Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Frank G. Wisner, Diplomat With Impact on Foreign Policy, Dies at 86

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      He headed U.S. embassies around the world and relished the role, bringing a gregarious style to promoting American interests. But he clashed with the Obama White House.Frank G. Wisner II, a veteran American diplomat, Washington insider and foreign affairs specialist who relished the prestige of ambassadorial life as much as the back-channel cajoling and arm-twisting of less public influence, died on Monday at his home in Mill Neck, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 86.His son, David, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.Over decades as a member of the policy elite, Mr. Wisner headed embassies in Zambia, Egypt, the Philippines and India, held high office under both Republican and Democratic administrations and was linked to initiatives that wrought change in regions as disparate as southern Africa and the Balkans.He rose to prominence at a time when the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union turned an emergent world of newly-independent states into a checkerboard of competition between Washington and Moscow and their various surrogates.Gregarious and often expansive, Mr. Wisner brought his own style to the task of promoting America’s vision. In Cairo, for instance, where he was ambassador from 1986 to 1991, he once invited a reporter along to join him for an evening of diplomacy and socializing, crisscrossing the city in an armored Mercedes-Benz followed by a chase car of bodyguards as he was feted in a series of formal receptions.The guest list at his dinner parties offered a Who’s Who of the elite. And as the representative of Egypt’s most influential superpower ally, his interlocutors sometimes treated him like an affable viceroy.Once, Mr. Wisner borrowed a friend’s apartment in Cairo to conduct unpublicized talks with exiled members of the Soviet-backed armed wing of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, at a time when official contact with such figures was unusual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lynne Marie Stewart, Miss Yvonne on ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ Dies at 78

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      She was the “most beautiful woman in Puppetland” in the 1980s children’s show starring Paul Reubens, and more recently had a recurring role in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Pee-wee Herman’s perky, bouffant-wigged neighbor, Miss Yvonne, in the 1980s children’s television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the sweet, timorous mother of one of the main characters in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 78.The cause of her death, at her sister’s home, was cancer, said her manager, Bette Smith. Her doctors found a tumor shortly after Ms. Stewart finished filming a movie called “The Dink,” a comedy starring Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, in December, Ms. Smith said.Ms. Stewart played a variety of characters in a career that spanned six decades, and had nearly 150 credits as a screen, stage and voice actress starting in 1971, according to IMDb, the entertainment database.But she was perhaps best known for her role as Miss Yvonne, or the “most beautiful woman in Puppetland,” in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which ran for five seasons on Saturday mornings on CBS.She was a fixture on the show as Pee-wee Herman’s extravagant neighbor with creative hairdos and a chipper personality.With its whimsical and slyly subversive sense of humor, the show swiftly attracted an audience beyond its core demographic of preadolescent children, and Ms. Stewart and other members of its cast embraced its anarchic and surreal spirit of make-believe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Carlos Diegues, Filmmaker Who Celebrated Brazil’s Diversity, Dies at 84

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      Seeking to shed the gauzy influence of Hollywood and focus on Brazil’s ethnic richness and troubled history, he helped forge a new path for his country’s cinema.Carlos Diegues, a film director who celebrated Brazil’s ethnic richness and its social turbulence, helping to forge a new path for cinema in his country, died on Feb. 14 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84.His death, in a hospital, was announced by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, of which he was a member. The academy said the cause was complications of surgery. The Rio newspaper O Globo, for which Mr. Diegues wrote a column, reported that he had suffered “cardiocirculatory complications” before the surgery.Mr. Diegues, who was known as Cacá, was a founder of Cinema Novo, the modern school of Brazilian cinema that combined Italian Neo-Realism, documentary style and uniquely Latin American fantasy. He focused on hitherto marginal groups — Afro-Brazilians, the poor, disoriented provincials in an urbanizing Brazil — and was the first Brazilian director to employ Black actors as protagonists, in “Ganga Zumba,” (1963), a narrative of enslavement and revolt that was an early cinematic foray into Brazil’s history of racial violence.The often lyrical results, expressed over the course of 60 years in dozens of features and documentaries, charmed audiences in his own country and abroad, though critics sometimes reproached him for loose screenplays and rough-edged camera work.José Wilker, left, and Principe Nabor in “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979). Mr. Diegues’s international breakthrough, it was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes.Ademir Silva/LC Barreto Productions, via New Yorker FilmsMr. Diegues’s international breakthrough film, “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979), nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes, is considered the apotheosis of his dramatic visual style and of his preoccupation with those on the margins of Brazilian society. It follows a feckless group of rascally street performers through the outback, documenting a vanishing Brazil where citizens in remote towns are beguiled by fake falling snowflakes — actually shredded coconut — and hypnotized, literally, by a rare communal television set.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Souleymane Cissé, Celebrated Malian Filmmaker, Dies at 84

