C8 CONSTANCEREID, 92
Writer had a gift for explaining math
She concluded: “It is the hope BY MARTINWEIL
Constance Reid, 92, who led a venturesome life of achievement, building heavy bombers during World War II and then writing popular and penetrating studies of mathematics and mathemati- cians, died Oct. 14 at her home in San Francisco. She had cancer. As a worker in a California
plant that built B-24 bombers, Mrs. Reid led the life of “Rosie the Riveter,” the female hero of the home front who rolled up her sleeves to produce ships, planes and tanks while men were off at war. Mrs. Reid wrote about her experience in a book republished years later by the Smithsonian Institution. In her later life, she raised a
family while publishing a stream of biographies and expository works on mathematics, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the 2oth century. One particularly well-received book told the story of her sister, Julia Robinson, a pioneering Americanmathemati- cian. Mrs. Reid also wrote “From
Zero to Infinity: What Makes Numbers Interesting,” “Introduc- tion to Higher Mathematics for the General Reader” and “A Long Way from Euclid,” which traced developments in mathematics to the ancient figure familiar to stu- dents of high school geometry. The opening of that book sug-
gests the warm and inviting way in which Mrs. Reid could lure readers into topics that might easily seem cold and forbidding: “In Ancient Greece, where mod- ern mathematics began, there was no question among mathe- maticians but that the gods them- selves were mathematicians too.”
Rita J. Andrews BUSINESS OWNER
Rita J. Andrews, 66, who
owned and operated a consulting business specializing in women’s leadership and diversity training, died Sept. 5 at aManor Care Fair Oaks nursing home in Fairfax County after a stroke. Mrs. Andrews opened Rijaan
Consulting Services in the late 1980s. Over the years, her clients included the InternationalMone- tary Fund, theU.S. Postal Service, Ford andNASA. Before opening her firm, she
worked as a training director for BellAtlantic. Mrs. Andrews served as on the
board ofHope Springs Institute, a women’s retreat center in Ohio, and organized its international peace gathering in June. Rita Jane Coulburn was a na-
tive of Providence, R.I. She was a 1978graduateofGeorgeWashing- tonUniversity,whereshereceived a master’s degree in special stud- ies in 1983. Shewas aWashington resident until her death. Hermarriage to Lawrence An-
drews endedindivorce. Survivors include two sons, Lawrence E. Andrews of Oakland, Calif., and Charles D. Andrews of Wood- bridge; and three grandchildren. —MeganBuerger
Sylvia Forman VOLUNTEER
Sylvia Forman, 89, who volun-
teered during the past two de- cades at the LeisureWorld retire- ment community in Silver Spring and later at Classic Residence in Chevy Chase, died Oct. 6 at the Residences at Thomas Circle in Washington. She had hypertension, coro-
nary artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mrs. Forman ran the store and
taught bridge at Classic Resi- dence, and she was a longtime social secretary at LeisureWorld. She was born Sylvia Kahn in
Brooklyn,N.Y. In addition to rais- ing her family, she had worked as a dental assistant and in retail sales. Herhusbandof 51 years,Ralph
Forman, died in 1994. Survivors include three chil-
dren, Ira Forman of Washington, Ellice Forman of Pittsburgh and Jeffrey Forman of Columbus, Ohio; and four grandchildren. —EmmaBrown
NancyKollerDove
SPEECH PATHOLOGIST Nancy Koller Dove, who until
February served for 15 years as a speech pathologist at Williams- burg Middle School in Arlington County, died Oct. 12 of cancer at her home in Arlington. She was 62.
Mrs. Dove had previously
of the author that the reader of this book will be able to glimpse through his own misty memories of Euclid’s geometry the outline of some of the more imposing edifices of modern mathematics.” Martin Gardner, a celebrated
popularizer of mathematics, wrote that “no one today writes about mathematics and mathe- maticians with more grace, knowledge, skill and clarity” than Mrs. Reid. She also tackled the lives of
mathematicians and statisticians whose careers were little known to untrained outsiders:DavidHil- bert, Richard Courant and Jerzy Neyman. The book about her sister, “Ju-
lia: A Life in Mathematics,” is known as an autobiography, but Mrs. Reid is widely regarded as having written it, based on inter- views with her sister. Mrs. Reidwasfond of quoting a
question that her vexed step- mother asked about her sister: “What are we going to do with a girl like that?” Mrs. Reidwasprominently fea-
tured in a 2008 documentary about her sister’s life, “Julia Rob- inson and Hilbert’s Tenth Prob- lem.”
