IN MEMORIAM

In memory and appreciation of our friends and colleagues who have passed away:

Roger Chaffee (1)    Mary Mitchell Church    Ida Virginia Clark
Nicholas Cordasco    Marshall Cox    Lloyd Ellingson    Gary Frost (3)
Glen Gish (3)   Everett Goldberg (1)    Joseph Gulvas    Ilse Heilbrun
Gerald Hoffman (3)    Wolf Leslau (2,3)    Ann Browder Lorenz (3)
Brenda Mathiesen (3)    Ivan Myers (3)    Preston Perlman    Dorothy Pugh
Herman Rachut (3)    Henry C. Scott (2,3)    Gertrude Solomon
Helen Elias Steel    Paul Ward    Elizabeth Williams
H. Donald Wilson (2,3)

Notes:  (1) Transfer  (2) Staff  (3) See obituaries and other remembrances below

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This site will now include obituaries and other comments, which are provided below where available. Please use the message box at the bottom of the page if you wish to provide an obituary, remembrance or other information.

Obituaries and Remembrances

Ivan Myers, Glen Gish, Jerry Hoffman, Brenda Mathiesen, Gary Frost. Remembrance by William Seraile, EE2 RPCV, Makelle. [posted July 19, 2009]

As fate would have it, Mekelle lost a number of volunteers: Glen Gish, Jerry Hoffman, Ivan Myers, Brenda Mathiesen and Gary Frost. Additionally, June Clifton and Willie Mae Harris from Eth 1 have also died. I remember Jerry for trying to explain to Ethiopians the meaning of Thanksgiving; Glen for his constanst friendly smile and Brenda and Bud for transferring to Asmara to have their child instead of departing Ethiopia for America before their tour ended. Ivan and I were housemates for part of the first year until he transferred to Asmara. Ivan was a skilled mechanic who hooked up a hot water stove so that we could have about 15 minutes of hot water for showers. Many a weekend night we walked the darkened streets of Mekelle half drunk and singing at the top of our lungs "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore," and other folk songs. Ivan convinced me to go to Vietnam with him in 1967 as volunteer English teachers with International Voluntary Srvices. We were both caught up in the 1968 Tet Offensive that led to the kidnapping of two volunteers including Gary Daves, an Eth III volunteer in Mekelle. I remember him for his happy-go-lucky attitude although it was a cover for a troubled soul who experimented with drugs more than most of us which led to an incarceration in Eastern Europe in the late 1960's. After the failure of his marriage, Ivan ran away and kept his two children unaware of his residence. His son Nick found out from the Social Security Administration that years earlier (sometime in the 1990's) Ivan had died of a heart attack on a New York City subway. He was a good friend and I missed the good times we had in Mekelle, New York and Vietnam.

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Wolf Leslau, 100, professor emeritus at UCLA and a leading expert on Ethiopian languages and culture, died at a nursing home on November 18, 2006 of natural causes, said his daughter, Eliane Silverman.  (obituary from Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2006, by Jocelyn Y. Stewart)

Leslau learned to use a computer at 80, and the last of the nearly 50 books that he wrote was published when he was 98. He spoke 17 languages. A deep connection with his wife, who died in 1998, was "one of the reasons Dr. Leslau has had such a long and fulfilling life; the other was his passion for his work," Silverman said.

Leslau was born Nov. 14, 1906, in Poland and grew up speaking Yiddish. Later he studied Semitic languages at the University of Vienna, where he met Charlotte Halpern, a student of French literature, whom he later married. The couple moved to Paris, where Leslau received a doctorate in comparative Semitic linguistics from the Sorbonne. Early in World War II, Leslau was sent to a concentration camp in France. With the help of an international rescue agency, the family escaped to the United States in 1942 and settled in New York.

In 1946, Leslau made the first of many trips to Ethiopia on a Guggenheim Fellowship. That country, he once said, was his laboratory. Over the years, he trekked to remote villages to study local languages. "He traveled by mule, drove an ancient Land Rover and rode in kayak-like boats built of reeds," Silverman said. Sometimes Leslau had to take his subjects to the local capitals to record the languages, because there was no electricity in the villages. In those villages the linguist sometimes found languages untouched by the world beyond. "In the older days, groups had no contact outside, so they kept their own dialects and languages," he told a Times reporter in 1984.

Leslau specialized in the Semitic language group, one of four such groups in Ethiopia. Often there was no written record of the language. Leslau recorded the spoken word, then determined the structure and grammar of the language and committed it to paper. In a remote village near the Blue Nile he recorded the last four people still using the Gafat language.

In 1955 Leslau and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he began teaching Hebrew and other Semitic languages at UCLA. Three years later he founded the university's department of Near Eastern and African languages and became its first chairman.

His many honors included the International Haile Selassie Award for Ethiopian Studies in 1965, given by Selassie in recognition of Leslau's many years of study, and the prestigious Lidzbarski Gold Medal Award from the International Oriental Societies in 1996. He wrote "The Jews of Ethiopia," a photo book of images taken between 1946 and 1970.

In addition to Silverman, Leslau is survived by another daughter, Sylvia Grotz of La Mirada.

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Ann Browder Lorenz, 62, died on August 4, 1994 of breast cancer. (obituary by Carole Beers from Seattle Times, August 14, 1994)

If a book were written on the life of a San Juan Islands doctor who also had worked in Africa and served on the University of Washington medical faculty, the heroine could be Ann Browder Lorenz.

