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Ethel Ball Green, 64, was grandparents' advocate
CLEVELAND - Ethel Ball Green, a self-made social worker who created an organization to aid the elderly, died Saturday en route to the Hospice of the Western Reserve.
She was 64 and had lung cancer.
Green, a longtime Hough resident, founded the Art of Living Club in 1966 to provide a social outlet for her elderly neighbors. The club evolved from social activity into an advocacy group for seniors.
In recent years, she incorporated the organization so she could lobby for assistance to grandparents who are rearing grandchildren. Her work resulted in the county's Department of Human Services training workers to serve seniors better and asking the state to increase assistance to elderly child-care givers.
"Ethel was so driven, committed to grandparents and their grandchildren. She had a fire in her spirit that ignited everyone else around her, " said Charissa Prunty, who had worked with Green as county ombudsman.
Green was born in Cuba, Ala., and moved to Cleveland in 1957. She was determined to complete high school before her daughter, Diane, a student at East High School. Green attended John Hay High School at night. In 1970, when John Hay held its graduation ceremony a week before the East commencement, her daughter handed her the diploma.
Green turned her avocation into a career when she went to work for the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department in 1977. She retired from the Center for Human Services 30 years later.
She also hosted a program about senior issues on the gospel radio station WABQ-FM. She was a member of New Jerusalem Baptist Church until she helped form Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church.
She is survived by her daughter, Diane Jofferion of Richmond Heights; sons, Andrew and Paul Ball, both of Cleveland and Pierce Jackson of Euclid; her mother, Lula Terrell of Cleveland; her companion, Samuel Green; 12 grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; two sisters; and five brothers.
Services will be at 10:30 a.m. today
Paul Matis, foreman
OLMSTED TOWNSHIP - Paul S. Matis, a foreman in The Plain Dealer's press room, died Friday at his home in Olmsted Township. He was 58 and had cancer.
Matis enjoyed restoring and showing classic cars. His favorite was a blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala. He won many trophies and helped organize a classic road rally to benefit the Hospice of the Western Reserve.
Matis was born in Pittsburgh. He graduated from high school in Mt. Lebanon, Pa., in 1960 and attended Duquesne University business school. He moved to Greater Cleveland 33 years ago.
He married
Patricia Anne Strelow in 1974.
He was deeply interested in genealogy and compiled information for a book about his family.
In addition to his wife, Matis is survived by sons, Paul of Bentleyville, Pa., and Daryl of Olmsted Township; a daughter, Laura of Olmsted Township; a brother; and two sisters.
Services will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Independence Presbyterian Church, 6624 Public Square, Independence. Arrangements are by Busch Funeral Home of Parma.
Ture Johnson, 87, state forester who helped farmers with trees
BURTON TOWNSHIP - Ture Johnson, who became one of only three state farm foresters when he came to Ohio in 1945, died Tuesday in Briar Hill Nursing Home in Middlefield. He was 87.
As a state forester for nearly 40 years, Johnson helped farmers maintain healthy trees and improve woodlands. He also advised communities on cutting trees.
His family said Johnson used much of his spare time planting more than a million trees of various species in Northeastern Ohio over 35 years. He helped establish Tree City USA designations for many cities in Northeast Ohio, including Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights.
He retired in the early 1980s, but continued consulting.
Johnson was a founding member of the Berkshire Athletic Booster Club where he was instrumental in establishing a lighted football stadium. He also briefly coached the Burton High School basketball team and was a volunteer with the Burton Fire Department.
He was a member of the Burton Chamber of Commerce for 50 years, and served on the Geauga Maple Festival Board for more than 40 years.
Johnson helped organize the Ohio Christmas Tree Growers Association, Inc. and the National Maple Syrup Council in 1960. He won several awards for conservation and tree growing.
Johnson was inducted into the National Maple Syrup Hall of Fame in Groghan, N.Y., in 1980.
He was born in Gwinn, Mich., and graduated from the Michigan State University School of Forestry in 1937.
Surviving are his wife of 49 years, Erma; sons, Curt of Burton and Alan of Solon; a daughter, JoAnn Hiscox of Burton; six grandchildren; a brother; and a sister.
Services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Burton Congregational Church "On the Square, " Burton.
Arrangements are being handled by the Russell Golden Rule Funeral Service, 15670 W. High St., Middlefield.
Rev. Arthur Ziegler, 89, served Lutheran church for 65 years
CLEVELAND - The Rev. Arthur Ziegler, 89, pastor emeritus of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland and past president of the Ohio District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, died Wednesday at his Cleveland home.
His death came just three days after a weekend in which he was honored for his 65 years in the ministry by hundreds of family, friends and fellow ministers. Festivities were at Trinity Lutheran Church, highlighted by a banquet Saturday at the Marriott Cleveland Downtown at Key Center.
Ziegler was pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church from 1958 until his retirement in 1973.
