Yannis Varveris, Greek poet, critic and translator, died from cardiac arrest he was , 56.

Yannis Varveris was an award winning Greek poet, critic and translator  died from cardiac arrest he was , 56.
Varveris was born and died in Athens. He read Law at the University of Athens. His first collection of poems was published in 1975. He belongs to the so-called Genia tou 70, which is a literary term referring to Greek authors who began publishing their work during the 1970s, especially towards the end of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 and at the first years of the Metapolitefsi. He has been awarded the State Book Prize for Criticism in 1996 for his book Κρίση του θεάτρου Γ΄ (1976–1984) and the Cavafy prize (2001) and the poetry prize of literary journal Diavazo (2002) for his poetry collection Στα ξένα.

(1955 – 25 May 2011)

Works

Poetry

• Έν φαντασία και λόγω (In Imagination and Word), 1975
• Το ράμφος (The Beak), 1978
• Αναπήρων Πολέμου (Disabled Veterans), 1982
• Ο θάνατος το στρώνει (Death Spread It Around), 1986
• Πιάνο βυθού (Piano of the Deep), 1991
• Ο κύριος Φογκ (Mister Fog), 1993
• Άκυρο θαύμα (Miracle Null and Void), 1996
• Ποιήματα 1975-1996 (Poems 1975-1996), 2000
• Στα ξένα (Abroad), 2001

Selected Essays & Criticism

• Κρίση του θεάτρου (1976–1984) (Theater Reviews 1, 1976–1984), 1985
• Κρίση του θεάτρου Β΄ (1976–1984) (Theater Reviews 2, 1976–1984), 1991
• Κρίση του θεάτρου Γ΄ (1976–1984) (Theater Reviews 3, 1976–1984), 1995
• Σωσίβια λέμβος (Lifeboat), 1999
• Κρίση του θεάτρου Δ΄ - κείμενα θεατρικής κριτικής 1994-2003 (Theater Reviews 4, 1994–2003), 2004

 

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Paul J. Wiedorfer, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient died he was , 90.

 Paul Joseph Wiedorfer was a United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in World War II died he was , 90..

(January 17, 1921 – May 25, 2011)

 

Biography

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in the 2400 block of McElderry Street, he attended St. Andrew's School, and graduated in 1940 from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. On November 11, 2008, a plaque honoring him was placed in Poly's Memorial Hall.^[2]
Married to his bride, Alice Stauffer, for just six months when Wiedorfer enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943, he was working as an apprentice power station operator at the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company in Baltimore,^[3] and was living in the 1900 block of Bank Street.^[4]
Wiedorfer received basic training at Camp Lee, Virginia. He was then assigned to the Quartermaster Corps, and then passed the examination for cadet air training. He was training to be a pilot, but the Army switched him to infantry because of greater need. On the way to England he crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the HMS Queen Mary, and by December 25, 1944, was serving as a private in Company G, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division.^[2][3]

"So I thought, somebody's got to do something. And all of a sudden I said, 'Goddammit, let's see if we can get that nest.' I remember slipping, falling and the good Lord was with me and I got it. I got two of 'em."

Paul J. Wiedorfer
On the Medal of Honor suicide charge^[3]

On that Christmas Day, near Chaumont, Belgium, Wiedorfer single-handedly charged across 40 yards of open ground, destroyed two German machine gun emplacements and took six Germans prisoner. He was subsequently promoted to staff sergeant and on May 29, 1945, issued the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle.
While crossing the Saar River, he was severely wounded February 10, 1945, by a mortar shell that blew up near him; shrapnel broke his left leg, ripped into his stomach, and seriously injured two fingers on his right hand. The soldier next to him died from his wounds and Paul credited that soldier for saving his life. Recent research has discovered the soldier's name to be PFC Milton C Smithers of Huntingdon, New Jersey. Paul was evacuated to the 137th United States Army General Hospital in England where he was placed in traction. While in the hospital a sergeant reading Stars and Stripes asked him how he spelled his name, and then told him he had received the Medal of Honor. Later, on May 29, 1945, Brigadier General Egmont F. Koenig with a band entered the ward to present him with his medal.^[2][3]

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Medal of Honor didn't exist because there were no wars and we could all live in peace? And that the only way to spell war was love? Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Paul J. Wiedorfer
On the Medal of Honor^[5]

Wiedorfer reached the rank of master sergeant before retiring from the Army. In addition to the Medal of Honor he was also awarded a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.^[3]
He returned to Baltimore on June 11, 1945, and was given a ticker tape parade with General George C. Marshall and Maryland governor Herbert O'Conor in attendance.^[2]
After the war he spent another three years recovering in different Army hospitals and then returned to Baltimore Gas & Electric, and retired in 1981 after 40 years of service. He and Alice had four children.^[2][3]
Wiedorfer died in Baltimore on May 25, 2011, at age 90. He will be buried in Baltimore's Moreland Memorial Park Cemetery on June 7, 2011.^[6]

 

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Huguette M. Clark, American heiress, daughter of William A. Clark died she was , 104.

