The Boston Globe - 02.09.2019

D6 The Boston Globe MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019

Obituaries

By Rebecca R. Ruiz
NEW YORK TIMES
NEW YORK — Nicolás Leoz,
the most powerful man in
South American soccer for
more than two decades, who
had spent recent years under
house arrest in Paraguay fight-
ing extradition to the United
States on corruption charges,
died on Wednesday. He was 90.
The cause was cardiac ar-
rest, his lawyer, Ricardo Preda,
said.
Mr. Leoz was the president
of CONMEBOL, South Ameri-
ca’s soccer confederation, from
1986 to 2013. He was also a
longtime top executive of FIFA,
international soccer’s govern-
ing body, which saw its leader-
ship upended by a sweeping
criminal case announced by
the US Justice Department in

He was one of more than
40 men charged as part of that
inquiry.
In a federal indictment, un-
sealed in May 2015, prosecu-
tors accused Mr. Leoz of repeat-
edlysolicitingandaccepting
six- and seven-figure bribes, en-
gaging in schemes dating to
1991 that had diverted revenue
from international soccer into
his own pocket.
Among Mr. Leoz’s legacies
at CONMEBOL was his reloca-
tion of that organization’s
headquarters to Luque, Para-
guay, near Asunción, where he
won sovereign-territory status
from national lawmakers —
granting the headquarters legal
immunity in the style of an em-
bassy.
Even before US authorities
charged Mr. Leoz in 2015 with
multiple crimes, including
money laundering, wire fraud,
and racketeering conspiracy, he
had been a subject of scandal.
As detailed by news reports

and ethics investigations com- missioned by FIFA, Mr. Leoz was accused of accepting bribes in the late 1980s and early 2000s from a Swiss sports marketing company in ex- change for awarding that company lucrative broadcasting contracts. He was also accused by David Triesman, a British politician and the former head of England’s soccer association, of demanding a knighthood in return for his support of Eng- land’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup. In 2013, after having won reelection for the sixth time as president of CONMEBOL, he resigned from both CONME- BOL and FIFA amid corruption allegations. Of the dozens of people charged in the United States case, which touched multiple continents but centered on South America, Mr. Leoz was among those who had already stepped down from his job, making him absent from the Zurich meetings where his former colleagues were roused from bed in predawn police raids of a luxury hotel.

Interpol issued a so-called red notice for him, telegraph- ing his status as an international wanted person, and Para- guayan authorities placed him under house arrest. Mr. Leoz’s lawyers denied any wrongdoing by their client and argued against his extradition to the United States, invok- ing his advanced age and dete- riorating health. In 2018, a court in Paraguay approved his extradition, but Mr. Leoz ap- pealed that decision, and at the time of his death it was pend- ing before the country’s Su- preme Court. Nicolás Leoz Almirón was born Sept. 10, 1928, in Pirizal, in the Paraguayan Chaco, a remote area of the country. He studied to be a lawyer at the National University of Asun- ción. Early in Mr. Leoz’s career, he worked as a sports journal- ist before joining Paraguay’s national basketball confederation. He began at CONMEBOL in 1972, when he was in his early 40s. He was 84 when he stepped down. “Nicolás Leoz sometimes

would confuse his personal fi- nances with CONMEBOL’s fi- nances,” Alejandro Burzaco, an Argentinesportsmarketingex- ecutive and cooperating defen- dant in the US case, testified at trial in Brooklyn in 2017. “He would steal from CONMEBOL.” CONMEBOL, which has sought financial restitution from former officials who have been criminally charged, including Mr. Leoz, acknowl- edged in a brief message on Twitter that it had been in- formed of his death, but the organization did not reply to a re- quest for further comment. In 2015, on the day the United States announced the charges, FIFA’s ethics commit- tee banned Mr. Leoz from working in national or international soccer. Lawmakers in Paraguay soon voted to revoke CONMEBOL’s legal immunity; in 2016, its headquarters, no longer a protected territory, was raided by the police, who seized evidence that was presented at the 2017 trial at which one of Mr. Leoz’s succes- sors at CONMEBOL was con- victed.

NicolásLeoz;

soccerfigure

facedcharges

ofcorruption

ASSOCIATED PRESS/2012 FILE Mr. Leoz, speaking with former Brazilian soccer great Pele, was at one time considered the most powerful figure in South American soccer.

