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KLMNO OBITUARIES A LOCAL LIFE:HAROLD M. KESHISHIAN, 81
He was the expert’s expert on oriental rugs, carpets F
by Matt Schudel
or years, on the first Satur- day of each month, Harold M. Keshishian would hold
court at Washington’s Textile Mu- seum. The sessions became known as Mr. Keshishian’s “rug mornings,” when he would de- scribe the vibrant patterns and hues of oriental rugs and the equally colorful stories behind them. He illustrated his lectures with items from his own collection or from the vast stores of his family’s business, Mark Keshishian and Sons. Mr. Keshishian, who died July 23 of leukemia at his home in the District at 81, grew up in the rug trade. His family has been furnishing the carpets that cover Washington’s most distinguished floors since 1931, and he brought a lifetime of knowledge to his rug mornings at the Textile Museum. With just a glance or the edu-
cated touch of his forefinger and thumb, he could weave stories about carpets and the people and places that produced them. “It’s not enough to look at a
rug,” Grace Moe, who attended many of those Saturday sessions, recalled last week. “You really need to handle it. Harold had handled tens of thousands of rugs.”
A 1978 Washington Post article described Mr. Keshishian as hav- ing “the manner of a . . . poten- tate” as he examined the rugs brought before him. “Take that home and soak it in
the bathtub overnight,” he told one owner. “It is filthy.” He could point out treasures
worth thousands of dollars or break the hearts of people who had been bamboozled in a for- eign bazaar. Once, when someone presented a carpet he believed was handmade, Mr. Keshishian declared it virtually worthless: “It was made in Belgium or Italy on a machine.” “You think so?” the man asked. “I know so,” Mr. Keshishian an-
swered.
By studying a carpet’s knots, coloring and calligraphy, he could instantly assess its prove- nance, naming the country, vil-
FAMILY PHOTO
Mr. Keshishian with wife Melissa McGee Keshishian at the Hay-Adams Hotel (the White House is in the background).
lage and sometimes the exact year in which it was made. One of his most dazzling dis- coveries came when he noticed something unusual about an an- tique Star Oushak carpet from Turkey that had spent years in a dusty attic in Georgetown. Some- how, the rug seemed familiar. Finally, Mr. Keshishian remem- bered where he had seen it be- fore: It was the same rug — or a close copy — that appeared in a celebrated 16th-century portrait of England’s King Henry VIII by Hans Holbein. “That was the genius of Har- old,” Moe said. “He was able to
bring it all together because of vast knowledge of history and an almost photographic memory.” Harold Mark Keshishian was
born March 20, 1929, in London, during the third step of his fami- ly’s long journey into exile. His family was Armenian and had lived in the Turkish region of An- atolia for years. In 1915, a pro- longed period of ethnic cleansing began, during which Armenians were forced from their homes in Turkey and often killed. Mr. Keshishian’s father, Mark
Keshishian — all male members of the family have Mark as a mid- dle name in his honor — moved
FAMILY PHOTO FAMILY PHOTO Harold Keshishian last year at Kennedy Farm in Washington County.
Mr. Keshishian, in an undated photo, at a reception at the State Department, where he supplied many of the rugs.
his family to the Greek island of Corfu in the 1920s, then to Bel- gium and London. Each of his three sons was born in a different country. The family came to New York in 1931 and settled in Washington later that year. Mark Keshishian, who first became a rug merchant in Constantinople, opened a shop in the District and, by 1935, was cleaning, repairing and selling rugs at the White House. “Mrs. Roosevelt used to go to
my father’s shop at least once a month to look at carpets,” John Keshishian, the eldest of the three sons, recalled last week. Harold Keshishian, the young- est son, graduated from Wood- row Wilson High School in 1948, served in the Army and attended the Colorado School of Mines. In 1956, he joined his father and middle brother, James, in busi- ness.
On any given day at Keshishian and Sons, a visitor could hear seemingly half the languages of Europe and the Near East. At home, the family spoke Arme- nian and a patois all its own. “My father would say some- thing in Greek,” John Keshishian recalled, “and my mother would answer in French.” Mark Keshishian, the family
patriarch, died in 1985; James Keshishian died in 2003. The
SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010 INMEMORIAM COOPER
company, based in Chevy Chase, is now operated by Mr. Kesh- ishian’s widow and nephew. Mr. Keshishian’s first marriage,
to Nancy Cornett, ended in di- vorce. In addition to his brother John
of McLean, survivors include his wife of 27 years, Melissa McGee Keshishian, and their three chil- dren, Kirk M. Keshishian, Chris- topher M. Keshishian and Joc- elyn B. Keshishian, all of Wash- ington; and a daughter from his first marriage, Elizabeth A. Kesh- ishian-Tyler of Los Angeles. Mr. Keshishian wrote two books on rugs and quietly did work at the White House for presidents of both parties. In the 1970s, he had a prominent role in redecorating the diplomatic re- ception rooms at the State De- partment. He was a trustee of the Textile
Museum and a consultant to em- bassies, the Blair House and the historic Tudor Place, Decatur House and Hillwood Estate in the District. He received a presiden- tial appointment to the State De- partment’s Cultural Property Ad- visory Committee in 1992 and was sometimes called on by the U.S. Customs Service to examine rugs seized from smugglers. Proud of his Armenian heri-
tage, Mr. Keshishian was a mem- ber of Soorp Khatch Armenian Apostolic Church in Bethesda. He had a farm in Poolesville, where he raised cattle, sheep, horses, chickens and goats and was part of a group that bought and re- stored the Kennedy Farmhouse in Washington County, Md., where abolitionist John Brown planned his 1859 raid on the fed- eral arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.Va. It is now a national historic landmark.
