The Boston Globe - 02.08.2019

FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 The Boston Globe C11

Obituaries

ByBryan Marquard

GLOBE STAFF

Good bookeditors can be as

invaluable to authorsas they

are invisible to readers, and

those writers whobenefited

fromVirginia W. LaPlante’s tal-

entswereunsparingin their

praise.

“You would send a draft in

to her and witha very deft

touch she would send some-

thing backto you that was just

a hundredpercentbetter — a

thousandpercentbetter,” said

Dr. JudithHerman, who

worked withMs. LaPlante on

booksincluding“Traumaand

Recovery.”

At Harvard University Press

for many years, and then for the

rest of her life on a freelanceba-

sis, Ms. LaPlante edited many

authors and numerous booksof

fiction and nonfiction about

subjects that included psychol-

ogy, literary criticism,and legal

matters. Eachmanuscript, Her-

mansaid,wouldleave Ms.

LaPlante’s handsmorepolished

than it had been when she jot-

ted down her first editing notes.

“You didn’t knowyou were a

good writer until she made you

a good writer,” Herman said.

“Thatwashergift,andshedid

it with grace and kindness.”

Ms. LaPlante, who also was

a mainstay of Brookline poli-

tics, serving for nearly 50 years

as an elected Town Meeting

member, was 88 whenshe died

at homein Brookline June 28

frommedical complications fol-

lowinga fall.

“My mother was really good

at figuring out what you want-

ed to say and helping you say

it,” said her daughter, the writer

Eve LaPlante of Brookline,

whosebooks “Seized” and

“AmericanJezebel” were edited

by Ms. LaPlante.

Though Ms. LaPlante helped

everyone from authors to her

grandchildrenrefine their

thoughts,the clarity she

broughtout in writingwas par-

ticularly indispensable to those

she edited, Hermansaid.

“She was working to help

you develop your ideas. She was

not imposingher ideason you,”

Herman recalled. “That’s part

of the generosity of editors in

general and, I think, of her in

particular.”

Ms. LaPlante focused on de-

tails smalland large for books

she edited — in someinstances

helping shape early ideasthat

led writers to pursue particular

topics, her daughtersaid.

As an analogy, Hermanin-

voked the pre-digital days of

photography, when prints were

developed in chemicals and re-

touchedby handafterward.

“In the old days, whenthere

usedto be darkrooms, one of

the things that wouldhappen

after a roughprint was madeis

that you wouldgo around and

touch it up with little bits of

black,” she said.

“You didn’t even know the

photo was fuzzyuntilyou saw

how it came to life, how clear it

became,onceyou touched it

up,” Herman added. “And that

was Virginia’s gift. She turned

thingsthat werefuzzyand un-

focused into something clear

and persuasive.”

Ms. LaPlante could be equal-

ly persuasivepromoting ideas,

proposals, and people in local

politics, said Arthur Conquest,

who served withher as a Town

Meeting member, and whose

own entry into elective politics

was launchedat her urging.

He had written columns for

the Brookline Tab newspaper

when “one day, in 1998,I heard

a knock on my door and she

was standingthereand asked

me if I wouldbe interested in

joining Town Meeting. To be

quitehonest I didn’t know what

she was talkingabout,” Con-

quest recalled.

More concerned with na-

tional politics, he hadn’t consid-

ered participating in local elec-

tions.

He wasn’t the only candi-

date she guidedinto politics.In

Precinct Six, she helpedlead

the “Neighbors Together”

group and was a mainstay of its

newsletter, Conquest said.

Through that group, she re-

cruitedmany Brookline candi-

dates over the years.

“She was a very, very sweet,

dedicated personwho was com-

mitted to people who don’t nec-

essarilyget support,” Conquest

said. “A lot of younger people

are in Town Meeting because of

Virginia LaPlante.”

He recalled that she also was

at the forefrontof the town’s

progressive politics. “People in

Brooklinelike to say they’re lib-

eral and progressive, but I think

you can set people like Virginia

and myself apart as being revo-

lutionary progressives, separate

from everybody else,” he said.

“You name a majorsocial

justice issue,” he added, “and

Virginiawas rightthere.”

