A00003- Wadih el-Safi, Lebanese Singer and Songwriter

Wadih el-Safi, 91, a Favorite Singer in the Arab World

Khaled Al-Hariri/Reuters

Wadih el-Safi at a concert in his honor in Damascus in 2010.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 14, 2013

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Wadih el-Safi, a Lebanese singer and composer whose strong and clear voice propelled him to fame throughout the Arab world, died in Beirut on Friday. He was 91.

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His death was reported by the state-run National News Agency.

Mr. Safi, whose real name was Wadih Francis, helped spread colloquial Lebanese Arabic outside his country, becoming known to many Arabs as “the man with the golden voice.” Over seven decades he worked with well-known Arab composers and singers like Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab, Farid al-Atrash and Fayrouz.

He was much beloved in Lebanon, which has issued postage stamps bearing his likeness. “His passing is a loss to the nation and every Lebanese home,” President Michel Suleiman said in a statement on Saturday. “He embodied the nation through his art.”

The son of a police officer, Mr. Safi was born on Nov. 1, 1921, in the mountain village of Niha. He lived in near poverty in the village until his family moved to Beirut when he was 9. There, he enrolled in a Catholic school and began singing with its choir. At 12 he dropped out and began working and singing to help the family make ends meet.

When he turned 17, his brother Toufic showed him an announcement about a signing competition at state-run Lebanon Radio. He placed first out of 40 contestants and began working at the station. He later traveled to Brazil, where he spent time before returning to Lebanon.

Mr. Safi left Lebanon at the start of the 1975-90 civil war, traveling first to Egypt, then Britain, and finally, France.

In addition to Lebanese, Mr. Safi held Egyptian, Brazilian and French citizenships.

Survivors include his wife, Melfina Francis, and six sons and daughters.

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Wadih El Safi (Arabic: وديع الصافي‎, born Wadi' Francis) (November 1, 1921 – October 11, 2013) was a Lebanese singer songwriter, and actor. He became a Lebanese cultural icon, and was often called the "Voice of Lebanon". Born in Niha, Lebanon, Wadih El Safi started his artistic journey at the age of seventeen when he took part in a singing contest held by Lebanese Radio and was chosen the winner among fifty other competitors.

Wadih El Safi was a classically trained tenor, having studied at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music. He became nationally known when, at seventeen, he won a vocal competition sponsored by the Lebanese Broadcasting Network. El Safi began composing and performing songs that drew upon his rural upbringing and love of traditional melodies, blended with an urban sound, and creating a new style of modernized Lebanese folk music.

In 1947, El Safi traveled to Brazil, where he remained until 1950.

El Safi toured the world, singing in many languages, including Arabic, Syriac, French, Portuguese and Italian.

In the spring of 1973, El Safi recorded and released a vinyl single with the songs "Grishlah Idi" (lyrics by Ninos Aho) and "Iman Ya Zawna" (lyrics by Amanuel Salamon), first one in Western Syriac and second one in Eastern Syriac. The music arrangements were done by Nuri Iskandar and the songs were produced especially for an Aramean Festival, which occurred in the UNESCO building in Beirut at that time where El Safi participated as a singer.

El Safi has written over 3000 songs. He is well known for his mawawil (an improvised singing style) of 'ataba, mijana, and Abu el Zuluf. He has performed and recorded with many well-known Lebanese musicians, including , Fairouz, and Sabah.

In 1990, Wadih El Safi underwent open heart surgery. In 2012, he broke his leg and had to have surgery to mend the fracture. After the surgery, his health declined quickly. In 2013, he was admitted to hospital, suffering from pulmonary consolidation. On October 11, 2013, he fell ill at his son's home and was rushed to the Bellevue Medical Center where he died. His funeral was held at Saint George Maronite Cathedral, Beirut on October 14, 2013.

The discography of Wadih El Safi as a singer includes the following:

• Best of Wadi – Vol. 1
• Best of Wadi – Vol. 2
• Best of Wadi – Vol. 3
• Inta Omri
• The Two Tenors:Wadi Al Safi Aad Sabah Fakhri
• Wadih El-Safi and José Fernandez
• Wetdallou Bkheir
• Rouh ya zaman al madi atfal qana
• Chante Le Liban
• Wadi El Safi / Legends Of The 20th Century
• Mersal El Hawa
• Mahrajan Al Anwar
• Youghani Loubnan
• Ajmal El Aghani

The discography of Wadih El Safi as a composer includes the following:

• Cantiques de l'Orient
• Psaumes Pour Le 3ème Millénaire

The discography of Wadih El Safi as a sideman includes the following:

• Music of Arabia, Hanaan and her ensemble (withWadih El-Safi on oud)

A00002 - Peter M. Flanigan, Investment Banker and Nixon Aide

Peter M. Flanigan, Banker and Nixon Aide, Dies at 90

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: July 31, 2013 7 Comments

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Peter M. Flanigan, a Wall Street investment banker who became one of President Richard M. Nixon’s most trusted, influential and well-connected aides on business and economic matters, died on Monday in Salzburg, Austria. He was 90.