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      He won multiple awards during his 50-year career, including the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and spent his life championing African cinema. Souleymane Cissé, an award-winning writer and director who became the first Black African filmmaker to win the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, died on Wednesday in Bamako, Mali. He was 84. His death was confirmed by François Margolin, a French film producer and a close friend of Mr. Cissé’s for the last three decades. Mr. Cissé had just appeared at a news conference on Wednesday morning to present two prizes ahead of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, known as Fespaco, where he had been set to head the jury. After the news conference — where he was “talking and joking” — Mr. Cissé went to take a nap and didn’t wake up, Mr. Margolin said. Mr. Cissé was catapulted to worldwide fame with the release in 1987 of “Yeelen” (“Light” in his native Bambara). The film won the jury prize at Cannes and was nominated as the best foreign film in the 1989 Spirit Awards. The director Martin Scorsese called the film “one of the great revelatory experiences of my moviegoing life.” Mr. Cissé had been energetic until the end of his life, Mr. Margolin said, working and traveling around the world. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Zakia Jafri, Who Sought Justice for Victims of Indian Riots, Dies at 86

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      For two decades, she waged a legal battle against government officials in India after her husband was brutally killed in Gujarati in 2002.Zakia Jafri, who turned her personal loss into an uphill campaign for justice after her husband, Ehsan Jafri, was brutally murdered during sectarian riots in the state of Gujarat in 2002, died on Feb. 2 at her daughter’s home in Ahmedabad, India. She was 86.Her death was confirmed by her son Tanveer Jafri.More than 1,000 people, a majority of them Muslim, died in the riots that gripped Gujarat, on the western coast of India, in 2002. They began on Feb. 27, when a fire killed nearly 60 people on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims to Godhra, a town in Gujarat. The cause of the fire was disputed. However, as rumors spread that Muslims were responsible, mobs erupted across large parts of Gujarat, attacking Muslim homes and businesses, and killing people by hacking and burning them to death. Among those killed was Ms. Jafri’s husband, who was a union leader, a lawyer and a former member of Parliament.In a legal battle that dragged on for nearly two decades, Ms. Jafri accused Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister, who at the time was the leader of Gujarat, of “conspiracy and abetment” in the riots.In all that time, “she remained stoic, despairing, yet hopeful,” Teesta Setalvad, a human-rights activist, said in an interview. “For me, for us, she was the mother of all the survivors of 2002, carrying the burden of her pain and loss with dignity and fortitude and always giving us strength.”A scene from the riots in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, in 2002.Arko Datta/ReutersZakia Naseem Fidahusain Bandookwala was born on Jan. 15, 1939, in Rustampur, a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She was one of six children of Fidahusain Fakhrali Bandukwala and Amtubai Fidahusain Bandukwala, wealthy farmers. She moved to Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, after marrying Mr. Jafri in 1962.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ron Travisano, Adman Behind Singing Cats and Joe Isuzu, Dies at 86

