Feb 1 1992
^PM-UN Summit
^Leaders Pledge to Seek Nuclear Cuts; Stronger U.N. Peacekeeping Role With AP Photos
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ The Security Council met in an unprecedented colloquium of world leaders and hailed the Cold War's end. But the tightly scripted affair did not escape criticism that the old order still reigned.
Economically powerful Japan on Friday repeated its suggestion that it deserves a fixed seat on the 15-member council, joining the permanent five of Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China - all nuclear powers and World War II victors. And Venezuela criticized the quintet's veto power over resolutions.
Japanese officials also said Japan should have a say in future U.N. peacekeeping plans, or it couldn't guarantee it would keep up with donations to the cash-strapped world body.
At the end of the one-day summit, the leaders passed a declaration stressing the need to maintain collective security, arms control and "preventive diplomacy" that could head off future conflicts.
But the declaration was non-binding, and whether the summit succeeds in making the world a safer place depends on the council's will to pursue those goals.
The only followup measure established by the Security Council calls for Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to issue a report July 1 on his recommendations for making the United Nations more effective and for improving U.N. peacekeeping, which could include creation of a standing U.N. army.
The meeting marked the first time that heads of state gathered to represent their countries in a Security Council meeting, and the event showed how much the world has changed in the United Nations' 46 years.
In a final symbolic burial of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin claimed the defunct superpower's seat. He suggested creating a common global nuclear defense using U.S. "Star Wars" technology and Russian expertise and proposed reductions in multiple-warhead missiles, considered the world's most threatening nuclear weapons.
President Bush, who has also proposed nuclear arms cuts, hailed the diminished nuclear threat between the superpowers but said the world is still threatened by proliferation of nuclear weapons to Third World nations.
"The threat of global nuclear war is more distant now than at any time in the nuclear era ... but the specter of mass destruction remains all too real," Bush told the leaders gathered around a huge circular table in the council's chamber. Above the leaders was a mural depicting the phoenix of peace rising from the ashes of World War II.
"Our presence today is a turning point for the world and the United Nations," said Prime Minister John Major of Britain, whose nation holds the rotating council presidency and who called the meeting.
"Are we to mourn for the old order?" asked French President Francois Mitterand. "Certainly not. Liberty has grown in the world. We must continue to help it."
Mitterrand said France was ready to assign 1,000 soldiers to a U.N. rapid- deployment force that could be sent to trouble spots within 48 hours. The plan was supported by Yeltsin and several other leaders.
The summit declaration also cited commitments to democracy and human rights - a provision opposed by China and some other non-aligned nations.
China's Premier Li Peng, making his first appearance at such a forum since the bloody crackdown on China's pro-democracy movement 2 1/2 years ago, said it was "neither appropriate nor workable" for a small group of nations to set human rights standards for the world. He was received cordially by other leaders but did not mingle after the summit.
Thousands of people opposed to China's government for its military crackdown and its control over Tibet gathered near the United Nations but were kept away by police.
The summit underscored the high profile the United Nations has assumed after years of being considered ineffective.
"Gone are the days, I hope forever, when the United Nations was the last body you would turn to for effective action," Major told reporters after the summit.
After its pivotal role in the Persian Gulf War, the United Nations has had a string of diplomatic successes - including mediating release of Western hostages in Lebanon and arranging truces in Croatia, El Salvador and Cambodia.
Boutros-Ghali said he expected the United Nations, which had a shortfall of more than $800 million last month, will overcome its cash problems in several weeks.
The rotating Security Council members are: Austria, Belgium, Cape Verde, Ecuador, Hungary, India, Japan, Morocco, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
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HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
Friday, August 7, 2026
El Salvador Peace Talks
Jan 5 1992
^AM-UN-Salvador
^Salvadoran Government Fails to Arrive at Talks Date
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ Negotiators for Salvadoran guerrillas scolded the government Sunday for failing to show up for a scheduled meeting on their U.N.-brokered peace accord.
Under the peace agreement signed on New Year's Eve, the rebel and government sides in El Salvador's civil war were to have met Sunday to negotiate a timetable for demobilizing the guerrilla army of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, known as the FMLN.
Four FMLN negotiators appeared at U.N. headquarters at dusk Sunday and headed for a negotiating room, where Alvaro de Soto, the U.N. mediator, was waiting for them. But the government delegation did not show up.
"The government owes an explanation to the nation and to the international community as to why they were not here ready to begin this meeting today," said Roberto Canas, the FMLN spokesman.
Mauricio Sandoval, the government spokesman in San Salvador, said negotiators were arriving Sunday night in New York for talks Monday. He gave no explanation for their delay.
El Salvador's 12-year civil war has claimed more than 75,000 lives. Other issues remaining to be resolved include land reform, reducing the size of the Salvadoran army, and incorporating rebel fighters into a new civilian police force to replace the current militarized police force that has committed many human rights abuses.
The Dec. 31 agreement sets a deadline of Friday for the U.S.-backed government of Alfredo Cristiani and the rebels to negotiate a timetable for implementation.
It the talks do not produce "positive results" by Friday, both sides must submit to binding arbitration by the new U.N. secretary-general, Butros Ghali. Any unresolved matters are to be presented to Ghali on Jan. 14.
The final peace pact is to be signed in Mexico City on Jan. 16.
The peace pact - the fruit of 21 months of U.N.-mediated negotiations led by former Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and de Soto, his Peruvian compatriot - provides for a definitive cessation of hostilities Feb. 1.
Joaquin Villalobos, the leader-among-equals of the five-member general command of the FMLN, arrived from New York in Managua on Sunday to meet with Sandinista leaders, and said the peace process was "irreversible."
"We are now before the harvest of all these years of fighting, and we hope that peace and stability in El Salvador will also be carried over to Nicaragua," Villalobos said.
Nicaragua is technically at peace but skirmishes and tension continue among the conservative Nicaraguan government, the leftist Sandinista movement it ousted in 1990 elections, and former Contra fighers.
In San Salvador, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said in his Sunday homily that a Catholic priest, Jose Ignacio Meza, had disappeared and was presumed kidnapped Friday in an area east of the capital. No other details were immediately available.