VirginiaWilson was born in

1930 in Pittsburgh,the young-

est of three sisters. Her father

was PhilipJ. Wilson Jr., a chem-

ical engineer who also taught at

the University of Pittsburgh

and what is now Carnegie Mel-

lon University. Her mother, Vir-

giniaEaglesfield,stayed home

to raise the children.

At Bennington College, from

whichshe graduated in 1952,

Ms. LaPlantestudiedwiththe

poets Stanley Kunitz and How-

ard Nemerov, and she wroteher

thesis on the work of William

Faulkner. After graduating, she

beganher career with entry-lev-

el editing jobs in Boston, work-

ing at the BeaconPress and Lit-

tle, Brown publishing houses

before marrying Joseph A.

LaPlante Jr. in 1953.

They moved to Hartford for

his work teaching at the Uni-

versity of Connecticut Schoolof

Law, and they had a daughter

before divorcing in 1962.

Ms. LaPlante, who counted

amongher ancestors Puritans

from the Colonial era, returned

to Boston and settled in

Brookline. She began working

asaneditorwithHarvardUni-

versity Press, where she stayed

until retiring in 1988. From

then on she worked as a free-

lanceeditor.

In 1974,she married Carl

Dreyfus Jr., an insurance agent

with whomshe spentsummers

in Rockport andcountless

hourson tenniscourts. “I think

they met on the tenniscourt,”

Eve said. “They loved tennis.”

Mr. Dreyfus, who had served

as presidentof the Boston Ur-

ban League, died in 2010.

In addition to her daughter,

Eve, Ms. LaPlante leaves three

stepsons, Peter Dreyfus of

Brookline, Andrew Dreyfus of

Newton, and Tony Dreyfus of Ja-

maica Plain;four grandchildren;

and many step-grandchildren

and step-great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be

held at 11 a.m. Saturday in First

Parish in Brookline.

“She was a very quiet person

with a sort of powerful will, and

probably would have liked to

have a louder voice herself, but

didn’t, and so she helped other

peoplefind their voices,” Eve

said.

Such an approach madeMs.

LaPlante well-suited for the be-

hind-the-scenes nature of edit-

ing as she worked on books — a

greenpenciland eraser at the

ready.

“Shealways had a manu-

script out on the kitchentable

that she was workingon,” Eve

said. “She was always writingin

her neat handwriting in green

pencil on thesemanuscripts.”

Herman,who soughtout

Ms. LaPlanteas a freelanceedi-

tor, recalled that “it was always

a pleasure working with her.”

“She had a devotion to the

craft that was really breathtak-

ing, I thought,” Herman said.

“Shewas elegant. Not in an af-

fected way, but in a very genu-

ine, down-to-earth way. And

she was funny. She just made

the wholeenterprisecheerful

and common-sensical.”

BryanMarquardcanbe

reachedat

[email protected].

Virginia LaPlante, deft,

graceful editor of books

Ms. LaPlantewasalsoactive

in Brooklinepolitics.

ByNeil Genzlinger
NEWYORK TIMES
NEWYORK — AgnesHell-
er, a prominentHungarian
philosopher and dissident who
repeatedlyfound herself un-
welcome in her owncountry,
died on July 19 while vacation-
ing on Lake Balaton in western
Hungary. She was 90.
Her son, Gyorgy Feher, said
Mrs. Heller had gone for a
swim,a favoriteactivity, when
her body was found floating in
the lake. She had beenstaying
at the summerresort of the
HungarianAcademy of Scienc-
es in the town of Balatonalma-
di.
The causeof death was not
immediately clear. The police,
Feher said,saw no signof a
heart attack or aneurysm.The
policeruledout the possibility
of a crime,accordingto the
Hungarian news site Hungary
Today.
Mrs. Heller, a prolific, wide-
rangingwriter in multiplelan-
guages, explored Marxism, eth-
ics, and modernity as well as
everyday life. Her eventfullife
includedlosingher fatherin
the Holocaust, falling into offi-
cialdisfavoraftertheHungari-
an uprisingof 1956,and, most
recently, speaking out against
ViktorOrban,Hungary’s right-
wing prime minister.
“A story is always a story of
choices,” she wrotein one of
her last essays, published in the
journal Social Research last
spring. “It was not written in
the stars that Hungary would
fare worst amongall post-Sovi-
et states or that it wouldbe the
most radicalin its elimination
of freedom of the pressor bal-
anceof power in government
and wind up witha system I
call tyranny.
“Tyrannies always collapse,”
she continued,“butwhether
Hungarianswill escapewith

their sanity and sufficient clari-

ty for a new start remains to be

seen.”

