C8 PETER GUBSER, 69


Scholar’s main focus was on the Middle East


by Matt Schudel


Peter Gubser, a scholar and au- thor who spent 30 years as presi- dent of a group promoting devel- opment and humanitarian assis- tance in the Middle East, died Sept. 2 of prostate cancer at Sub- urban Hospital in Bethesda. He was 69. From 1977 to 2007, Dr. Gubser was president of American Near East Refugee Aid, a Washington nonprofit agency that offers eco- nomic, educational and nutri- tional aid to Palestinian and Arab refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan and other parts of the Middle East. Among other efforts, Dr. Gubs- er led a 2003 initiative to estab- lish a program providing milk to thousands of preschool children in the Gaza Strip. His relief agen- cy also funded the construction of educational centers at West Bank colleges to offer training in busi- ness management. In 1983, Dr. Gubser helped found the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, which seeks to foster greater understanding of the Arab world. He wrote several books and ar- ticles on social and economic con- ditions in the Middle East. In April, he published a major biog- raphy of Saladin, a 12th-century Islamic leader who fought against Christian crusaders from Europe. Peter Anton Gubser was born


May 9, 1941, in Tulsa and became interested in the Middle East while taking a year off from col- lege to travel. After graduating from Yale


University in 1964, he studied at American University of Beirut, re- ceiving a master’s degree in Mid- dle Eastern studies and Arabic language in 1966. He received a doctorate in social anthropology from England’s University of Ox- ford in 1969.


Early in his career, Dr. Gubser


Warnetta Gussie operated a real estate firm in Alexandria.


Warnetta Gussie REAL ESTATE BROKER


Warnetta Gussie, 88, who ran


Peter Gubser was a member of the Somerset town council in Montgomery County.


was an adjunct professor at the University of Manchester in Eng- land and worked for the Ford Foundation in Lebanon and Jor- dan. After moving to Washington in the 1970s, he worked for the American Institute for Research before going to American Near East Refugee Aid. He was an adjunct professor at


Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service from 1995 to 2003. He was a board member of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Builders for Peace and oth- er groups supporting humanitari- an efforts in the Middle East. Locally, Dr. Gubser had been a member of the Town Council of Somerset, a small Montgomery County community, and he served on the Western Montgom- ery County Citizens Advisory Board. Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Annie Yenikomshian Gubs- er of Somerset; two daughters, Sasha Gubser of Denver and Christi Gubser of Boulder, Calif.; his mother, Mary Gubser of Tulsa; two brothers; and two grand- daughters.


schudelm@washpost.com


an Alexandria real estate busi- ness for many years, died Aug. 21 at Our Family assisted living fa- cility in Mount Airy. She had a heart attack. Mrs. Gussie, who lived in the


Wellington neighborhood of Fair- fax County near Alexandria, be- came a licensed real estate broker in 1957 and founded Gussie Real Estate a year later. She special- ized in commercial real estate early in her career and later fo- cused on residential sales. She re- tired in 2007. Warnetta May Hutchinson was born in Uniontown, Pa. Although she was not legally adopted by her mother’s second husband, she was known throughout her youth by his last name, Morton. She attended West Virginia Uni- versity. Mrs. Gussie lived in Japan, Ita- ly and Cyprus with her husband, an Army officer, and studied ike- bana, or the Japanese art of flow- er arranging, in Tokyo. She wrote a book on the subject and later taught ikebana at flower clubs in the Washington region. She volunteered with the Juve- nile Diabetes Research Founda- tion, was president of a coopera- tive real estate listing service and was a member of several real es- tate boards. After studying to be a clown in the 1980s, she occa- sionally performed as one.


Joan Doherty Harper, top, modeling with twin sister Jean.


Joan Doherty Harper REAL ESTATE AGENT, MODEL


Joan Doherty Harper, 72, a


longtime real estate agent in Montgomery County who often modeled in advertisements with her twin sister in the 1950s, died Aug. 13 of ovarian cancer at Georgetown Hospital. She lived in Kensington. Mrs. Harper was born Joan Do-


herty in Washington and gradu- ated in 1956 from the Marymount School in Arlington County. For several years, she and her sister Jean were featured in advertising campaigns for tourism, chewing gum, and other products and ser- vices. After graduating in 1960 from


Immaculata University in Penn- sylvania, Mrs. Harper taught el- ementary school in San Francisco for three years. She returned to Washington after her marriage in 1963. In the early 1970s, she began her real estate career with Town and Country in Rockville. She lat- er spent many years in the Rock- ville and Bethesda offices of Long & Foster, selling residential prop- erties. She retired last year. She


S


KLMNO OBITUARIES


Her husband of 36 years, re- tired Army Col. Michael Gussie, died in 1977. Survivors include three chil- dren, Michele Lendt of Council Bluffs, Iowa, Diane M. Gussie of Fairfax and David V. Gussie of Hatfield, Pa.; a sister, Beverly Ha- ney of Purcellville; six grand- children; and nine great-grand- children.


