Friday, May 4, 2007
Thomas P. ShoesmithAmbassador
Thomas P. Shoesmith, 85, who held many diplomatic posts in Asia with the State Department and was a former ambassador to Malaysia, died April 26 of cancer at his home in Springfield.
Mr. Shoesmith was born in Palmerton, Pa., and enlisted in Army after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. After intensive Japanese language training at Yale University and the University of Michigan, he served as a military intelligence analyst with the Army in Tokyo from 1946 to 1948.
He received a master's degree in international studies from Harvard University in 1949, then did two additional years of graduate study in political science at Harvard.
Mr. Shoesmith joined the State Department in 1951 as a research analyst of Japanese political affairs and entered the Foreign Service in 1955. His first overseas assignment was in Hong Kong as a consular officer.
From 1958 to 1960, he was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. After additional study of Japanese, Mr. Shoesmith served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and later held a diplomatic post at the U.S. consulate in Fukuoka, Japan.
After returning to Washington in 1966, Mr. Shoesmith served with the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. From 1972 to 1977, he was deputy chief of mission in Tokyo, followed by four years as consul general in Hong Kong. He then returned to the East Asia bureau as principal deputy assistant secretary, with responsibility for Japan, Korea and China.
In 1983, Mr. Shoesmith was appointed ambassador to Malaysia, where he served until his retirement in 1987.
In retirement, he was active in the Japan-America Society of Washington and served as the group's president. He was also president of the National Association of Japan-America Societies.
He died two days before his 62nd wedding anniversary.
Survivors include his wife, Martha H. "Mike" Shoesmith of Springfield; two children, Thomas Mark Shoesmith of Shanghai and Jo Shoesmith of Harpers Ferry, W.Va.; a sister; and two grandchildren.
Elizabeth J. HarperState Department OfficerElizabeth J. Harper, 86, a State Department employee who retired in 1980 as deputy assistant secretary for visa services, died April 22 at her home in Dumfries. She had cancer.
Early on, Miss Harper had assignments in Asia. From 1973 to 1979, she was consul general in Montreal.
After retiring, she continued to work until 2003 as a State Department consultant on immigration issues.
She was an Oklahoma native and served in the Women's Army Corps in the Pacific during World War II. She was a 1952 graduate of George Washington University.
She had no immediate survivors.
Morris W. KandleGovernment OfficialMorris W. Kandle, 89, an official with the Department of Defense, the Peace Corps and the General Accounting Office, died April 22 of congestive heart failure at Nexus Specialty Hospital in Shenandoah, Tex. He lived in The Woodlands, Tex., and was a former resident of Alexandria and Bethesda.
Mr. Kandle settled in the Washington area in the late 1940s and was a civilian employee of the Defense Department from 1949 to 1964. He worked first on the staff of the U.S. Air Force and later on the staff of the secretary of defense as director of operations of the comptroller's office.
From 1965 to 1967, Mr. Kandle was the first controller of the Peace Corps and designed a program for planning and budgeting Peace Corps projects worldwide. He then became vice president for administration, finance and resource management for Federal City College and the Washington Technical Institute from 1967 to 1969. The colleges were later merged into the University of the District of Columbia.
After a short time as a management consultant, Mr. Kandle joined the GAO as deputy director of personnel and compensation in 1970. He received the GAO's director's award and retired in 1981.
Mr. Kandle was born in Philadelphia and was a graduate of Temple University. He did graduate work at Georgetown University.
During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces in Europe, Africa and the China-Burma-India theater. He won two Bronze Star Medals and continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve until 1978.
He moved to Texas in 1993.
Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Frances Kandle of The Woodlands; three children, Jeffrey Kandle of The Woodlands, Jonathan Kandle of Spring, Tex., and Elissa Dean of Boulder, Colo.; and two grandchildren.
R. Gerald SuskindMedical DirectorR. Gerald Suskind, 82, a retired medical director with the U.S. Public Health Service who investigated viral causes of cancer, died April 11 of a cerebral hemorrhage after heart surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He was a Washington resident.
Dr. Suskind was a staff investigator and experimental pathologist at the Laboratory of Viral Carcinogenesis at the National Institutes of Health until his retirement in 1982.
Dr. Suskind, who was fluent in French, German and Italian, was a guest fellow at the Laboratoire de Medecine Experimentale, College de France.
He was a member of the Washington Society of Pathologists, and his research was published in numerous medical journals.
Dr. Suskind was born in Berlin and came to the United States after his family escaped Germany during the Holocaust.
He graduated from Harvard College in 1944 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and classics. He received a medical degree from the University of Bern in Switzerland in 1952. After completing his medical studies, he returned to the United States and began his career at NIH in 1953.
A devoted Francophile, Dr. Suskind and his wife brought an apartment in Paris, where they had spent six months a year since 1985.
In retirement, he pursued his passions for art, French literature, music, cooking and gardening. He and his wife went on painting excursions in France and exhibited their work at the Gerald Wartofsky Studio and the Alliance Francaise in Washington and at the Simart Gallery in Paris.