Mrs. Heller’s strong criti-

cism of the current Hungarian

governmentleft some friends

and colleaguesa tad skeptical

aboutthe circumstances of her

death.

“She was a strong and avid

swimmer,” Judith Friedlander,

a former deanof the New

Schoolfor SocialResearch in

New York, whereMrs. Heller

taughtfor morethan20 years,

wrote in a tribute to her. “Yet

somehowon Friday, she went

into the water and did not

come out.”

Friedlander called Mrs. Hel-

ler “one of Europe’s most re-

vered philosophers and outspo-

ken dissidents,both during

Communist times and again

more recently.”

Agnes Heller was born on

May 12, 1929, to a middle-class

Jewish familyin Budapest. Her

father, Pal Heller, was a lawyer

and writer who had beenhelp-

ing people escape Hungary and

the Nazi sphere whenhe was

sent to Auschwitz in 1944; he

diedthere.She remainedin

Budapest with her mother, An-

gela Ligeti, expecting to be exe-

cuted — an experience, she

said,that stayed with her per-

manently.

“A trauma cannotbe forgot-

ten,” Mrs. Heller said in a talk

in 2014, when she was award-

ed the WallenbergMedal by

the University of Michigan, giv-

en in memory of Raoul Wallen-

berg, the Swedish diplomat

who rescued tens of thousands

ofHungarianJewsduring

World War II. “You will not for-

get it even if you want to forget

it. The moreyou want to forget

it, the less you can forget it.”

Other family members also

died in the concentration

camps, and one themeof her

later explorationsin philoso-

phy was set.

Much of her writing looked

at issues of ethics and morality

and pondered the relationships

between the self and the hu-

man institutions into which a

personis born. Her earliest in-

fluence was the philosopher

Gyorgy Lukacs, whomshe en-

counteredsomewhat by acci-

dentwhenenrolled at the Uni-

versity of Budapest after the

war. She was studying to be a

scientist, but a boyfriend asked

her to accompany him to a phi-

losophy lecture.

“I sat therelisteningto Lu-

kacs and I understood hardly a

singlesentence,” she told the

journal Radical Philosophy in

1999.“ButI did understand

one thing: that this was the

most important thing I had ev-

er heardin my life,and so I

must understand it.”

She fell into Lukacs’s intel-

lectual circle and later, in the

1960 s, becamea principal

member of what was known as

the Budapest School, philoso-

pherswhosecommonlink was

Lukacs.They initiallyfocused

on applicationsof Marxism,

though most later distanced

themselves from it.

Mrs. Heller also becamepo-

litically active, joining the

Communist Party in 1947.It

was the beginningof a turbu-

lent relationshipwiththe au-

thorities. After the Hungarian

uprisingof 1956was snuffed

out by the Soviet Union, Lu-

kacs was temporarily deported

and fell into official disfavor, as

did his followers. Mrs. Heller

lost her position as a philoso-

phy professorat the University

of Budapest. She felt ostra-

cized.Peopleshe had consid-

ered friendsturnedaway from

her on the street to avoid hav-

ing to greet her.

Her relationship to official

powersin Hungary continued

to be strained,and in 1977she

emigrated to Australia to teach

at La Trobe University in Mel-

bourne.She joinedthe New

School in 1986.

She published at least 20

booksafter leavingHungary.

Sheretiredfromthe New

School in 2009.At her death,

her son said, she had been liv-

ing primarily in Budapest.

Mrs. Heller’s first marriage,

to Istvan Hermannin 1949,

endedin divorcein 1962.Her

second husband, Ferenc Feher,

another member of the Buda-

pest School,diedin 1994.In

addition to her son, she leaves

a daughter from her first mar-

riage, Zsuzsa Hermann.