Priests frequently have been targeted by right-wing troops or paramilitary forces in El Salvador.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
^AM-UN-Salvador
^Salvadoran Government Fails to Arrive at Talks Date
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ Negotiators for Salvadoran guerrillas scolded the government Sunday for failing to show up for a scheduled meeting on their U.N.-brokered peace accord.
Under the peace agreement signed on New Year's Eve, the rebel and government sides in El Salvador's civil war were to have met Sunday to negotiate a timetable for demobilizing the guerrilla army of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, known as the FMLN.
Four FMLN negotiators appeared at U.N. headquarters at dusk Sunday and headed for a negotiating room, where Alvaro de Soto, the U.N. mediator, was waiting for them. But the government delegation did not show up.
"The government owes an explanation to the nation and to the international community as to why they were not here ready to begin this meeting today," said Roberto Canas, the FMLN spokesman.
Mauricio Sandoval, the government spokesman in San Salvador, said negotiators were arriving Sunday night in New York for talks Monday. He gave no explanation for their delay.
El Salvador's 12-year civil war has claimed more than 75,000 lives. Other issues remaining to be resolved include land reform, reducing the size of the Salvadoran army, and incorporating rebel fighters into a new civilian police force to replace the current militarized police force that has committed many human rights abuses.
The Dec. 31 agreement sets a deadline of Friday for the U.S.-backed government of Alfredo Cristiani and the rebels to negotiate a timetable for implementation.
It the talks do not produce "positive results" by Friday, both sides must submit to binding arbitration by the new U.N. secretary-general, Butros Ghali. Any unresolved matters are to be presented to Ghali on Jan. 14.
The final peace pact is to be signed in Mexico City on Jan. 16.
The peace pact - the fruit of 21 months of U.N.-mediated negotiations led by former Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and de Soto, his Peruvian compatriot - provides for a definitive cessation of hostilities Feb. 1.
Joaquin Villalobos, the leader-among-equals of the five-member general command of the FMLN, arrived from New York in Managua on Sunday to meet with Sandinista leaders, and said the peace process was "irreversible."
"We are now before the harvest of all these years of fighting, and we hope that peace and stability in El Salvador will also be carried over to Nicaragua," Villalobos said.
Nicaragua is technically at peace but skirmishes and tension continue among the conservative Nicaraguan government, the leftist Sandinista movement it ousted in 1990 elections, and former Contra fighers.
In San Salvador, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said in his Sunday homily that a Catholic priest, Jose Ignacio Meza, had disappeared and was presumed kidnapped Friday in an area east of the capital. No other details were immediately available.
Priests frequently have been targeted by right-wing troops or paramilitary forces in El Salvador.
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HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
Nicaragua Documentary: We Died for Nothing
Oct 6 1991
^BC-AP Arts: Nicaragua
^Documentary Tracks Down People Who Were in Photos of Sandinista Revolution
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ In 1978, a relatively unknown photojournalist named Susan Meiselas went to Nicaragua and landed in the middle of one of the biggest stories of the day - the opening salvos of the Sandinista revolution.
Now, 13 years later, Ms. Meiselas and co-producers Richard Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti look back at the revolution that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza - and which, after fighting off a U.S.-backed insurgency for a decade, was rejected by Nicaraguan voters last year.
In "Pictures of a Revolution," shown at its world premiere Friday night at the New York Film Festival, the filmmakers tracked down the people who appeared in Ms. Meiselas' war photos more than a dozen years ago and let them tell their story.
The documentary, received enthusiastically by the packed house at Lincoln Center, conveys the crushed hopes of Nicaraguans and the feeling that the tens of thousands who died in the revolution and ensuing Contra war lost their lives needlessly.
The film flashes Ms. Meiselas' photos showing urban guerrilla warfare amid footage of the locations as they are now. The photos show danger and acts of heroism - a man with a .22-caliber rifle urging on his comrades against Somoza's National Guard, another hurling a Molotov cocktail.
The footage of present-day Nicaragua shows only bleak poverty.
"I thought better things would come (after the revolution), now I don't," says a woman in the film, wiping away her tears. "It's hard to even find food now."
The filmmakers tracked their subjects down to Miami, Toronto and to shacks lining dirt roads in Managua and other towns. One former National Guard officer and later a Contra commander, Mike Lima, was found in Florida working as a security guard.
"We killed for nothing, we died for nothing," says Lima, explaining that he now sees the Sandinistas and the Contras were puppets for the Soviet Union and Washington.
Some of the former Sandinista combatants also expressed frustration that little was gained because of their sacrifices, although one said it was enough that the National Guard was defeated and he would no longer have to fear their knock on the door.
Another Sandinista says the gains the revolutionaries tried to make were hamstrung by the U.S.-backed Contras and Washington's economic embargo. In her narration, Ms. Meiselas wonders how the Sandinista government would have fared without the intervention.
Ms. Meiselas told the audience after the 93-minute film that the filmmakers had no idea what they would find when they sought the people she had photographed years ago.
"You feel the despair, even among the ones who were most loyal (to the Sandinistas), who were most hopeful," she said. "We didn't think that was going to happen."
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
^BC-AP Arts: Nicaragua
^Documentary Tracks Down People Who Were in Photos of Sandinista Revolution
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ In 1978, a relatively unknown photojournalist named Susan Meiselas went to Nicaragua and landed in the middle of one of the biggest stories of the day - the opening salvos of the Sandinista revolution.
Now, 13 years later, Ms. Meiselas and co-producers Richard Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti look back at the revolution that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza - and which, after fighting off a U.S.-backed insurgency for a decade, was rejected by Nicaraguan voters last year.
In "Pictures of a Revolution," shown at its world premiere Friday night at the New York Film Festival, the filmmakers tracked down the people who appeared in Ms. Meiselas' war photos more than a dozen years ago and let them tell their story.
The documentary, received enthusiastically by the packed house at Lincoln Center, conveys the crushed hopes of Nicaraguans and the feeling that the tens of thousands who died in the revolution and ensuing Contra war lost their lives needlessly.
The film flashes Ms. Meiselas' photos showing urban guerrilla warfare amid footage of the locations as they are now. The photos show danger and acts of heroism - a man with a .22-caliber rifle urging on his comrades against Somoza's National Guard, another hurling a Molotov cocktail.