Constance Bowman was born
in St. Louis on Jan. 3, 1918. After her mother died, Mrs. Reid and her sister were sent to live with a grandmother in Arizona. The family later moved to California, where both sisters graduated from San Diego State University. Mrs. Reid received a master’s degree in education from theUni- versity of California at Berkeley in 1949. She was teaching English dur-
ingWorldWar II when she and a friend decided to spend their
worked in school districts in Cali- fornia and at Defense Depart- ment schools inGermany.Shehad been an Arlington resident for 28 years. Nancy Ruth Koller was a San
Francisco native and a 1970 grad- uate of George Washington Uni- versity. She received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1972fromSanJoseStateUniversi- ty.
Her memberships included
the American Speech-Language- HearingAssociation. Survivors includeherhusband
of 38 years,CurtisR.Dove Jr., and their son, Matthew C. Dove, both ofArlington; and a sister. —EmmaBrown
KarenWilliamson ADDICTIONS COUNSELOR
Karen Williamson, 67, an ad-
dictions counselor for the Capitol Hill Business Improvement Dis- trict and a therapist at Washing- tonHospitalCenter,diedSept.7at her home inWashington. A spokesperson from the D.C.
Office of the Medical Examiner said that the cause of death was atherosclerotic and hypertensive disease. Ms.Williamson hadworked at
the Capitol Hill Business Im- provement District since 2008 and atWashington Hospital Cen- ter since 2003. Before that, she had worked as a substance abuse counselor for a private nonprofit health center. Karen Dolores Williamson, a
nativeWashingtonian,was a 1960 graduate of Wheaton High School. After high school, she worked
as a secretary and counselor at St. ElizabethsHospital intheDistrict before pursuing a career as an addictions counselor and thera- pist. She graduatedwithadegree in
counseling fromtheUniversity of Maryland in 1988 and received a master’s degree in community counselingfromGeorgeWashing- tonUniversity in 1997. Ms.Williamson spentmuch of
her time working with the Dis- trict’s tenants’ rights movement. She helped found the DC Tenants AdvocacyCoalition. Shewas amember of All Souls
Unitarian Church in Washington andavolunteerwiththeWashing- ton Area Council on Alcoholism andDrugAbuse. Her marriage to Praveer S.
Shulka ended in divorce. She had no immediate survivors. —ErinWilliams
ArturoG. Costantino III
STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL Arturo G. Costantino III, 83, a
Foreign Service officer with the StateDepartment from1949until 1986, died Sept. 19 at his home in Naples, Fla., of congestive heart failure.
summer vacation working in the Consolidated Vultee aircraft plant. She wrote the words, and her
friend, Clara Marie Allen, drew illustrations for their book, origi- nally titled “Slacks and Callous- es.”
A 1944 review in the New York
Times said she “cast a small but bright ray of sunlight” on the mysteries of life in the plant. She chose to work the swing
shift, she wrote, because it paid 8 cents an hour more than the day shift. The book was reprinted in 1999. After her 1950 marriage, Mrs.
Reid published an article on prime numbers in Scientific American. After reading the arti- cle, a book publisher asked for what would become “From Zero to Infinity, ” which appeared in 1955 and put Mrs. Reid on the road she was to follow for years. In researching one of her
During his career,Mr. Costan-
tino worked in Thailand and Ar- gentina and directed the Ameri- canSchoolsandHospitalsAbroad program in Cairo. For his last assignment, he led an aidmission in the Friuli region of northeast Italy after an earthquake struck the area in 1976. Arturo Giovanni Costantino
III was born in New York. He served in the Navy during World War II and was a graduate of PrincetonUniversity. He was a resident of McLean
fromthe late 1960s until 1986. His marriages to Ruth Feisser
CostantinoandThaliaCostantino ended in divorce. Survivors include his partner
of nine years, Loyda Rovere of Naples; three children from his first marriage, Marie-Louise Da- vidson ofMcLean,ArturoCostan- tino IV of Santa Fe, N.M., and RobertoCostantino ofWaterford; a sister; and five grandchildren. —LaurenWiseman
Sarah F. ‘Sally’ Smith
SUPREME COURT SECRETARY Sarah F. “Sally” Smith, 77, who
was the personal secretary toU.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and who later was the secretary to a retired Supreme Court justice, died Sept. 25 at the Renaissance Gardens at Green- spring retirement community in Springfield. She had congestive heart failure. Sarah Frances Smithwas born
in Roanoke and graduated with honors from Roanoke College in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in history. She taught sixth grade in Winchester, Va., for three years before moving to Richmond to becomeasecretarytoPowell, then in private practice. MissSmithmovedtoWashing-
ton soon after Powell was nomi- nated to the Supreme Court in December 1971. After Powell’s re- tirement from the court in 1987, Miss Smith continued to serve as his private secretary until 1996. Powell died in 1998. From1997 to 2001,Miss Smith
was personal secretary to retired Supreme Court justice Byron R. White. She lived in Southwest Wash-
ington for many years, enjoyed Washington’s cultural life and held season tickets to the Wash- ington Redskins. She moved to GreenspringVillage in 2002. She had no immediate survi-
vors. —Matt Schudel Viola A. ‘Vicky’ Fitzpatrick
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EDITOR Viola A. “Vicky” Fitzpatrick,
81, a senior editor for the Library of Congress’s National Library Servicefor theBlindandPhysical- ly Handicapped until her retire- ment in 2002, died Oct. 12 at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital
CORRECTION The Oct. 20 obituary of actor
Tom Bosley incorrectly reported the surname of his recurring character on the CBS detective drama “Murder, She Wrote.” He played Sheriff Amos Tupper, not Tucker.
