The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 63

f11 TE 19 10 bs 90 AN De bi THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2003 THE BOSTON GLOBE C15 Alphee Surette, 91, star skater despite disability Alphee Surette was a star. Rocketing around the ice in a spray of chips, he played a rub-legged scarecrow, a clown, band a misfit sailor in the glittery productions of the Ice Capades. -That was before rheumatoid arthritis finally ended his skating career. After his retirement from show business, he repaired TVs in his shop in Bridgewater. "He still did ice dancing with "local groups," Celeste Crowley of Chelmsford said of her father, who died Sunday in the Life Care Center of West Bridgewater at age 9 91.

"He was a very happy man." Mr. Surette was born in Wedgesport, Nova Scotia, and moved to Cambridge with his family when he was 11. Having learned to skate on the frozen ponds of Nova Scotia, he became a champion speed skater in his teens. His first bout with arthritis ended his speed skating career before he turned 20, but he still spent all the time he could on skates. When arthritis made that impossible, he frequented local rinks and watched others skate.

By the end of 1938, he was feeling much better and worked up a comedy and barrel-jumping routine, which he performed at the New York World's Fair in 1939. John Harris, who was organizing the first Ice Capades at the time, caught his act and gave him a job with his show. Mr. Surette played the scarecrow in a Humpty Dumpty number, and crisscrossed A new job is waiting for you here. Boston Works Combining the power of The Boston Globe and boston.com By Tom Long GLOBE STAFF DEATHS VACCARO, Evelyn (Rafalko)-Of Hyde Park, April 8.

Beloved of the late Michael Vaccaro. De-voted mother of Jean Scott of CO, Michael Vaccaro of Reading, Wanda Cloran of Melrose, Donna Lombard of North Attleboro, and the late Agnes Tapin and Josephine Nicholas. Also survived 6 children. grandchildren and 3 from great grandFuneral The LaughNichols Pennacchio Funeral Home, 34 Oak (cor. Maple St.Cleary Sq.) HYDE PARK, 617-361- 2410, Friday at 9 a.m.

Followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Pius Church, 101 Wolcott Milton, at 10 o'clock. Relatives and friends respectfully invited to attend. Visiting hours Thursday 4- 8 p.m. Memorials may be made in Evelyn's memory to the Learning Center for the Deaf, 30 Seton Way, Randolph MA 02368.

Doorman parking. VAZNAIAN, Helen R.Of Amherst, 79, formerly of Medford, died at her home on Tuesday. Born Winthrop, MA, Jan. 19. 1924, the daughter of the late Megerditch and Rose (Korokin) Vaznaian.

Educated at Framingham State Teachers College; receiving her Master's from Boston University, and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. A Teacher and Administrator in the Newton Schools, before becoming Professor and Director of Home Eco nomics at Amherst, until retirement. Sister of Margaret V. Stone of Lexington.

Aunt of Michael, Mark, and Robin. A graveside service will be at 11:00 AM. Apr. 12, in the Oak Grove Cemetery, Medford. There are no calling hours.

A Memorial Service on the campus of the University of Mass, will be held at a date and time to be announced. Memorials may be made to the charity of choice. The Douglass Funeral Service, AMHERST is handling arrangements. Obituary and register at www.douglassfuneral.com SERVICE DIRECTORY CASKETS CASKET ROYALE Starting at $495.00 No Sales Tax www.casketroyale.com 1-800-791-4169 Atlantic Casket Co. Why Spend More? 163 Lincoln Saugus 781-233-2668 CEMETERIES ST.

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His daughter pretended the footboard was a barre while practicing her ballet lessons while he offered encouragement. But he was still determined to skate. And he did through sheer force of will. "He had that Nova Scotia backbone," said his daughter, who helped him walk to a pond in back of their house and laced his skates so he could take his first tentative glide out onto the ice. When the Ice Capades came to town in 1955, Mr.

Surette went backstage and one of the members of the ice dance team the Old Smoothies offered up a pair of skates he'd broken in. They were big, but they offered him a new mobility. In 1956, Mr. Surette visited the Ice Capades in Atlantic City, where they were rehearsing for the new season. He said he wasn't expecting a job he thought the year's lineup had already been hired but at night, when he thought no one was around, he strapped on his skates and took to the ice.

