THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2010


KLMNO OBITUARIES


Jane G. Gilroy TEACHER’S AIDE


Jane G. Gilroy, 69, a teacher’s aide for special-needs students at Margaret Brent Regional Center in New Carrollton from 1982 to 1985, died Aug. 14 at her home in Lakewood, Colo. She had breast cancer. From 1979 to 1982, Mrs. Gilroy was an administrative assistant in the cardiology department at Children’s Hospital. Jane Frances Green, a native


Washingtonian, was a 1959 grad- uate of Mackin High School and received a degree in fine art from the old Immaculata Junior Col- lege in 1964.


She was a member of St. Je-


rome’s Catholic Church in Hyatts- ville, where she been a resident until moving to Colorado in 1992. Survivors include her husband of 46 years, Edward Gilroy of Lakewood; two sons, John Gilroy of Denver and Daniel Gilroy of Charlottesville; a brother, Mi- chael Green of Bethany Beach, Del.; and four sisters, Mary Anne Sonnenschein of Silver Spring, Cecelia Pincus of Hampton Roads, Va., Agnes Cammack of Leesburg and Dolores Milmoe of Poolesville.


— Lauren Wiseman


Robert D. Larrabee PHYSICIST


Robert D. Larrabee, 78, a re- search physicist who worked for the National Institute of Stan- dards and Technology from 1977 to 1993, died Sept. 2 at Mont- gomery Hospice’s Casey House. He had pancreatic cancer. Dr. Larrabee was a research


physicist for RCA Laboratories in Princeton, N.J., from 1957 to 1976. Robert Dean Larrabee, a Der- wood resident, was born in the New York borough of Queens. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a mas- ter’s degree in mathematics, both from Bucknell University in Lew- isburg, Pa. He received a master’s degree in 1955 and a doctorate in 1957, both in physics from the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technol- ogy. He was a member of the Mont-


gomery Amateur Radio Club and the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club.


Since 1999, he had volunteered for the Montgomery County school system giving science demonstrations to students. He also tutored GED students at the Montgomery County Correction- al Facility in Clarksburg. He was a member of St. Paul


United Methodist Church in Lay- tonsville. Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Ramona Rogers Larrabee of Derwood; two children, Susan L. Albohn of Morgantown, Pa., and David A. Larrabee of Swift- water, Pa.; a brother; and five grandchildren.


— Lauren Wiseman


James A. Morrissey COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR


James A. Morrissey, 81, a re- tired communications director at the American Textile Manufac- turers Institute, a trade associa- tion, died Sept. 4 at his home in Potomac Falls. He had coronary artery disease. Mr. Morrissey spent 28 years


James A. Morrissey


with Institute before retiring in 1994. He then wrote a weekly column for Tex- tile World magazine’s elec- tronic newslet- ter and volun- teered at local organizations, including the American Can- cer Society and


the Newseum. James Anthony Morrissey was


a Salt Lake City native and a 1951 journalism graduate of the Uni- versity of Washington. He was an Army veteran of the Korean War, during which time he was a cor- respondent for Pacific Stars and Stripes. He also covered the last few months of the war for the United Press. He was a journalist in Wash-


ington state for a series of news organizations before moving into public relations work by the late 1950s. He was a past chapter presi- dent of the Public Relations Soci- ety of America and was inducted into the National Capital chap- ter’s hall of fame. He was a Eu- charistic minister at St. Thomas a Becket Catholic Church in Res- ton, and his memberships in- cluded the Knights of Columbus. Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Constance Winski Morris- sey of Potomac Falls; four chil- dren, James A. Morrissey of Scottsdale, Ariz., Patrick E. Mor- rissey of Detroit, Michael C. Mor- rissey of Battle Creek, Mich., and Erin Ingrisano of Reston; and 10 grandchildren.