The footage of present-day Nicaragua shows only bleak poverty.
"I thought better things would come (after the revolution), now I don't," says a woman in the film, wiping away her tears. "It's hard to even find food now."
The filmmakers tracked their subjects down to Miami, Toronto and to shacks lining dirt roads in Managua and other towns. One former National Guard officer and later a Contra commander, Mike Lima, was found in Florida working as a security guard.
"We killed for nothing, we died for nothing," says Lima, explaining that he now sees the Sandinistas and the Contras were puppets for the Soviet Union and Washington.
Some of the former Sandinista combatants also expressed frustration that little was gained because of their sacrifices, although one said it was enough that the National Guard was defeated and he would no longer have to fear their knock on the door.
Another Sandinista says the gains the revolutionaries tried to make were hamstrung by the U.S.-backed Contras and Washington's economic embargo. In her narration, Ms. Meiselas wonders how the Sandinista government would have fared without the intervention.
Ms. Meiselas told the audience after the 93-minute film that the filmmakers had no idea what they would find when they sought the people she had photographed years ago.
"You feel the despair, even among the ones who were most loyal (to the Sandinistas), who were most hopeful," she said. "We didn't think that was going to happen."
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
In-Line Skating: The New Thing
May 4 1991
^PM-Blade Runners
^Rollerblading Craze Cuts a New Figure on City Streets
^LaserPhoto NY4 of May 3
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The weekend joggers and cyclists who once reigned supreme on park sidewalks across the nation are being elbowed aside by a new breed of knee-padded, Lycra-clad creatures who whiz by on polyurethane wheels at 30 mph.
These high-tech roller skaters are ushering in a booming new leisure fad - rollerblading, also known as in-line skating.
Their skates - molded boots with four or five wheels in a row - have also created a booming new leisure industry. Retail sales rocketed from $150,000 in 1984 to about $10 million in 1988 and are expected to double to $300 million in 1991, said Mary Haugen, a spokeswoman for Rollerblade Inc.
For roller skaters, the advancement in skate technology adds a whole new dimension of thrills and fun to their pastime.
"It's an unbelievable rush," said Max Langstaff, who spent a recent balmy day skating in New York's Central Park. "It's a cross between ice skating and downhill skiing. Imagine skating down a hill, it's like ... aaaahhhh 3/8"
As rock music blasted from a portable stereo, hundreds of people gathered on a recent Sunday to watch skaters speedily weave through a sloping obstacle course of cones. The crowd cheered when skaters, some on only one skate, others going backward, negotiated the course without knocking over a single cone.
Bladers as they're called propel themselves much like speed-skaters on ice, swinging their arms.
In-line skating has also become a hit in California, and in the Midwest where the two largest manufacturers of the skates are based: Rollerblade Inc. in Minnetonka, Minn., and First Team Sports in Blaine, Minn.
Rollerblade Inc. got its start in 1980 when two brothers, Scott and Brennan Olson, both high school hockey players, sought a way to keep in shape during the summer.
They sold their first pairs of the skates out of their parents' basement.
In 1984 the Olsons sold the company, which began promoting in-line skating as a new sport in 1986.
At Peck & Goodie, a skate rental and sales shop near Central Park, customers can rent skates for $10 for two hours, or buy a pair for $95 to $320.
New skaters making their way through Central Park traffic look like ducklings trying out their legs for the first time.
Many of the park's hard-core skaters go by nicknames like Blur, Blade and Gladiator. Some travel far to compete in rollerblade races.
"It was only last year that we started to see competitors come out, class athletes, so racing is still at a rough stage now," said Steve Novak, also known as Thud, a monicker he earned crashing into a car while skating.
Now the sport is poised to go international.
Nordica, a large Italian manufacturer of ski boots, bought half of Rollerblade Inc. in March and will market the skates in Europe and Japan, said Nordica spokesman Adalberto Muzio.
Suzanne Winick of New York began skating when she bought some blades last November.
"It's great," she said. "When you find a road that's smoothly paved you feel like you're on a sheet of ice. You just go."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
^PM-Blade Runners
^Rollerblading Craze Cuts a New Figure on City Streets
^LaserPhoto NY4 of May 3
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The weekend joggers and cyclists who once reigned supreme on park sidewalks across the nation are being elbowed aside by a new breed of knee-padded, Lycra-clad creatures who whiz by on polyurethane wheels at 30 mph.
These high-tech roller skaters are ushering in a booming new leisure fad - rollerblading, also known as in-line skating.
Their skates - molded boots with four or five wheels in a row - have also created a booming new leisure industry. Retail sales rocketed from $150,000 in 1984 to about $10 million in 1988 and are expected to double to $300 million in 1991, said Mary Haugen, a spokeswoman for Rollerblade Inc.
For roller skaters, the advancement in skate technology adds a whole new dimension of thrills and fun to their pastime.
"It's an unbelievable rush," said Max Langstaff, who spent a recent balmy day skating in New York's Central Park. "It's a cross between ice skating and downhill skiing. Imagine skating down a hill, it's like ... aaaahhhh 3/8"
As rock music blasted from a portable stereo, hundreds of people gathered on a recent Sunday to watch skaters speedily weave through a sloping obstacle course of cones. The crowd cheered when skaters, some on only one skate, others going backward, negotiated the course without knocking over a single cone.
Bladers as they're called propel themselves much like speed-skaters on ice, swinging their arms.
In-line skating has also become a hit in California, and in the Midwest where the two largest manufacturers of the skates are based: Rollerblade Inc. in Minnetonka, Minn., and First Team Sports in Blaine, Minn.
Rollerblade Inc. got its start in 1980 when two brothers, Scott and Brennan Olson, both high school hockey players, sought a way to keep in shape during the summer.
They sold their first pairs of the skates out of their parents' basement.
In 1984 the Olsons sold the company, which began promoting in-line skating as a new sport in 1986.
At Peck & Goodie, a skate rental and sales shop near Central Park, customers can rent skates for $10 for two hours, or buy a pair for $95 to $320.
New skaters making their way through Central Park traffic look like ducklings trying out their legs for the first time.
