In passing
Evelyn Roberts, 88, wife of evangelist
Tulsa, Okla. Evelyn Roberts, wife of evangelist Oral Roberts, died Wednesday in a California hospital after suffering a head injury during a fall. She was 88.
Evelyn Roberts died a day after she fell in the parking lot of a dentist’s office, striking her head on the pavement and causing massive internal bleeding, said Jeremy Burton, spokesman for Oral Roberts University. She fell into a coma a short time later.
The couple’s surviving children, Richard Roberts, who is the university’s president, and Roberta Roberts Potts, flew to Newport Beach, Calif., on Tuesday to be with their mother and father.
Oral and Evelyn Roberts married more than 66 years ago, and she worked with her husband to build his television ministry and university.
Evelyn Roberts authored several books, including “His Darling Wife, Evelyn,” “Heaven Has a Floor” and “Evelyn Roberts’ Miracle Life Stories.”
Edward von Kloberg III, represented notorious
Washington Edward J. von Kloberg III, who made his fortune representing the political pariahs of the world, died Sunday. He was 63.
U.S. Consulate officials in Rome confirmed that von Kloberg died in an apparent suicide.
As a lobbyist, von Kloberg represented the likes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu and Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko. His clients weren’t all notorious, however. According to the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registry in 2001, his last active year as a lobbyist, von Kloberg’s clients also included Bahrain, Gambia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Edward Joseph Kloberg III was born Jan. 9, 1942, in New York. He added “van” to his surname in the 1960s and later changed it to “von” because he thought it sounded more distinguished.
Von Kloberg graduated from Rider College in Lawrenceville, N.J., in 1965. He received a master’s degree in history from American University, where he advanced to be the dean of admissions and financial aid.
In 1982, von Kloberg began his public relations and lobbying business, later renamed the Washington World Group. He retired in 2002.
Miguel Contreras, 52, longtime labor leader
Los Angeles Miguel Contreras, a son of migrant farmworkers who helped revive Southern California’s unions in recent years as head of the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, died of a heart attack Friday. He was 52.
Tyrone Freeman, president of Service Employees International Union Local 434B, gave the cause of death but declined further comment, saying he was at a hospital with Contreras’ wife, Maria Elena Durazo, leader of Local 11 for the large hotel and restaurant union Unite Here.
Contreras was known as a king-maker for both local and state politicians, and the labor federation had endorsed James K. Hahn in his current mayoral campaign. The association of 345 local unions is known as the most politically influential political machine in Southern California.
The son of farmworkers, Contreras began working in the fields of the Central Valley at age 5 and by 17 was handing out grape boycott leaflets at grocery stores during the famous United Farm Workers campaign.
He eventually became a strike captain and was dispatched by legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez to Toronto. He worked with unions in Salinas and San Francisco before the international Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union recruited him as a national organizer, taking him to Los Angeles in the late 1980s.