By Giovanni Russonello NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK — Clora Bryant, a trumpeter who was widely considered one of the finest jazz musicians on the West Coast — but who ran into gen- der-based limitations on how famous she could become — died Aug. 23 in Los Angeles. She was 92. Her son Darrin Milton said she died at Cedars-Sinai Medi- cal Center after suffering a heart attack at home. A self-described “trumpet- iste,” Ms. Bryant came of age in the 1940s, aligning herself with the emerging bebop move- ment. But she never lost the brawny elocution and gregari- ous air of a classic big-band player, even as she became a fixture of LA’s modern jazz scene. Often faced with sexist dis- crimination, without support from a major record label or agent, Ms. Bryant did not come forth as a band leader until middle age. By that point the jazz mainstream had moved on to fusion, a style she never em- braced. Andevenwhenjazzhistory became a subject of major aca- demic concern in the late 1970s and 1980s, she was rarely cele- brated at the level of her male counterparts, who had enjoyed greater support throughout their careers. But among themselves, those same musicians often recognized her virtuosity, and she played with many of them. Dizzy Gillespie, an inventor of bebop, found himself dazzled upon first hearing her in the mid-1950s, and took to calling her his protégé. “If you close your eyes, you’ll say it’s a man playing,” Gillespie said in an interview for “Trum- petistically, Clora Bryant,” a documentary directed by Zeinabu Davis. (He apparently intended it as a compliment.) “She has the feeling of the trumpet. The feeling, not just the notes.” Writing in The Los Angeles Times in 1992, when Ms. Bry- ant was in her mid-60s, Dick Wagner noted that she retained her beguiling powers. “When Bryant plays the blues, the sound is low, almost guttural, a smoldering fire,” he wrote. “When she plays a fast tune, the sound is piercing — the fire erupts.” Clora Larea Bryant was born on May 30, 1927, in Denison, Texas, the youngest of three children of Charles and Eulila Bryant. Her father was a day la- borer. Her mother was a home- maker who died when Clora was 3, leaving him to raise his children alone on a salary of $7 a week. Ms. Bryant credited her success as a trumpeter to her father’s tireless support. “Nobody ever told me, ‘You can’t play the trumpet, you’re a girl,’ ” she said in a 2007 interview with JazzTimes magazine. “My father told me, ‘It’s going to be a challenge, but if you’re going to do it, I’m behind you all the way.’ And he was.” She started out on the piano

but took up the trumpet after her high school established an orchestra and marching band. Showing preternatural talent, she often woke up at dawn to take private lessons before the school day began. In 1943 she declined schol- arships to the Oberlin Conser- vatory in Ohio and Bennett Col- lege in North Carolina to attend Prairie View A&M University — a historically black school out- side Houston — because it had an all-female 16-piece jazz band. “When I found out they had an all-girl band there, that’s where I was going,” she said in a wide-ranging six-hour interview with Steven Isoardi for the University of California Los Angeles’s oral history program. But in 1945, after two years at Prairie View, Ms. Bryant moved with her family to Los Angeles and transferred to UCLA. (Her father had been run out of Texas by a group of white people who accused him ofstealingpaint.)Sheimmedi- ately found her way to Central Avenue, the bustling nucleus of black life in the city, where jazz clubs abounded. In 1946 Ms. Bryant joined the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the country’s leading all-female swing ensemble, where she was a featured solo- ist. (Jazz bands led by women had become popular during World War II, and many of these ensembles continued to thrive for years afterward.) Soon after, she joined the Queens of Rhythm, another large group. When its drummer left, she learned drums to fill the role. A crowd-pleaser, she sometimes played trumpet with one hand while drum- ming with the other. Ms. Bryant married bassist Joe Stone in the late 1940s, and the couple had two children. In one publicity photo with the Queens of Rhythm, she subtly conceals an eight-month preg- nancy. She and Stone eventual- ly divorced, and she raised their children as a single parent, con- tinuing to perform all the while. Ms. Bryant leaves her four children — April and Charles Stone, from her marriage to Stone, and Kevin and Darrin Milton, from her relationship with drummer Leslie Milton — as well as nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her brothers, Frederick and Melvin, died before her. Ms. Bryant retired from playing trumpet in the 1990s after suffering a heart attack and undergoing quadruple by- pass surgery. She committed herself to preserving and pass- ing on jazz’s legacy, giving lec- tures at colleges and universi- ties, working with children in grade schools around Los An- geles, and coediting a book on Los Angeles jazz history. In 2002 the Kennedy Center presented Ms. Bryant with a lifetime achievement award at its Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. She sang some of her own compositions at the event, flanked by younger musicians.

