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Eugenia Charles, 86; Prime Minister of Tiny Dominica for Fifteen Years

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From Associated Press

Former Dominica leader Eugenia Charles, who gained widespread attention as she stood beside President Reagan when he announced the U.S. invasion of Grenada, has died. She was 86.

Charles, the Caribbean’s first woman prime minister, who was known as the region’s “Iron Lady,” died Tuesday at a hospital on the Caribbean island of Martinique, where she was taken for treatment of a broken hip, longtime associate Dr. Bernard Yankey said Wednesday.

Charles, who was prime minister of the tiny mountainous island from 1980 to 1995, survived two coup attempts. “She was a no-nonsense person,” said press secretary Lennox Honeychurch.

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Charles won fame for standing with Reagan at the White House on Oct. 25, 1983, when he announced the invasion of Grenada. She then scornfully dismissed criticism for supporting the U.S. action. “The Grenadians wanted it, and that’s all that counts. I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks,” she told the Associated Press in 1995.

Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, praising Charles for dedicating her “entire life to the service of the country,” directed that the island’s flags be flown at half-staff and ordered a state funeral.

Mary Eugenia Charles was born May 15, 1919, in the village of Pointe Michel, the youngest of four children of John-Baptiste and Josephine Charles. Her father founded a cooperative bank for peasants and became mayor of Roseau, the island’s capital, and a legislator.

She graduated from the University of Toronto and studied at the London School of Economics before returning home to become a lawyer in 1949.

After forming the Freedom Party, she was elected an assemblywoman and once wore a bathing suit underneath her lawyer’s gown in the House to protest a dress code for legislators.

She became the first woman prime minister in the Caribbean in 1980, two years after Dominica had declared independence from Britain.

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A firm anti-communist, she refused to accept scholarships offered by Cuban President Fidel Castro to Dominican students.

Charles, who said she never met anyone she wanted to marry, lived with her father until he died in 1983 at age 107. She is survived by two brothers.

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