Obituaries - Oct. 10, 1999

Sir De Villiers Graaff; S. African Politician

Sir De Villiers Graaff, 85, led South Africa’s opposition United Party for 27 years. Graaff was a wealthy farmer and lawyer who inherited his title from his father, Sir David Pieter de Villiers Graaff, who made a fortune in the meat industry and was a cabinet minister. The younger Graaff was decorated for his military service during World War II, then turned to politics, becoming South Africa’s youngest member of Parliament in 1948. He was elected leader of the United Party in 1956 and quickly unveiled proposals for a multiracial senate while still providing for a white veto. Over the years he was often criticized for equivocating and was seen as a weak leader. He advocated gradual change in apartheid policy and grew increasingly out of step with liberal opinion. In the 1970s, disenchantment with United Party leadership led to the formation of the breakaway Progressive Party, which by 1977 had gained enough seats to become the official opposition. Graaff resigned as United Party chief and retired. On Monday on his farm near Cape Town after a short illness.

Elizabeth M. Mills; Violinist, Music Educator

Elizabeth Morgridge Mills, 83, violinist and pioneering California music educator who helped introduce the Suzuki method of violin instruction to the United States. Mills was born in Sierra Madre, the daughter of a printer and a piano teacher. She was passionate about violin playing by her early teens. Under the tutelage of Vera Barstow, an internationally known violinist, she began to give concerts and win competitions. She married composer-pianist Harlow Mills in 1937, and they traveled the West as a duo and in the Mills Chamber Music Ensemble. They opened the Mills Music Studio, offering violin and piano instruction, at their Pasadena home and later in Altadena. In 1959, Mills became fascinated by the teaching methods of Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violinist who had developed a program for teaching toddlers to play music by ear. She began to teach according to his principles, becoming one of the first American string teachers to bring the Suzuki method to the United States. She traveled to Japan to study Suzuki’s techniques firsthand. In 1966 she and her husband hosted Suzuki’s first concert tour in the Los Angeles area. She also directed the first three summer Suzuki Institutes in the West and helped form the Suzuki Music Assn. of America and the Suzuki Music Assn. of California. She edited two books: “In the Suzuki Style” and “The Suzuki Concept.” On Sept. 12 at Mt. San Antonio Gardens in Claremont of a stroke.

Robert Blanchon; Artist, UC Irvine Teacher

Robert Blanchon, 33, an artist who taught at UC Irvine and the California Institute of the Arts. Born in Boston, Blanchon received his master’s degree in fine arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. He lived in New York from 1991 to 1995, working at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, before moving to Los Angeles and teaching at Irvine and CalArts. As an artist, his work came from a tradition of conceptualism employing various mediums but primarily photography. While he was in Los Angeles, Blanchon’s work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Marc Foxx Gallery in Santa Monica. In 1995, Blanchon’s work was included in a group show with the provocative title “Pervert” at UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Gallery. In 1998 he was a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also had an exhibition at the university’s John and June Alcott Gallery. Blanchon returned to Chicago earlier this year to teach at the Art Institute. On Monday in Chicago of complications from AIDS-related illnesses.