Howard Eliot Wolpe III was a seven-term
U.S. Representative from Michigan and Presidential Special Envoy to the
African Great Lakes
Region in the Clinton Administration, where he led the United States
delegation to the Arusha and Lusaka peace talks, which aimed to end
civil wars in
Burundi and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He returned to the State Department as Special Advisor to the Secretary
for Africa's Great Lakes Region. Previously, he served as Director of
the Africa Program at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
and of the Center’s Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity.
While at the Center, Wolpe directed post-conflict leadership training
programs in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Liberia.
(November 3, 1939 – October 25, 2011)
A specialist in African politics for ten of his fourteen years in the Congress, Wolpe chaired the Subcommittee on Africa of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
As chair of the House Africa Subcommittee, Wolpe co-authored (with Rep.
Ron Dellums and others) and managed legislation that imposed sanctions
against
South Africa, by over-riding President
Ronald Reagan's
veto of that sanctions legislation (the Comprehensive Anti-apartheid
Act of 1986). He also authored and managed the passage of the
African Famine Recovery and Development Act,
-- a comprehensive rewrite in the 1980s of America's approach to
development assistance in Africa that included the creating the
African Development Fund. In 1992 redistricting made it unlikely that Wolpe would be re-elected, and he retired from Congress.
Prior to entering the Congress, Wolpe served in the
Michigan House of Representatives and as a member of the
Kalamazoo
City Commission. In 1994, he won the Democratic nomination for Governor
of Michigan and selected one of his former rivals in the Democratic
primary,
State Senator Debbie Stabenow
(now a US Senator), as his nominee for Lieutenant Governor. The
Wolpe-Stabenow ticket lost the general election to incumbent Governor
John Engler and Lieutenant Governor
Connie Binsfeld.
Wolpe taught at
Western Michigan University (Political Science Department),
Michigan State University where he co-published a volume on modernization in Nigeria
[1], and the
University of Michigan
(Institute of Public Policy Studies), and served as a Visiting Fellow
in the Foreign Policy Studies Program of the Brookings Institution, as a
Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar, and as a consultant to the
World Bank and to the Foreign Service Institute of the
U.S. State Department.
Wolpe received his B.A. degree from
Reed College, and his Ph.D. from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a former member of the Boards of Directors of the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
Africare,
Pathfinders, International and of the Advisory Board of
Coexistence International.
He co-directed (with Ambassador David C. Miller, Jr.) the Ninetieth
American Assembly on “Africa and U.S. National Interests” held in March
1997. He wrote extensively on Africa, American foreign policy, and the
management of ethnic and racial conflict.
Howard Wolpe was married to Judy Wolpe until her death in 2006. He died on October 25, 2011 at his home in Saugatuck, Michigan.
[2] Memorial services were held in Kalamazoo, Michigan in December 2011 and in Washington, D.C. in January 2012.
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Norrie Woodhall was an English stage actress and the last surviving member of the Hardy Players, a theatrical group based around the work of poet Thomas Hardy, whom Woodhall knew personally after an encounter in 1924.[1]
The Hardy Players became defunct in 1928, shortly after Hardy's death,
but after its reformation in 2005 she decided to return to the stage at
the age of 100.[2]