While at Trinity, Ziegler served on the board of Project Equality, which sought to address social-justice issues in Cleveland during the 1960s. He helped establish Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, which today is a social service ministry operating throughout urban Northeast Ohio.
His ministry dedication led the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to elect him president of its Ohio District in 1972. In that post, Ziegler served as a pastor of pastors, overseeing more than 100 congregations in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia.
He retired from that position and full-time ministry in 1982.
In 1999, he was named chairman of Building Hope in the City, a ministry and capital campaign at Trinity that seeks to serve urban poor and the forgotten, begin churches in the city and restore and expand Trinity's campus on W. 30th St.
Ziegler graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1935, studied theology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and was ordained in 1937 at Faith Lutheran Church in Kent.
His ministry also included serving at Faith until 1947 and St. Peter Lutheran Church in Huntington, Ind., from 1947 to 1958.
His wife, Ruth, died in 1998.
Surviving are a son, John of Hagerstown, Md.; daughters, Mary Vida of Jefferson City, Mo., and Lois Georgeadis of Richfield; seven grandchildren; and one great grandchild.
Services will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Trinity Lutheran Church, 2031 W. 30th St.
Memorial contributions may be made to Building Hope in the City or to the Ruth Ziegler Scholarship Fund, both of which are c/o Trinity Lutheran Church, 2031 W. 30th St., Cleveland, OH 44113.
Arrangements are by Wischmeier-Buesch Funeral Home, 3111 Broadview Rd., Cleveland.
Anne Haney, appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire, ' other top films
06/08/01
LOS ANGELES - Anne Haney, the character actress who portrayed the family court supervisor in "Mrs. Doubtfire, " Michael Douglas' secretary in "The American President" and a nun in "Changing Habits, " had a novel explanation for going into the movie business.
"My husband died, my daughter went to college, the dog got fleas and the maid quit, " she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1985. "So I had to come to Hollywood."
Haney, who appeared in some 50 motion pictures and television programs over the past two decades, died May 26 of congestive heart failure at her Los Angeles home. She was 67.
The actress' unlikely Hollywood career, which began in her mid-40s, ran the gamut of mothers, secretaries, teachers, judges, patients, nurses, nuns and bag ladies.
She had regular roles as housekeepers on Robert Wagner's 1985 television series "Lime Street" and on boxing champion George Foreman's 1993 series "George." She was a tough divorce lawyer on "Murder One, " the mother of a decapitated gay man on "NYPD Blue" and an elderly leukemia patient determined to attend her grandchild's christening on "ER."
And on the big screen she played the next-door neighbor in Albert Brooks' "Mother, " Greta in Jim Carrey's "Liar, Liar" and the woman in the bathroom in the 1999 "The Out-of-Towners."
"I was 45, and they were happy to see a new face, a new old face, " Haney said of her success.
Actually, Haney was not totally without media experience when she arrived in Hollywood.
Born in Memphis, Tenn., she studied drama and then radio and television at the University of North Carolina where she met her husband, John Haney. But after working briefly at a Memphis television station, she settled with him in Atlanta, where he worked for campus TV, and devoted herself to bringing up their daughter, Melissa.
"We were raised to be wives and mothers. Those were our choices . . . There were no choices, " she said five years ago. "I was a lovely faculty wife. We made ambrosia salad. We did good works. We played a lot of bridge."
But as feminism raised women's consciousness in the 1970s, Haney returned to her acting training to perform in local theater and a few commercials. Moving on to dinner theater, she played the maid in a touring company of Noel Coward's "Fallen Angels" for two years.
While still in Atlanta, she became a member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists.
Once John Haney retired, the couple always said, they'd move to Hollywood for her to try big-time acting. He died of kidney disease in 1980, and she came alone.
In less than two months she had an agent, and she quickly found work. She appeared in the film "Hopscotch" starring Walter Matthau and remained so busy after that she said she barely had time to tend her garden.
Aside from motion pictures and television, the actress appeared in plays for Theatre West including "Verdigris" in 1985. Starring in the play as salty-tongued wheelchair-bound Margaret Fielding, Haney earned accolades from Los Angeles Times reviewer Don Shirley.
Victor Paz Estenssoro,
president of Bolivia
LA PAZ, Bolivia - Victor Paz Estenssoro, four-time president of Bolivia and considered one of its most influential politicians ever, died yesterday following surgery to ampuate his leg, doctors said. He was 93.
Paz Estenssoro died about two hours after the operation, said head physician Max Attie.
Doctors operated to repair a blood clot in his right leg, said Guillermo Justiniano, a leader of Paz Estenssoro's National Revolutionary Movement. He said they amputed the leg at the knee when the clot couldn't be repaired.
Doctors said Paz Estenssoro died as a result of complications of the amputation.
The news shook Bolivians, particularly members of the MNR party, which Paz Estenssoro founded exactly 60 years ago - June 7, 1941.
Paz Estenssoro was president of Bolivia longer than anyone else, governing from 1952-56, 1960-64, 1964-65 and 1985-89.