But the strongest thread run- ning through Mr. Keshishian’s life was his devotion to the elabo- rately dyed and knotted rugs that have enchanted the world for centuries. “Harold was recognized as the
expert’s expert,” said Grace Moe. “He could unravel the mystery of a rug — its history and back- ground. Every rug was a puzzle to figure out.”
schudelm@washpost.com
LINDA GITELSON
January 24, 1943 - August 8, 2004 The Love Family
Stanley, Deborah, Angie and Mark
Tommy, Duncan, Valerie, Allie, Max, Andrew, Sam, Lindi, Ethan and Benjy
December 20, 1927 - August 8, 2002 He had a smile for everyone, A heart as pure as gold.
MELVIN J. COOPER, SR.
To those who knew and loved him best His memory will never grow old.
Sorely missed by Wife, Audrey; Sons, Melvin Jr., Sidney and Michael; Daughter, Margie; Daughter-in-law, Brenda; Son-in- law, Joe; and many Grand and Great-Grand- children.
FISHER
CHERYL A. FISHER 2/26/1951 - 8/8/2001
Dearest Cheryl, a beautiful Wife and Mother. Though you left us nine years ago, your spirit will always be with us. We miss you and will love you forever.
Love Alvin, Sr., Alvin II, Christina, and family.
GITELSON In Loving Memory
MARILYN BUCK, 62
Radical went to prison after heists, bombings
by David B. Caruso Marilyn Buck, 62, a member of
the leftist group the Weather Underground who spent 25 years in prison for her role in some of the most notorious radical crimes of the 1980s, including the bomb- ing of the U.S. Capitol and a dead- ly armored car heist, died Aug. 3 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
She had uterine cancer and was paroled July 15 from a federal prison hospital in Fort Worth. Ms. Buck belonged to a clique of antiwar and civil rights activ- ists who took up arms in the 1970s and became involved in a series of politically motivated at- tacks on government and corpo- rate targets. On Oct. 20, 1981, she was part of a group of Weather Underground and Black Libera- tion Army members who am- bushed a Brink’s armored car car- rying $1.6 million at a mall in Na- nuet, N.Y.
One guard was killed at the scene and a second was badly wounded. Two police officers were killed after they pulled over one of the getaway cars. Ms. Buck accidentally shot her- self in the leg during the gun bat- tle with police, but she escaped and remained free for four years. During that time, she was in- volved in a series of bombings that included a 1983 nighttime blast at the Capitol that damaged Senate offices but caused no in- juries. The bomb was purported- ly placed to protest the U.S. in- vasion of Grenada. After her 1985 capture in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., she was con- victed in the Brink’s robbery and other crimes. Prosecutors said she helped Black Liberation Army leader Jo- anne Chesimard, who had been convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, escape from prison and flee to Cuba in 1979. Ms. Buck also was implicated in another 1981 armored car robbery in which a guard was killed. In 1988, she pleaded guilty to taking part in the Capitol bomb- ing, although she later said she only took the deal to spare fellow radicals from lengthy prison terms.
TONY JUDT, 62
European-history scholar stirred controversy with writings on Israel
by Matt Schudel ASSOCIATED PRESS
Marilyn Buck belonged to a clique of antiwar and civil rights activists linked to 1980s attacks.
Other bombings covered by her plea agreement included at- tacks on a federal building, on a police union and the South Afri- can consulate in New York City and at the Washington Navy Yard and National War College in Washington. Ms. Buck insisted that she was
a victim of state oppression. “I am a political prisoner, not a terrorist,” she said at a court ap- pearance in 1988. In jail, she wrote poetry and continued to enjoy the support of left-wing radicals who occasion- ally called for her release. Ms. Buck discovered leftist politics as a student at the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley, and she joined Students for a Democratic Society after trans- ferring to the University of Texas. By 1973, she was in serious le- gal trouble for her affiliation with the Black Liberation Army. At age 26, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges that she bought guns and ammunition for the group. She was four years into that term in 1977 when she failed to return from a prison furlough and became a fugitive.
She was free for eight crime-
filled years before her recapture. — Associated Press
Tony Judt, 62, a well-regarded scholar of European history who became one of the most contro- versial public intellectuals of re- cent with his critical statements about Israel, died Aug. 6 at his home in New York. He had amyo- trophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Judt was an English-born historian who spent most of his professional life in the United States and had been a professor at New York University since 1987. He began his career as a scholar of the economic practices of 19th- and 20th-century France and expanded his portfolio to en- compass all of European history. His 2005 book, “Postwar: A His- tory of Europe Since 1945,” is con- sidered a landmark study, exam- ining the political, social and cul- tural efflorescence across Europe since World War II.