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Peter M. Flanigan in 1990.

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His family announced the death.

Mr. Flanigan, an executive at the venerable investment house Dillon, Read & Company, was an early and strong supporter of Nixon before being appointed principal presidential assistant for financial matters. His facility in advancing business interests in regulatory agencies led Time magazine to label him “Mr. Fixit.”

His wide-ranging assignments included securities regulation, antitrust matters, and agricultural and environmental policies. Administration officials compared his influence on business issues to Henry A. Kissinger’s on foreign affairs.

“He’s the guy who people in our industry turn to,” a steel executive told The New York Times in 1972. “And we wouldn’t turn to him unless he came through.”

Mr. Nixon applauded his contributions to international economic policy and to the country’s moving to an all-volunteer Army. But some saw him as the face of an administration that had cozied up to business interests. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, acknowledged Mr. Flanigan’s influence by calling him a “mini-president.” He also called him the “most evil” man in Washington.

Mr. Flanigan was sharply criticized in Congress for his role in the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue an antitrust case against the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation as an illegal conglomerate. He had arranged for a colleague at Dillon, Read to draft a financial analysis that helped persuade the administration to drop antitrust charges.

At a hearing in 1972, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton, a Missouri Democrat, characterized Mr. Flanigan’s interventions on behalf of business as “the Flanigan factor.” The senator accused him of holding back enforcement actions by the Environmental Protection Agency against the Anaconda Corporation and the Armco Steel Corporation.

Mr. Eagleton called Mr. Flanigan “the mastermind, the possessor of the scuttling feet that are heard faintly, retreating into the distance in the wake of a White House ordered cave-in to some giant corporation.”

The White House press secretary, Ronald L. Ziegler, responded that the president wholly supported Mr. Flanigan. He demanded “concrete evidence that Mr. Flanigan has gained personally in any way.” Senator Norris Cotton, a New Hampshire Republican, called Mr. Eagleton’s charges “flimsy.”

Mr. Flanigan was unruffled. “I’ve gotten, as my wife says, a little leathery,” he told The Washington Post. “It’s an election year, and I note who’s making these charges.”

He left the administration in June 1974, just weeks before the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign. Mr. Flanigan himself was not linked to the scandal. President Gerald R. Ford, Nixon’s successor, nominated him to be ambassador to Spain, but the Senate did not vote on his appointment before a scheduled recess. Some senators said that Mr. Flanigan had arranged for prestigious ambassadorships to go to big Nixon contributors. Mr. Flanigan asked that his nomination not be resubmitted.

Peter Magnus Flanigan was born on June 21, 1923, in Manhattan and raised there. His father, Horace Flanigan, who was known as Hap, was chairman of the Manufacturers Trust Company, later Manufacturers Hanover. His mother, the former Aimee Magnus, was a granddaughter of Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.

Mr. Flanigan was a Navy carrier pilot in World War II, then graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. He joined Dillon as a statistical analyst. He took a break in 1949-50 to work in London for the Marshall Plan, the initiative to rebuild war-ravaged Europe, then returned to Dillon. He became a vice president in 1954.

Mr. Flanigan became active in New York Republican politics in the mid-1950s and was named chairman of New Yorkers for Nixon in 1959 as Nixon, then vice president, was seeking the 1960 presidential nomination. Mr. Flanigan became national director of Nixon volunteers in 1960.

Nixon wrote in his memoirs in 1978 that Mr. Flanigan was one of a small group of Republicans who had raised money for him to campaign for Republican candidates in the 1966 midterm elections as an early step toward Nixon’s seeking the 1968 nomination.

In 1968, he was Nixon’s deputy campaign manager. After Nixon’s victory, Mr. Flanigan was a talent scout for the transition team. He served as a presidential assistant until 1972, when he was named director of the Council of International Economic Policy.

Mr. Flanigan’s first wife, the former Brigid Snow, died in 2006.