Many of the park's hard-core skaters go by nicknames like Blur, Blade and Gladiator. Some travel far to compete in rollerblade races.
"It was only last year that we started to see competitors come out, class athletes, so racing is still at a rough stage now," said Steve Novak, also known as Thud, a monicker he earned crashing into a car while skating.
Now the sport is poised to go international.
Nordica, a large Italian manufacturer of ski boots, bought half of Rollerblade Inc. in March and will market the skates in Europe and Japan, said Nordica spokesman Adalberto Muzio.
Suzanne Winick of New York began skating when she bought some blades last November.
"It's great," she said. "When you find a road that's smoothly paved you feel like you're on a sheet of ice. You just go."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
Gulf War Protests
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Aug 28 1990
^AM-Gulf-US-Dissent
^Some Suspect U.S. Would Fight War to Benefit Oil Companies
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf has given rise to scattered protests that are focusing more on economics than on the political concerns expressed during the Vietnam era.
Many of the demonstrators say the soldiers are risking their lives for oil companies and that the financially strapped nation cannot afford the deployment.
"Hell no, we won't go, we won't die for Texaco," 200 protesters shouted Saturday outside the White House, echoing words used by demonstrators during the Vietnam War but adding a twist: the name of a U.S. oil company.
Opposition to the Vietnam War in the '60s and '70s and to U.S. military policy in Central America in the '80s focused on whether the United States had the right to interfere in the politics of other nations. Opponents of U.S. gulf policy, a minority according to opinion polls, are centering their arguments on the morality of intervention for economic ends.
"We have to tell each other that we will not kill and we will not die for Exxon, for Gulf Petroleum," peace activist Becky Minnich said last week during a meeting of 100 dissidents in Minneapolis.
The argument might get a sympathetic ear.
An Associated Press poll conducted earlier this month said 86 percent of Americans believed the oil companies took advantage of the Iraqi invasion and unfairly raised gasoline prices. The survey of 1,004 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, speaking at a news conference in New York last week, called the U.S. military buildup "aggression designed simply to dominate oil."
Another of the protesters' arguments is that America - $4.16 trillion in debt - cannot afford a massive troop deployment costing billions of dollars.
"They now run up a military bill to the top of the sky and take it out of federal housing money for Brooklyn," wrote Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist for New York Newsday.
Many protesters don't believe protecting Middle East oil from Iraq is worth American lives.
"I kissed my son goodbye today," college professor Alex Molnar wrote in a letter to Bush published in The New York Times. "He is a 21-year-old Marine. You have ordered him to Saudi Arabia. ... For what? Cheap gas?"
Images of soldiers boarding transport planes for the Middle East have become a daily staple of television news, but not all are going willingly.
One serviceman, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Paterson, said he will not fight a war over oil and has filed for conscientious objector status to prevent his deployment to the gulf.
The AP poll said 64 percent of Americans supported deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to help defend it against a possible Iraqi attack, while 22 percent were opposed. But the poll said 52 percent of Americans opposed using ground forces to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Thirty-two percent favored such a move.
If the United States is drawn into a war to force Iraq out of Kuwait, which is the intent of the economic embargo, the few voices of protest in the U.S. will likely grow.
Among the scattered voices raised in recent days:
- In Amherst, Mass., about 15 protesters elicited a few honks in support from passing motorists, but also the shouted comment: "Get out of America."
- At Westover Air Force Base, Mass., where planes being used to supply troops in the gulf are based, two people were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace Monday during a small demonstration.
- In San Francisco, 15 protesters at the Federal Building held signs saying "Shed No Blood for Oil" and promised to continue holding pickets there until the troops come home.
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HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
Aug 28 1990
^AM-Gulf-US-Dissent
^Some Suspect U.S. Would Fight War to Benefit Oil Companies
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf has given rise to scattered protests that are focusing more on economics than on the political concerns expressed during the Vietnam era.
Many of the demonstrators say the soldiers are risking their lives for oil companies and that the financially strapped nation cannot afford the deployment.
"Hell no, we won't go, we won't die for Texaco," 200 protesters shouted Saturday outside the White House, echoing words used by demonstrators during the Vietnam War but adding a twist: the name of a U.S. oil company.
Opposition to the Vietnam War in the '60s and '70s and to U.S. military policy in Central America in the '80s focused on whether the United States had the right to interfere in the politics of other nations. Opponents of U.S. gulf policy, a minority according to opinion polls, are centering their arguments on the morality of intervention for economic ends.
"We have to tell each other that we will not kill and we will not die for Exxon, for Gulf Petroleum," peace activist Becky Minnich said last week during a meeting of 100 dissidents in Minneapolis.
The argument might get a sympathetic ear.
An Associated Press poll conducted earlier this month said 86 percent of Americans believed the oil companies took advantage of the Iraqi invasion and unfairly raised gasoline prices. The survey of 1,004 adults had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, speaking at a news conference in New York last week, called the U.S. military buildup "aggression designed simply to dominate oil."
Another of the protesters' arguments is that America - $4.16 trillion in debt - cannot afford a massive troop deployment costing billions of dollars.
"They now run up a military bill to the top of the sky and take it out of federal housing money for Brooklyn," wrote Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist for New York Newsday.
Many protesters don't believe protecting Middle East oil from Iraq is worth American lives.
"I kissed my son goodbye today," college professor Alex Molnar wrote in a letter to Bush published in The New York Times. "He is a 21-year-old Marine. You have ordered him to Saudi Arabia. ... For what? Cheap gas?"
Images of soldiers boarding transport planes for the Middle East have become a daily staple of television news, but not all are going willingly.
One serviceman, Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Paterson, said he will not fight a war over oil and has filed for conscientious objector status to prevent his deployment to the gulf.
The AP poll said 64 percent of Americans supported deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to help defend it against a possible Iraqi attack, while 22 percent were opposed. But the poll said 52 percent of Americans opposed using ground forces to push Iraq out of Kuwait. Thirty-two percent favored such a move.
If the United States is drawn into a war to force Iraq out of Kuwait, which is the intent of the economic embargo, the few voices of protest in the U.S. will likely grow.
