Here's what was happening, in mid-march, 1996:
In the Netherlands, an Aviation Firm Declares Bankruptcy:
Fokker NV, a Netherlands-based airplane manufacturer, March 15 declared
bankruptcy after failing to secure a rescue bid for the company. Fokker
immediately announced that it would lay off some 5,600 workers in its plane
building unit, the largest firing in Dutch corporate history.
Germany's Daimler-Benz AG automotive and aviation group, a part owner of
Fokker, in January had cut off crucial funding for the beleaguered company.
The Dutch government, also a part owner, subsequently announced that it would
significantly curtail its support for the company. Fokker then requested
and received protection from its creditors while it sought a buyer for the
plane manufacturing unit.
Bridging loans that Fokker had been granted by the Dutch government had
been set to run out on the day before the company declared bankruptcy.
Economics Minister Hans Wijers March 13 had said that additional loans
would be made only if the company received "concrete and serious signals"
from a bidder. Fokker's chairman, Ben van Schaik, March 15 said that the
company was forced to declare bankruptcy after the strongest potential
bidder, Samsung Group of South Korea, failed to make an acceptable bid.
Samsung would reportedly continue talks with Fokker management over a
possible buyout of the company's manufacturing division. Aviation Industries
of China had also been involved in negotiations.
Several viable parts of Fokker, such as the maintenance and defense-contracting
divisions, would continue operating under the Fokker Aviation holding company.
Those operations employed some 2,300 people. About 350 of the 5,600 people
fired would continue working for the next several months to complete existing
projects, and an additional 950 people would receive employment with the holding
company.
Fokker's failure was expected to hit related industries throughout Europe.
Short Brothers PLC, a northern Ireland-based aircraft manufacturer that made
wings for Fokker, March 15 sent 700 workers home after receiving news of the
bankruptcy.
On Saturday March 16, in front-page news Canada's Calgary Herald, Police Chief Christine Silverberg saluted
new members who had just graduated into the Calgary Police Service at
Mewata Armouries:
N E W P O L I C E O F F I C E R S
OLYMPIANS CLEAR HURDLE
Tamara Goertz
Calgary Herald
Two Olympians were among the 25 men and five women
who officially became police constables Friday in a ceremo-
ny at Mewata Armouries.
Const. Todd McNutt, a cyclist, represented Canada in the
1992 Olympic Games. Now married, with two children, Mc-
Nutt is the son of former staff sergeant Ralph McNutt, who
was on hand for the ceremony.
"I'm very proud of him," said the senior McNutt, adding
he did not influence his son's recruitment. "He did it all on
his own."
Const. Cristi-Adrian Sudu -- Chris to his friends -- who at
12 years of age was an athlete in Romania, also represented
Canada in the 1992 Olympics in the luge.
"I've been waiting my whole life for this moment, I just
don't have the words to describe it," he said.
Chief Const. Christine Silverberg told the graduates that
trust and integrity must never be compromised.
The rookies will now be assigned to officer coaches for
12 weeks of job training.
On Sunday March 17, the day in history that John died, the Sunday New York Times,
was reviewing the
book, "And This Too Shall Pass":
G a y N o v e l i s t ' s
I n v i s i b l e L i v e s
A r e F a s h i o n e d
I n t o B e s t S e l l e r
By FELICIA R. LEE
WHEN E. Lynn Harris writes about the particular difficul-
ties of being black and gay and the universal loneliness of
the search for romantic love, he calls it "getting naked."
Mr. Harris theorizes that because he puts so much of himself
into his novels, it allows his readers to get naked, too. It is also
making him famous: his third novel published by Doubleday, "And
This Too Shall Pass" is No. 8 this week on the New York Times
best-seller list. There is talk of a movie deal. Not bad for a guy who
five years ago was selling his self-printed first novel, "Invisible
Life," out of his car and giving it away in beauty salons.
