PASSINGS

Carole Graebner

Doubles champion in tennis

Carole Caldwell Graebner, 65, a tennis player who won doubles titles at the U.S. and Australian championships in the 1960s, died Wednesday in New York City after a brief battle with cancer, said her daughter, Cameron Graebner Mark.

The top-ranked doubles player in the United States in 1963, Graebner teamed with Nancy Richey to capture doubles titles at the 1965 U.S. Championships, now called the U.S. Open, and the 1966 Australian Championships, now known as the Australian Open.

She also won doubles titles at the 1965 and 1966 U.S. Clay Court Championships and was a finalist in singles at the 1964 U.S. Championships, losing to Maria Bueno.

Born June 24, 1943, in Pittsburgh but raised in Santa Monica, Graebner was ranked in the U.S. top 10 in singles from 1961 to 1965 and in 1967. She was on the inaugural 1963 U.S. Fed Cup team and played college tennis alongside Billie Jean King at Cal State L.A.

Graebner later served the U.S. Tennis Assn. as chairwoman of the Fed Cup committee. She was a vice president of Tennis Week magazine and a radio and television commentator.

Boris Fyodorov

Financier aided Russian economy

Boris Fyodorov, 50, a reformist financier who helped bring the Russian economy out of the post-Soviet chaos, has died, his company said in a statement. Russian television said he suffered a heart attack in London three weeks ago and died in a clinic there.

Born in Moscow in 1958, Fyodorov was among the economists who fostered reforms in Russia before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. He also founded one of the country’s largest investment banks, United Financial Group.

Fyodorov’s background was in the planned socialist economy, but he was one of the first Russian financiers to adopt the Western model of a liberal market economy. In 1990, he was one of the authors of “500 Days,” an anti-crisis program that envisaged the end of price regulation and the privatization of state companies.

But all did not work out as planned: The results of privatization were flawed, and a small group of businessmen known as oligarchs amassed vast fortunes and gained control over key sectors of the Russian economy.

Fyodorov held several top government posts in the 1990s, including finance minister and vice premier, and was elected to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

More recently, he had focused on expanding his businesses and had joined the board of the state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom.

Alan Ford

Swimmer set freestyle records

Alan Ford, 84, the first swimmer to break 50 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle race and a silver medalist at the 1948 Olympics, died Nov. 3 in Saratoga, Fla., his alma mater, Yale University, said. The longtime smoker had emphysema.

Ford was born Dec. 7, 1923, in the Panama Canal Zone, where his American grandfather and father worked on the canal. His family sent him back to the United States for school and swimming training when he was a teenager. At 5 feet 9, 170 pounds, he was called the Balboa Bullet at Yale.

Under the tutelage of Yale coach Robert Kiphuth, Ford swam 100 yards in 50.6 seconds in February 1943, breaking icon Johnny Weissmuller’s record of 51 seconds, which had stood for 16 years. A year later, Ford swam the distance in less than 50 seconds and by 1945 had improved his time to 49.4, a mark that stood until 1952.

Ford graduated from Yale in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and served in the Navy.

Having missed the 1944 Olympics, canceled because of World War II, and after taking a 2 1/2 -year hiatus from swimming, he resumed training with Kiphuth only months before the 1948 London Games. Ford finished second to U.S. teammate Walter Ris in the 100-meter freestyle, then retired from swimming. He was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1966. He went on to a career designing and building oil refineries as well as chemical, ore and food processing plants and petroleum and chemical storage facilities.

Alex Omalev

Basketball coach in Fullerton

Alex Omalev, 88, the first men’s basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton who led the Titans for 12 seasons starting in 1960 after having coached for 11 years at Fullerton College, died Nov. 10, the university announced. The cause of death was not specified.

Omalev, whose parents immigrated to the United States from the former Yugoslavia, also served as a translator for Vlade Divac when the Serb joined the Lakers in 1989.

Alexander Omalev was born July 2, 1920, in Hamtramck, Mich. He worked in an automobile factory for a year after high school before playing forward at USC from 1939 to 1943.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, he earned a teaching credential from USC and in 1949 began teaching drama at what was then Fullerton Junior College. When the basketball coach died unexpectedly, Omalev was asked to step in.

Over the next 11 years the Hornets went 262-77 and won eight conference titles and, in 1954, a state championship.

When Cal State Fullerton was formed as Orange County State College, Omalev became its first basketball coach and compiled a 139-176 record. His best season was his second, when the Titans went 24-7 and advanced to the fifth round of the small-college NAIA playoffs.

Among the players he coached there was Bobby Dye, who coached the Titans to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 1978.

Omalev retired as coach in 1972 but taught physical education until 1991.

Fluent in Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and German, Omalev served as language coordinator for basketball at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, overseeing a team of translators for players, officials and the media.

-- Times staff and wire reports