Among the scattered voices raised in recent days:
- In Amherst, Mass., about 15 protesters elicited a few honks in support from passing motorists, but also the shouted comment: "Get out of America."
- At Westover Air Force Base, Mass., where planes being used to supply troops in the gulf are based, two people were arrested on charges of disturbing the peace Monday during a small demonstration.
- In San Francisco, 15 protesters at the Federal Building held signs saying "Shed No Blood for Oil" and promised to continue holding pickets there until the troops come home.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
700,000 Bodies: Exclusive Visit to New York's Mass Graveyard
Jun 14 1990
^PM-Paupers' Graveyard
^Paupers' Graveyard: Only the Dead Know Hart Island
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The city couldn't provide them homes when they were alive. But after the two men died - killed when their cave beneath a razed building collapsed - they were given a final resting place on a grassy, quiet island.
Quiet because only the dead reside on Hart Island. About 700,000 bodies are buried on the 100-acre island. A paupers' graveyard for 121 years, it is among the most intensively used pieces of real estate in New York City.
Miguel Marrero and Jose Diaz were buried Wednesday, 34 days after the shelter they dug collapsed in a rainstorm.
The body of a third man who died with them was claimed by his family. But because the bodies of Marrero and Diaz lay unclaimed in the morgue for more than two weeks, they were sent to Hart Island.
A ferry bearing a stack of 14 pine caskets containing the bodies of Marrero, Diaz and other indigents chugged to the island in Long Island Sound, about a mile from the borough of the Bronx.
Diaz's and Marrero's names were written in black marker on their rough-hewn caskets. Another casket had the markings UNK WHT M, for unknown white male.
The bodies headed for Hart Island are not embalmed and the caskets are thin. That way, nature can reclaim them and the burial plots can be used again in a few decades, in a macabre recycling program.
"A box sometimes falls apart as we're moving it and a body rolls out," said Jerome DiSisto, a corrections officer accompanying the burial detail. "If that happens, we just get an empty box, put the body in and that's all."
Capt. Gene Ruppert, another corrections official, said an average of 1,500 adults are buried each year on the island, in addition to 1,500 infants, most of them stillborn. A quarter or more of those buried are believed to have been homeless.
The Corrections Department manages the island and all burials are performed by inmates, who earn 50 cents an hour, department spokesman Tom Antenen said.
The few buildings on the island, such as a onetime insane asylum, are overgrown with vegetation, except for a recently abandoned prison barracks, which still has fences with concertina wire.
Every plot of 150 bodies has a white marker. The location of each body is recorded in case a relative comes to claim it. About 90 bodies are exhumed each year.
Al Saunders, a city employee, uses a backhoe to dig the trench where the caskets are laid two across and stacked three high. He has buried thousands of coffins since 1984 - and has had to dig a few up.
"It isn't the nicest job going, but it has to be done," he said. "You have to develop a callous attitude, because how much death can you see without it having an effect on you?"
Saunders said one of his predecessors became so preoccupied with death he had nightmares and quit.
The prisoners, many shirtless in the sun, hoisted Diaz's casket into the trench, then put three more inside. No words were said as Diaz and Marrero were buried. The inmates reached for the next casket and the next until their chore was done.
Saunders dropped the soil onto the common grave with his backhoe. The prisoners smoothed out the loam with rakes and shovels.
Diaz and Marrero were known as Mike and Joe, according to a New York Newsday article that appeared shortly after their deaths.
"They were good people," one friend, Daisy Aldebedo, told the newspaper. "They got high, but they worked for their money. They never robbed anyone."
The city planned to build low-income housing on the lot where Diaz, Marrero and the third man, Benjamin Olivera, were killed.
There are an estimated 70,000 homeless people in New York City. In recent weeks, hundreds of homeless people have been evicted from train stations and bank-machine vestibules.
City shelters have a reputation for violence, and many homeless people shun them because of rules that residents must be drug- and alcohol-free, said Marjorie Valleau, a spokeswoman for the city Human Resources Administration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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^PM-Paupers' Graveyard
^Paupers' Graveyard: Only the Dead Know Hart Island
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ The city couldn't provide them homes when they were alive. But after the two men died - killed when their cave beneath a razed building collapsed - they were given a final resting place on a grassy, quiet island.
Quiet because only the dead reside on Hart Island. About 700,000 bodies are buried on the 100-acre island. A paupers' graveyard for 121 years, it is among the most intensively used pieces of real estate in New York City.
Miguel Marrero and Jose Diaz were buried Wednesday, 34 days after the shelter they dug collapsed in a rainstorm.
The body of a third man who died with them was claimed by his family. But because the bodies of Marrero and Diaz lay unclaimed in the morgue for more than two weeks, they were sent to Hart Island.
A ferry bearing a stack of 14 pine caskets containing the bodies of Marrero, Diaz and other indigents chugged to the island in Long Island Sound, about a mile from the borough of the Bronx.
Diaz's and Marrero's names were written in black marker on their rough-hewn caskets. Another casket had the markings UNK WHT M, for unknown white male.
The bodies headed for Hart Island are not embalmed and the caskets are thin. That way, nature can reclaim them and the burial plots can be used again in a few decades, in a macabre recycling program.
"A box sometimes falls apart as we're moving it and a body rolls out," said Jerome DiSisto, a corrections officer accompanying the burial detail. "If that happens, we just get an empty box, put the body in and that's all."
Capt. Gene Ruppert, another corrections official, said an average of 1,500 adults are buried each year on the island, in addition to 1,500 infants, most of them stillborn. A quarter or more of those buried are believed to have been homeless.
The Corrections Department manages the island and all burials are performed by inmates, who earn 50 cents an hour, department spokesman Tom Antenen said.
The few buildings on the island, such as a onetime insane asylum, are overgrown with vegetation, except for a recently abandoned prison barracks, which still has fences with concertina wire.
Every plot of 150 bodies has a white marker. The location of each body is recorded in case a relative comes to claim it. About 90 bodies are exhumed each year.
Al Saunders, a city employee, uses a backhoe to dig the trench where the caskets are laid two across and stacked three high. He has buried thousands of coffins since 1984 - and has had to dig a few up.
