SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010


KLMNO OBITUARIES


EZ SU


C7 ALOCALLIFE:TIPPYSTRINGERHUNTLEYCONRAD,80


Beautiful TV ‘weather girl’ charmed city of Washington


BY EMMA BROWN T


ippy StringerHuntley Con- rad, who became a Wash- ington personality during


the 1950s as a comelyweather girl issuing forecasts on the localNBC affiliate, and who left the city for New York when she married tele- vision newsman Chet Huntley, died Oct. 1 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 80 and had a brain tumor. Miss Tippy Stringer, as she was


known when she took to the air- waves, hosted cooking and home- making shows on WRC-TV and radio before she landed a perma- nent role as the station’s weather girl in 1953. She was often joined on-air by a cartoon character she created named Senator Fair- weather, whose doe-eyed likeness was photographed with Tippy for Life magazine in 1955. Mrs. Conrad appeared as a


weather girl twice each evening, at 6:45 and 11:10, wearing pearls andaperfect coiffure. Inbetween, she raced to theShorehamHotel’s swanky Blue Room nightclub, where she changed costumes to sing in two nightly floor shows. Five-foot-five, blond and slen-


der, she was popular among tele- vision viewers and critics alike. She “pitches her patter atwom-


en, but Miss Stringer herself is well-worth any male’s attention,” wrote Washington Post TV re- viewerLawrenceLaurent in 1953. “Her long suit is fashion, beauty and the undeniable fact that she’s about the cutest thing seen on TV in these parts.” Washington newsman David


FILE PHOTO BY ARTHUR ELLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST Shown in 1955,WRC-TV’s Tippy Stringer appeared twice each evening in pearls and a perfect coiffure.


Brinkley, whom Miss Stringer knew through her television work, introduced her to Chet Huntley, who was known nation-


ally for broadcasting the news with Brinkley on NBC’s “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.” “She sat inmy lap orsomething


corny like that,” Brinkley said in a 1961 interview, “and I told her who Chet was while he looked on [in] the monitor. The next thing I knewhe was taking her out.” The couple married in 1959.


They lived inNewYork until retir- ing in 1970 to Huntley’s home state, Montana, where they founded the Big Sky Resort on the Gallatin River outside Bozeman. ChetHuntley died just three days before the 1974 dedication cere- mony for the $25 million recre- ational complex. The resort, which includes a


golf course and a tangle of ski runsincludingonecalled “Tippy’s Tumble,” was sold to a Michigan company in 1976.Mrs. Conrad — then Mrs. Huntley — ran unsuc- cessfully for Congress in 1978 as a Republican candidate fromMon- tana. In 1980, she met and married


another nationally known figure: William Conrad, an actor who first rose to prominence as the voice of Marshal Matt Dillon on the radio program “Gunsmoke.” Hehadbeenwidowedin 1977,and he met Tippy during a visit to the Big Sky Resort. Mrs. Conrad moved to Los An-


geles and helped manage Con- rad’s later career, which included a starring role in the CBS legal drama “Jake and the Fatman.” William Conrad died in 1994 after 14 years of marriage. In 1995, Mrs. Conrad founded


the Stringer Foundation to sup- port causes including public broadcasting and reproductive education. Lewis Tipton Stringer was born July 15, 1930, in Evanston,


Ill.Her familymovedto theWash- ington area later that decade, and she graduated from Bethesda- Chevy ChaseHigh School. She was admitted to the Col-


lege of William & Mary in Wil- liamsburg only to discover that theschoolhadassumed,givenher name, that she was a young man. With space in women’s dorms already allotted to other students, she chose instead to attend the University ofMaryland—andshe began calling herself Tippy. Mrs. Conrad was noticed for


her looks and magnetism while performing onstage in student plays. She was crowned home- coming queen in 1951, the same year she appeared in a Washing- ton Post article featuring local womenand their fashion philoso- phies. “I’m very fond of crinolines


because they make your waist look so small,” she said. During the height of her local


fame, Mrs. Conrad often ap- peared off-screen at local fairs and holiday celebrations. In the mid-1950s, she cut the ribbon at opening ceremonies for the Seven Corners Shopping Center and the bridge that carries East Capitol Street across the Anacostia River. An honorary member of the


city’s royalty, she was crowned Miss Get Out the Vote in 1956, posing at the District Building in a sash, gown and white gloves as part ofacampaigntonudgereluc- tant voters to the polls. She also was the Washington