— Megan Buerger EDWIN NEWMAN, 91 Broadcaster brought gravity to NBC, order to grammar by Matt Schudel Edwin Newman, whose under-


stated delivery of the news was a mainstay of NBC broadcasts for more than 30 years, and who cul- tivated a second career as a care- taker of proper grammar and us- age, died Aug. 13 of pneumonia in Oxford, England, where he had lived since 2007. He was 91. The Associated Press said the announcement was delayed to give his family time to mourn. With his balding, slightly rum- pled appearance, Mr. Newman was hardly cast in the classic mold of the chirpy, bright-eyed broadcaster. Instead, he brought gravity, wit and a depth of under- standing to television, whether as an interviewer, a substitute an- chor, a host of the “Today” show or the narrator of documentaries. Mr. Newman, who spent more than a decade as a foreign corre- spondent, became known for his unflappable manner on the air, embellishing broadcasts with knowledge from his well-fur- nished mind. He gained his quiet sense of authority from his com- mand of the language and a sense of cultural history that reached back earlier than the advent of the color television camera. “The key to Edwin Newman’s success is the triumph of content over presentation,” former “NBC Nightly News” anchor John Chancellor said when Mr. New- man retired in 1984. “What he says is more interesting to him than how he says it. If he has nothing to say, he doesn’t say any- thing, which is rare in television . . . and in life.” In 1963, Mr. Newman an- nounced the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on NBC radio. Five years later, he an- chored the network’s television coverage of the slayings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. When Ken- nedy’s funeral train took eight hours to reach its destination in- stead of four, Mr. Newman im- provised his coverage, citing his-


torical facts pertinent to every stop along the way.


During the 1976 presidential campaign between Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Mr. New- man was the moderator of the first presidential debate in 16 years. In 1984, he moderated a debate between President Ronald Reagan and Democratic chal- lenger Walter F. Mondale. As time ran out, Mr. Newman stopped Reagan in mid-sentence, or “in mid-piety,” as Washington Post television critic Tom Shales put it.


“Reagan had launched into an ode to American youth,” Shales wrote, “when Newman, accord- ing to the rules set down by the League of Women Voters, cut him off. The president never got to his shining city on a hill.”


One of the most versatile broadcasters of his generation, Mr. Newman was comfortable as a correspondent, studio anchor or narrator of investigative docu- mentaries, which used to be a sta- ple of network news. He was an acerbic presence on the floor of political conventions, an occa- sional moderator of “Meet the Press” and a frequent host of NBC’s “Today” show. Mr. Newman’s most memora- ble appearance on “Today” came in 1971, when he banished co- median George Jessel from the studio. In a rambling interview, the 73-year-old Jessel likened The Washington Post and New York Times to Pravda, the official So- viet newspaper. “You are a guest here,” a steely


Mr. Newman told Jessel. “It is not the kind of thing one tosses off. One does not accuse newspapers of being Communist, which you have just done.” After further strained com- ments, Jessel said, “I didn’t mean it quite that way. . . . I won’t say it again.”


“I agree that you won’t say it


again,” Mr. Newman replied. “Thank you very much, Mr. Jes- sel.”


“I just want to say one thing be- fore I leave,” Jessel added.


JOYCE LASKY REED, 76 Author championed Faberge legacy by Adam Bernstein Joyce Lasky Reed, 76, a well-


traveled author and editor who became a foreign policy adviser in Washington and spent two decades guiding a cultural foun- dation focused on the legacy of the czarist-era


goldsmith and


jeweler Peter Carl Faberge, died Sept. 12 at Georgetown Univer- sity Hospital. She had lung can- cer.


Mrs. Lasky Reed, born in New


York to Jewish immigrants from Poland, was the youngest and last survivor of three prominent sib- lings. Her brother was Melvin Lasky, a leading intellectual Cold War- rior who edited the London- based cultural and political magazine Encounter. Her sister, Floria Lasky, became an influ- ential New York lawyer who spe- cialized in theater clients includ- ing playwright Tennessee Wil- liams and director Elia Kazan. Joyce Lasky, as she was then known, graduated in 1952 from Barnard College in New York and married Anatole Shub, who ed- ited the New Leader, a liberal an- ti-Communist magazine. Over the years, Mrs. Shub (pro- nounced “shewb”) worked in publishing as an editor and was a freelance journalist. Her husband became an editor at the New York Times and then a Washington Post correspondent in Bonn, Ger- many, and Moscow. She later wrote that they were


expelled from the Soviet Union in 1969 after her husband had writ- ten articles that “had given dis- pleasure” to the foreign ministry. Her husband had been given 24 hours’ notice to leave. “The au- thorities,” she wrote, “gave me a fortnight’s grace to give notice to my own Moscow-based job, gath- er up [my] children and pack.” Within a few years, they had


settled in Washington, where she wrote a novel, “Moscow by Night- mare” (1973), which was deeply critical of Russian life and fea- tured the wife of a foreign corre- spondent as its protagonist. She based much of the plot on her knowledge of cultural dissidents, mostly artists she had known. In the New York Times, New-


gate Callendar — the pseudonym for the paper’s classical music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, when he reviewed mysteries and thril- lers — called Mrs. Shub’s book “gripping” and “a strong indict-