"It isn't the nicest job going, but it has to be done," he said. "You have to develop a callous attitude, because how much death can you see without it having an effect on you?"
Saunders said one of his predecessors became so preoccupied with death he had nightmares and quit.
The prisoners, many shirtless in the sun, hoisted Diaz's casket into the trench, then put three more inside. No words were said as Diaz and Marrero were buried. The inmates reached for the next casket and the next until their chore was done.
Saunders dropped the soil onto the common grave with his backhoe. The prisoners smoothed out the loam with rakes and shovels.
Diaz and Marrero were known as Mike and Joe, according to a New York Newsday article that appeared shortly after their deaths.
"They were good people," one friend, Daisy Aldebedo, told the newspaper. "They got high, but they worked for their money. They never robbed anyone."
The city planned to build low-income housing on the lot where Diaz, Marrero and the third man, Benjamin Olivera, were killed.
There are an estimated 70,000 homeless people in New York City. In recent weeks, hundreds of homeless people have been evicted from train stations and bank-machine vestibules.
City shelters have a reputation for violence, and many homeless people shun them because of rules that residents must be drug- and alcohol-free, said Marjorie Valleau, a spokeswoman for the city Human Resources Administration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME PAGE: https://andrewap-nystories.blogspot.com/
My Relative Dodges Death Time and Time Again Amid Revolution and War
7-5-1992
Undated (AP) _ EDITOR'S NOTE - For three generations a collection of family memoirs passed from attic to attic. At length, a great-great-grandnephew took a look. What he found was a saga of terror, bloodshed and intrigue, a personal account of one soldier who fought in the Russian army in World War I and witnessed the communist revolution. By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - On the night of Jan. 5, 1918, a friend whispered a warning, provided a fast horse, and Valerian Yavorsky, a 25-year-old lieutenant, escaped certain death at the hands of the Russian soldiers he commanded.
A few days later he escaped execution once again, this time by the crazed officer who commanded him. And again and again after that when his jailers held a gun to his head and forced him to watch as others were tied to a tree and shot.
When death finally came it was at age 99 after a peaceful and varied career in the United States, as a tennis pro, industrial analyst and teacher. Yavorsky did not live to witness the collapse of the communist government which so terrorized him and he so despised.
Valerian Yavorsky was my father's great-uncle. His remarkable story is contained in a stack of memoirs passed down through my father to me.
The yellowing pages went unread for months before I got around to them. I discovered not the boring monologue I expected but a thriller, a tale of danger, betrayal and lucky escapes.
They form part of a fading collective memory of the Russian Revolution. As witnesses to that momentous event age and die, only such written accounts, and those retold by their families remain.
Yavorsky was born in 1893 and raised in Odessa. He was a medical student, a tennis champ and soccer player. His entire amateur soccer team enlisted in the army at the start of World War I. He completed officer training and became a company commander in January 1915 in the 4th Sharpshooters Division, fighting the Germans and their allies.
His memoirs describe his respect for his foes and the massive losses both sides suffered. He himself was wounded in battle three times.
"None of the Russian, French or English soldiers could be compared with the Germans," he wrote. "No one questioned their ability to fight and to die heroically."
"In a fight at Tziganka Mara, with about 50 soldiers left out of 250 after having turned back the Germans all day, we stopped them for the last time at six o'clock in the evening after twelve attacks. Oh, they could die, and that they did. My company was remanned during the night. The next morning we took the offensive."
In October 1917, Lenin, trying to consolidate his revolution and wipe out remnants of czarist rule, encouraged workers, peasants and soldiers to revolt. At that point Yavorsky found himself in danger of being slain by his own troops.
"You would not like to see what went on during those days at the front lines. I do not like to think of it either. ... Every soldier who did not like his officer could arrest that officer and even kill him without any trial. A shoemaker was now telling a general what to do if he wanted to stay alive."
On that fateful night of Jan. 5, 1918, revolutionaries in Yavorsky's division called a meeting of all enlisted men. No officers were allowed.
"About three o'clock in the morning my orderly quietly slipped in and, in a whisper, told me, 'Your honor,' and then corrected himself, 'Comrade Lieutenant, the meeting is over; you had better pack whatever you can take with you and run away from here. It was decided that all of you will be killed in the morning. I will have a horse ready for you in the back yard.'"
Yavorsky warned his commander, who told his officers to save themselves. Then he fled with two other lieutenants.
"Rifle, shoulder straps were discarded and all insignias from the military caps and coats which would have identified ourselves as officers were removed. We looked like soldiers deserting the front and we tried to act accordingly."
The three joined a "Battalion of Death" composed of officers who had left their divisions and were preparing to fight the revolutionaries. But "in two days we realized that our commander was not a normal person ... in those two days he personally killed about a dozen of his officers whom he did not trust completely and so the three of us decided to run away again."
Yavorsky returned to Odessa, where he enrolled in law and drama school. In March 1918, the new Soviet government signed a peace agreement with Germany. But civil war raged between the Red and the White army, which had been formed to oust Lenin's government.
As civil order in Odessa crumbled, Yavorsky joined a group of armed students who guarded banks and prisons and patrolled the streets. Three days later, the Red army captured the city and installed their secret police, the Cheka, later renamed the KGB.
On May 5, 1919, Yavorsky was on his way to a play rehearsal when the Cheka arrested him and accused him of being a Capt. Yavorsky of the White army. Although he had been in a White army unit - the "Battalion of Death" - for two days, he denied it.
He was held with 60 other prisoners in a former classroom. The commissar of the cell gave him the spot of a man who had been shot the previous night.
Guards periodically took prisoners away, telling them to leave their belongings behind - that they wouldn't need anything where they were going. Those prisoners were not seen again.
One day three guards took a man named Gregoriev away. The prisoners were ordered to the window.
"We all came and saw that the guards had led Gregoriev to a tree which stood in the yard," he wrote. "They offered to tie him to the tree, but he refused to be tied. Then they started putting a blindfold on, but he tore it off. He stood there against the tree facing the three guards with lifted rifles. 'Shoot,' the command (was) shouted, and by the force of the bullets Gregoriev was first pushed to the tree and then slowly settled down to the ground."
A Cheka officer, named only as Michail, told the prisoners that such a fate awaited all traitors.