Convention and Visitors Associa- tion’s Miss Summer Jubilee; Queen of the Seabees, the Navy’s civil engineering corps; and Prin- cess of the Winchester, Va., Apple Blossom Festival. Survivors include a brother. browne@washpost.com


OF NOTE LOKI SCHMIDT


Wife of German Chancellor Loki Schmidt, 91, wife of for-


mer West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, died Oct. 21 at her home in the northern Ger- man port city of Hamburg. No cause of death was reported. She was born Hannelore Gla-


ser in Ham- burg in 1919. Shemet her fu- ture husband when they were school- children, and they married in 1942. Her hus-


be enabled to protect the life of the child, born and unborn.” Dr. Jeffersonwas born in Pitts-


burg, Tex., in 1926, the daughter of a schoolteacher and a minis- ter. She graduated from Texas College in Tyler and received a master’s degree from Tufts Uni- versity in Medford, Mass. She graduated fromHarvardMedical School in 1951. Dr. Jefferson had taught as an


assistant clinical professor of surgery at Boston University Medical School.


DEANOLMSTEAD UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL


Author Robert Katz, right, and film directorGeorge Pan Cosmatos attend the second hearing of their defamation trial in 1974. ROBERTKATZ, 77


American writer chronicled war massacre in Italy BY EMMA BROWN RobertKatz,anAmerican writ-


erwhowasknownfor chronicling violent episodes in modern Ital- ian history and for accusing Pope Pius XII of silent complicity in the Holocaust, diedOct. 20 of compli- cations from cancer surgery at a hospital inMontevarchi, an Ital- ian community south of Florence. He was 77. Mr. Katz published more than


a dozen books over the course of his career, but was perhaps best known for his first, which nearly landed him in jail for defaming the pontiff: “Death in Rome,” published in 1967 and made into the 1973 movie “Massacre in Rome” starring Richard Burton. Using vivid detail, Mr. Katz


reconstructed the March 24, 1944, massacre at the Ardeatine Caves near Rome. Nazi soldiers killed more than 300 Italians, including Jews,RomanCatholics, political prisoners and anyone deemedundesirable by theGesta- po.


The bloody assault came in response to an Italian partisan attack the previous day that had killed 32 German soldiers. Adolf Hitler, enraged, demanded 10 dead Italians for every Nazi casu- alty. Over the next 24 hours, Nazi troops rounded up 335 men and boys and trucked them to the


Ardeatine Caves, where the vic- tims were shot in the back of the head. Mr. Katz reported that Pope


Pius XII received word ofHitler’s plan 19 hours before the killing began. “One can hardly escape the conclusion,”Mr. Katz wrote, “that Pius XII lackedthe will to attempt to save the men destined to die in the Ardeatine Caves.” Mr. Katz’s direct indictments immediately came under fire, re- newing a long-roiling controver- syamongWorldWar II historians over the Pope’s role during that conflict. Pope Pius XII had died in 1958,


but his niece suedMr. Katz—and the producer and director of the film version ofMr. Katz’s book — for defaming the pontiff ’s memo- ry.Mr. Katz’s accusations were “a vicious lie,” a Vatican official told theUnited Press International. According to Mr. Katz’s ac-


count in a later book, “The Battle forRome” (2003), he was initially found guilty of defamation and sentenced to 14 months in prison; after 10 yearsandseveral appeals, the case was ultimately thrown out by the Italian supreme court. The court left open the possibility of a civil lawsuit, Mr. Katz wrote, which Pope Pius XII’s family did not pursue. Undeterred by his brush with the law, Mr. Katz again accused


the Pope of failing to speak out against German wartime atroci- ties in “The Battle for Rome.” The book made use of newly released military documents to detail the nine-month German occupation of Rome after the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943. Mr. Katz “skillfully weaves into


his narrative the experiences of a large, fascinating cast of charac- ters — ordinary Roman citizens, informants, craven opportunists, spies and double agents, and some Germans who risked death in an effort to save Rome’s Jews,” wrote historian Carlo D’Este in the New York Times. “His book is a poignant, dramatic and defini- tive account of a tragic time.” Robert Katz was born June 27,


1933, in Brooklyn,N.Y.He attend- ed Brooklyn College for several years before leaving to work as a writer and photographer, first for the United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Service and later for the American Cancer Society. He married Beverly Gerstel in


1957. Besides his wife, survivors include two sons, Jonathan Katz and Stephen Katz, both of Rome; two brothers; and two grandchil- dren. Mr. Katz moved to Rome in the


early 1960s and worked as a freelance writer, occasionally supplementing his salary with work as a visiting professor of investigative reporting at the


University of California at Santa Cruz.