Agnes Heller, outspoken

Hungarianphilosopher

LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/GETTYIMAGES/2019

Mrs. HellerexploredMarxism,ethics,andmodernity in

herwriting.

ByMatt Schudel
WASHINGTONPOST
WASHINGTON — Corbin
Gwaltney, who broughta tough-
mindedscrutiny to the coverage
of colleges as co-founderand
longtime editor of the Chronicle
of HigherEducation and who
launched a sister publication,
the Chronicleof Philanthropy,
died Monday at his home in Po-
tomac,Md. He was 97.
Mr. Gwaltney beganhis ca-
reer as the editor of the Johns
Hopkins University alumni mag-
azine,whichhe reshapedin the
1950sas an intellectually serious
publication with provocative sto-
ries and vivid photography.
Later, while publishing
newsletters for college trustees,
he saw a needfor a newspaper
to coverthe academic world.
Working at first fromBalti-
more,Mr. Gwaltney and anoth-
er journalist, John Crowl,
launched the Chronicleof
Higher Education in 1966.
‘‘We set out withthe idea
that whilewe weregoing to

make academeour beat, we

were going to be primarily a

journalistic newspaper,’’ Crowl

toldthe Associated Press in

1984.‘‘We were going to hire

journalists to cover academe

the way The Wall Street Journal

covers business.’’

Supported by grantsfrom

the Carnegie Foundation (and

later fromthe Ford Founda-

tion),Mr. Gwaltney and Crowl

published the first issueof the

Chronicle of HigherEducation

on Nov. 23, 1966.

Published by the nonprofit

Editorial Projects in Education,

theChronicleappearedevery

two weeks and struggled to stay

afloat for the first few years.

‘‘If we’d known how difficult

it was going to be at the begin-

ning,’’ Crowlsaid this weekin

an interview, ‘‘we’d probably

never have started.’’

The Chronicle’s headquar-

ters movedto Washington in

1970 — May 4, 1970, to be ex-

act, the day of the National

Guard shootingsthat killedfour

students on the campus of Kent

State University in Ohio. The

paper coveredthe shootings

and othersensitive subjects, in-

cluding student unrest, racial

discrimination, changingsexual

mores, colleges’ investments in

apartheid-era South Africa, and

threats to academicfreedom.

After a few years, the Chron-

icle became a weekly publica-

tion and was read by morethan

90 percent of the country’s top

college administrators.

Mr. Gwaltney gave no in-

depth interviews to any publica-

tion, including his own,but was

a strong presence insidethe

company, withhis whitehair

and tailored suits. He hired staff,

assignedstories,and was the fi-

nal arbiter of grammar and style.

‘‘He was a visionary, obvi-

ously,’’ formerChronicle man-

agingeditorPhil Semas said in

an interview. ‘‘He was also very

detail-oriented. He read every

wordof every issueand did all

the layouts.He had very high

standards,whichmeant he

could be very demanding.’’

In the early 1990 s, when

Crowl retired, Mr. Gwaltney

boughthis shareof the compa-

ny and became its sole owner.

He steppeddownas editor of

the Chronicle of Higher Educa-

tion in his late 70s.

‘‘He was a brillianteditor,

the best wordeditor I’ve ever

run into,’’ Crowl said this week.

‘‘He had a great eye for design.

It was the thrillof a lifetimeto

be able to run the paperand

have it becomesuccessful.”

Howell Corbin Gwaltney Jr.

was born April 16, 1922, in Bal-

timore. His father was a lawyer.

Mr. Gwaltney’s first mar-

riage, to Doris Kell, ended in di-

vorce.His secondwife,Jean

Wyckoff, died in 1990. They

were married 17 years. He leaves

his wife of 15 years,the former

PamelaImburgia,of Potomac;

three children from his first mar-

riage, Jean and Margaret, both

of Chevy Chase, Md., and Thom-

as of Bethesda,Md.;five grand-

children; and a great-grandson.