Mr. Harris is a cult figure of sorts. Fans break out in tears
upon meeting him, and he is showered with compact disks, flowers,
cookies, telephone numbers. A reader told him recently that she
had photocopied "Invisible Life" in its entirety and sent it by
overnight delivery to friends nationwide.
"A lot of people who come to my signings don't know much
about gay people or gay life," Mr Harris said the other day as he
took a break between appearances on a 14-city book tour for the
latest novel. "They just like the characters. They identify with the
love, the closeness. I want to show even when we look successful,
we're battling the self-esteem issues."
"Invisible Life" and his second novel, "Just as I Am," tell the
story of Raymond Winston Tyler Jr., a handsome black lawyer
with sexual identity conflicts.
The current book, "And This Too Shall Pass," features Zurich
Thurgood Robinson, a football player also struggling with his
sexual identity. Zurich is accused of sexually assaulting Mia Miller,
a glamorous sportswriter who has her own problems with men.
Mr. Harris's tales of betrayal, romance and friendship star a
cast of characters ranging from gay men to straight couples to
women unknowingly involved with bisexual men. Most are black,
young urban professionals -- buppies -- but there are white
characters, too.
Readers, tell Mr. Harris that he writes as if he had been
eavesdropping on their lives, and many actually advise him on his
characters. There is a consensus that he should have something
bad happen to Basil (a married gay man who is cheating) but that
he should invent some miracle to bring back Kyle (a gay designer
who died of AIDS).
A fourth novel, a sequel to the first two, is in the works. Martha
K. Levin, the vice president and publisher of Anchor Books, a
division of Doubleday, said the books have found devotees among
both gay and straight people.
"Hi, darling," was Mr. Harris's stock greeting to fans the other
night at a reading at New York University sponsored by QBR: The
Black Book Review. Mr. Harris has a soft Southern accent and was
(Continued on Page 46)
A G a y N o v e l i s t ' s L i v e s
Continued From Page 43 when his memoir, tentatively titled
"For Colored Boys Who Have Con-
sidered Suicide When Being Gay
stylishly dressed, even quite dapper Was Too Tough," is expected to be
in a blood-red shirt, blue blazer and published.
white-pants. In his early 40's (he is "I was miserable because I was
coy about the exact digits), he lives living a lie," Mr. Harris said, recall-
alone in a one-bedroom apartment in ing those years he hid his sexual
Atlanta. identity. "I was like one of those
The night before, he drew 300 peo- people in high school who wins class
ple clutching cameras and copies of favorite but really has no close
his novels at a reading at Barnes & friends."
Noble on Astor Place. But Mr. Harris He said he is still a hopeless ro-
wasn't always naked, and he wasn't mantic who prays for a partner.
always popular. "Someone who loves basketball and
Although his literary universe is ballet," Mr. Harris said. "Someone
middle-class, he and his three young- who's willing to tell the truth. Some-
er sisters were reared by a single one who's willing to accept love."
mother who worked in an AT&T fac- Five years ago, Mr. Harris quit his
tory in Little Rock, Ark. He was 14 job as a computer salesman and
when he first met his father, who was used $25,000 of his own money to
killed a year later. Mr. Harris said he print "Invisible Life." The frenzy
had fretted over his looks and lied that resulted led to a newspaper arti-
about his sexuality for years. He cle and a meeting with Ms. Levin at
drank too much. He was lonely. Doubleday. The publisher made a
After graduating from the Univer- few changes and released "Invisible
sity of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Life" as a paperback in 1994. Next,
where he was a cheerleader -- he is besides the memoir and the sequel,
still a football fanatic -- Mr. Harris with Raymond Tyler, is a novel about
went to work as a sales executive for a reunion of friends who are out-
I.B.M. wardly successful but battle some
When someone at the QBR party stubborn inner demons.
asked if he was Greek -- as in frater- "I'm just putting it out there in the
nity man -- he was mock-chiding and universe," Mr. Harris said. "Maybe
loud: "I'm not telling you all all my someone will listen. So far, it's been
business. Wait till next year." That's like walking through a dream."
