Saturday, January 26, 2008
Wilhelmina Patterson LasleyTeacher
Wilhelmina Patterson Lasley, 77, a retired Prince George's County reading specialist, died of a heart attack Jan. 19 at the Knollwood retirement residence in Washington, where she lived.
Mrs. Lasley was born in Windsor, N.C., and graduated from Virginia State University in 1951. After her marriage in 1952, she accompanied her husband on a series of Army postings in the United States and Germany and traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Mrs. Lasley settled in Landover in 1965 and taught initially at Pershing Hill Elementary School in Fort Meade. After receiving a master's degree in education from the University of Maryland in the late 1960s, she became a reading specialist in the Prince George's public schools, including Marlton and Hillcrest Heights elementary schools.
From 1979 until her retirement in 1993, she taught at Tulip Grove Elementary School in Bowie. She received a teacher-of-the-year award in 1990.
Mrs. Lasley lived in Mitchellville from 1979 until 2006 and was an officer with the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, an honor society for female educators. In retirement, she tutored students and organized scholarship programs through her church, the First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover, where she was a deaconess. More recently, she was a member of the Woodstream Church in Mitchellville.
She enjoyed travel and visited Alaska last summer.
Her husband, retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Oliver Lasley, died in 1979.
Survivors include two children, Corlis Lasley Sellers of Voorhees, N.J., and Oliver "Jeff" Lasley Jr. of Los Angeles; a brother; three grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.
-- Matt Schudel
Carl H. ShugaarJob Corps Official
Carl H. Shugaar, 95, a retired Labor Department official who held key positions with the Job Corps program and who was a labor organizer early in his career, died Jan. 11 of congestive heart failure at his home in Washington.
Mr. Shugaar settled in Washington in 1962 and worked for the Commerce Department for two years. In 1964, he transferred to the Labor Department as director of Project Cause, a two-year special project to recruit young people for job counseling positions.
In 1966, Mr. Shugaar coordinated Labor Department manpower activities in Mississippi, working closely with civil rights organizations.
From 1967 until his retirement in 1988, he worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity and for the Job Corps program, where he was chief of the National Program Management and Review Office.
Mr. Shugaar was born in Konskowola, Poland, and moved to Montreal in his teens. He studied at McGill University in Montreal and roamed throughout Canada and the United States by boxcar during the Great Depression.
After settling in New York, Mr. Shugaar became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He joined the Army in 1943 and served in the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II. He participated in military campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and southern France and received the Purple Heart.
In 1946, he completed a fellowship in labor economics at Harvard Business School and joined the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in New York as an organizer. In the early 1950s, Mr. Shugaar was a labor relations consultant for a federal agency called the Mutual Security Agency, which provided international economic assistance.
During the remainder of the 1950s, he was a consultant in industrial relations in Washington, California and New York. In 1961 and 1962, he lived in Houston as a regional director for the American Council for Judaism.
In retirement, Mr. Shugaar was an election judge and volunteered with the Red Cross. He enjoyed music and art and was a volunteer art information specialist at the National Gallery of Art for more than 10 years.
His marriages to Bertha Shugaar, Carolyn Shugaar and Gerda Range Shugaar ended in divorce.
Survivors include a son from his second marriage, Eric Shugaar of San Francisco; four children from his third marriage, Holly Zimmerman of Silver Spring, Antony Shugaar of Charlottesville, Aimee Martinez of Colorado Springs and Carla McNellis of Burbank, Calif.; and six grandchildren.
-- Matt Schudel
Frank Anton LevyCIA Operations Officer
Frank Anton Levy, 88, a retired Navy captain and former CIA operations officer, died of complications from a stroke Jan. 22 at the Johnson Center at Falcons Landing in Potomac Falls.
Capt. Levy began working for the CIA in 1952 as an operations officer assigned to the clandestine service, and he left in 1975 in the wake of the Church Committee hearings into intelligence-gathering activities by the agency.
He returned as a contract employee for the agency, working for 20 years. He helped declassify papers, including those of William J. Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
Born in Chester, Pa., Capt. Levy graduated from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., where he played football, baseball and basketball and was voted into the athletic hall of fame. He also played on the Little All-American football team in the early 1940s.
