Maxine North, Tycoon in Thailand
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: By GRANT PECK, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: BANGKOK, Thailand
Maxine North, who came to Thailand in 1950 as the wife of an undercover CIA
agent and stayed to become a highly successful business entrepreneur, has
died in the resort city of Pattaya, friends said Wednesday.
North, a native of Salem, Ore., died Oct. 3 and was buried Oct. 8 in
Pattaya's Catholic cemetery, said Willis Bird, Jr., a family friend. The
Pattaya Mail weekly newspaper reported that she was 83 and died after a long
illness.
North was best known for founding North Star Co., whose Polaris bottled
water held a virtual monopoly in the Thai market for about three decades.
Her business took off in the 1960s and 1970s, when tens of thousands of U.S.
troops were stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War.
North also established Thai Celadon, which revived a northern Thai style of
making high quality porcelain stoneware, and the Nipa Lodge, the first of
what is now a world famous complex of luxury hotels in Pattaya, a seaside
resort 45 miles southeast of Bangkok.
North was working at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood when she met her
husband, screenwriter Robert G. North. He headed the Far East Film Co., a
movie distribution firm, when the couple moved to Bangkok.
The company served as a cover for his work with the Central Intelligence
Agency, which considered Thailand part of the front-line in the Cold War
against communism.
When her husband died suddenly from polio in 1954, North decided to stay in
Thailand and launched her business career.
She also laid claim to introducing commercial advertising to Thailand and to
starting its first English-language radio station.
Her circle of friends included a number of prominent people, including the
late President Richard M. Nixon, whom she knew from her time in California.