Obituaries - Nov. 13, 1999

* Alberto Bolet; Violinist, Conductor

Alberto Bolet, 94, the Cuban-born conductor who escaped Havana after the Communist takeover and went on to conduct orchestras in Dallas, Sydney, Australia, and Bilbao, Spain. Bolet began playing the violin in high school, despite his father’s urging that he train for a career in law. He traveled to Europe to study violin at a conservatory in Madrid. He later moved on to Budapest, where he established a trio that toured North Africa and Europe extensively. In 1932, he went to San Francisco and established a chamber orchestra, returning to Cuba four years later. He founded the first classical radio station in his homeland and became conductor of the Havana Philharmonic in 1951 and stayed there until 1959, when he was blacklisted by Fidel Castro. He fled to England, where he convinced the British Broadcasting Corp. to offer him a contract. After a brief stay, he moved to the United States, where he took over as director of the Dallas Symphony. Bolet’s brother, the virtuoso pianist Jorge Bolet, died in 1990 at the age of 75. Alberto Bolet had been living in Long Beach for the last several years. On Wednesday at his daughter’s home in Teaneck, N.J.

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John Eshleman; Blacklisted Reporter

John M. “Jack” Eshleman, 85, a former reporter for the San Francisco Examiner who was blacklisted in the 1950s after he refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Eshleman, a Berkeley native and son of the late California Lt. Gov. John M. Eshleman, graduated from UC Berkeley and worked for the Examiner, United Press and the now defunct Oakland Post-Enquirer before World War II. During the war, he worked at a shipyard. He went back to work at the Examiner after the war and was subpoenaed to testify before HUAC in 1957, when the panel held hearings in San Francisco. Eshleman testified that he was not a current member of the Communist Party, nor was he a Communist sympathizer, but refused to answer questions about past political affiliations, invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. He was summarily fired by the Hearst-run Examiner. The local newspaper union vigorously opposed the firing but lost its claim when an arbitrator ruled that “the menace of Communism” and the “question mark” of Eshleman’s past were sufficient grounds for termination. He was never able to find work again as a reporter in the mainstream press, but did hold jobs with several labor journals and had leadership posts in the Northern California Newspaper Guild. At a San Francisco hospital Nov. 5.

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Thomas Jukes; Molecular Biologist

Thomas Hughes Jukes, 93, a noted molecular biologist and nutritionist who was emeritus research biochemist and former professor-in-residence at UC Berkeley. Not afraid to wade into controversial issues, Jukes fought against the teaching of creationism in schools and, despite his Sierra Club membership, against the banning of DDT. Born in Hastings, England, Jukes emigrated to Canada in 1924 at the age of 18. After receiving his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Toronto in 1933, he moved to California, where he had been drawn by the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain. In 1942, he moved to New York to take a job at Lederle Laboratories, a division of American Cyanamid Co., where he evolved the idea of giving antibiotics to animals so they could be raised in greater concentrations. In 1963, he moved on to UC Berkeley as a research biochemist. In the early 1970s, Jukes argued against the ban on DDT, which was also supported by the American Audubon Society, noting that the pesticide had saved the lives of countless people in Third World countries as a cheap but effective way to kill malarial mosquitoes. He also spoke out against creationists who wanted to remove discussion of evolution from school textbooks and, in the 1980s, was instrumental in getting numerous California textbooks rejected because of their inadequate discussion of evolution. “He hated humbuggery . . . and should be remembered as a crusader,” said Kevin Padian, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. For many years, Jukes wrote a column on evolution for the British journal Nature. On Nov. 1 at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley of pneumonia.

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H. Messick; Meyer Lansky Biographer

Hank Messick, 77, reporter and author on organized crime best known for his biography of mobster Meyer Lansky. A native of Happy Valley, N.C., Henry Hicks Messick earned degrees at the Universities of North Carolina and Iowa and taught English briefly at what now is Colorado State University. He worked as a reporter for several North Carolina newspapers, the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, the Miami Herald and the Miami Beach Sun. His beat was crime, particularly organized crime, and in 1967 he published his first book, “The Silent Syndicate.” He followed with 18 other books, but his greatest success came in 1971 with “Lansky.” Most of his 19 books involved organized crime’s infiltration into certain geographical or commercial areas, including the Bahamas, drugs, gambling and show business. He also examined the history of particular crimes, such as kidnapping, and the role of key government officials in dealing with crime, including Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. “Perhaps no single individual,” commented the Library Journal, “has more fully documented the sordid, irrepressible growth of organized crime in this country than Messick.” A 1978 profile in the popular press said: “Hank Messick’s mind is like a geodetic survey of American crime. . . . The names of hoods and goons and crooked cops and alleged international vice lords roll off his tongue like strange poetry.” Messick, a Southerner, wrote one book outside his usual genre--”King’s Mountain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge Mountain Men in the American Revolution,” published during the nation’s bicentennial in 1976. On Saturday in Cocoa, Fla. of Sjogren’s syndrome, an incurable autoimmune disorder.

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John Noga; Owned Jazz Clubs

John Noga, 83, part owner of the legendary Blackhawk nightclub in San Francisco, where singer Johnny Mathis was discovered. A native of Honolulu, Noga and his wife, Helen, had interests in the Blackhawk and another internationally known jazz spot, the Downbeat, for 14 years. Many of the world’s finest jazz musicians played at the club and recorded albums there, including Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, Billie Holiday and Gerry Mulligan. While in college, Mathis sang with a jazz sextet and took part in jam sessions at the Blackhawk. In 1955, Helen Noga heard him sing and was so impressed that she signed him to a contract and became his manager. After discovering Mathis, the Nogas sold their interest in each club and moved to Beverly Hills. On Tuesday of a heart attack at his home in Studio City.

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L. Stone; Defended Nazi Saboteurs

Lauson H. Stone, 94, a lawyer who was appointed by the War Department to defend eight Nazi saboteurs tried in Washington in 1942. The son of Harlan Fiske Stone, the chief justice of the United States from 1941 to 1946, Stone was an Army major when he was added to the defense team of eight German operatives who were captured after landing on Long Island, N.Y., and near Jacksonville, Fla. The saboteurs were assigned to blow up production and transportation targets, but the Long Island group gave away the plot after being discovered by Coast Guard officers. Among the arguments presented by the group’s defense at the largely secret military trial was the constitutionality of the proceeding and whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt could legally keep the case out of civil courts. A special Supreme Court session affirmed Roosevelt’s authority in the case and all eight were convicted. Six were electrocuted and two were imprisoned. After the war, Stone practiced corporate law in New York until his retirement in 1980. On Sunday in a hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y.