OTHER DEATHS -GWYNNE, Anne In Los Angeles, March 31, at 84. A leading lady in scores of sci-fi and horror films, Ms. Gwynne starred in "Black Friday" with Boris Karloff. Michael Family and friends recall Atlantic Monthly editor's loads of talent and devotion and lack of anything resembling organization. Story, Pg.

B1. (617)625-6150 WILKINS, Dr. Robert Wallace- In Newburyport, April 9, of Newburyport. Former Professor Chairman of Medicine at Boston University, Medical School, who developed new high altitude "G- Suits" was awarded the U. S.

Government Certificate of Appreciation, received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award, helped in restoration of Newburyport, survived by three children; Margaret Noel Portland, OR, Mary Haslinger, Bloomfield, CT and Newburyport and Robert W. Wilkins Yarmouthport, MA; sister, Kate Woolley, Baton Rouge, LA; a brother-in-law Frank F. Morrill of Newburyport; and six grandchildren, Katherine Noel, Margaret Noel, Jennifer Noel, Robert Haslinger, Karl Haslinger, and Ellen Haslinger. Private family services. Donations to American Heart Association or to a humanitarian charity of one's choice.

Arrangements by Simplicity Services, Newburyport, Condolences can be sent at www.burialsand cremations.com. DEATHS WETZONIS, Anna Frances (MacGil-Of Somerville, April 4. Beloved wife of the late John Wetzonis. Mother of Joan Bell of Somerville, Kenneth of Hanover, Michael of Somerville, Paul of Maryland, James of Cambridge and the late Donald, John Keith Wetzonis. Sister of John MacGillivray of West Peabody.

survived by her 15 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren. Funeral from the Cota-StruzzieroMcKenna Funeral Home, 197 Washington SOMERVILLE on Friday, April 11 at 9am. Funeral Mass in St. Catherine of Genoa Church, 179 Summer Somerville at 10am. Relatives and may call at the Funeral Home Thursday 4 thru 8pm.

Interment Fox Hill Cemetery, Billerica. (cotafuneralhomes.com) SERVICE DIRECTORY FUNERAL HOMES SWEENEY BROS. HOME FOR FUNERALS, INC One Independence Ave, Quincy, 617-472-6344 Serving Quincy and The South Shore LIFE INSURANCE Wills, Legal Service Plans and Life Insurance. Empire Insurance Agency Call 617-445-5555 MONUMENTS CANNIFF 323-3690 531 CUMMINGS HIGHWAY, ROSLINDALE 583 MT. AUBURN STREET, CAMBRIDGE 1-800-439-3690 617-876-9110 MON-SAT 9AM-9PM SUN 12-5PM DAVIS MONUMENTS 617-524-4300 3859 Washington Street, Roslindale Since 1862 MA Leading Monument Specialist THOS.

CARRIGG SON 617-323-2454 772 La Grange Street Near St. Joseph's Cemetery, W. Roxbury 41 No. Cary St, Brockton, 508-586-6588 To advertise in this listing please call 617-929-8358 Once again Harris saw him and invited him back to the show. His comeback lasted a a a a a a a a a a a year.

Some said it was arthritis that once again ended his career, but his daughter isn't so sure. "I think the travel got to him," she said. "He missed his family back home." Mr. Surette then opened a TV repair shop in West Bridgewater. He made some of his own tools so he could repair the electronics with hands gnarled and misshapen by arthritis.

Whenever the Ice Capades came to town, he visited his old buddies backstage. Mr. Surette enjoyed bicycle riding and took trips up to 40 miles long with the Charles River Wheelmen on a bicycle he modified to accommodate his arthritis. On weekends, he taught children to skate at the Cohasset Winter Garden, and whenever he got the chance he laced on his own skates and performed ice dancing routines in shows sponsored by figure skating clubs on the South Shore. "He still loved the limelight," said his daughter.

"He ate up the attention." In addition to his daughter, he leaves a brother, Sylvain; two grandchildren, and a great child. A funeral will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Dahlborg-MacNevin Funeral Home in Brockton. Burial will be in Pine Hill Cemetery, West Bridgewater. Cecile de Brunhoff; inspired Babar tales ASSOCIATED PRESS PARIS Cecile de Brunhoff, the inspiration for Babar, the enchanting little elephant whose adventures captivated generations of children, died Monday after suffering a stroke Saturday.