Among his well-known books


were “Black Sabbath” (1969), about a Saturday in October 1943 when German forces in Rome gathered more than a thousand Jews to send to Auschwitz; and “Days ofWrath” (1980), about the Red Brigade’s 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister AldoMoro. “Anyone who knows and loves


Italy, anyone who has meditated on the fragility of the modern democratic state, and anyone whocan be moved by the pity and terror of amoderntragedy,” wrote literary criticGodfreyHodgsonin The Washington Post, “will want to read this original and passion- ately heartfelt book.” Mr. Katz, a recipient of a


Guggenheim fellowship for liter- ature, occasionally strayed from Italian history to write novels such as “The Cassandra Cross- ing,” about a terrorist who infects passengers on a train across Eu- rope with the plague. Mr. Katz later co-wrote the screenplay for the film version. Released in 1977, “The Cassandra Crossing” received scathing re- views despite a star-studded cast including Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster and O. J. Simpson.


browne@washpost.com


band, a Social Democrat, gov- erned what was then the Federal Republic of Germany from 1974 to 1982, when his governing coalition with the small Free Democrat Party col- lapsed. He was replaced as chan- cellor by the conservative oppo- sition Christian Democrat Union’s Helmut Kohl. Loki Schmidt was beloved by


Loki Schmidt was a


passionate botanist.


Germans for her down-to-earth nature and devotion to her hus- band of nearly seven decades. She was also a passionate bota- nist who urged environmental awareness years before “green” became a buzzword. Enthusias- tic smokers, the Schmidts made headlines in 2008 by lighting up in a Hamburg theater that had banned smoking. Mrs. Schmidt is survived by her husband and a daughter.


MILDRED JEFFERSON


Antiabortion Leader Mildred Jefferson, 84, the first


black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and a nationally recognized leader of the antiabortionmovement, died Oct. 15 in Cambridge, Mass. No cause of death was reported. Dr. Jefferson helped establish


the National Right to Life Com- mittee, and communications di- rectorDerrick Jones said shewas its at-large director when she died. Dr. Jefferson was a foe of Roe


v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. In a 1981 congressional hearing, Dr. Jefferson said the high court decision “gave my profession an almost unlimited license to kill.” She added: “With the obstetri-


cian and mother becoming the worst enemy of the child and the pediatrician becoming the assas- sin for the family, the state must


Satellite Industry Executive Dean Olmstead, 55, president


of EchoStar Satellite Services, died Oct. 16 in Princeton, N.J.He had cancer. Mr.Olmstead joined EchoStar,


based in Englewood, Colo., in 2008, after it was spun off from Dish Network Corp. He headed its satellite services subsidiary. He had also worked for SES


Global, Arrowhead Global Solu- tions, DirecTV and Hughes Elec- tronics. Olmstead was instru- mental in several mergers and consolidations. Before moving to the private


sector, he worked inWashington as deputy director of the State Department’s Satellite and Cable Policy Branch and at NASA, where he was chief of the Ad- vanced Communications Branch and program manager for the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite.


DAVIDTHOMPSON


Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson, 48, the


primeminister of Barbados, died Oct. 23 at his home in St. Philip, Barbados, the government said. He had pancreatic cancer. In January 2008, Mr. Thomp-


son,whowas trained as a lawyer, became prime minister of the Caribbean nation of 270,000 people. He had been ill since March and traveled to New York several times for treatment. In an address to the nation last


month, Mr. Thompson said he was shuffling his cabinet to pass many of his responsibilities to otherministers.He said he chose to speak by radio instead of going on camera so that islanders would focus on his message, not his appearance. His deputy, Freundel Stuart,


has been acting as prime minis- ter.


— FromNews Services


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