LAFF Society

NEWSLETTER

In Memoriam

 

Eugene “Rocky” Staples died last October in Wakefield, R.I., where he had a second home. He was 91. He was at the Foundation for 17 years, nearly all of that time working in Asia and on Asia-related programs.
 
Mr. Staples began at Ford in 1964 as associate director for Policy and Planning and then as assistant to the vice president for the International Division before becoming involved with the Foundation’s work in Asia.
 
In 1967 he was named the deputy of the South and Southeast Asia program, then head of the Asia and Pacific office. He was Ford’s representative in Southeast Asia before returning to New York as a program officer in 1981. He retired later that year.
 
He had a long, varied and colorful career before and after Ford, beginning as a Marine Corps fighter pilot in the Pacific theater during World War II, where he survived an attack on the carrier the USS Franklin on March 19, 1945, that caused hundreds of casualties. 
 
After the war he graduated from the English-language Mexico City College and then did advanced work in Russian-language studies at the U.S. State Department and U.S. Army language institutes. He was a news correspondent in Mexico for the old United Press and then joined the Foreign Service in 1951, where he helped plan a South American tour for Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1958. 
 
The next year, he was sent to Moscow to set up an exhibit of American products that became the scene of the famous “kitchen debate”, when Vice President Nixon lectured Russia’s premier Nikita Khrushchev on the relative values of the two countries’ political systems.
 
He served in the United States embassy in Moscow for three years before leaving to go to work at the Ford Foundation. 
 
After he left Ford he worked in the Asia Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development and served in Pakistan from 1985 until his retirement from foreign service in 1988.
 
In 1992 he helped establish the Eurasia Foundation, which provides community development grants to former republics of the Soviet Union and other locales, and was its president when he retired from that organization in 1997.
 
His first wife, the former Charlotte Stern, died in 1978 after 30 years of marriage, and his second marriage, to Suzanne Fisher, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 20 years, Judy Reynolds Staples, three children, a brother and four grandchildren. 
 
Siobhan Oppenheimer-Nicolau, who was the first woman program officer in the Foundation’s National Affairs office and worked at Ford from 1968 to 1981, overseeing Hispanic and Native American initiatives, died last September at her home in Banteer, Ireland.
 
While at Ford she was instrumental in developing the National Council of La Raza, now the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. She also funded and advised the National Conference of American Indians and many tribal organizations.
 
In 1981 Mrs. Nicolau founded the Hispanic Policy Development Project, a policy analysis group dedicated to Hispanic-American issues, and for many years conducted the annual Aspen Institute Seminar on Hispanic Americans and the Business Community. She was also the only non-Native American member of the board of the First Nations Development Institute.
 
She was involved in the work of many foundations as a board member and consultant, most notably in advising Ewing M. Kauffman as he set up the billion-dollar Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which she then served as a trustee until she retired in 2012, having been its longest-serving trustee. She also co-founded the National Film Archive of Philanthropy that is housed at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. 
 
As a recognized authority on philanthropy and a champion of minorities and human rights, she was one of the authors of the “Glass Ceiling” report of the U.S. Department of Labor.
 
Mrs. Nicolau, who also had a home in New York City, is survived by her husband, George Nicolau, their five children and six grandchildren, and a brother, Jack Caffrey.
 
Mary Kroski, a retired administrative assistant at the Foundation, died last October. She had been living on Staten Island, in New York City.
 
Ms. Kroski began at Ford in 1988 as a secretary in the Urban Poverty program, later transferring to the Human Development and Reproductive Health office. She was named an administrative assistant in 1999 and worked in the Education, Sexuality and Religion unit and then the Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom program before retiring in 2003.
 
Penny Alex, who worked in the Foundation’s Latin America and Caribbean program from 1984 to 1997, died in May. 
 
“She was always a positive person,” said Nellie Toma, who worked with her at Ford, “and, even though she had been ill for a long time, always had a happy demeanor.”
 
Her husband died three years ago. She is survived by two sons, Michael and Scott, and a daughter-in-law, Sally.

 

 

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