She was 99. Mrs. de Brunhoff invented the tale of a little elephant as a bedtime story for her boys in 1931. They in turn told their father, painter Jean de Brunhoff, who illustrated the story and filled in details, naming the elephant Babar and creating Celeste, Zephir, and the "Old Lady," who takes care of young Babar after his mother is killed. Before "The Story of Babar" was published, Mrs.

de Brunhoff insisted that her name be removed from the book because she thought her role too minor, according to publishers Harry N. Abrams Inc. A pianist, she was a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. Jean de Brunhoff died of tuberculosis in 1937 at the age of 37. His eldest son, Laurent, carried on Babar's adventures, completing two books unfinished by his father and eventually devoting himself full time to Babar, publishing dozens of books.

Mrs. de Brunhoff, who was born Oct. 16, 1903, did not remarry after her husband's death. S. Bryant, at 58; loved outdoors, folk music By Brendan McCarthy GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Robert A.

Monaco was a pilot for a quarter-century. Robert A. Monaco, 49; pilot who loved gardening, hiking By Peter DeMarco GLOBE CORRESPONDENT It didn't matter what you put in Robert A. Monaco's hands a canoe paddle, a garden shovel, or the controls of a King Air B200 twinengine airplane. So long as it kept him busy, he was at his happiest, friends and family said.

Mr. Monaco, 49, a professional pilot and flight instructor, died Friday when the plane he was piloting crashed into a building in Leominster. National Transportation and Safety Board investigators have not yet determined the cause of the accident. Born in Everett and raised in Waltham, Mr. Monaco was anything but conventional, said those who knew him.

A lover of the outdoors, he once spent 23 hours in a canoe paddling from Quincy to Provincetown, and would routinely swim across Walden 1 Pond as late in the year as November. Last fall, he transplanted a small fish pond from his backyard into his living room, lilypads and all, because he worried the fish would freeze during the winter. When painters asked what color he wanted his house to be, Mr. Monaco showed them an American flag and said: "This color." They painted it white with blue shutters and a red front door. For his parents' 50th wedding anniversary, he surprised his entire family by hiring an ice cream truck to drive onto his front lawn.

"It was a typical Bobby thing creative and spontaneous," said John Buckley, a longtime friend. A dedicated son, Mr. Monaco would call his elderly parents, Frank A. and Joan "Pia" (Mancini) Monaco of Waltham, at least two or three times a day. They would track his flights by computer whenever he flew, which was often several times a week, family members said.

Mr. Monaco held an Airline Transport Pilot rating, the highest a pilot can achieve, and was a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association for the last 25 years. Fellow pilots at Hanscom Field in Bedford, where Mr. Monaco often biked to work from his home in Lexington, referred to him as "a good stick" the highest of compliments. "For him, it was a passion, not work," said Bill O'Connell, a Hanscom pilot who used the same hangar as Mr.

Monaco. "I betcha he would have flown for nothing." Never one to sit still, Mr. Monaco could be perfectly content spending hours by himself canoeing, hiking in Franconia Notch, N.H., or planting flowers and trees in his yard. Gregarious by nature, he would often call friends, such as boyhood chum John Schrimpf, to join him at the last minute on a flight to White Plains, N.Y., or Washington, D.C. "I've been on this route 13 years, and I was probably more friendly with Bob than anyone else," said postal carrier Tim Brothers, who last saw Mr.

Monaco last week when he was invited inside his friend's home for a soda. Barbara Dove, Mr. Monaco's next-door neighbor in Lexington, remembered him as a constant source of entertainment, recalling his fish pond exploits and the day he tramped through poison ivy without a shirt on, boasting he wasn't allergic only to learn later he was quite mistaken. Three times, Dove and her husband, Jim Slack, invited Mr. Monaco over for dinner, but for various reasons he had to cancel, she said.

"But he felt so badly, he brought over bags of groceries from Trader Joe's, including frozen swordfish fillets, green tea ice cream, frozen vegetables, and little rolled cookies for dessert," she said. "It was expensive stuff. He was just that kind of guy." "When Bob did something, he did it 250 percent," said Ellie McCabe, Mr. Monaco's first cousin. "He was a perfectionist." Mr.

Monaco loved the beach and animals, including his deceased dalmatian, Spoony, and a cat named Cat. He also cherished his 1994 maroon Chevy Impala, friends said. A graduate of Waltham High School class of 1971, Mr. Monaco attended the Berklee College of Music and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. In addition to his parents, he leaves many aunts, uncles, and cousins; and his friend, Lynda A.

