rebuked him for sev- eral instances of “intemperate and injudicious remarks tending to downgrade litigants, witness- es, counsel, court officials and others appearing before him.” The commission highlighted one instance in particular, when Judge Alexander chastised a white police officer who had re- ferred to a black witness by her


full name without the prefix “Mrs.” The judge dismissed the case, which involved a 16-year-old facing a weapons charge, because the prosecutor asked for continu- ance after the judge refused to let the officer continue testifying. The judicial commission also


reported that Judge Alexander threatened to jail a social worker who had angered him in court and that he accused other judges of racism when they disagreed with him on court matters. To his staunchest supporters, including politicians such as for- mer D.C. mayor Marion Barry and editors in the black media


PAUL ROSEN, 88 Engineer helped develop the high-speed modem by T. Rees Shapiro CBS


Mike Wallace and Buff Cobb hosted “Mike and Buff,” which mixed light themes and more serious issues, along with bickering.


Hosted talk show with husband Mike Wallace


by Valerie J. Nelson


Buff Cobb, who hosted the pio- neering TV talk show “Mike and Buff” in the early 1950s with Mike Wallace, who was then her hus- band, died July 12 at a nursing home in Lebanon, N.H. She was thought to be 83. Ms. Cobb was appearing with


Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of “Private Lives” when Wallace, then a relatively young newsman, interviewed her in 1949.


“She was an actress and a bit of


a glamorous figure to me,” Wal- lace later said. They soon married and launched the “Mike and Buff” show on CBS. They also roamed New York City to co-host “All Around Town,” an interview pro- gram that aired in 1951 and 1952. “Mike and Buff” mixed light themes and more serious issues with the couple’s bickering. “Smarten up, Buff!” was one of Wallace’s catchphrases. “We overdid the personal ex-


changes,” Ms. Cobb said, accord- ing to the 1985 book “Whatever Became Of?”


CBS canceled the show in 1953, and their marriage ended two years later. Patrizia Cobb Chapman was born in Florence, where her fa- ther, opera singer Frank Chap- man, was studying voice. Many references give her birth date as


Oct. 19, 1928. But when she im- migrated to the United States in 1929, her birth year was listed as 1926. After her parents divorced, she


was raised by her mother, Elisa- beth Cobb, a writer and daughter of author and humorist Irvin S. Cobb. After growing up mainly in


New York and Santa Monica, Calif., she adopted Buff Cobb as a stage name.


Signed to a contract at 20th


Century Fox, she played one of Rex Harrison’s wives in the 1946 film “Anna and the King of Siam.” She had two brief early marriages, to Hollywood entertainment law- yer Gregson Bautzer and actor William Eythe, a fellow contract player at Fox who introduced her to Bankhead, which led to Ms. Cobb being cast in “Private Lives.” From 1953 to 1955, she was a panelist on the TV quiz show “Masquerade Party,” which in- volved identifying celebrities dis- guised with elaborate makeup. She turned to stage producing and received a Tony Award nomi- nation for the first play she pro- duced on Broadway, the 1963 re- vival “Too True to Be Good,” which starred Lillian Gish. In 1967 in her Manhattan apart- ment, Ms. Cobb married her fourth husband, H. Spencer Mar- tin, a real estate developer. He died in 1987. Survivors include a brother.


—Los Angeles Times


Paul Rosen, an electrical engi- neer who in the mid-1950s helped develop the high-speed modem, spurring revolutionary progress in the nascent industry of tele- communications, died of conges- tive heart failure July 20 at his cottage in West Bath, Maine. He was 88. The technology behind the mo- dem — a device that converts data into signals that can be passed through channels such as phone lines — has existed in primitive forms since the late 1940s. But in those days, phone lines carried data signals incon- sistently, and information was transmitted slowly. While working at the Massa-


chusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory in 1958, Mr. Rosen and a colleague, Jack Har- rington, patented a device that rapidly transmitted large amounts of data over phone lines. Their invention, “Method of


Land Line Pulse Transmission,” helped expand computer net- works nationwide by significant- ly accelerating the flow of data over phone lines. “One of my colleagues said, ‘Oh, you’re going to get rich on this,’ ” Mr. Rosen said in a 2004 interview with IEEE, the organi- zation formerly known as the In- stitute of Electrical and Electron- ics Engineers. But the patent’s wording was too constrained — the work of an inept lawyer, Mr. Rosen often said — which allowed competitors such as AT&T’s Bell Labs to create their own modems by making only minor adjustments to the patented design. Thus, Mr. Rosen never made the fortune he thought he deserved when high- speed modems based on his work began popping up across the United States. Nonetheless, Mr. Rosen’s sys- tem was a crucial addition to a landmark Army defense project during the Cold War. The SAGE program, or Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, was a se- ries of more than 100 radar in- stallations spread across the northern border of the United States. Each station sent data about incoming planes, such as Russian bombers loaded with nu- clear weapons, to centers around the country at a rate of more than 1,800 bits per second through Mr. Rosen’s modems. The standard maximum speed


such as Calvin Rolark of the Washington Informer, Judge Al- exander was a compassionate champion of racial dignity and due process. To the rank and file in some of


the city’s black neighborhoods, Judge Alexander’s outspoken style and upbraiding of police of- ficers and prosecutors shaped his image as “a folk hero,” The Post reported in 1977. Judge Alexander received com-


munity leadership awards and flirted with a run for D.C. Council in 1974. After the council unani- mously declared a day in his hon- or in 1976, he led a motorcade