S


B9


1976 PHOTO BY JERRY MOSEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS Edwin Newman hosted “Today” and was a substitute anchor in more than three decades at NBC.


“Please don’t,” Mr. Newman said, as he broke for a commer- cial three minutes early. When he came back on the air,


Mr. Newman said television had a responsibility to uphold “cer- tain standards of conduct.” “It didn’t seem to me we have


any obligation to allow people to come on to traduce the reputa- tions of anyone they want,” he said, “to abuse people they don’t like.”


Edwin Harold Newman was


born Jan. 25, 1919, in New York City, and graduated from the Uni- versity of Wisconsin in 1940. He left graduate school at Louisiana State University to work for the old International News Service in Washington. After serving in the Navy dur-


ing World War II, he returned to Washington and worked for a news service and for the short- lived PM newspaper. From 1947 to 1949, he was a writer for Eric


Sevareid at CBS News. Mr. Newman, who married the English-born Rigel Grell in 1944, moved to London in 1949. In ad- dition to his wife, survivors in- clude a daughter, Nancy Drucker. After freelancing for NBC and other news outlets, Mr. Newman joined the network full time in 1952 and later became bureau chief in London, Rome and Paris. In New York after 1961, Mr.


Newman often appeared on local news, showing talents seldom seen on the national network. He was an Emmy Award-winning drama critic and often wondered why television didn’t cover the arts more fully. For years, he was the host of “Speaking Freely,” an erudite hour-long interview pro- gram featuring cultural figures, scientists and athletes. Long peeved by what he con- sidered sloppy and pretentious use of the English language, Mr. Newman published “Strictly


DEBRA H. BERGER, 72


Linked Israeli society, U.S. community leaders


FAMILY PHOTO Joyce Lasky Reed served on the staff of then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.


ment of a society in which suspi- cion and fear are a way of life.” Around this time, Mrs. Shub


survived a bout with ovarian can- cer and separated from her hus- band (they later divorced). She began working as a foreign policy assistant on Capitol Hill, even- tually joining the staff of then- Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). She spent most of the 1980s as


a State Department special ad- viser. She worked under Law- rence S. Eagleburger and Michael H. Armacost when they were un- dersecretaries for political af- fairs, the department’s third- ranking job. She co-edited “Spain: Studies in Political Secu- rity” (1985) with Raymond Carr, an esteemed British-born histori- an of modern Spain. Joyce Lasky, a Chevy Chase res- ident, was born in the Bronx, N.Y., on Sept. 5, 1934. Besides her Bar- nard degree, she received a mas- ter’s degree in political affairs from Georgetown University. Her second husband was Leon- ard Reed, a retired Voice of Amer- ica journalist. He died in 2008 af- ter 20 years of marriage. Survi- vors include two children from her first marriage, Rachel Shub of Geneva and Adam Shub of Mexi- co City, and two grandchildren. The last two decades of Mrs.


Lasky Reed’s life were dedicated to the Faberge Arts Foundation, a nonprofit foundation she and a Washington friend started in 1990. Now called the St. Peters-


burg Conservancy, the group works to preserve the cultural heritage of that Russian city and in particular the works of one of its most famous artists, Faberge. After the collapse of the Soviet system, Mrs. Lasky Reed was in- volved in many cultural exchang- es and restoration projects that aimed to educate Russians on Fa- berge decorative arts, most fa- mously his jeweled Easter eggs. Many were sold to Western col- lectors in the 1920s and 1930s — when they were seen as decadent reminders of imperialist privilege — and those that remained in the Soviet Union were largely kept hidden from view. Working with the Hermitage


Museum and prominent Western collectors, she helped organize major Faberge shows and exhibi- tions in Washington, St. Peters- burg, London and Paris. She also co-edited a book, “Faberge Flow- ers” (2004), that showcased his botanical-themed jewelry such as flowers and fruit made of jewels, enamel, gold and semiprecious stones.