While waiting for a Navy commission, he was drafted into the Army during World War II but was able to switch services. He served in the Navy in Alaska and Maryland during the war as a supply corps officer. From 1947 to 1949, he was assigned to Moscow as an assistant naval attache.
After returning to the United States, he was assigned to the relatively new Central Intelligence Agency. He resigned from the Navy in 1954 but stayed in the Navy Reserve for several years.
A longtime resident of McLean, he was a member of St. Johns Episcopal Church, coached in a Babe Ruth baseball league and was a timer at local summer swimming meets. He also volunteered to talk to Georgetown University Medical Center patients before open-heart surgery, having survived his own in 1983.
Capt. Levy enjoyed fixing things around the house and welcoming new residents to the neighborhood.
A son, Steven C. Levy, died in 1996.
Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Barbara Coggins Levy of Potomac Falls; two sons, Frank A. Levy Jr. of McLean and Michael N. Levy of Columbia, S.C.; a sister; and three grandchildren.
-- Patricia Sullivan
Mary-Ann S. RozbickiCIA Senior Executive
Mary-Ann Spodnick Rozbicki, 77, a specialist in international economics who became a senior manager in the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence, died Jan. 13 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County. She had cancer and pneumonia.
Mrs. Rozbicki worked for the CIA from 1951 to 1988 and was among the first women to earn a senior intelligence ranking.
In the early 1980s, she was director of the European analysis office. Her final assignment was Directorate of Intelligence senior representative to the CIA's London office.
After retiring, she did consulting for the CIA inspector general's office and the training and education office.
Mrs. Rozbicki, a McLean resident, was born in Lilly, Pa., and grew up in Bridgeport, Conn. She received bachelor's and master's degrees in international relations at the University of Connecticut before joining the CIA.
Her husband of 43 years, Stephen R. Rozbicki, died in 1997.
Survivors include two children, Karen Rozbicki Stringer of Reston and Christopher Rozbicki of McLean; a sister; and two granddaughters.
-- Adam Bernstein
Sara B. WheelerFairfax County Reading Teacher
Sara Brawley Wheeler, 85, a Fairfax County school system reading specialist who retired from McLean's Chesterbrook Elementary School in 1989, died Jan. 18 at Greenspring Village retirement community in Springfield. She had respiratory failure.
Mrs. Wheeler began teaching in Fairfax in 1967 after a career with North Carolina schools. She moved to Greenspring Village four years ago from Vienna.
She was a native of Troutman, N.C., and a 1944 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She received a master's degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1951.
She was a founding member of the Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Vienna, where she did volunteer work.
She played piano and organ, and her hobbies included antiquing and gardening.
Her husband, William C. Wheeler, whom she married in 1951, died in 1974.
Survivors include three children, William C. Wheeler and G. Lentz Wheeler, both of Herndon, and Sara Arey of Rockville; two brothers; a sister; and six grandchildren.
-- Adam Bernstein
Carl Vance McDanielResearch Chemist
Carl Vance McDaniel, a retired research chemist at W.R. Grace & Co., died of pneumonia Dec. 29 at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia. He was a Howard resident.
Dr. McDaniel, who went by Vance, was born in Grafton, W.Va. From 1952 to 1957, he worked at U.S. Steel Applied Research Laboratory in Pittsburgh, in the field of applied research on the physical and chemical properties of metals and films.
He graduated cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 1957 and received a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, both in chemistry. He was a member of Sigma Xi, the honorary scientific society.
Dr. McDaniel worked for 29 years as a research chemist at W.R. Grace in Columbia. His work on the production of high octane gasoline was a key component in the company's petroleum research.
He received 20 U.S. patents and additional foreign patents for discoveries related to petroleum catalysts, pollution control devices and catalysts and ion-exchange processes. Dr. McDaniel, who also had three scientific publications, retired in 1990.
Survivors include his wife of 55 years, Janie McDaniel of Howard County; two children, Janet Reeder of Ellicott City and Keith McDaniel of Laurel; a sister; and seven grandchildren.
-- Joe Holley