 Huguette Marcelle Clark was the youngest daughter of former U.S. Senator and industrialist William A. Clark died she was , 104.. She lived a reclusive life after 1930 and her activities were virtually unknown to the public. Upon Clark's death in 2011, she left behind a vast fortune, most of which was donated to charity. Substantial sums were also left to her long time nurse, her goddaughter, some employees and her attorney. Her accountant and her attorney are part of a criminal investigation concerning suspicions of mishandling Clark's assets.

(June 9, 1906 – May 24, 2011)

Early life

Huguette Marcelle Clark was born in 1906 in Paris, France, the second daughter of William A. Clark with his second wife, Anna Eugenia (née La Chapelle) (1878—1963).^[3] She had an elder sister, Andrée Clark, and several half siblings from her father's first marriage: William Andrews Clark, Jr., Charles W. Clark, Katherine Clark Morris and Mary J. Clark. Following the death of her father in 1925, she and her mother moved from a mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue to a 12th floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue. She later purchased the entire 8th floor in the building. In 1928, she agreed to donate $50,000 (equivalent to $641,131 in 2010 dollars^[4]) to excavate the salt pond and create an artificial freshwater lake across from Bellosguardo ( 34.418376°N 119.660664°W), her 23-acre (93,000 m²) estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, California. She stipulated that the facility would be named the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge after her deceased sister.
In 1928, she married Princeton graduate and then-law student William MacDonald Gower but they divorced in 1930.^[5] The daughter of a former staff member described Clark and her mother as not "odd or strange" but rather "quiet, loving, giving ladies". Over the years she developed a distrust of outsiders, including her family, because she thought they were after her money. She preferred to conduct all of her conversations in French so that others were unlikely to understand the discussion.^[6]
Huguette Clark was a musician and an artist who, in 1929, exhibited seven of her paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The last known photograph of her was taken in 1930 and she was rarely seen in public following the death of her mother in 1963. She reportedly had a very small group of friends.^[7] Her closest friend and former employee, Suzanne Pierre, died of Alzheimer's in February 2011.^[2][8]

Later years and controversy

In February 2010, Clark became the subject of a series of reports on msnbc.com, which said caretakers at her three residences had not seen her in decades, and that her palatial estates in Santa Barbara, California, and New Canaan, Connecticut, had lain empty throughout that time, although the houses and their extensive grounds were meticulously maintained by their staff.^[9] Msnbc.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman later determined that she was in the care of a New York City hospital, and that some of her personal possessions had been quietly sold. Possessions sold included a rare 1709 violin called La Pucelle (or The Virgin) made by Antonio Stradivari and an 1882 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting entitled In the Roses.^[7] Building staff reported that she was frail but not ill when Clark left her Fifth Avenue co-op in an ambulance in 1988. Initially she took up residence at Mount Sinai Medical Center to be more comfortable but was later transferred to another hospital in Manhattan.^[10]
In August 2010, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office initiated a probe into her affairs managed by her accountant, Irving Kamsler, and her attorney, Wallace Bock.^[11] Then a former paralegal for Wallace Bock's law firm, Cynthia Garcia, said that Bock received many lavish gifts from Huguette, including a $1.5 million gift after 9/11 to build a bomb shelter in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank near the homes of his daughters.^[12] According to Garcia, Bock tried many times to get Clark to sign a will, including versions that included him as a beneficiary. Bock's spokesperson acknowledged that she had a will.^[13]
In September 2010, in a one-paragraph ruling, Judge Laura Visitacion-Lewis turned down a request from a grand-half-nephew and two grand-half-nieces, Ian Devine, Carla Hall Friedman and Karine McCall, to appoint an independent guardian to manage Clark's affairs.^[14] The Manhattan District Attorney interviewed her twice and found she did not have all her faculties, and both her vision and hearing were, unsurprisingly, poor.^[15]