ByHarrisonSmith
WASHINGTONPOST
Arthur Lazarus Jr., a Wash-
ington lawyerwho represented
Native American tribes for
morethan four decades, nota-
bly securing a landmark $106
millionaward for the Sioux Na-
tion as part of its long fightfor
the Black Hills of South Dakota,
diedJuly 27 at a hospital in
Washington. He was 92.
He had kidney and heart ail-
ments, said his son Edward La-
zarus,a lawyerand authorwho
chronicled the Sioux case in a
criticallyacclaimedbook,
‘‘BlackHills WhiteJustice’’
(1991).
The practice of Indian law
scarcelyexisted whenMr. La-
zarus beganhis career in 1950.
But with tutelage from Felix Co-
hen,an architect of the field,
Mr. Lazarus becamea preemi-
nentpractitioners, known for
workingwith tribes including
the Blackfeet in Montana, the
Miccosukee in Florida,the Nez
Perce in Idaho, the Oglala Sioux
in South Dakota, the San Carlos
Apache in Arizona, and the
Seneca in New York.
With a laconic, restrained

demeanor in and out of the

courtroom,Mr. Lazarustrav-

eled to tribalcouncilmeetings

across the country, offeringle-

gal advice on budgets, land

claims, and dealingswith the

federal government. In Wash-

ington, he lobbied on behalfof

Native American legislation

and helpeddraft the 1971Alas-

ka Native Claims Settlement

Act, which awarded$962mil-

lionand 44 million acres —

roughly 10 percentof the state

— to Alaska Natives.

Mr. Lazarus spent much of

his career working on the his-

toricSiouxNation case,consid-

ered one of the longest legal

battles in American history.

Passed from judge to judge

and eventually lawyer to lawyer

for nearly60 years,the Sioux

Nation case resultedin a 1980

SupremeCourt rulingthat up-

held the largest Indian land

compensation award in US his-

tory, set a standard for later

claims,and divided the approx-

imately 100,000 Sioux. Younger

leadersinsisted that the land

was never up for sale,calling

the process a sham, and the

SiouxNation wenton to reject

the money, which continues to

accrueinterest in Treasury De-

partmentaccountsand was

worth morethan $1 billion as

of 2011.

Known in the Lakota lan-

guage as Paha Sapa, the Black

Hills encompass roughly 7 mil-

lion acres of western South Da-

kota and northeastern Wyo-

ming, a mountainousregion

that was long covered with dark

pinetreesand pocketed with

gold. An 1868treaty set it aside

‘‘for the absoluteand undis-

turbed use and occupancy of

the Sioux,’’ who consider it sa-

cred.

But over the next nine years,

George ArmstrongCuster led

an expeditioninto the hills,a

gold rushbegan, and Congress

reneged on the treaty, reclaim-

ing land that is nowknown

largely as a tourist attraction

home to Mount Rushmore.

Finally, in 1979, the Court of

Claimsawardedthe Sioux

$17.5 million, plus 5 percent in-

terest, for the illegalseizureof

the BlackHills. Whenthe gov-

ernment appealed,objecting to

the interest payment, Mr. La-

zarus argued the case before

the Supreme Court, whichup-

held the paymentin an 8-1 rul-

ing. (Justice William Rehnquist

was the sole dissenter.)

The youngest of three chil-

dren,Arthur LazarusJr. was

bornin Brooklynon Aug. 30,

1926.His father was an indus-

trial engineer and business con-

sultant, and his mother was a

pacifist and adviser to conscien-

tiousobjectors.

Mr. Lazarus appeared before

the SupremeCourt for the first

timein 1959, in an effort to

blockRobert Moses and the

New York Power Authority

from seizing one-fifth of the

Tuscarora Indian Nation’s land

for a power project. He lost in a

6-3 decision,with Justice Hugo

Black lamenting in his dissent

that the government had bro-

ken faith with the tribe.

‘‘Great nations, like great

men,should keep their word,’’

he said.

Mr. Lazarus,whoalso

taughtat Yale Law School, re-

tired from Fried Frank in 1991

and thenjoined Sonosky, re-

cruited by his partnerin the

Sioux Nation case. He retired

from day-to-day work in 2011.

Corbin Gwaltney, editor of Chronicle of Higher Education

ArthurLazarus, at 92; lawyer arguedNative Americanclaims