Obituaries - Aug. 5, 1999

Paul Busch; Authority on Water, Waste Treatment

Paul L. Busch, 61, an authority on management and treatment of industrial and toxic wastes. Busch was president and chief executive of Malcolm Pirnie Inc., a national environmental consulting firm headquartered in White Plains, N.Y. He began with the company as an environmental engineer 38 years ago, after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate at Harvard. He rose to vice president in 1970, was named president in 1988 and CEO in 1990. Called a visionary by other leaders in the field, he helped provide clean drinking water and design environmental cleanup solutions for many of the nation’s major cities. In San Francisco in 1980, he developed a plan for a waste water treatment system that saved the city more than $300 million while providing environmental benefits. More recently in San Diego, he came up with a unique solution for an emergency repair on a giant sewer that allowed city engineers to keep the sewer in service by performing the repair from the outside of the waste pipe. He also helped direct the expansion of a Cleveland facility, creating the world’s largest advanced waste water treatment plant, which helped clean up Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. The San Diego and San Francisco projects were among many that won accolades from professional societies. Busch’s honors include his 1996 election to the National Academy of Engineering. He was past president of the American Academy of Engineers and chairman of the Water Environment Research Foundation and served on the National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board. Believing that his field needed to increase the numbers of African Americans in environmental engineering, he helped establish the Malcolm Pirnie / United Negro College Fund Scholars Program. On July 28 in Boston of complications of Hodgkins disease.

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Mary Linscott; Led Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

Sister Mary Linscott, 80, leader of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Linscott achieved a level of responsibility within the Roman Catholic Church that was rare for a woman. Born in Lancashire, England, she entered the Notre Dame de Namur novitiate in 1945 and did her apostolic work at Mt. Pleasant Training College. From 1948 to 1966, she was a lecturer at the college and for a short interval headed Notre Dame High School in Leeds. In 1969 she was elected superior general of the Notre Dame Congregation, becoming the first English sister to occupy the post. She oversaw the administration of the Congregation, which has 4,000 teachers on four continents, from its headquarters in Rome. In 1970 she was elected president of the Union of International Superiors General, a job that brought her into close association with cardinals, bishops and superiors general of male and female congregations. At the request of Pope Paul VI, she remained in Rome after her nine years as superior general were over and served in a senior position in the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, an agency responsible for oversight of male and female religious orders and congregations. She worked at the Vatican, writing books and operating retreats and conferences, from 1985 until her retirement to Liverpool in 1994. In 1988, President Francois Mitterrand of France awarded her the National Order of Merit for her services to the religious life of the church. On June 14 in Liverpool, England. The cause of death was not disclosed.

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Richard Marion; Actor, Coach, TV Director

Richard Anthony Marion, 50, actor, coach and director whose television credits included “Operation Petticoat” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Marion was educated at Fairfax High School and UC Berkeley. He worked on stage early in his career, including productions at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Long Wharf Theatre Company in New Haven, Conn., and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where he also directed. He was a founding member of the Bay Area’s Magic Theater, which became known for its presentation of cutting-edge playwrights like Sam Shepard. He moved back to Los Angeles in 1974, winning a regular role on the 1977-79 ABC-TV sitcom “Operation Petticoat” as Pharmacist’s Mate Williams. He later directed television episodes, including assignments on the 1989-92 ABC-TV comedy “Anything but Love” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” currently on CBS. He also served as acting coach on the latter show. His death came just three days before the show, now in its third season, received its first Emmy nominations for outstanding comedy series and best lead comedy actor. On July 19 after collapsing at home in Los Angeles. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

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Yitzhak Rafael; Oversaw Immigration to Israel

Yitzhak Rafael, 85, the head of the Jewish Agency’s immigration department in Israel’s early years, who oversaw massive waves of immigration to the country between 1948 and 1953. He was head of the quasi-governmental agency when 687,000 Jews--mostly Holocaust survivors and refugees from Arab countries--came to Israel between 1948 and 1951 in an immigration program that doubled the country’s population. One operation during this time brought 50,000 people--almost the entire Jewish population of Yemen--to Israel between December 1949 and January 1951. Another operation brought 121,512 Jews from Iraq and Kurdistan in 1950. By 1963, long after Rafael had left as head of the agency, Israel had absorbed more than 1 million immigrants. Rafael, a member of the National Religious Party, was religious affairs minister from 1974 to 1977 in the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He also served seven terms as a lawmaker in the Knesset, holding senior committee posts. After retiring from public life, he wrote and published numerous religious and Zionist writings as head of a Jerusalem institute affiliated with the NRP. In 1981, Rafael, who was born in Poland and emigrated in 1935, published an autobiography called “You Don’t Find the Light by Chance.” Yigal Bibi, a member of the Knesset from the NRP, credited Rafael with refusing to limit Jewish immigration despite the strain on the fledgling state’s resources. “He made brave decisions at a young age,” Bibi said. On Tuesday at his Jerusalem home after a long illness.

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Zohara Schatz; Israeli Sculptor

Zohara Schatz, 83, the artist who designed the emblem of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial in Jerusalem. Schatz was a sculptor who was perhaps best known for the six-branched menorah she designed for the entrance to the Yad Vashem, which was built to commemorate the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. The menorah is lit once a year on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Schatz was the daughter of Boris Schatz, a sculptor and visionary Zionist who founded the Bezalel School, an arts academy originally located in downtown Jerusalem and later moved to a hilltop site outside the city. She was born in the Bezalel complex and attended classes there, as did her late designer-brother, Bezalel. Her sister-in-law, Louise Schatz, who died in Jerusalem in 1997, was a prominent abstract watercolorist in Israel who in the late 1940s was part of the group of Big Sur artists known as the “California Seven.” On Wednesday in Jerusalem after a long illness.