Obituaries

Richard Charles SchoonoverForeign Service Officer

Richard Charles Schoonover, 70, a retired Foreign Service officer whose postings included several African nations, died March 12 of cancer at the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill, N.C. A former resident of the District, he moved to Chapel Hill in 2004.

Mr. Schoonover was born in Sacramento, Calif., and graduated in 1960 from the University of California at Riverside, where he was student body president. He also did graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley.

He joined the State Department in 1964, working with the U.S. Information Agency. As a diplomat, he served in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Tunisia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Belgium. After he retired in 1996, he accompanied his wife, Brenda Brown Schoonover, to Togo when she was appointed its ambassador. He also participated in the 33rd Class of the Senior Seminar, a Foreign Service program.

Mr. Schoonover was active in several organizations, including service as co-chairman of the Carolina Friends of the Foreign Service and as a board member of the online magazine American Diplomacy. He was an avid golfer and a longtime member of Kenwood Golf and Country Club in Bethesda.

His marriage to Virginia Santee Schoonover ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 40 years, of Chapel Hill; three children from his first marriage, Peter Schoonover and Elizabeth Wrightson, both of Los Angeles, and Stephanie Schoonover of Austin; and one grandson.

-- Joe Holley

Raul RodriguezPainter

Raul Rodriguez, 80, a painter for the Arlington County school system, died March 2 of small cell lung cancer at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He lived in Centreville.

The Havana-born Mr. Rodriguez stayed in Cuba to support his parents for several years after his family lost its coffee business following the 1959 revolution. In 1966, after his six brothers and one sister left, and after he married and his daughter was born, he immigrated to the United States.