Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Elias William BrownProgrammer, Accountant
Elias William Brown, 86, a computer programmer with the U.S. Army Personnel Information Systems before retiring in 1973, died Oct. 26 of kidney failure at Sunrise of Alexandria assisted living community. He lived in Alexandria for 57 years.
Mr. Brown worked with the federal government for 33 years and then became an accountant for Carroll V. Shreve & Sons, a plumbing, heating and electrical contractor. He retired in 1990.
Mr. Brown was born in Atwood, Kan., and served with the Army Air Forces in World War II. He was in the European, African and Middle Eastern theaters.
He was active with St. James United Methodist Church in Alexandria, where he served as treasurer for 26 years and was on the board of trustees.
His wife of 51 years, Anne Crakow Brown, died in 1995. A daughter, Beverly C. Fico-Brown, died in 2006.
Survivors include a son, James E. Brown of Alexandria; a brother; and two grandchildren.
-- Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb
Mary Carpenter OlversonVolunteer
Mary Carpenter Olverson, 86, a Washington native who volunteered with the Red Cross and the National Gallery of Art, died Oct. 31 of complications from a stroke at a Manor Care nursing facility in Sarasota, Fla. She had lived in Sarasota since 1996.
Mrs. Olverson was a 1938 graduate of Washington's old Central High School and attended West Virginia University and George Washington University.
In addition to her volunteer work, she assisted with her husband's bar review institute.
Her husband of 56 years, John B. Olverson, died in 1997.
Survivors include four children, Carolyn Cooper of McLean, Jeanne Derrick of Sarasota, John Olverson of Bradenton, Fla., and Thomas Olverson of Weston, Mass.; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
-- Matt Schudel
Mary T. LaneProfessor, Writer
Mary T. Lane, 42, a playwright and short story writer who taught English at Anne Arundel Community College, died Oct. 21 of breast cancer at her home in Silver Spring.
Dr. Lane was born in Silver Spring and grew up primarily in Montgomery Village. She was a 1983 graduate of Seneca Valley High School in Germantown and received a bachelor's degree in English from Boston College in 1987.
She lived in Bloomington, Ind., from 1988 to 1996, while pursuing graduate studies. She received a master's degree in English in 1991, a master's degree in creative writing in 1992 and a doctorate in English literature in 2000, all from Indiana University.
Since 2000, Dr. Lane had taught English composition and creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College.
She wrote many short stories, poems and plays. Her play "An Exhibit in Memory of Nyla Molloy" was read at Signature Theatre in Arlington in 2005. She also published several articles in The Washington Post.
She was a volunteer teacher of English as a second language at St. Camillus Catholic Church in Silver Spring. She enjoyed basketball and softball.
Survivors include her husband of 14 years, David Schwartz of Silver Spring; her parents, D. Joseph Lane and Dorothy Lane of Bethany Beach, Del.; four brothers, Daniel Lane of North Potomac, Patrick Lane of Gaithersburg, Matthew Lane of Portland, Ore., and Brendan Lane of Darnestown; and a sister, Anne-Marie Smith of Oak Hill.
-- Matt Schudel
Frank Aydelotte RiceLinguist
Frank Aydelotte Rice, 90, a linguist who taught Arabic for the State Department for several years, died Oct. 27 at Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church. He had dementia.
Mr. Rice began linguistic studies as a boy and ultimately learned at least 14 languages. He came to Washington in the early 1950s and served as a State Department attache in Beirut and on the faculty of the Foreign Service Institute, teaching Arabic to Foreign Service officers.
According to his son, William Craig Rice, Mr. Rice studied Arabic for six weeks "and started teaching in Week 7."
He stayed with the State Department for about 10 years, leaving in the 1960s to become a linguist and scholar at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington. He retired in 1971.
Mr. Rice was born in Chicago and raised in Nebraska, Florida and England. His father, John Andrew Rice, was one of the founders of Black Mountain College, a progressive college in North Carolina noted for producing many artists and poets and for providing an academic refuge to European exiles before and during World War II.
Mr. Rice attended Black Mountain and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of North Carolina. He taught English to German refugees in Cuba in the late 1930s. He received a master's degree in library science from the University of Michigan in 1942 and did additional graduate study in linguistics there and at Columbia University.
During the 1940s, he taught at Black Mountain and the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He also taught Arabic to employees of the Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco) in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s.
His son said Mr. Rice knew Greek, Latin, all the western European and Scandinavian languages, Russian, Sanskrit and Arabic. A textbook he co-wrote in 1956, "Eastern Arabic," is still in print. He also published "The Classical Arabic Writing System" and other works on linguistics.
"He had a preternatural gift for languages," his son said. "He could mimic anything."
Mr. Rice, a longtime resident of Arlington County, had many interests, including chamber music, reading, poetry and fern growing, which he pursued in his retirement.
In addition to his son, of Evanston, Ill., survivors include his wife of 67 years, Ann Craig Rice of Arlington; two other children, John Andrew Rice III of Berkeley, Calif., and Frances Sutton Rice of North Adams, Mass.; a half brother and half sister; four grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.
-- Matt Schudel
Josephine Stone SalmonTranslator
Josephine Stone Salmon, 70, a translator at Arlington's Yorktown High School and a volunteer in a free clinic, died of lung cancer Nov. 1 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington.
Fluent in French and Spanish, she worked at the high school from 1990 to 2000 as the resource assistant and coordinator for students in high-intensity language training and their families. She also was a liaison between Spanish speakers and the high school.
She then volunteered at the Arlington Free Clinic for the next seven years.
Mrs. Salmon was born in Mexico City and grew up in Venezuela, Cuba and Canada. She graduated from McGill University in Montreal and worked for the U.S. Embassy in Paris from 1959 to 1965. She moved to Washington to work as a staff officer at the National Science Foundation's international affairs division.
Survivors include her husband, Bill Salmon of Arlington; three children, Bill Salmon Jr. of Portland, Maine, Didi Salmon of Arlington and Paulette Salmon of Lansing, Mich.; and two sisters, Mary Cover of New York and Susan Ferrer of Fairfax.
-- Patricia Sullivan