NEW YORK -- Steve Tesich, 53, the Yugoslav-born playwright and Academy Award-winning screenwriter, died July 1 in Sydney, Nova Scotia, after a heart attack. A resident of New York City and Conifer, Colo., he was stricken while vacationing with his family.
Mr. Tesich came to the United States when he was 14, speaking no English. He attended Indiana University on a wrestling scholarship, majoring in Russian literature. He then went to New York to pursue graduate study at Columbia University.
In New York, his first six plays were produced at the American Place Theater, including "The Carpenters" in 1971.
His "Division Street," about a former radical trying to free himself from the past, opened at the Mark Taper Forum in June 1980, with Tim Matheson in the leading role. When the play made its Broadway debut that October, John Lithgow had taken over the role. The production was a failure, as was Mr. Tesich's last Broadway play, "The Speed of Darkness," a grim tale about the divergent experiences of two Vietnam War veterans.
Mr. Tesich's play writing turned increasingly darker and pessimistic. His most recent play, "Arts and Leisure," about a theater critic whose family is in ruins while he comments on public boredom with real-life horrors, completed an off-Broadway run last month at Playwrights Horizons. Other recent plays include "Square One" and "On the Road."
Mr. Tesich concentrated on films in the 1980s, and many were successful, including "Eyewitness" (1981) and an adaptation of the John Irving novel "The World According to Garp" (1982). He also wrote a novel of his own, "Summer Crossing" (1982).
Survivors include his wife, Becky Fletcher, and a daughter, Amy, of New York and Conifer; his mother, Rade Tesich of Chicago; and a sister, Gospava "Nadja" Bulaich of New York. LUCY BEALL PIERPOINT Civil Service Examiner
Lucy Beall Pierpoint, 89, a Postal Service employee who retired in 1960 as a civil service examiner, died of a heart ailment July 2 at Mount Vernon Nursing Center. She was a lifelong resident of Alexandria.
Mrs. Pierpoint was a graduate of St. Mary's Academy. She began working as a clerk in the main Alexandria Post Office in the early 1940s, and she became a civil service examiner in the mid-1950s.
She was recording secretary of a local chapter of Catholic Daughters of America and a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Alexandria.
Her husband of 62 years, John A. Pierpoint, died in 1989 and a son, Edward S. Pierpoint, died in 1977. Survivors include seven children, Ellen P. Coleman, John D. Pierpoint and Thomas J. Pierpoint, all of Woodbridge, Mary F. Davis, Paul V. Pierpoint and Robert L. Pierpoint, all of Alexandria, and Michael A. Pierpoint of Brookeville; a sister, Sister Rosemary Beall of South Bend, Ind.; and 31 grandchildren; 51 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren. JOHN CHARLES SCHROETER Air Force Comptroller
John Charles Schroeter, 90, a former Bethesda resident and retired civilian comptroller of the Military Airlift Command, died of cardiopulmonary arrest June 24 at his home in Chevy Chase.
Mr. Schroeter, an Ohio native, was a 1930 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the early 1930s, he joined Pan American Airways and was a flight officer on its South American routes. He also served as its Atlantic systems and schedule manager. He worked for the Defense Department, primarily in the Washington area, from the late 1940s until retiring in the 1950s.
He was a member of the Medallion Society.
His first wife, Frances Perry Schroeter, died in 1945. His second wife, Madelene Tamblyn Schroeter, died in 1992. He leaves no immediate survivors.