Survivors include his wife, Mary Jane Power Suskind of Washington, whom he married in 1962, and a sister.
Evelyn J. BurgeNative WashingtonianEvelyn Johnson Burge, 67, a native Washingtonian who did administrative work for the Government Printing Office from the late 1960s to early 1970s, died May 2 at her home in Harrisburg, Pa. She had lung cancer.
Mrs. Burge, a 1959 graduate of Cardoza High School, moved to Harrisburg from Washington in the early 1970s.
She retired from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry in 1999 as a contract supervisor.
She was a former member of Peace Lutheran Church in Washington.
Her husband of six years, Army Sgt. Frederick Burge, died in 1968 while serving in the Vietnam War. A daughter, Evelyn Bryant, died in 2005.
Survivors include two daughters, Evette Taylor and Tanya Williams-Bell, both of Harrisburg; a stepdaughter, Marian Price of Gary, Ind.; and 33 grandchildren.
Jorge ZilvettiProduce Stand OwnerJorge Zilvetti, 66, a longtime fruit and vegetable stand owner in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington, died April 27 of pulmonary fibrosis at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. He was a Silver Spring resident.
Mr. Zilvetti was born in Sucre, Bolivia, and was a pilot in the Bolivian Air Force before moving to the Washington area in 1966. His first job in this country was at a small grocery store in Bethesda. He moved to Pantry Pride (later Food Town) in Rockville, where, as he learned English, he became the store's dairy manager.
He began selling produce from a stand in 1969, initially buying his fruits and vegetables from the wholesale produce market in the District and then from area farmers.
Select Produce became a fixture on Massachusetts Avenue NW, with Mr. Zilvetti and family members setting up six days a week year after year on a spot between Chevy Chase Bank and Crate and Barrel, across the street from American University's Washington School of Law. He also operated a grocery store in Darnestown until the mid-1990s.
Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Eileen Zilvetti of Silver Spring; four children, George Zilvetti of Glen Rock, N.J., Adrian Zilvetti of Wauwatosa, Wis., Yvonne Woods of Tampa and Yvette Rippeon of Silver Spring; two brothers; three sisters; and six grandchildren.
Marjorie Gildea AlfordNavy Budget AnalystMarjorie Gildea Alford, 90, who spent 30 years with the Navy Department before retiring as a budget analyst in 1972, died April 30 at her home in Arlington. She had kidney failure.
In her Navy work, Mrs. Alford reviewed program budgets and established cost-saving initiatives.
She was a native of Coaldale, Pa., and a 1938 graduate of what is now Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. She received a master's degree in comptrollership from George Washington University in 1959.
Her father, James H. "Casey" Gildea, was a Pennsylvania Democrat who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1935 to 1939.
Her avocations included gardening and hiking in Shenandoah National Park.
Her husband of 10 years, Bernard Alford, died in 1999.
Survivors include a sister, Kathleen Kelley of Bethesda, and three brothers, James Gildea of Vienna, Robert Gildea of Arlington and Daniel Gildea of Lansford, Pa.
Rivca Sara CohnAdministrative AssistantRivca Sara Cohn, 71, a retired administrative assistant at the State Department, died of complications of leukemia April 27 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. She had lived in Rockville for the past 34 years.
Mrs. Cohn was born in Afula, Israel, and served as a military police officer in Israel. She joined the Israeli foreign service and in 1965 came to work at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
She was married in 1969 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1973. The next year, she began working as an administrative assistant at the State Department. She spent most of her career with the Latin American bureau but also had temporary overseas duty in Geneva, Hong Kong and Jerusalem. She retired in 2006.
Mrs. Cohn's interests included traveling, reading, languages, bowling and genealogy.
Her husband, Warren I. Cohn, died in 2000.
Survivors include two children, Philip M. Cohn of Horsham, Pa., and Rachel D. Cohn of Rockville, and a brother.
Nancy M. WinlundChemist, HomemakerNancy M. Winlund, 71, a self-employed chemical consultant for 20 years, died April 17 of complications of a stroke at her second home in Woodbridge. She also was a resident of Arlington.
From 1977 to 1997, Mrs. Winlund worked for area companies primarily on U.S. Department of Agriculture contracts.
She was born Nancy Choroszy in Saco, Maine, and attended Boston University on a full academic scholarship, graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1957. She also studied Italian, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Russian and Polish.
After graduation she moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she worked as a chemical indexer for the Chemical Abstracts Service. In Columbus, she also volunteered for President Kennedy's election campaign.
She moved to Washington in 1962 when she joined the Institute for the Advancement of Medical Communication. In the early 1970s, she volunteered at Long Branch Elementary School in Arlington, tutoring students in math, assisting in the library and serving with the PTA.
Her hobbies included reading, crocheting, gourmet cooking, quote acrostic and crossword puzzles. She also enjoyed trying new foods and restaurants and took pleasure in time spent with her grandchildren.
He husband, Donald M. Winlund, whom she married in 1965, died in 2002.
Survivors include her daughters, Mary Ellen Winlund of Bowie and Ann Marie McGeehan of Dumfries; a brother; and two grandchildren.