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      The art director for Meow Mix and other memorable commercials, he began his career at the dawn of a creative revolution on Madison Avenue.In the early 1970s, the madcap advertising executives Ron Travisano and Jerry Della Femina were struggling to find a gimmick to sell an undistinguished brand of pet food.Watching interminable and unremarkable footage of cats eating, Mr. Travisano and an editor, Joe Lione, spotted one that kept opening and closing its mouth in a manner that appeared to simulate singing.In fact, the cat was choking on its food. But in an eye-of-the-beholder eureka moment, the admen were inspired to create the classic singing-cat commercial that put Meow Mix on the map.The original commercial for Meow Mix won a Clio Award.Della Femina AdvertisingThe endearing “Meow, meow, meow, meow” commercial for Ralston Purina — accompanied by the tagline “The cat food that cats ask for by name,” written by Mr. Travisano’s collaborators Neil Drossman and Bob Kuperman, who also came up with the name Meow Mix — won a Clio and other industry awards. Nearly two decades after the ad debuted, The Times described it as having “one of the best known, most readily sung commercial jingles.” (The insistent meowing, mouthed by the singer Linda November, was presumably less endearing when played repeatedly to torture terrorism suspects at the U.S. prison compound at Guantánamo Bay.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yrjo Kukkapuro, Who Made the Easiest of Easy Chairs, Dies at 91

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      A celebrated Finnish modernist, he designed a variety of furnishings but was best known for his seating — which, his company said, “almost every Finn has sat on.”Yrjo Kukkapuro, a Finnish furniture designer who devoted his restless creative energies to sedentary comfort, creating dozens of chairs that coddled sitters and lent a zesty flair to their surroundings, died on Feb. 8 at his home in Kauniainen, Finland. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Isa Kukkapuro-Enbom.In his seven-decade career, Mr. Kukkapuro designed a variety of furnishings for homes, offices and public institutions. But he was best known for his seating.“Almost every Finn has sat on a chair he designed — at a metro station, in a bank, at a school or in a library,” his company, Studio Kukkapuro, said in a news release.An experimental modernist who was invigorated by the availability of lightweight synthetic materials after World War II, Mr. Kukkapuro made abundant use of fiberglass and other plastics, which could be sculpted to the human form. He also favored organic materials like steam-bent plywood and leather.Referring to Mr. Kukkapuro’s relentless pursuit of ergonomics, Jukka Savolainen, a former director of the Design Museum in Helsinki who now heads the Alvar Aalto Museum in Finland, described him as “playful with form and color, but always thinking about the user at the center.”Among Mr. Kukkapuro’s most celebrated designs was Karuselli, a slick fiberglass lounge chair with exuberant leather upholstery rolling over the edges. He attached the bulbous bucket seat to the flowerlike base with a steel bracket that permitted the chair — whose name means “carousel” in Finnish — to both swivel and rock.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lorraine O’Grady, Artist Who Defied Category, Is Dead at 90

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      She worked in collage, photography, performance, video and installation, and she dealt forthrightly with the complexities of race and gender.Lorraine O’Grady, a conceptual artist who had careers as a research economist, literary translator and rock critic before producing her first art in her 40s, and who went on to influence a generation of younger Black artists, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.Robert Ransick of the Lorraine O’Grady Trust confirmed the death.Embracingly interdisciplinary in her formal choices, Ms. O’Grady had no fixed style. She worked in collage, photography, performance, video and installation. And she dealt forthrightly with the complicated realities of race and gender, drawing on her own experience of being excluded from the white art world because she was Black and marginalized within the Black art world because she was a woman. As a result, no one knew quite what to do with her, and her art career remained little known until recently.The child of Lena and Edwin O’Grady, middle-class Jamaican immigrants who had, she said, “more education than they would be allowed to use in this country,“ Lorraine Eleanor O’Grady was born in Boston on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up within a few blocks of the city’s main public library, where she spent much of her childhood reading and writing.In 1983, Ms. O’Grady created a participatory piece titled “Art Is …” in which performers descended into the street and invited spectators to pose for portrait photos within empty gilded frames.Lorraine O’Grady Courtesy Lorraine O’Grady TrustShe majored in economics and Spanish literature at Wellesley College and, after graduation, took a job in Washington as a research economist with the U.S. Department of Labor, focusing on labor conditions in Africa and Latin America.But her path was a restless one. After a few years, she quit her government job and moved to Europe to write a novel. She returned to the U.S., where she studied at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. For a while, to support herself, she taught high school Spanish. In 1970, she opened a commercial translation agency in Chicago that attracted clients ranging from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Playboy magazine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More