The following day, Monday, March 18, 1996 -- also in the Times -- was this obit, along with many others,
(for William Warne, Henry Armstrong, Maurice Goodgold,
Harris Goldman, Maurice Moss and others):
T h o m a s E n d e r s , D i p l o m a t
I n C o l d W a r , I s D e a d a t 6 4
By Clifford Krauss
Thomas O. Enders, a career diplomat who played a major role in the secret
bombing of Cambodia during the Nixon Administration and guided the early
Reagan Administration policy in Central America, died yesterday at his home
in Manhattan. He was 64.
The cause of death was melanoma, a form of skin cancer, according to Salomon
Brothers Inc., where he was an international financial adviser after retiring
from the State Department in 1986.
A man of imposing size who climbed mountains in his spare time, Mr. Enders
was a blunt-spoken conservative pragmatist whose diplomatic career included
assignments as Ambassador to Canada and Spain, Assistant Secretary of State
for Economic and Business Affairs and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-
American Affairs.
While his career was highlighted by cold war intrigues in tropical climes, he
also played a central role in reaching an agreement with Canada to construct a
natural gas pipeline to the United States and in setting up a Reagan
Administration program to increase United States trade with Latin America.
Mr. Enders was born on Nov. 28, 1931, in Hartford, the son of an affluent
Connecticut banker and nephew of John F. Enders, a Nobel Prize winning
virologist. He attended Yale, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his
junior year and was a prominent member of Scroll and Key, the select secret
society known to provide a network for high powered careers. He met his wife,
Gaetana Marchegiano, the daughter of an Italian diplomat in Tangiers, in 1951,
while he was doing research on the medieval economy of Morocco.
Mr. Enders received master's degrees at the University of Paris and at Harvard
University and joined the State Department in 1958.
After working as an economic officer in Stockholm and Washington, he was made
deputy chief of mission at the United States Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
in 1969. But he quarreled openly with the Ambassador, William Leonhart, and
was assigned to Washington.
Self-confident but also aloof, Mr. Enders found himself through much of his
career in the middle of tangles within the State Department and with officials
of the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
"His brain power was towering," said Alexander M. Haig, Jr., a former
Secretary of State and a patron of Mr. Enders, "but he tolerated fools not
easily, and that contributed to his reputation for brusqueness and perhaps
impatience."
Lawrence Pezzullo, who worked for Mr. Enders as Ambassador to Nicaragua
in 1981, said: "He had the exterior of a very cold, difficult kind of person.
But what was behind it was a very impressive intelligence and strength of
character."
Mr. Enders quickly rebounded from his setback in Yugoslavia, and he was
assigned to Cambodia, where he became deputy chief of mission in 1971. There,
Ambassador Emory C. Swank placed Mr. Enders in charge of a committee that
reviewed and cleared requests by the Government of Prime Minister Lon Nol for
secret American bombing raids on Cambodian territory occupied by North
Vietnamese forces.
Mr. Enders role in the bombing, considered a vital component of President
Nixon's efforts to bolster the Saigon Government during the withdrawal of
American ground forces from South Vietnam, won him the recognition of Henry
A. Kissinger, then the national security adviser. But it angered powerful
members of Congress when he was accused of misleading two staff members of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee who went to Phnom Penh in 1973 to investigate
whether the American air strikes exceeded Congressional restrictions..
A year later, when Mr. Kissinger, then the Secretary of State, promoted
Mr. Enders to Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs,
the Foreign Relations Committee delayed the appointment for several weeks as
a mild protest.
After serving as Ambassador to Canada and the United States representative
to the European Economic Community, Mr. Enders was selected by Secretary of
State Haig in 1981 as the first of three Assistant Secretaries of State for
Inter-American Affairs in the Reagan Administration.