And the literarily inclined Dr. Lorenz, who died Aug. 4 of breast cancer at age 62, also would have been just the one to write it, if you could get her to sit still long enough. A typical day for Dr. Lorenz would be to gather firewood for a friend's cookstove, take part in a working bee for one of her Waldron Island neighbors, look in on a sick baby, then rehearse with the Island Choral Group that evening.

Daughter of a Brooklyn, N.Y., brain surgeon, Dr. Lorenz at 10 moved with the family to a New Jersey farm, where she'd help her father with odd jobs when he came home on weekends. Her upbringing, combined with a compassionate nature - and schooling at Wellesley College and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine - prepared her to direct a hospital in Ethiopia from 1963 to 1966.

Back in the U.S., she worked on various faculties, specializing in public health, and wrote 32 articles for professional publications. One job at the UW was as principal investigator, Social Epidemiology of Cancer-Control Programs. She moved to Waldron Island in 1976 when her daughter was born. She divorced, and gradually resumed her medical practice, commuting by boat or plane to Orcas Island Clinic.

"Ann was one of those people who had so many talents, it was a problem picking one," said friend Carmela Alexander. "She loved poetry, studied foreign languages and handled English with such grace and understanding. She could have been a writer."

Survivors include her daughter, Jennifer Beth Lorenz, Waldron Island; a sister, Elizabeth Ridenour, New Jersey, and two nieces.

A service was scheduled at 2 p.m. today at the Waldron School. Remembrances may be sent to the Jennifer Lorenz Educational Trust Fund, c/o Linnea Magraw Bensel, General Delivery, Waldron, WA 98297. 

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Herman E. Rachut, 76, of Lansing, Mich., died Feb. 22, 2009. He was formerly of Burt and Okemos, Mich. Herman was born April 14, 1932, to Herman and Emma Rachut. He graduated from Burt High School and received a bachelor degree from Wartburg College and a masters degree from the University of Colorado.

 
Herman joined the Peace Corps in 1963, where he met his soon-to-be wife, Linda Ames. They served two years. He married Linda in 1965 at Lancaster, Ohio.

He was employed by the Burt Savings Bank until 1980 when he and Linda moved to Michigan. He worked at Walter Neller Real Estate and Real Estate One in Holt Michigan before retirement.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Herman and Emma Rachut. He is survived by his wife, Linda; two daughters: Erin (Jerry) Herrera and Megan (Kevin) Macina; sons: Sean Rachut and Niles (Julie) Rachut; nine granddaughters and four sisters: Mary Jean (Harold) Bern of Cedar Rapids; Helen Smith of Burt; Stella (Bob) Davis of Red Bluff, Calif., and Sheila (Steve) Crist of North Highlands, Calif.

A memorial service was held on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009, in Lansing, Mich., with Father John Byers officiating. Mail will reach the family at

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Henry C. Scott, 74, a longtime former resident of Menlo Park, died July 6, 2003 from complications following cancer surgery.  (obituary from Palo Alto Weekly, August 20, 2003)

Born in St. Louis, Mo., in 1928, he was the son of George Drake and Mary Keck Scott. While he was still a young boy, the family moved to Long Island, N.Y., where he lived until he went to high school at Phillips Academy at Andover, graduating in 1947. He continued his education at Stanford University, where he earned a master's degree in marine biology. He completed his doctoral work, (but for his dissertation) as a Danforth Teaching Fellow in Education. He started his teaching career at Sequoia High School in Redwood City and continued at San Francisco State University as a biology professor, living in Woodside with his first wife, Cynthia Keil, and their three children.

In 1963, he joined the Peace Corps and served as deputy director for Ethiopia, living with his family in Addis Ababa for two years. On returning home he became director for Africa for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C.

He returned to teaching and became dean of students and professor of biology at the then new and experimental campus of the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Moving West, he joined the faculty at California Institute for the Arts, in Valencia, Calif., where he lived with his second wife, Catherine Berne, and their three children. He next moved to Menlo Park and became executive director of Hidden Villa's environmental education program in Los Altos. Later, he became research assistant at Transnational Family Research Institute and a teacher at Peninsula School in Menlo Park.

He is survived by his beloved wife, Caroline Rose Helmuth of San Anselmo; brother, Tom Keck Scott of Chapel Hill, N.C.; children, Mary Elizabeth Scott-Bellman of Portland, Ore.; Kathryn Ann Scott Dulin of Lake Oswego, Ore.; Peter Kiel Scott of Boulder, Colo.; Chloe Britton Scott, Will Berne Scott and Samuel Keck Scott, all of Lagunitas, Calif.; seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

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H. Donald Wilson, 82, died at his home in Mitchellville, Maryland, on November 12, 2006 of a heart attack. Don served as Peace Corps/Ethiopia director from 1964 to 1966. A graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover, Yale University, and Columbia Law School, he was a database pioneer and entrepreneur. He was the first president and one of the principal creators of the Lexis legal information system, and Nexis, the database for newspapers. An attorney by training who became an information industry innovator and a venture capital consultant to numerous businesses, Mr. Wilson was also an active internationalist and a passionate conservationist. At the time of his death, he was chairman of Lessac Technologies Inc., a text-to-voice software venture based on nearly fifty years of partnership with Prof. Arthur Lessac. His detailed obituary can be found on Wikipedia here, along with links to his obituaries in the New York Times and Washington Post.

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      Thank you, Bob Matthai