TrumpeterCloraBryant,

at92;pillarofL.A.jazz

By Barry Wilner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
To call Tom Collins the fa-
ther of figure skating tours
might be hyperbole. Then again
...
‘‘Tommy treated everyone
like family,’’ Michelle Kwan, the
greatest skater of her genera-
tion, said Sunday after learning
of Mr. Collins’s death at his
home in Minneapolis at age 88.
‘‘I skated for 14 years in his
show, and I felt like the daugh-
ter he never had.
‘‘Tommy would help any
skater. He’d open his wallet to
anyone in need. He was very
special and we’ll miss him dear-
ly.’’
Kwan and 1988 Olympic
champion Brian Boitano spoke
on the phone Sunday, sharing
both tears and laughs as they
recalled their days on ‘‘Tommy’s
Tour,’’ and Mr. Collins’s role in
the lives of so many figure skat-
ers whose careers he helped
prolong.
‘‘Tom Collins’s death marks
the end of an era, the golden

age of figure skating,’’ Boitano said. ‘‘He stood out in the busi- ness. He was a man of loyalty, vision, and tremendous gener- osity.’’ A former skater in Holiday on Ice, Mr. Collins organized an exhibition tour of the United States with world champion skaters in 1969. It was the fore- runner of Champions on Ice. Mr. Collins was inducted in- to the figure skating halls of fame of the United States and Canada — he was born in Cana- da — and in 2006 sold the US rights to the show. ‘‘We lost our hero, Tom Col- lins, today,’’ the family said in a statement. ‘‘No words can ex- plain how much love and joy he gave us. He shared his fun-lov- ing charismatic personality with everyone he met. He will be dearly missed by all of us, his dear friends and the figure skating community.’’ Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion and himself an entrepreneur in the sport — Hamilton founded Stars on Ice

soon after he won the gold medal — called Mr. Collins ‘‘the greatest impresario of skating.’’ ‘‘There wasn’t a champion skater since the 1970s that didn’t perform in one of his shows,’’ Hamilton said. ‘‘It was at one of his shows in Toledo, Ohio, that I saw championship skating live for the very first time in his World Champions Tour in 1970. Little did I know I would do my first show with him in 1978, where I bombed and was so embarrassed I left without my $50 honorarium. Every time I was able to speak publicly about Tommy, I would say that he still owes me $50.’’ In addition to figure skating, Mr. Collins also handled mer- chandising for such musical acts as the Beach Boys, Neil Di- amond, John Denver, the Blues Brothers, and the Cars. Last spring, skaters and oth- ers involved with Champions on Ice held a reunion in Minne- apolis to honor Mr. Collins. ‘‘It wasn’t just the skaters who showed up but the chore-

ographers, the people who did the lighting, everyone who was part of the shows,’’ Kwan said. ‘‘They all loved Tommy and he treated all of them so well. ‘‘He would call my dad every two weeks just to talk about things. He made all of us feel like part of his family.’’ Hamilton, a cancer survivor who oversees many charity events, last spent time with Mr. Collins about a year ago at Hamilton’s Sk8 To Elimin8 Can- cer show in Minneapolis. Ham- ilton missed the reunion earlier this year while viewing his son’s school play. Mr. Collins later called him and said, ‘‘It was the greatest night of my life,’’ and the only thing that could’ve made it better was if Hamilton were able to attend. ‘‘He always called me ‘Ham- ilton!’ in a loud voice. He said. ‘Hamilton! You missed it!’ I loved hearing the joy in his voice for that very special night. I haven’t cried this hard in a very long time. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.’’

