Obituaries - April 27, 1999

Manmohan Adhikari; Nepalese Leader

Manmohan Adhikari, 78, Nepal’s first Communist prime minister who controlled the small country only nine months. Adhikari, who helped popularize communism in Nepal, became prime minister in November 1994, but his minority government lost a vote of confidence the next year. He was elected general-secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1953 and remained its head until it merged with another Communist group in 1990 to become the United Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Nepal. He was elected as the merged party’s chairman the same year. Adhikari participated in a popular movement that stripped Nepal’s King Birendra of absolute power and turned him into a constitutional monarch. Nepal became a multi-party democracy in 1990, and Adhikari was elected to Parliament in 1991 and 1994. His own party split last year, and he was fighting for its revival in the coming May 3 elections. During his tenure as prime minister, Adhikari was popular with the public for fighting corruption and nepotism within the administration and working for the welfare of the elderly. On Monday in Katmandu, Nepal, after collapsing and slipping into a coma last week.

Sen. Roman Hruska; Famed for Praise of Mediocrity

Former U.S. Sen. Roman Hruska, 94, who represented Nebraska for more than two decades and was known for praising mediocrity. A conservative old-style politician who loved stumping Nebraska, Hruska was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952 and two years later was appointed to serve the four years remaining in the unexpired term of the late Sen. Hugh Butler. Hruska, an Omaha lawyer, won reelection in 1958, 1964 and 1970. He retired in 1977 as ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was considered for minority leader of the Senate in 1969 but yielded to the more powerful Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. Hruska gained national notoriety and a permanent place in common vernacular with a Senate speech in 1970 touting the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell for the Supreme Court. Critics objected that Carswell at best was a mediocre federal judge. Hruska responded, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?” The speech was quickly shortened to the catch-phrase “What’s wrong with a little mediocrity?” On Sunday in Omaha, of complications from a broken hip.

Doreen Lang; Actress on Stage, Film

Doreen Lang, 81, actress in Broadway’s “Blithe Spirit” and films such as “The Wrong Man” with Henry Fonda. Born in New Zealand, Lang studied acting in London and appeared there in “Blood Wedding.” She appeared with Noel Coward in London performances of “Blithe Spirit” and reprised the role in New York. Lang also performed on Broadway in “I Know My Love,” “Make Way for Lucia,” “Faithfully Yours” with Robert Cummings and “Season in the Sun” with Walter Matthau. She also worked in live television drama series of the 1950s, including Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One. Alfred Hitchcock brought Lang to Hollywood for her film debut in the 1957 mystery “The Wrong Man.” She appeared in subsequent Hitchcock films and in his television series. Among her other films were “Wild in the Country” starring Elvis Presley in 1961 and “The Group” in 1966. She later worked with her husband, Arthur Franz, in the daytime soap opera “The Nurses.” More recently, Lang co-starred as Mrs. Garner in the Paul Hogan film “Almost an Angel” in 1990. On Wednesday in Malibu of cancer.

Douglas Lawrence; Pioneer in Psychology

Douglas H. Lawrence, 81, experimental psychologist at Stanford University who was an early supporter of cognitive psychology. Lawrence conducted research that went against the grain of behavior-oriented theories of the 1950s. Although trained at Yale University in the 1940s, when it was a center of Pavlovian theory, Lawrence “always resisted that environmental influence” and became an early supporter of cognitive approaches to learning behavior, Stanford colleague Albert Hastorf said. Lawrence believed that humans and animals do not merely respond to stimuli in their environment but selectively perceive and process them. He was considered instrumental in demonstrating the importance of attention as a factor in learning, even in lower animals such as rats. Some of his research showed how learning can be made easier by beginning with a simple task, such as discriminating between red and green, and building up to more difficult problems, such as discriminating between red and pink. Lawrence, a native of Saskatchewan, Canada, was educated at the University of Washington, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and at Yale, where he received a doctorate in psychology in 1948. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1949. He moved to a Medford, Ore., retirement home the week before his death. On Tuesday after a lengthy illness in Medford.