Death and interment

Clark died at Beth Israel Medical Center on the morning of May 24, 2011, two weeks short of her 105th birthday. She had been moved a month earlier to an intensive-care unit and later to a room with hospice care. She had been living at Beth Israel under pseudonyms; the latest was Harriet Chase. The room was guarded and she was cared for by full-time private nurses. Her room on the 3rd floor had a card with the fake room number "1B" with the name "Chase" taped over the actual room number. A criminal investigation into the handling of her money was ongoing at the time of her death.^[2][16]
She was interred on the morning of May 26, 2011, in the family mausoleum in section 85 of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx before the cemetery gates were open to the public. Her attorney said she had specific instructions that no funeral service or mass be held. In 2008, Clark's representatives obtained consent from other Clark family members to alter the mausoleum originally commissioned by her father. It was not until early 2011 that the mausoleum was altered to accommodate her entombment.^[17]
Clark's will was filed on June 22, 2011 in Surrogate's Court. The last will and testament was made in 2005 and left 75% of her estate, about $300 million, to charity. Her longtime nurse, Hadassah Peri, received about $30 million, her goddaughter, Wanda Styka, received about $12 million and the newly created Bellosguardo Foundation $8 million. Other employees who managed her residences received smaller sums. Her attorney and accountant each received $500,000. One of Claude Monet's 250 oil paintings inspired by Water Lilies (Nymphéas) in his Giverny flower garden was bequeathed to the Corcoran Museum of Art.^[18] She purchased the 1907 painting from Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1930.^[19][20]

 

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José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, Brazilian Amazon environmentalist and conservationist, shot.

José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva was a Brazilian conservationist and environmentalist who campaigned against logging and clearcutting of trees in the Amazon rainforest.

(? - May 24, 2011)

Ribeiro da Silva, who was also known by the nickname Ze Claudio, campaigned against illegal logging, deforestation and ranchers.^[2] He originally worked as a community leader at a forest reserve that produced sustainable rainforest products, such as oils and nuts.^[2] He became an anti-logging activist as illegal logger began to encroach further into untouched areas of Pará, his largely forested homestate in northern Brazil.^[2] He and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, had received death threats for his activism in favor of the preservation of Brazil's rainforest.^[1] In 2008, a report issued by a group of Brazilian human rights groups listed Ribeiro da Silva one of a dozen activists based in the Amazon to be "considered at risk" of harm or assassination by opponents.^[1][3]
In November 2010, da Silva was invited to speak at TED conference.^[2] He told the TED audience that his particular region of Pará once had 85% coverage of native Amazonian plants.^[2] However, since the arrival of loggers, the region's plant biodiversity had shrunk to just 20% native Amazonian plant life.^[2] De Silva also acknowledged the death threats that he had received, "I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment — because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers."^[4]
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, aged 52, and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, aged 51, were shot and killed in an ambush attack on May 24, 2011.^[1] The attack occurred ata settlement called Maçaranduba 2, which is located near their home in Nova Ipixuna, Pará.^[1] José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva had been refused police protection by local authorities, according to reports by the Diário do Pará and The Guardian.^[1] Da Silva murder brought comparisons with the killings of environmentalist Chico Mendes in 1988^[1] and American nun Dorothy Stang in 2005.^[5]
Two other environmental activist were also killed soon after Da Silva - Eremilton Pereira dos Santos, a farmer who was killed in the same area of Pará, and Adelino Ramos, a farmer and leader of the Corumbiara Peasant Movement in Rondonia, who was shot while selling vegetables on May 27, 2011.^[6] The Brazilian government pledged to protect Amazonian activists in an emergency cabinet meeting held on May 31, 2011, to deal with the crisis.^[6]
Da Silva was survived by his adopted sixteen year old son and two children from a previous marriage.

 

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Arthur Goldreich, South African-born Israeli political activist died he was , 82.

Arthur Goldreich was a South African-Israeli abstract painter and a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement in the country of his birth died he was , 82.




(1929–24 May, 2011)

Early life

Goldreich was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and settled in Israel, where he participated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as a member of the Palmach, the elite military wing of the Haganah.^[3] In time he became a leading figure at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. In 1966, he became the head of Industrial and Environmental Design Department, which he helped transform into an internationally recognized center for design.
By the age of 33, Goldreich had moved to South Africa where he became one of the country's most successful artists. In 1955, he won South Africa's Best Young Painter Award for his figures in black and white, but to the Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's government, he was a key suspect in the clandestine operations of the anti-apartheid underground.