Bazin of Belmont. A funeral was held yesterday. Stephen Rogers Bryant, a guitar-toting computer programmer who logged hundreds of canoe trips, died March 27 from hypothermia after his canoe capsized on Fowler River in Alexandria, N.H. He was 58. "He loved the outdoors," said his companion, Dorothy Weitzman of Newton.

"Canoeing and guitar playing were two of his favorite loves." Mr. Bryant had a "canoe log" that detailed his adventures, with more than 250 entries over six years. He kept notes on obstruetions he cleared, animals he encountered, and partners he paddled with. Music, especially folk and blues, was another passion. He collected steel guitars and had a repertoire of folk songs to sing and play.

He sang in the Wayland First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church choir for 23 years. "He played the guitar for years and years and never had any lessons," said his son, Daniel, of Sacramento, Calif. "He was very proud of the fact that he was selftaught." Mr. Bryant played baseball in many adult leagues. He loved hiking and was a longtime member of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

On one winter hike through New Hampshire's White Mountains, he was determined to spend the night in a self-made igloo. "On the first night of his hike he tried to build an igloo that he wanted to sleep in, and he only had a backpack," Weitzman said. "It collapsed near completion when he was in it, and while everyone panicked, he just stood up smiling. The next night he made a new one and slept in it." Mr. Bryant grew up in Winthrop, Maine, and graduated from the University of Maine with a mathematics degree.

He served in the Navy for four years and was stationed in Washington, D.C., and Rota, Spain. Shortly after being discharged from the Navy, Mr. Bryant married the former Susan Bowen, and the couple moved to Wayland. He worked as a data processing manager at Newton-Wellesley Hospital for 13 years and was employed as a systems analyst for Fidelity Investments until 2001. After a 1999 divorce, Mr.

Bryant met Weitzman at a Folk Song Society of Boston event. The two shared a love for hiking and folk songs and were members of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, a nonprofit group aimed at promoting humane criminal justice policy in Massachusetts. They lived in Newton. In addition to his companion, former wife, and son, Mr. Bryant leaves another son, Alexander, also of Sacramento.

A memorial service was held Sunday. Anita Borg; helped women break industry's 'silicone ceiling' LOS ANGELES TIMES LOS ANGELES Anita Borg, a computer scientist who sought ways to boost the ranks of women in the industry and to use technology to create value for society, not just more profits, died Sunday of brain cancer at her mother's Sonoma, home. She was 54. Ms. Borg, a Chicago native who taught herself how to program computers while working at an insurance company, eventually earned a doctorate in computer science at New York University.

Working as a researcher at Digital Equipment Ms. Borg noticed the dearth of women in her field while she attended a computing conference in 1987. That revelation led her to start an e-mail support group for women in technology, dubbed Systers. The group currently has 2,500 members in 40 countries. Ms.

Borg, an amateur pilot who also mountain biked and kayaked, thought her profession needed more women, who she thought would be more likely to develop technology to meet more social rather than commercial interests. "I believe women think differently," Borg said in an interview with The Boston Globe last year. Male engineers generally emphasize power and speed rather A than value when creating technology, she said. "The tendency has been, 'Let's build the next best complex thing' first rather than sorting out how we can use the technology to benefit the country," she said. Borg also believed girls were discouraged from computer science by the profession's negative stereotype of geeks who do nothing but sit in front of computers for hours on end.

"Girls begin to hear the stereotypes. They start out open to everything but by the end of middle school they are not that eager to do math, and they do not want to be associated with the nerds or geeks," she said. "There really needs to be support in middle school and encouragement right up through high school, every step of the way." To foster such support, Ms. Borg launched the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 1994, a gathering now held every other year. "She felt that the right way to promote the success of women in technology fields was to celebrate their successes, not complain about the barriers they faced," said Maria Klawe, dean of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science in Princeton, N.J., and a longtime 2000 AP FILE PHOTO Anita Borg was considered a pioneer in computer friend of Ms.

Borg. Three years later, Ms. Borg embarked on what would be her last major project establishing the Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto, Calif. "I love technology. I love creating it.

I've worked with it for 30 years," she said in an interview soon after learning she had brain cancer. "I want to find ways for future technology to help create a better world not just a greedier hierarchy of haves and have-nots. It's taken this new-economy slowdown to make us say, 'Oops, what have we missed here? Maybe being fast isn't quite We have to engage people in the whole process of defining the future." Ms. Borg leaves her husband, Winfried Wilcke, a physicist and computer architect; a sister, Lee Naffz; and her mother, Beverly Naffz..