Paz Estenssoro led some of the most important changes in Bolivia this century. His party was the driving force behind the 1952 revolution that launched agrarian reform, the universal right to vote and the nationalization of Bolivia's mines.
Dr. Salvatore John Ciresi, chief of staff at Deaconess
BRECKSVILLE - Dr. Salvatore John Ciresi, 58, a cardiologist and former chief of staff at Deaconess Hospital, died May 29 at his home in Brecksville. He had cancer. The Cleveland native earned his medical degree in Italy and later taught at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Ciresi graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1960 and from the University of Notre Dame four years later. He studied medicine at the Universita di Bologna in Italy, where he received a degree in 1969. That same year he married
Laura Astorina, whom he met in Bologna.
Ciresi interned at University Hospitals and was chief resident in cardiology at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, now MetroHealth Medical Center. He practiced on the staffs of Deaconess and Parma Community General Hospital. He earned specialist's certificates from the American boards of internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases and was a fellow of the American colleges of cardiology and chest physicians.
Ciresi served on the board of directors and the executive committee of the Cleveland Academy of Medicine, the editorial board of Cleveland Physician and the board of American Services Inc. He also was a member of the National Faculty of the American Heart Association in advanced life support.
In addition to his wife, survivors include daughters Michelle Sokolowski and Anna Maria Ciresi, both of Brecksville; sons Anthony of Brecksville and Robert of Cleveland; three grandchildren; and a sister.
Services at St. Basil the Great Catholic Church were arranged by the Nosek Funeral Home of Brecksville.
Memorial donations may be made to the St. Ignatius Scholarship Fund, 1911 W. 30th St., Cleveland 44113-3495; or to the Taussig Cancer Center, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland 44195.
Lawrence J. Koreness, was CEO of Kronheims Furniture
SOLON - Lawrence J. Koreness, 67, president and chief executive officer of Kronheims Furniture, died in Hillcrest Hospital Friday of injuries he suffered in a car accident. The crash occurred May 30 on Green Rd. in South Euclid.
Koreness was part of a group of investors who purchased Kronheims in 1963. After he became head of the company in the 1980s, he led an expansion that doubled the number of stores to six. With longtime partner and Vice President Eugene Phinick, he moved the headquarters in 1997 from a cramped warehouse on E. 40th St. in Cleveland to a new 125, 000-square-foot building in Bedford Heights. Kronheims is the top-selling local furniture chain.
He was born in New York City but was reared in Phoenix. That was where he met his wife, Nancy Stern, of Shaker Heights. He moved to Cleveland in 1961 and worked for Kronheims, which was then owned by his father-in-law. The company was founded in 1918.
Koreness, of Solon, enjoyed traveling with his wife. They visited Europe and China, among other places. He especially liked the Southwest.
He served on the boards of the Cleveland Sight Center and Suburban Temple-Kol Ami in Shaker Heights. He also was associated with American ORT, Coats for Kids, Health Hill Hospital's Autism Center and Jewish Children Foster Homes Auxiliary.
He liked to garden and appreciated Judaic art.
In addition to his wife, survivors include a daughter, Cathy Davis of Atlanta; a son, Greg of Cleveland Heights; and two grandchildren.
Services will be at 10 a.m. today at Suburban Temple-Kol Ami, 22401 Chagrin Blvd., Shaker Heights.
Contributions may be sent to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, P.O. Box 1151, Monroeville, Pa. 15146-1151.
Arrangements are by the Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz Memorial Chapel of Cleveland Heights.
Kenneth Prusovic, musician, brakeman
OLMSTED TOWNSHIP - Kenneth E. Prusovic's passion for music began when he took up the accordion at age 10.
He later added drums and keyboards to his repertoire, and his interests ran from polka to jazz.
Prusovic, 62, died Thursday at his Olmsted Township home. He had had Parkinson's disease diagnosed in 1990.
His daughter, Sylvia Prusovic, said her father was perhaps best described by a line from a song Dan Fogelberg wrote about his father - that he was "a quiet man of music."
In his teens, Prusovic was the drummer for the Polka Kings, later known as the Rhythm Kings, which played at weddings and in West Side clubs during the 1950s. His early musical experiences centered on his Slovak heritage, and he could play every popular polka, most without needing the sheet music, she said. Later in life, he developed a love of jazz music.
He became a railroad brakeman in 1958 and eventually worked for Conrail. He retired in 1990 after 32 years, in large part because of his illness.
Prusovic remained active in the National Association of Retired & Veteran Railway Employees organization and was a member of the United Transportation Union.
When he was in his 40s, he learned to sail and owned a sailboat named Sweets.
"He loved the sea and felt a calming in the water, " Sylvia Prusovic said.
In addition to his daughter, who lives in Sheffield Lake, survivors include sons, Keith of Canton, Kevin of Bay Village and Nicholas of Parma, and three grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Sheffield Lake. Arrangements are through the Bollinger-Catavolos Funeral Home in Cleveland.