"At night half a dozen men were taken away and I began to wonder how soon my turn would come. ... I was told secretly that those who were taken out had been taken across the street into the Cheka headquarters and shot there in the deep cellars so that the shooting wouldn't be audible from the outside."
Another night two prisoners, as they were being led across the street, threw salt and pepper they had been saving for weeks into the eyes of their guards and escaped.
"We never had salt and pepper brought in again."
One day, a guard came for Yavorsky.
A man named Severny, the head of the Cheka in Odessa, told him he would be forgiven of having been in the White army if he signed a confession.
Yavorsky, believing he would be signing his own death sentence, denied the charge. Michail came in and pointed a gun at him but Yavorsky repeated the denial and made up a story about being a socialist activist in the university before the war.
"I was fighting for my life. I called upon every stage trick I had learned at school. John Barrymore had nothing on me. The argument lasted for another hour and although the gun was next to my head most of the time, they could not shake me."
The other prisoners were surprised when Yavorsky was returned to the cell. The same day, a new prisoner - whom Yavorsky had known slightly - was put beside him for five days. The man tried to befriend Yavorsky and get him to admit he had been with the White army. Yavorsky, believing it was a trap, repeated his denials.
One day, the cell's commissar was taken away and shot in the yard without explanation.
Yavorsky was brought before Severny again and was told he was found innocent of having been in the White army. But he faced a new accusation - of having written an anti-communist poem. A typewritten copy of the poem was found in Yavorsky's desk.
Yavorsky had indeed written it, but explained that he had typed someone else's verses found at random as a typing lesson. Yavorsky was astounded when he was returned to the cell yet again.
The executions continued.
"One hysterical man was dragged out of the room. He was screaming his heart out, he was swearing, accusing the communists of doublecrossing, (he was a communist himself) and he shouted all the way down the steps and into the yard. He was yelling while they tied him to the tree and fought them until the shots were fired and he settled down at the roots of the tree.
"Every time a killing took place a truck was driven in and the motor was raced so the shots wouldn't be heard outside. Then the body was thrown on the truck and the show was over."
"Quite often we were ordered to the windows to witness executions of people from other rooms or cells. Sometimes I felt that perhaps it would be better to call an end to it. How much longer could a man last? Several in my room went mad and were taken away."
On May 27, a guard told Yavorsky to collect his things. Severny told him his explanations were believed and that he was a free man.
After he got home, Yavorsky saw himself in a mirror for the first time in weeks. "I didn't look so good." His brown hair had gone gray at the temples. He was only 26.
Being released by the Soviet government did not win him over to their side - his memoirs refer to them as murderers, hypocrites and liars.
Most of his friends were dead or in the White army.
He joined the White army's naval fleet and served there until the anti- communist forces were defeated in October 1920. He had married shortly before then and escaped on a boat with his bride to Turkey.
Two years later Yavorsky came to the United States, where he found work as a tennis instructor for several clubs and acted with Russian emigre theater in New York City.
In June 1929 he became the summer tennis pro at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulpher Springs, W.Va. In the winter, he taught at the Boca Raton Club in Florida and played exhibition games against such stars as Bill Tilden and Don Budge.
Another of his tennis partners was Frederick Rentschler, chief of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. When the Greenbrier was converted to use as an Army hospital during World War II, Yavorsky got a job as an analyst for Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut. He worked there from 1942 until the mid-1950s.
In the 1960s, he moved to Boca Raton and taught mechanical drawing, tennis and art at St. Andrew's prep school there. Yavorsky and his wife, Eugenie, never had children.
He died in Boca Raton in 1979, 12 years before the collapse of the communist government. Few were aware, even in his family, of the special feeling he would have had on that occasion.
End Adv Sunday July 5
Undated (AP) _ EDITOR'S NOTE - For three generations a collection of family memoirs passed from attic to attic. At length, a great-great-grandnephew took a look. What he found was a saga of terror, bloodshed and intrigue, a personal account of one soldier who fought in the Russian army in World War I and witnessed the communist revolution. By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - On the night of Jan. 5, 1918, a friend whispered a warning, provided a fast horse, and Valerian Yavorsky, a 25-year-old lieutenant, escaped certain death at the hands of the Russian soldiers he commanded.
A few days later he escaped execution once again, this time by the crazed officer who commanded him. And again and again after that when his jailers held a gun to his head and forced him to watch as others were tied to a tree and shot.
When death finally came it was at age 99 after a peaceful and varied career in the United States, as a tennis pro, industrial analyst and teacher. Yavorsky did not live to witness the collapse of the communist government which so terrorized him and he so despised.
Valerian Yavorsky was my father's great-uncle. His remarkable story is contained in a stack of memoirs passed down through my father to me.
The yellowing pages went unread for months before I got around to them. I discovered not the boring monologue I expected but a thriller, a tale of danger, betrayal and lucky escapes.
They form part of a fading collective memory of the Russian Revolution. As witnesses to that momentous event age and die, only such written accounts, and those retold by their families remain.
Yavorsky was born in 1893 and raised in Odessa. He was a medical student, a tennis champ and soccer player. His entire amateur soccer team enlisted in the army at the start of World War I. He completed officer training and became a company commander in January 1915 in the 4th Sharpshooters Division, fighting the Germans and their allies.
His memoirs describe his respect for his foes and the massive losses both sides suffered. He himself was wounded in battle three times.
"None of the Russian, French or English soldiers could be compared with the Germans," he wrote. "No one questioned their ability to fight and to die heroically."
"In a fight at Tziganka Mara, with about 50 soldiers left out of 250 after having turned back the Germans all day, we stopped them for the last time at six o'clock in the evening after twelve attacks. Oh, they could die, and that they did. My company was remanned during the night. The next morning we took the offensive."
In October 1917, Lenin, trying to consolidate his revolution and wipe out remnants of czarist rule, encouraged workers, peasants and soldiers to revolt. At that point Yavorsky found himself in danger of being slain by his own troops.
"You would not like to see what went on during those days at the front lines. I do not like to think of it either. ... Every soldier who did not like his officer could arrest that officer and even kill him without any trial. A shoemaker was now telling a general what to do if he wanted to stay alive."