Judge Alexander repeatedly clashed with the presiding judge, Nicholas S. Nunzio, known as “No Nonsense Nunzio.” He objected when Nunzio called him “Mr. Alexander” in- stead of “judge.” Nunzio told the defense attorney not to “orate” when making objections but to state his arguments, and he was irritated by Judge Alexander’s ag- gressive behavior toward wit- nesses. The Hanafis were found guilty of charges that included murder, conspiracy and armed kidnap- ping. In 1979, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals up- held the conviction and said Judge Alexander had “made im- proper opening remarks to the jury, argued with witnesses, in- terrupted the court, commented


on the testimony and the court’s rulings, asked improper ques- tions and ‘baited’ the court.” Judge Alexander continued to


attract criticism for his profes- sional behavior, including failing repeatedly to appear in court. In 1985, the D.C. Court of Appeals suspended him from practicing law for two years because of dis- ciplinary violations. “There is one standard for black folks and one standard for white folks,” Judge Alexander said at the time. “But this deci- sion has not made me feel in- competent. I’ll never be incompe- tent. My background is better than most people.” Harry Toussaint Alexander was


born July 22, 1924, in New Or- leans. He was a Navy pharma- cist’s mate during World War II and was detached to a Marine Corps unit during the battle of Iwo Jima. He graduated in 1949 from Xa-


vier University of Louisiana and then was admitted to George- town’s law school. He joined the Justice Department after gradu- ating in 1952. Working in the department’s criminal division in the early 1960s, he was chief prosecutor in several labor union corruption cases. He won convictions in the embezzlement and conspiracy trial of a bakery union president, James G. Cross, and several asso- ciates. In 1949, he married Beatrice


Perkins Alexander. In addition to his wife, survivors include four children, Normastel “Norma” Hart, Agnes Yates, Harry Alexan- der Jr. and Louis Alexander, all of Washington; a brother; and eight grandchildren. A daughter, Bea- trice Ann, died in 1973 at 9 of a rare virus. After being suspended, Judge


Alexander focused on mentoring and volunteering with communi- ty groups. He never practiced law again but insisted on being called “judge.” “A judge keeps his title,” he once said, “until someone takes it away or until he dies.” bernsteina@washpost.com


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FAMILY PHOTO


Paul Rosen, center, stands in front of a sequential decoder, an early piece of telecommunications equipment. His work was a crucial addition to a landmark Army defense project during the Cold War.


for data transmission was about 600 bps, but Mr. Rosen’s break- through technology allowed the military to monitor U.S. air space nearly in real time. In 1979, for his leadership and contributions in military com- munications, Mr. Rosen was made a fellow of the IEEE, one of the most prestigious honors for engineers. Paul Rosen was born in Boston


on Jan. 4, 1922. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and he grew up in ghettos in sub- urban Boston. His father’s first job in the United States was washing milk cans at a dairy. Mr. Rosen said he became fas-


cinated with engineering while toying with old crystal radios as a teenager. At what is now Tufts University, Mr. Rosen said, he re- ceived a “lousy education” and made money working in the school’s machine shop, where he made cast-iron ingots for 40 cents an hour. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in elec- trical engineering in 1944 and joined the Navy during World War II.


After sporadic training that in- cluded stints as an enlisted sailor and deck officer, Mr. Rosen spent the rest of his Navy service in Guam with a logistics company, supervising the loading and un- loading ships. The two supplies that Mr. Ro- sen said his company never ran out of were shaved ice and beer. Mr. Rosen began working at MIT in the late 1940s, where he later received a master’s degree in engineering. At the Lincoln Labo- ratory, he became a senior leader in the communications and me- chanical engineering divisions and oversaw the development of radar systems, satellites and data encryption systems. For much of his time at MIT,


Mr. Rosen worked in Building 20, a site of antiwar protests during the 1960s because the school’s ROTC and several programs funded by the Defense Depart- ment were there. “I felt like a turkey, because here I was working my butt off and I thought doing good work, and these guys would come around and accuse me of being a


warmonger,” Mr. Rosen said in the 2004 interview. He left the Lincoln Laboratory


in 1977 and spent three years as head of the Defense Communica- tions Agency. He returned to the Lincoln Laboratory in 1980 and spent four years there before re- tiring. Mr. Rosen went back to school in the early 1970s for a second master’s degree in psychiatric counseling from Boston Univer- sity and volunteered as a crisis and intervention responder in Cambridge. In 1992, he moved to Deerfield Beach, Fla., and taught courses on existentialism for senior citi- zens at Lynn University in Boca Raton. He had lived in Silver Spring since 2006. Survivors include his wife of 66 years, Annette Braverman Rosen of Silver Spring; three children, Mark Rosen of Auburn, Calif., Bruce Rosen of Newton, Mass., and Elliot Rosen of Takoma Park; a sister; a brother; and five grandchildren.


shapirot@washpost.com


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