Mr. Flanigan is survived by his second wife, Dorothea von Oswald, whom he married five years ago and with whom he lived in Wildenhag, Austria, and Purchase, N.Y. He is also survived by his daughters Sister Louise Marie, Brigid and Megan; his sons Tim and Bob; and 16 grandchildren.

After his White House service, Mr. Flanigan returned to Dillon, where he was managing director until 1992. The passion of his latter years was education, notably starting a program to help inner-city Roman Catholic schools. He was chairman of the Alliance for School Choice. His great love was St. Ann’s Roman Catholic School in East Harlem, to which he gave more than $250,000.

His visits there were appreciated. “I want to make something of myself,” Lawrence King, a seventh grader, told The Times in 1992. “It’s important to have someone to look up to.”

A00001- Jack Curran, Legendary Archbishop Molloy Basketball Coach

Jack Curran, a Mentor in Two Sports, Dies at 82

Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Curran in 2008. He coached basketball and baseball over 55 years at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens.

By BRUCE WEBER

Published: March 14, 2013

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Jack Curran, who coached generations of baseball and basketball players for 55 years at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, winning more than 2,600 games, certainly among the most victories that any scholastic coach anywhere has compiled, died late Wednesday or early Thursday at his home in Rye, N.Y. He was 82.

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Curran with Kenny Anderson in 1986. Anderson was among a handful of Curran’s players who went on to play in the N.B.A.

His death was confirmed by Richard Karsten, president of Molloy. Curran had lung and kidney problems, and had broken a kneecap in a fall in February.

“But we were expecting him back in a few weeks, in time to coach the baseball season,” Karsten said.

In 1958, Curran was living in West Springfield, Mass., and working as a building supplies salesman when one morning, over coffee in a diner, he read in a newspaper that St. John’s University, his alma mater, had hired Lou Carnesecca as an assistant basketball coach. Carnesecca had been the baseball and basketball coach at Molloy; Curran applied for the newly vacant jobs, was hired and held onto the positions for 55 years.

Molloy was a powerhouse under his leadership. His teams won 22 Catholic school New York City championships, 5 in basketball and 17 in baseball. Four times — in 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1987 — Molloy won both in the same year.

Curran coached Brian Winters, Kenny Smith, Kenny Anderson and Kevin Joyce, all of whom played in the N.B.A. The current Mets outfielder Mike Baxter played baseball at Molloy for Curran.

Over all, Curran’s record was 972-437 as a basketball coach and 1,708-523 as a baseball coach, the school said.

“He won everything except World War III,” Carnesecca, who spent 24 seasons as the head coach at St. John’s, said about Curran in a 2008 interview in The New York Times. “No one in the country has Jack’s record in both sports, no one.”

Curran, who never married, leaves no immediate survivors. His place of birth could not be confirmed. The school said he was born on Sept. 6, 1930, the son of a New York City police officer, Thomas Curran, and his wife, Helen, who worked for a time in the police commissioner’s office. They lived in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, the school said, but moved to the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, where Jack grew up.

He graduated from All Hallows High School in the Bronx and went on to St. John’s, where he studied English and pitched for the baseball team. For three years he played minor league baseball, pitching for teams in the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies organizations.

As a coach, Curran was known for emphasizing fundamentals, for maintaining discipline and for setting the performance bar at an extraordinarily high level for both his players and the officials — he could be tough on the referees and the umpires.

“Yes, but he was rarely profane or abusive,” said Tom Konchalski, a friend and a widely acknowledged expert on scholastic basketball in New York City. “In 55 years he only had four or five technicals. But yeah, all the top coaches, you try to win the game, so you ride the refs.”

In baseball, Curran was true to his playing roots, stressing pitching, defense and smart play. In basketball, he was more adaptive to the skills of his players.

“When he had his best teams, in the late ’60s, early ’70s, they were running, pressing teams,” Konchalski said. “He liked to pressure, push the ball up the floor. Later on he went to more set plays, and played more zone, because he didn’t think he had the players.”

He was also known for his strong Roman Catholic faith and for generous deeds away from the playing field. In 1969, he turned down an opportunity to take the basketball head coaching job at Boston College because his mother was dying and he was caring for her.

“He was the most selfless man I knew,” the Mets’ Baxter, who played for Curran from 2000 to 2002, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “He was so faithful and he just cared so much about the kids on his team, both on and off the court and the field. It really separated him; whether you were playing for him as a junior or senior or whether you were in college or looking for jobs, he would make sure to help you anyway he could. That never stopped to the last day.”