On that fateful night of Jan. 5, 1918, revolutionaries in Yavorsky's division called a meeting of all enlisted men. No officers were allowed.
"About three o'clock in the morning my orderly quietly slipped in and, in a whisper, told me, 'Your honor,' and then corrected himself, 'Comrade Lieutenant, the meeting is over; you had better pack whatever you can take with you and run away from here. It was decided that all of you will be killed in the morning. I will have a horse ready for you in the back yard.'"
Yavorsky warned his commander, who told his officers to save themselves. Then he fled with two other lieutenants.
"Rifle, shoulder straps were discarded and all insignias from the military caps and coats which would have identified ourselves as officers were removed. We looked like soldiers deserting the front and we tried to act accordingly."
The three joined a "Battalion of Death" composed of officers who had left their divisions and were preparing to fight the revolutionaries. But "in two days we realized that our commander was not a normal person ... in those two days he personally killed about a dozen of his officers whom he did not trust completely and so the three of us decided to run away again."
Yavorsky returned to Odessa, where he enrolled in law and drama school. In March 1918, the new Soviet government signed a peace agreement with Germany. But civil war raged between the Red and the White army, which had been formed to oust Lenin's government.
As civil order in Odessa crumbled, Yavorsky joined a group of armed students who guarded banks and prisons and patrolled the streets. Three days later, the Red army captured the city and installed their secret police, the Cheka, later renamed the KGB.
On May 5, 1919, Yavorsky was on his way to a play rehearsal when the Cheka arrested him and accused him of being a Capt. Yavorsky of the White army. Although he had been in a White army unit - the "Battalion of Death" - for two days, he denied it.
He was held with 60 other prisoners in a former classroom. The commissar of the cell gave him the spot of a man who had been shot the previous night.
Guards periodically took prisoners away, telling them to leave their belongings behind - that they wouldn't need anything where they were going. Those prisoners were not seen again.
One day three guards took a man named Gregoriev away. The prisoners were ordered to the window.
"We all came and saw that the guards had led Gregoriev to a tree which stood in the yard," he wrote. "They offered to tie him to the tree, but he refused to be tied. Then they started putting a blindfold on, but he tore it off. He stood there against the tree facing the three guards with lifted rifles. 'Shoot,' the command (was) shouted, and by the force of the bullets Gregoriev was first pushed to the tree and then slowly settled down to the ground."
A Cheka officer, named only as Michail, told the prisoners that such a fate awaited all traitors.
"At night half a dozen men were taken away and I began to wonder how soon my turn would come. ... I was told secretly that those who were taken out had been taken across the street into the Cheka headquarters and shot there in the deep cellars so that the shooting wouldn't be audible from the outside."
Another night two prisoners, as they were being led across the street, threw salt and pepper they had been saving for weeks into the eyes of their guards and escaped.
"We never had salt and pepper brought in again."
One day, a guard came for Yavorsky.
A man named Severny, the head of the Cheka in Odessa, told him he would be forgiven of having been in the White army if he signed a confession.
Yavorsky, believing he would be signing his own death sentence, denied the charge. Michail came in and pointed a gun at him but Yavorsky repeated the denial and made up a story about being a socialist activist in the university before the war.
"I was fighting for my life. I called upon every stage trick I had learned at school. John Barrymore had nothing on me. The argument lasted for another hour and although the gun was next to my head most of the time, they could not shake me."
The other prisoners were surprised when Yavorsky was returned to the cell. The same day, a new prisoner - whom Yavorsky had known slightly - was put beside him for five days. The man tried to befriend Yavorsky and get him to admit he had been with the White army. Yavorsky, believing it was a trap, repeated his denials.
One day, the cell's commissar was taken away and shot in the yard without explanation.
Yavorsky was brought before Severny again and was told he was found innocent of having been in the White army. But he faced a new accusation - of having written an anti-communist poem. A typewritten copy of the poem was found in Yavorsky's desk.
Yavorsky had indeed written it, but explained that he had typed someone else's verses found at random as a typing lesson. Yavorsky was astounded when he was returned to the cell yet again.
The executions continued.
"One hysterical man was dragged out of the room. He was screaming his heart out, he was swearing, accusing the communists of doublecrossing, (he was a communist himself) and he shouted all the way down the steps and into the yard. He was yelling while they tied him to the tree and fought them until the shots were fired and he settled down at the roots of the tree.
"Every time a killing took place a truck was driven in and the motor was raced so the shots wouldn't be heard outside. Then the body was thrown on the truck and the show was over."
"Quite often we were ordered to the windows to witness executions of people from other rooms or cells. Sometimes I felt that perhaps it would be better to call an end to it. How much longer could a man last? Several in my room went mad and were taken away."
On May 27, a guard told Yavorsky to collect his things. Severny told him his explanations were believed and that he was a free man.
After he got home, Yavorsky saw himself in a mirror for the first time in weeks. "I didn't look so good." His brown hair had gone gray at the temples. He was only 26.
Being released by the Soviet government did not win him over to their side - his memoirs refer to them as murderers, hypocrites and liars.
Most of his friends were dead or in the White army.
He joined the White army's naval fleet and served there until the anti- communist forces were defeated in October 1920. He had married shortly before then and escaped on a boat with his bride to Turkey.
Two years later Yavorsky came to the United States, where he found work as a tennis instructor for several clubs and acted with Russian emigre theater in New York City.
In June 1929 he became the summer tennis pro at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulpher Springs, W.Va. In the winter, he taught at the Boca Raton Club in Florida and played exhibition games against such stars as Bill Tilden and Don Budge.
Another of his tennis partners was Frederick Rentschler, chief of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. When the Greenbrier was converted to use as an Army hospital during World War II, Yavorsky got a job as an analyst for Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut. He worked there from 1942 until the mid-1950s.
In the 1960s, he moved to Boca Raton and taught mechanical drawing, tennis and art at St. Andrew's prep school there. Yavorsky and his wife, Eugenie, never had children.
He died in Boca Raton in 1979, 12 years before the collapse of the communist government. Few were aware, even in his family, of the special feeling he would have had on that occasion.
End Adv Sunday July 5
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