Anne Odom, curator emerita of


Washington’s Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, a show- case for Faberge art, called Mrs. Lasky Reed a positive force in the post-Soviet years in “providing money and expertise in a time when the Russians didn’t have their own in these particular fields.”


bernsteina@washpost.com


Debra Herman Berger, 72, who founded an international pro- gram to introduce community leaders and federal officials to Is- raeli society, died Sept. 1 at her home in Rockville. She had pro- gressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disorder. Ms. Berger founded Project In- terchange in 1982 and operated it out of her home during its early years. She led tours to Is- rael for many years and continued to direct the organization after it be- came part of the Amer- ican Jewish Committee in 1992. Project Interchange has introduced more than 5,000 government officials, journalists, religious and educational leaders, business groups and representatives of ethnic minorities to their Israeli counterparts and to other aspects of life in Israel. Participants in the intensive, weeklong pro- grams have come from more than 60 countries. Ms. Berger chaired the proj-


ect’s board until 1995 and re- mained active in its operation un- til the past two years. The pro- gram is supported by donations. Debra Joyce Herman was born in Queens, N.Y., attended Colum-


Thomas E. Beatty TEACHER


Thomas E. Beatty, 88, a former


biology teacher at Bladensburg High School, died Aug. 26 at his home in Silver Spring. He had leukemia. Mr. Beatty taught


at Bladensburg from 1950 until his retire- ment in 1978. For several years, he sponsored the Rat- tlesnake Luncheon, a student dining club that included on its menu rattle- snake meat, fried grasshoppers, snails and chocolate-cov- ered ants. For a few years after teaching,


bia University and was a dancer and theater actress in New York during the 1950s. After moving to Washington in 1960, she per- formed with the Dance Theater of Washington.


She received a bachelor’s de- gree in English from the Univer- sity of Maryland in 1972 and later spent a year studying the Hebrew language at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She received a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from George Washing- ton University in 1981. At GWU, she was the


Debra Berger


longtime vice president of Hillel, a Jewish stu- dent organization. She was also a trustee of


United Israel Appeal and a board member of the America-Israel Friendship League and served on many other committees involved with Jewish and Israeli matters. She was a member of Ohr Ko- desh Congregation in Chevy Chase. Survivors include her husband of 51 years, Paul S. Berger of Rock- ville; three children, Meryl Ro- senberg and Jessica Berger Weiss, both of Potomac, and Louis Berg- er of North Bethesda; a brother; and nine grandchildren. — Matt Schudel


ed from Central High School in 1940.


During World War II, he was


Thomas Beatty taught at Bladensburg High.


Mr. Beatty sold real estate for Century 21. Thomas Edward Beatty was born in Washington and graduat-


an Army Air Forces B-24 pilot. Af- ter the war, he received bachelor’s and master’s de- grees in agronomy from the University of Maryland. Mr. Beatty en- joyed making clocks, which he assembled from kits. He was a member of Wallace Presbyterian Church in College Park. Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Alison McDermid Beatty of Silver Spring; four chil- dren, John Beatty


and Paul Beatty, both of Silver Spring, Mary Masters of Cologny, Switzerland, and Joanna Taft of Indianapolis; a brother; and 14 grandchildren.


— Timothy R. Smith


Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English?” in 1974. The humorous but pointed book be- came a No. 1 bestseller and was soon followed by “A Civil Tongue” in 1976, securing Mr. Newman’s reputation as a guardian of gram- mar, usage and linguistic good manners. For many years, he chaired the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He published a comic novel,


“Sunday Punch,” in 1979 and ap- peared as host of “Saturday Night Live” in 1984. In one skit, he re- peatedly corrected the grammar of a desperate woman calling a suicide help line. In later years, Mr. Newman lec- tured widely on journalism and the English language. The writ- ten and spoken word, he main- tained, should be “direct, specific, concrete, vigorous, colorful, sub- tle and imaginative. . . . It is something to revel in and enjoy.” schudelm@washpost.com

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