— Matt Schudel


was a member of several local and national realty boards. Mrs. Harper enjoyed golf and was a member of Columbia Coun- try Club in Chevy Chase. She was also a member of Holy Redeemer Church in Kensington. She volunteered with what is now called Crittenton Services of Greater Washington, a social service organization for young women. Her husband of 46 years, Guy


G. Harper III, died last year. Survivors include three sons,


Guy D. Harper of Rockville and Scott Harper and Timothy Harp- er, both of Kensington; her twin sister, Jean Murray of Lusby; a brother, Neil Doherty of Vero Beach, Fla.; and 10 grandchil- dren.


— Matt Schudel


Edmond N. Howar REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER


Edmond N. Howar, 81, a Wash-


ington area real estate developer who was active in Arab American and Islamic organizations, died Sept. 1 at the Grand Oaks Assisted Living facility in Washington. He had Lewy body disease, a degen- erative neurological disorder, and dementia. Mr. Howar was a senior part- ner of Howar Properties, a real estate development company started by his father. He ran the business with his brother Ray- mond and became president in 1993, after his brother died. The company developed apartments and condominiums in Washing- ton and Northern Virginia. A Washington native, Edmond


Nazeeh Howar graduated from the private Landon School in 1947 and from George Washing- ton University in 1951. After serv- ing in the Army from 1953 to 1955, he began working for his fa- ther’s company. Mr. Howar was a co-founder of


the National Association of Arab- Americans, which later merged with the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee. He attended the 1975 state dinner for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He was a member of the Islam- ic Center of Washington. His marriage to author and


television personality Barbara Dearing Howar ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Margot Reid Howar of Washington; two children from


SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010


his first marriage, Bader Howar of Santa Monica, Calif., and Ed- mond Howar Jr. of Los Angeles; a daughter from his second mar- riage, Alexandra Howar of Win- chester, Va.; three sisters, Pat Ho- war of Washington, Nancy O’Sul- livan of New York and Joyce Howar of Palm Beach, Fla.; and four grandchildren.


— Timothy R. Smith


Polly Krieger STATE DEPARTMENT


INTERPRETER Polly Krieger, 86, a State De-


partment escort-interpreter from the 1970s through the 1990s, died Aug. 31 at her home in Washing- ton. She had congestive heart failure.


At the State Department, Mrs.


Krieger used her knowledge of French to accompany visiting dignitaries on tours through the United States. Polly Lewis was a native of


Newton, Mass., and a 1945 thea- ter graduate of Smith College in Massachusetts. During World War II, she traveled to Europe with the American Red Cross and produced theater productions for Allied troops.


She moved to Washington in 1948 and spent seven years as a translator with the old Foreign Broadcasting Information Serv- ice.


She was a founding member of


the Washington chapter of Wom- en in Film and Video. In 1978, she won the Washington Film Festi- val’s gold medal for writing, di- recting and producing the drama “The WhidjitMaker.” Starting in the early 1980s, she became involved in the Play- wright’s Forum in Washington and staged play readings at area theaters. She later volunteered as theater director for the private Potomac School in McLean and the Glen Echo Children’s Theater. She was a member of the French Heritage


Society, the


Smithsonian Women’s Commit- tee and the Smith Club of Wash- ington. Mrs. Krieger and her husband,


Henry Krieger, separated in 1980. Besides her husband of 60 years, who lives in Washington, survi- vors include two children, Clau- dia Krieger-Myers of Los Angeles and Duncan E. Krieger of Beth- esda; and three grandchildren. — Megan Buerger


Professor at Howard, U-Md. walters from C1


“Many of his ideas now make up the progressive wing of the country,” Jackson said. “If it’s morally right, it can’t be politi- cally wrong.” Two decades before Barack Obama was elected president, Dr. Walters described the political steps an African American candi- date would have to take in his 1987 book “Black Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic Approach.” In 2003, he predicted a re-


surgent white conservative movement in his book “White Nationalism, Black Interests: Conservative Public Policy and the Black Community.” When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Dr. Walters became a leading voice in high- lighting the inequality that tarnished the bright edges of the American dream. “Katrina kicked open a very historical door,” he said. “It showed us, for example, that pov- erty’s not gone in America and we’re not just talking about black poverty.”