Gary L. Ashby
INTELLIGENCE OFFICER Gary L. Ashby, 70, a retired
Navy commanderwhoworkedfor the CIA and National Security Agency, died Oct. 12 at a hospital in St. Louis.He had leukemia. Cmdr. Ashby joined the Navy
in 1966 and worked in intelli- gence. He retired from military service in 1987 at FortMeade. He thenworked for the Central Intel- ligenceAgency’sDirectorateof In- telligence before joining the NSA and retiring again in 2002. GaryLeeAshbywas anative of
Champaign, Ill., and a 1964 busi- ness graduate of SouthernIllinois University.He received amaster’s degree in international relations in 1977 from Central Michigan University. He lived in Bowie from1974 to
1995 and was amember of Chris- tian Community Presbyterian Church in Bowie. He had been a resident of O’Fallon, Ill., since 1995. Survivors includehiswifeof46
years, Patricia Egbert Ashby of O’Fallon; two daughters, Jennifer L.Mallon of Bristowand TriciaK. Ashby-Scabis of Bowie; a brother; and four grandchildren. —LaurenWiseman
BY T. REES SHAPIRO Harvey G. Phillips, 80, a tuba
virtuoso who led a nationwide crusade to elevate his instru- ment’s reputation as a galumph- ing staple of polka and marching bands and organized “Octubaf- est” and “TubaChristmas” con- certs to showcase the bass horn’s majesty and grace, died Oct. 20 at hishomein Bloomington, Ind.He had Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Phillips was considered
PHOTO BY GEORGE CSICSERY ©2001
Constance Reid wrote well-received books aboutmathematics and mathematicians, including her sister, Julia Robinson.
books, “The Search for E.T. Bell, Also Known as John Taine,” she discovered the story of 12 hidden years in the life of a Scottish mathematician who was himself a biographer of mathematicians. A reviewer in College Mathe-
matics Journal praised the book as “a dazzling piece of work” and calledMrs. Reid a “writer of skill and intelligence” who “could make even dull subjects interest- ing.” In addition to her husband,
lawyer Neil D. Reid, whom she met while she was working for her master’s degree at Berkeley, survivors include a daughter, a son and four grandchildren. She had a long life, her hus-
band said, and “good children and good grandchildren.” She died, he said, in the house where they had lived for 60 years, “with me sleeping beside her.”
weilm@washpost.com
one of the finest tubists in history. He played with such mastery that composers often tried to outfox him with exceedingly complex solo passages. They never man- aged to faze the burly musician widely known as the “Paganini of the tuba.” As a young man, Mr. Phillips
traveled the country playing tuba with the Ringling Bros. and Bar- num & Bailey Circus, a job that required a daunting level of preci- sion. He later performed with some of the most prestigious groups in the country, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and the New York City Ballet orchestra. He commissioned many pieces
to increase the tuba concerto rep- ertoire and played dozens of times at CarnegieHall. Withanevangelical passion for
his instrument, he was known at times to bristle when anyone sug- gested that the tuba was limited in its musical possibilities. “Would Heifetz have been any less a genius if he had played the tuba?” he once asked a reporter. Critics attributedMr. Phillips’s
in Rockville. She had chronic ob- structive pulmonary disease. Mrs.Fitzpatrickstartedher ca-
reerat theLibraryofCongressasa writer in 1977. She helped write and editmanuals. Viola Edith Andrewswas a na-
tive of New Haven, Conn., and a 1951 English graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island. She moved to the Washington region in 1958 and was a Rockville resi- dent from1964 to 2007. During the 1970s, she was
chairwoman of the Montgomery County public school system’sAd- visory Committee on Guidance andCounselingandhelpedMaril- lyn Allen and Elizabeth Spencer get elected to the county Board of Education. Shewasamemberof theAmer-
ican Association of University Women. Survivors includeherhusband
of 58 years, Stuart H. Fitzpatrick of Gaithersburg; two children, Kristine J. Fitzpatrick of Cheverly and Douglas C. Fitzparick of Me- bane, N.C.; and five grandchil- dren.