Many Congressional Democrats considered Mr. Enders a hard-liner, largely
because he strongly defended the Government of El Salvador, during a period of
frequent death-squad killings and army massacres. But he was considered some-
thing of a dove within the Administration for pressing for negotiations with
leftists in both El Salvador and Nicaragua, and he fought bitterly with several
senior officials, including the American representative to the United Nations,
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence.
In August 1981, before the contra guerillas were anything more than a
nuisance for the Nicaraguan Government, Mr. Enders flew to Mannagua for two days
of talks with the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra. The two forged a
tentative agreement in which Washington would stop sending money to the contras
in return for the Sandinistas' promising to curtail their military build-up and
halt their backing of the guerillas in El Salvador.
But a State Department draft of the agreement was rewritten by the national
security adviser, Richard Allen, to include blunt language that the Sandinistas
eventually rejected.
"If President Reagan had bought on to what Enders sensed when he met with the
comandantes," Ambassador Pezullo said, "you would have very likely had a
situation in which the contra war would have never occurred."
Apart from his career, Mr. Enders was a mountaineer who climbed extensively
through the Canadian Rockies and the Alps, and he collected rare books on travel
and exploration.
The funeral will be at 10 A.M. Wednesday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church, 869
Lexington Ave., followed by a private burial in Connecticut.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Enders is survived by three daughters, Domitila,
of Manhattan, Claire Enders Thomson of London and Alice Roessler of Washington;
a son, Thomas, of Bethany, Conn., three grandchildren; his brother, Anthony
Enders of Manhattan, and a sister, Dr. March Enders Kornack of Washington.
And in other news that Monday, again, from the New York Times:
U.S. and Russia Join in Supersonic Jet Study
By Michael R. Gordon
ZHUKOVSKY, Russia, March 17 -- In an unusual economic collaboration uniting
former cold war adversaries, a leading manufacturer of Russian warplanes has
joined forces with the American aerospace industry to carry out research for
a possible supersonic passenger plane for the 21st century.
The Tupolev Design Bureau, best known for designing Russia's huge Blackjack
bomber, has turned its TU-144 supersonic plane into a flying laboratory.
The experiments are being carried out at the behest of top American aerospace
companies, who have also produced their share of warplanes and are now interested
in determining whether it is economically feasible to build a new civilian plane
that could fly at more than twice the speed of sound.
The sleek, TU-144, which is to serve as the flying laboratory, was officially
unveiled today at the heavily guarded military airfield here, an hour's drive
from Moscow.
In an event redolent with political symbolism, the delta-wing plane was
festooned with American corporate logos, like those of the Boeing Company,
the Rockwell International Corporation and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
The Russian Army Choir sang, "America the Beautiful."
In another twist, any aircraft that emerges from the American-Russian
collaboration may compete with the French and the British, who have already
produced the Concorde supersonic plane.
"It's ironic that former Russian and American bomber manufacturers are now
working together on a civilian program," said Louis J. Williams, a specialist
on high-speed flight for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
which is financing the experiments. "At the same time, the competition with
Europe is intensifying."
The Concorde has given the Europeans considerable experience in supersonic
transport operations, and the Russian-American collaboration is intended to
erase that advantage and perhaps give the United States a lead, American
officials said.
"We want to even the playing field," Mr. Williams said.
Still, despite the good will here today, it was clear that the hard up Russian
aviation industry has more pressing hopes for the further collaboration than
American aerospace executives, who still appear noncommittal on the future
production of a supersonic passenger plane.
The origins of today's partnership go back more than two decades, when the
first effort was mounted to develop the supersonic transport plane.
The first supersonic transport was developed under the guidance of Andrei
N. Tupolev, who was at today's unveiling. The plane made its maiden flight
on Dec. 31, 1968.
All told, Russia produced 17 of the planes, one of which was involved in a
sensational air crash at the 1973 Paris air show. But the Russians concluded
that the planes were uneconomic and phased them out of service.
