Obituaries - Dec. 13, 1999

Inam Abdel Arafat Al Kidwah; Yasser Arafat’s Sister

Inam Abdel Raouf Arafat Al Kidwah, 82, eldest sister and mother figure of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Al Kidwah was the oldest of Arafat’s five siblings and has been described in various Arafat biographies as the mother figure who did much to raise him after their mother’s death when Arafat was a boy. At Arafat’s request, the funeral was private. Al Kidwah was buried next to her father in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, where she had lived since returning from Cairo in 1995. Arafat reportedly was tearful and emotional during the funeral and burial. President Clinton called Arafat on Saturday to express condolences. On Saturday in Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Pupella Maggio; Longtime Italian Actress

Pupella Maggio, 89, veteran Italian actress and the last member of a Neapolitan theatrical dynasty. Maggio was literally born on a set in Naples in 1910 and began performing in her family’s small theater company when she was 3. She did not become a theatrical star until after World War II, when she met Eduardo de Filippo, one of Italy’s most famous playwrights, who began casting her in prominent parts. She and Filippo became a permanent fixture in Italian theater. She was well known for her comic roles in Naples’ postwar theater, where farce often bordered on the scandalous. In her later years, she appeared in a few movie roles, including that of Federico Fellini’s mother in his autobiographical 1974 film “Amarcord.” She also played a mother in the Oscar-winning 1988 movie “Cinema Paradiso” by director Giuseppe Tornatore. On Wednesday in Rome of a brain hemorrhage.

Wilkinson Wright; Wright Brothers Kin

Wilkinson Wright, 77, the grandnephew of Orville and Wilbur Wright, whose stories about the flight pioneers helped fuel interest in aviation heritage. Wright was a fixture at anniversary celebrations and other events associated with the Wright brothers’ first flight, which came on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C. At one gathering in Los Angeles some years ago, Wright revealed a family secret: “There’s no way to gloss over it,” he said with a somber, straight face. “Orville was a terrible driver. He drove too fast, and the only thing that you could say in way of justification is that he had learned to fly an airplane seven or eight years before he’d learned to drive a car.” In 1982, Wilkinson Wright donated a six-foot spruce propeller to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington that had helped pull Orville Wright aloft. More recently, Wright was active in planning the 100th anniversary celebration of the famous flight, set for 2003. On Thursday of cancer in Dayton, Ohio.