Beginning in the 1970s, Dr.


Walters became known as one of the country’s foremost public in- tellectuals, with frequent appear- ances in the media as a commen- tator on public affairs. He was in- terviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS, commented on cable news shows and wrote opinion columns for newspapers and magazines. “As an academic, journalist and crusader, he was in the tradi- tion of W.E.B. DuBois,” writer and civil rights leader Roger Wil- kins said Saturday. “He was a man who used his intellect and wisdom to make this a fairer and culturally richer country than the one we were born into.”


Early days Ronald William Walters was


born July 20, 1938, in Wichita. His father was a musician and had served in the military; his mother was a civil rights investi- gator for the state. In July 1958, when he was lead- er of the youth council of the lo- cal NAACP, Dr. Walters and a cousin, Carol Parks, organized a sit-in protest of the Dockum drugstore in Wichita. Day after day, young African Americans sat at the drugstore’s lunch counter,


“Ron was one of the legendary forces in the civil rights movement of the last 50


years.” — Jesse L. Jackson


where they were refused service. The protesters sat in silence for hours at a time, enduring taunts from white customers. Finally, after more than three weeks, the store owner relented, saying, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” The Wichita sit-in and a simi- lar one in Oklahoma City oc- curred almost two years before the more famous lunch-room sit- ins in Greensboro, N.C., but re- ceived little publicity at the time. It was not until 2006 that Dr. Walters received a belated medal from the NAACP for his quiet but effective act of civil disobedience in Kansas. “You gain your authenticity through the risks you take,” Jack- son said Saturday. “He stood up. He marched. He was both schol- ar and activist.” In 1963, Dr. Walters graduated from Fisk University in Nash- ville, where two of his intellectu- al heroes, DuBois and historian John Hope Franklin, had studied in earlier years. Dr. Walters also sang tenor in Fisk’s famed Jubi- lee Singers. After being selected for a fel- lowship at the State Department, Dr. Walters received a master’s degree in African studies in 1966 and doctorate in international studies in 1971, both from Amer- ican University. He taught at Syracuse Univer-


sity in the late 1960s and became the first chairman of chairman of Afro-American studies at Bran- deis University in Boston before joining the faculty at Howard University in the early 1970s. He wrote his first books at


Howard, became chairman of the political science department and was busy with many outside proj- ects. He worked as a top adviser to Rep. Charles Diggs (D-Mich.), the first chairman of the Con-


gressional Black Caucus. He par- ticipated in summit meetings of black executives, political leaders and scholars and in 1977 was a founder of the TransAfrica Fo- rum, a group that led the fight against South African apartheid and sought to improve condi- tions in Haiti. During Jackson’s 1984 presi- dential campaign, Dr. Walters was a confidant of the candidate, as well as a street-level political operative. “He was on the ground with us,


going through it with the great unwashed, including me, to rec- oncile the tensions that existed between elected officials,” former Prince George’s County Execu- tive Walter K. Curry said Satur- day. In 1996, Dr. Walters moved to


the University of Maryland, where he directed of the African American Leadership Institute and was a distinguished scholar at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership. His wife, Patricia Turner Walters, said Dr. Walters had recently agreed to return to Howard University as a senior research fellow and lec- turer. In addition to his wife, of Sil- ver Spring, survivors include three brothers, Duane Walters of Atlanta, Terrence Walters of Oklahoma City and Kevin Wal- ters of Bowie; and two sisters, Marcia Walters of Austin and Sharon Walters of Atlanta. Dr. Walters had recently edited


a book about D.C. politics, “Dem- ocratic Destiny and the District of Columbia” and was at work on a book about Obama at the time of his death. In an essay in January, Dr. Wal-


ters defended Obama’s record in the face of criticism from the left and the right. “I think that the pundits and the public should face up to one fact,” he wrote. “The mess that President Barack Obama inher- ited will not be fixed in one year, or two or possibly even during his entire term. “The media works on a time-


frame of instant results. . . . If George Bush had been as crit- icized and interrogated as much as Obama, perhaps the edifice of problems that now challenge the very viability of America might have been stopped.” schudelm@washpost.com


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