TomCollins,at88;organizedtoursforOlympicskaters

By Livia Albeck-Ripka
NEW YORK TIMES
NEW YORK — Ningali Law-
ford-Wolf, an indigenous Aus-
tralian actress who brought the
world of her people to the stage
and, most notably, to the
screen in the film “Rabbit-
Proof Fence,” died Aug. 11 in
Edinburgh, where she was
touring with the Sydney The-
ater Company. She was be-
lieved to be 52.
Her death, from complica-
tions of an asthma attack, was
confirmed by her partner, Joe
Edgar, with whom she lived in
Broome, Australia’s northwest
coast.
Ms. Lawford-Wolf spent two
decades playing indigenous
roles, enlightening audiences
about the experience of aborigi-
nal Australians.
“What people saw in her,”
Edgar said, “was a real, genu-
ine personality that was not
pretentious.”
Ms. Lawford-Wolf originally

trained as a dancer with the Aboriginal Islander Dance The- ater and later performed with the Bangarra Dance Theater, both in Sydney. Her stage breakthrough came in 1994 with a critically praised one- woman show, “Ningali,” which portrayed through dance, song, and satire her struggle to main- tain her identity as an aboriginal woman in mainstream Aus- tralia. She said she wanted to challenge white people’s generaliza- tions about aboriginal Austra- lians. “I am sick and tired of people categorizing us,” she told The Age of Melbourne in

“I’m sick and tired of
people just talking.”
“That’s why I’m doing this,”
she added, “because I was one
of those people — talk, talk and
no action.”
Ms. Lawford-Wolf was born
in the remote community of
Wangkatjungka in Western
Australia, probably in 1967 but

possibly in 1968. (Edgar said there was no official record of her birth.) She spoke three languages — Gooniyandi, Walma- jarri, and Wangkatjungka — but little English until she was 11. Her father, who worked on a cattle farm, had been forcibly removed from his own parents as a child under a national poli- cy designed to assimilate aboriginal children, known as the “stolen generations.” He rein- forced to his own children that in order to educate white Aus- tralians, they would have to become adept at navigating deftly between the indigenous and white realms. “If you want to say some- thing in anger they won’t listen to you,” Ms. Lawford-Wolf said in an interview with The Ob- server of London in 1995. “So you’ve got to learn to be diplo- matic, to learn to change it all around, to do it in their little syrupy way.”

“I think,” she added, “I’ve managed to perfect that.” At 13, Ms. Lawford-Wolf left for boarding school in Perth on a government scholarship. Soon after, she applied to go to the United States on an ex- change program. She was hoping to move to Hollywood, but at 17 she was instead posted to Anchorage, where, despite the fact that her first languages had no words for ice, she found similarities between her own experience and those of Native Americans. “Their struggle in America made me realize our struggle more. Made me notice my cul- ture, my language, my people more, and our fight for recogni- tion,” Ms. Lawford-Wolf told The Canberra Times in 1995. The advice a grandparent gave her in those crucial mo- ments before she left Australia would later provide the founda- tion for “Ningali”: “Go wherev- er you want, be the very best.

But if you lose your language, you lose your connection to you. You lose everything.” Following the success of that show, Ms. Lawford-Wolf performed in stage productions for the Belvoir St Theater, the Black Swan State Theater Com- pany, and the Sydney Theater Company. She also appeared in films. In addition to Phillip Noyce’s “Rabbit-Proof Fence” (2002), which depicted the plight of three girls forcibly removed from their mother under the government assimilation poli- cy, she was seen in “Bran Nue Dae” (2009), about a teenager trying to hitchhike home to his community, and “Last Cab to Darwin” (2015), in which she played the love interest of a taxi driver with terminal cancer. That performance led to a nomination for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Televi- sion Arts Award for best actress in a leading role.

In 2002, Ms. Lawford-Wolf developed and starred in an improvised play together with Hung Le, an Australian Viet- namese actor and comedian. In the play, based on a true story, the two meet in a bar and crack jokes about race that at the time were uncomfortable for many Australians. “Nobody had ever seen a Vietnamese and an aboriginal person onstage together before,” Le wrote in a tribute to Ms. Lawford-Wolf on Face- book. By e-mail, he added that the show had “kicked the door open for comedy lovers who had never had the opportunity to hear blackfella stories before,” using a slang term for an indigenous Australian. In recent years, Ms. Law- ford-Wolf had also become involved in community work, ad- vocating for indigenous Austra- lians and mentoring students near her hometown.

NingaliLawford-Wolf,Australianactorwhoopenedthedoortoindigenousworld

The Boston Globe - 02.09.2019

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