Besides his scholarly work, Mr.
Judt wrote frequent essays for the New York Review of Books and other publications, covering a wide range of topics, including a recent series of personal accounts of his struggles with ALS. “In contrast to almost every other serious or deadly disease,” he wrote, “one is . . . left free to contemplate at leisure and in minimal discomfort the cata- strophic progress of one’s own de- terioration.” Later in the essay, titled
“Night,” he wrote: “There is no saving grace in being confined to an iron suit, cold and unforgiv- ing. The pleasures of mental agil- ity are much overstated.” But even as he became com-
pletely paralyzed, Mr. Judt re- tained and further developed his mental agility, learning ancient memory exercises, as he imag- ined a mental castle from which his thoughts could be retrieved. In March, New York magazine de- clared that he had “the liveliest mind in New York.” In his final public speech in Oc- tober 2009, with breathing tubes in his nose, he questioned why American society seemed to be in decline and why the social ad- vances of the 1960s, from racial
sponded. “The issue is not wheth- er Israel has a right to exist . . . The question is what kind of a state Israel should be. That’s all.” Tony Robert Judt was born Jan.
2, 1948, in London and grew up in a lower-middle-class but intellec- tually vibrant environment. He became known as one of the most fluent writers among scholarly historians. “I was raised on words,” he wrote. “Talking, it seemed to me, was the point to adult existence.” He graduated from the Univer-
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tony Judt’s book “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
justice to public broadcasting, were coming under threat. “Why is it that here in the Unit-
ed States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dys- functions and inequalities trou- ble us so?” he asked from his wheelchair. Mr. Judt’s provocative writings
about Israel, though only a small portion of his work, stirred the greatest amount of public dis- pute. In his youth, he had been an avowed Zionist and had lived in Israel. Over time, he changed his views and, by 1983, was writing that Israel was a “belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno state.” He incurred even greater ire with a 2003 essay in which he called for Israel to include Arabs and Jews equally as part of the government, or a “one-state solu- tion.” Three years later, he baldly declared, “The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.” His critics condemned him for calling for the abolition of the Jewish state, and Leon Wieseltier wrote in the New Republic that Mr. Judt “has become precisely the kind of intellectual whom his intellectual heroes would have despised.” “Oh, that’s nuts,” Mr. Judt re-
sity of Cambridge in 1969 and re- ceived a doctorate in history there in 1972. His first book was published in French in 1974. He taught at Cambridge, the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley and the University of Oxford before going to NYU. Two early marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his third wife, dance critic Jennifer Homans, and their two sons. After several books on French
history, Mr. Judt drew on his background of being from a Jew- ish family displaced by World War II for his 900-page magnum opus, “Postwar.” In the book, he described the resilience of a con- tinent that rebuilt itself after the predations of two autocrats, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. He suggested that Europe derived its moral strength and political tol- erance from instituting a welfare state across the continent. “Postwar” was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize and was praised by Louis Menand in the New Yorker as “virtually superhuman.” Yale historian Timothy Snyder called it “the best book on its sub- ject that will ever be written by anyone.”
With the aid of his memory and assistants, Mr. Judt pub- lished a new book about the Unit- ed States, “Ill Fares the Land,” in March. “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live to- day,” he wrote. He argued that the right and left have switched roles in society, with the left hoping to conserve social institutions while right had become radical, aban- doning “social moderation which served it so well.”
schudelm@washpost.com
GRIGSBY NORMANW. GRIGSBY
In loving memory of NORMANW. GRIGSBY, who departed this life August 8, 1986. For one brief shining moment that was known as our Norman: a cherished son, faithful hus- band, proud father, nurturing grandfather, our big brother, the cartoon-watching uncle. Greatly Loved By All,THE FAMILY
HANSON February 9, 1929 DANIEL JOSEPH HANSON,SR. Moe, Duke and Whajin, Polly and Dean We love you and miss you HENDRICKS August 8, 2009
February 6, 1930 - August 7, 2000
On this 10th anniversary of our loss, we cel- ebrate the life of Marshall L. Hendricks. He staunchly defended the United States of Amer- ica through his work for both the Navy and Intelligence services. His knowledge of art helped spread peace and understanding between cultures. Marshall's curiosity and drive took him all over the world so that we could learn fundamental truths. His fascination with life illuminated his family's life. His family and many friends miss him. Your loving family
MWOMBELA
MARSHALL L. HENDRICKS
PETER I.MWOMBELA 9/9/34 - 8/8/05 Sorrow comes in great waves but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us - it leaves us.And we know that it is strong,we are stronger. In as much as it passes, we remain. We miss you so much.
PARKS THE PROMISE OF US
In deep green forests on; fields of sand. When our time on earth is through, in heaven, too, you will have my hand.
In Memory of our Parents BILLIE and CLAUDE PARKS of Cleveland Park
Across the years I will walk with you
Your Family
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