Escape from jail

Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe, a lawyer, used South African Communist Party funds to buy Liliesleaf Farm, which was to become the key location in the Rivonia Trial, following the arrests of 19 African National Congress members and leaders by the National Party there. Goldreich and Wolpe also helped locate sabotage sites for Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military arm of the ANC, and draft a disciplinary code for guerrillas.
Wolpe, father of Nicholas Wolpe, the administrator of the new Liliesleaf Trust, was arrested shortly after the Liliesleaf raid where Goldreich, along with Nelson Mandela and others were also jailed. He was taken to Marshall Square prison in the city, where Goldreich was already being held.
The two met up with Mosie Moola and Abdulhay Jassat, members of the Natal Indian Congress, allied to the African National Congress. Moola and Jassat had been held in solitary confinement, where they had been tortured (they were believed to be the first political activists tortured in South African jails). Eventually the four men, working together with the aid of a prison warden, escaped successfully from custody, splitting up outside the prison (with Goldreich disguised as a priest).
Wolpe and Goldreich spent several days hiding in and around Johannesburg's suburbs to avoid capture. Eventually, they were driven to Swaziland, and from there were flown to Botswana, still disguised as priests to avoid being identified by potentially pro-South African British colonial authorities (at this time Swaziland was not independent).

Criticism of Israel

According to the Guardian, Feb. 2006, Goldreich was living in the city of Herzliya. There was a time when he believed the young Jewish state might provide the example of a better way for the country of his birth. As it is, Goldreich sees Israel as closer to the white regime he fought against and modern South Africa as providing the model. Israeli governments, he says, ultimately proved more interested in territory than peace, and along the way Zionism mutated.
Goldreich speaks of the "bantustanism we see through a policy of occupation and separation", the "abhorrent" racism in Israeli society all the way up to cabinet ministers who advocate the forced removal of Arabs, and "the brutality and inhumanity of what is imposed on the people of the occupied territories of Palestine". "Don't you find it horrendous that this people and this state, which only came into existence because of the defeat of fascism and Nazism in Europe, and in the conflict six million Jews paid with their lives for no other reason than that they were Jews, is it not abhorrent that in this place there are people who can say these things and do these things?" he asks.[1]

 

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Mark Haines, American television anchor (CNBC) died he was , 65.

Mark Haines was a host on the CNBC television network. From the New York Times article, "He also developed a reputation as a sometimes sharp-tongued interviewer, bluntly battling with guest chief executives over their companies.
His CNBC colleague David Faber said that Mr. Haines’s beginnings as a reporter covering corruption in Providence, R.I. helped inform that rough-and-tumble approach.
'There were those unexpected moments in interviews when he would be relentless and ferocious and not take no for an answer,' Mr. Faber said in a telephone interview. He added that such skepticism helped establish a foundation of integrity in CNBC’s news coverage."

(April 19, 1946 – May 24, 2011)

Early life and education

Haines grew up in Oyster Bay, New York, and resided in Monmouth County, New Jersey.^[1] His almamater was Denison University, and in 1989, the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He was a member of the New Jersey bar association.

Career

Haines was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; WABC-TV in New York City; and WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island. It is reported that Cary Grant considered Haines his favorite television reporter.^[2]
In 1989, Haines joined the newly created CNBC network. Haines was the host of the CNBC TV shows Squawk Box and Squawk on the Street. Squawk on the Street was expanded from one hour to two on July 19, 2007, when co-anchor Liz Claman of Morning Call left to co-anchor Fox Business on the Fox Business Network. Haines also presented a financial segment prior to the market open each day on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Haines' longtime co-anchor on Squawk on the Street" Erin Burnett moved on to CNN, with May 6, 2011 being her last show with Haines just weeks before his death.

Death

On May 25, 2011, Haines' wife Cindy reported that he had died at home in Marlboro, New Jersey, on the evening of May 24. He is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter.^[3] He died of congestive heart failure due to cardiomegaly.^[4]
Just after the market opened on May 25, CNBC broadcast that Haines had died the previous evening. There was silence on the trading floor and CNBC presented a retrospective on his life and career. A special television program about his life and career aired on CNBC that evening.

Host shows

• Squawk on the Street (2005–2011)
• Morning Call (2006–2007)
• Squawk Box (1995–2005)
• How to Succeed in Business

 

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Barry Potomski, Canadian ice hockey player (Los Angeles Kings) died he was , 38.

Barry Potomski) was a Canadian professional ice hockey right winger  died he was , 38.. He played 68 National Hockey League games: 59 with the Los Angeles Kings and 9 with the San Jose Sharks.

(November 24, 1972 – May 24, 2011)

Potomski died on May 24, 2011, after collapsing at a fitness centre, Lifestyle Family Fitness in Windsor.

 

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