AP Obits--11/11/04
ObitsMan
Obituaries in the News
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 11, 2004; 9:13 PM
Yasser Arafat
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Yasser Arafat, revered as the champion of
Palestinian statehood and reviled as a terrorist, died Thursday. He was 75.
Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. Paris time at a French military hospital. Neither his
doctors nor Palestinian leaders said what killed him.
A visual constant in his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the
Palestinians' cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell
short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab
leaders of his generation, saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical
Islam in recent years.
Revered by his own people, Arafat was reviled by others. He was accused of
secretly fomenting attacks on Israelis while proclaiming brotherhood and
claiming to have put terrorism aside. Many Israelis felt the paunchy 5-foot,
2-inch Palestinian's real goal remained the destruction of the Jewish state.
Arafat became one of the world's most familiar faces after addressing the U.N.
General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a
holster and carrying a sprig.
"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun," he
said. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
Two decades later, he shook hands at the White House with Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel's right
to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. The pact led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and
then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
But the accord quickly unraveled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of
treaty violations, and a new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000
has killed some 4,000 people, three-quarters of them Palestinian.
The Israeli and U.S. governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the
derailing of the peace process. Even many of his own people began whispering
against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a
bad economy in the Palestinian areas.
A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts and even a
plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa on Aug. 4,
1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948
war over Israel's creation. There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza
or in Cairo.
Educated as an engineer in Egypt, Arafat served in the Egyptian army and then
started a contracting firm in Kuwait. It was there that he founded the Fatah
movement, which became the core of the PLO.
After the Arabs' humbling defeat by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, the PLO
thrust itself on the world's front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack
airplanes, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer
Olympics.
---
Wyeth Chandler
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Former Memphis Mayor Wyeth Chandler, who served three
terms in the 1970s and early 1980s, died Thursday, three days after suffering a
heart attack, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis reported. He was 74.
Chandler was mayor during the city's police and fire department strikes in
1978.
A colorful character, he enjoyed the city's nightlife, had a baby hippo at the
Memphis Zoo named for him and traded jobs with a radio deejay on April Fool's
Day in 1979.
He stepped down during his third term to accept an appointment to the Circuit
Court bench in 1982.
---
Robert Perine
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Robert Perine, a prolific jack-of-all-trades in the
creative arts fields who helped found a revitalized version of the historic
Chouinard Art Institute, died Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was
81.
A graduate of and instructor at Chouinard, Perine in 1985 wrote a critical book
- "Chouinard: An Art Vision Betrayed" - about the institute after Walt Disney
bailed it out of debt and turned it into the California Institute of the Arts
in Valencia.
He and partner Dave Tourje started the Chouinard Foundation a dozen years after
the book renewed interest in the institute. They started a newsletter and held
exhibitions and auctions to raise money for the new school, which opened in
South Pasadena in 2003.
The original school operated from 1921 to 1972.
Revival plans by Perine and Tourje piqued interest in 2001, when they arranged
museum exhibitions by Chouinard alumni. Perine served as co-director and taught
design, figure drawing and watercolor painting after the new Chouinard opened
last year.
He attended Pasadena City College before joining the Navy as a painter during
World War II. He later attended the University of Southern California and
graduated from Chouinard in 1950.
Perine was also an artist and writer who published books about the craft under
his Artra Publishing Co.
His artwork is housed in more than 200 permanent collections across the
country. He also had a graphic design firm and created logos and marketing
materials.
---
Erna Rosenstein
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Erna Rosenstein, a surrealist painter and poet whose
works evoked her experience as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland, died of arterial
sclerosis Wednesday at her home in Warsaw, her son, Adam Sandauer, said. She
was 91.
Before and after World War II, Rosenstein belonged to an avant-garde group of
artists who became known as the "Krakow Group."
She survived the war in Poland by using fake documents and an assumed Christian
name, her son said.
Rosenstein, who was married to Polish writer Artur Sandauer, also published a
book of memoirs and several volumes of poetry.
Rosenstein was the sister of the late Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan, an influential
economist and Boston University professor who was credited with coining the
term "underdeveloped countries."
She was born into a Jewish family in Lviv, a formerly Polish city now in
Ukraine.
---
Zachary Solov
NEW YORK (AP) - Zachary Solov, a dancer and former chief choreographer for the
Metropolitan Opera, died Saturday of heart failure, his biographer said. He was
81.
During his tenure at the Met, from 1951 to 1958, Solov created dances for such
productions as "Carmen," "Aida" and "La Gioconda." The company also staged some
of his independent dance pieces, including "Viottorio," in which he also
danced, and "Soiree."
He also hired the company's first black artist, dancer Janet Collins, under
regular contract.
After leaving the Met, he founded the Zachary Solov Ballet Ensemble, where he
oversaw dances for regional musical productions and ballets. He returned to the
Met periodically as guest choreographer until the mid-1980s.
Solov studied at the Dauphin School of the Arts and the Littlefield Ballet
School. He went on to dance with prominent ballet companies including George
Balanchine's American Ballet Caravan and Eugene Loring's Dance Players. He
appeared on television shows including "Your Show of Shows" and "The Fred Allen
Show."
He was drafted into the Army in 1943, and choreographed and danced in 35 Army
revues in the United States and Asia.
---
Wang Junyao
BEIJING (AP) - Wang Junyao, who ran China's first private charter airline and
built a business empire valued at $300 million, died Sunday of intestinal
cancer, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 38.
Wang rose to prominence running charter flights in 1991 and later built a
corporate empire that was best known as a milk producer. He was also involved
in real estate.