Britain and France developed the somewhat smaller supersonic Concorde, which
made its maiden flight in 1969 and its first commercial flight in 1976. But
Congress blocked a similar American project over concerns about economic
feasibility and possible environmental damage.
Some experts will say the glory days of the supersonic transport are not at
hand. "Speed is not that important," said Chris Chlames, spokesman for the
Air Transport Association, a trade association for the major airlines. "When
you look at the business travel market, the overriding factor tends to be
convenience and frequent service."
But others experts with an eye on business travel across the Pacific say there
will be a market for supersonic commercial flights.
In something of a switch, the American Government has begun a research program
on high-speed civilian aircraft and plans to spend a hefty $1.9 billion on
research by 2001.
And by all accounts, the experiments with Russians are being carried out at
bargain basement prices. Including ground tests of the engine, they will cost
NASA about $15.5 million, some $8.5 million of which is being paid by Tupolev.
The project was called for in a 1993 agreement between Vice President Al Gore
and Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin of Russia.
Standing in front of the hangar, which still bears an outsized portrait of
Lenin, Aleksei Tupolev added that the Americans were right to work with the
TU-144, since it was "a little better" than the Concorde.
There are to be 32 flights, the first of which is scheduled for the end of
April. The data will be shared.
Aleksandr L. Pukhov, Tupolev's chief designer, said the Russians would like
to fly the plane to California for sonic boom tests in a second phase of the
experiments. But American officials said that had not yet been agreed.
Robert F. Spitzer, a Boeing Company vice president, indicated that any decision
on production of a supersonic transport was years away. "We will go almost to
the turn of the century before we have all the data collected," Mr. Spitzer said.
Valentin T. Klimov, Tupolev's director general, was more upbeat, wrapping his
project in political themes intended to appeal to Americans.
"It used to be that the emphasis was on military aviation and civil aviation
was not so interested in supersonic," Mr. Klimov said. "Now, maybe the civilian
area may be more important to aviation."
Following on the heels of these stories, Britain reported a 'Mad Cow' Disease Danger:
Meat Industry Devastation Feared
The British government March 20 unveiled a scientific study reporting a
link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease,
and a similar ailment found in humans. Some observers suggested that the
findings could completely devastate Britain's meat industry.
Concerns over a possible link between mad-cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease, a variant of the mad-cow virus that affected humans, had first surfaced
in 1989. Fears over a possible connection had been renewed in 1995. Both scares
led to boycotts of British beef products, causing a severe slump in Britain's
meat industry.
The government had commissioned a scientific panel to study the deaths of 10
teenagers and young adults who had suffered from the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease. Health Minister Stephen Dorrell March 20 told the Parliament that the
panel had found that "the most likely explanation for the victims exposure to the
virus was through beef consumption," but he maintained that there was still "no
scientific proof" that mad cow disease could be transmitted to humans.
European Nations Ban British Beef
France, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Portugal March 21 banned the
importation of British meat. British Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg said that
the ban was "quite unnecessary and probably illegal" under European Union law.
Germany March 21 urged the EU to impose a complete ban on British beef
products. Several German states had previously instituted such measures
separately when fears of the disease were first raised.
The British Scientific panel was expected to reconvene to study possible
courses of action. Some ministers expressed fear that the group would suggest
slaughtering the country's entire herd of 11 million cows. Analysts said that
such an action could cost between 15 billion and 20 billion (Sterling)
[ed. note: $23 billion and $31 billion].
And that's what was in the news, during mid-march 1996, before and after, the
death.
Check back soon, for my links to the World Police and Fire Games, held in Canada, the following summer. By then, Prime Minister Major was gone, and Tony Blair
was in office. Warren Christopher had ceded his office to Madeleine Albright,
and Bill Clinton had been re-elected, to a second term of office.
And a military base had closed.
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