Marlen E. Neumann; Served on 1965 McCone Commission

Marlen Eldredge Neumann, the only woman to serve on the eight-member McCone Commission that investigated the Watts riots of 1965, has died in Washington, D.C., at age 81.

Neumann also served as president of the Los Angeles League of Women Voters and was a member of the city’s Civil Service Commission. She died Tuesday of heart failure, family members said.

She was married to Robert G. Neumann, a UCLA political science professor who became U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia and is now retired, and was the mother of the present U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Ronald E. Neumann.

Neumann served as chairwoman of the Foreign Diplomatic Wives Assn. when her husband was serving in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in the late 1960s. She wrote a book on the history of the American Embassy residence in Kabul.

In a 1968 Times interview, she expressed hope for the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan, which has since come under Islamic fundamentalist control and has adopted a policy against women working or being educated outside the home.

Born in India, where her American father was working as an electrical engineer, Neumann met her future husband, a native Austrian, in 1937 when both were attending a Swiss school.

In 1939, after Robert Neumann was imprisoned in a concentration camp for anti-Nazi activities upon Germany’s annexation of Austria, she and her father arranged for him to come to the United States, where the couple became engaged.

During 19 years in Los Angeles, Neumann was an officer in various capacities in the League of Woman Voters and was president from 1957 to 1959.

Then-Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr. appointed her to the McCone Commission, headed by John A. McCone, a former head of the CIA. The vice chairman was Warren Christopher, later to become U.S. secretary of state.

After three months of study, commission members said in an 88-page report that many of its recommendations for reforms were “costly and extreme.”

“We make them because we are convinced the Negro can no longer exist, as he has, with the disadvantages which separate him from the rest of society,” the report said.

“Through the implementation of the programs we propose, with the dedication we discuss, and with the leadership we call for from all, our commission states without dissent that the tragic violence that occurred during the six days of August (1965) will not be repeated,” it concluded.

Neumann also is survived by a second son, Gregory, and five grandchildren. Services in Washington are pending.