—LaurenWiseman
considerable musical achieve- ments to his seemingly tireless work ethic. He was known to practice in the back seat of the car while his wife drove him to recit- als and through the night when he got home while his children were sleeping. Offering proof of the tuba’s
supple sound, and his own gentle touch,Mr. Phillips once said that during these midnight sessions his children never stirred from their beds. In the early 1970s, Mr. Phillips
started his Octubafest tradition as a way to help student musi- cians socialize at theUniversity of Indiana, where he was a music professor for 23 years. The event eventually became a nationwide tour for tubists, with an annual convention at his TubaRanch in Bloomington that attracted thou- sands of participants. In 1974,Mr. Phillips decided to
gather more than 200 tuba play- ers for a Christmas celebration at NewYork’s Rockefeller Center. The event attracted wide- spread media attention and pub- lic interest. Scores watched the huge col-
laboration of tubists deftly ma- neuver through soft, blanket- warm renditions of “Silent Night,” “Joy to theWorld” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” arranged by his friend Alec Wilder. TubaChristmas was a smash,
EZ SU
KLMNO OBITUARIES
HARVEYG. PHILLIPS,80
Virtuoso showcased versatility of tubas
and Mr. Phillips returned for many years dressed in a red Santa suit for the occasion. The point of his concerts, Mr.
Phillips said, was to display the tuba as a noble instrument and to dispel an image problem that was only magnified when the instru- ment was placed to the wrong set of lips. “The worst enemies of the tuba
have beensomeof the peoplewho played itandplayed it poorly,”Mr. Phillips told the Chicago Tribune in 1991. “They don’t sing through the instrument. They belch through it.” Harvey Gene Phillips was born
Dec. 2, 1929, in Aurora, Mo., the last of 10 children. As a child, he subsidized his family income by trapping and skinning rabbits for 8 cents a pelt and picking straw- berries, apples and peaches for a penny per box. His musical career began ser- endipitously when a seat in his high school band’s horn section opened up after the tuba player joined the military duringWorld War II. Mr. Phillips became so enam-
ored with his new instrument that after graduating from high school in 1947 he secured a sum- mer job with a traveling circus. According to a 1975 profile of
Mr. Phillips in the New Yorker magazine, a Methodist preacher said to his mother, “That boy will be destroyed if he works in a circus. Circuses are full of the wicked and degenerate. He will be lost.” His mother replied: “You don’t
have much faith in Harvey, do you?Well, I do.” When young Mr. Phillips
stepped off the bus in Connecti- cut tomeetmembersof the circus band, he was greeted by a one- legged trumpeter and a drummer who suffered from an unspecified affliction that prevented him from fully closing his mouth. The band’s leader, Mr. Phillips learned, played entire perfor- mances with both cheeks bulging with tobacco. “I’ll admit,” Mr. Phillips told
the New Yorker, “the sight of those three made the reverend’s words pass throughmy mind.” He spent three years with Ring-
ling Bros. before moving to New York in 1950 to accept a music scholarship at the Juilliard School. Survivors include his wife and
three sons. As a professor, Mr. Phillips
taught his students that the tuba was invented in the mid- 1830s but that the first tuba concerto was not written until more than century later. If anything, Mr. Phillips told
his students, the tuba lackedpres- ent-day popularity only because of its novelty in the music world. Itwasfor this reason,hesaid, that he became one of the tuba’s most visible advocates. “I want the tuba player to have
an in-depth legacy to lean on,”Mr. Phillips once said. “I want him to know he has roots.”
shapirot@washpost.com
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010
INDIANA UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES/INDIANA UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Harvey Phillips, 80, was the leader of the “TubaChristmas” band.
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