Obituaries of note

ROBERT ABPLANALP, 81, who was a confidant of Richard Nixon and an inventor who changed aerosol technology, died Saturday in Bronxville, N.Y. In 1969, he lent Nixon the money to buy the 29-acre property at San Clemente, Calif., that became the western White House. In the first few days after Nixon resigned over Watergate in August 1974, Mr. Abplanalp flew to California to be by his side. He ran the Precision Valve Corp., which manufactured a patented plastic aerosol valve that was cheaper and was more efficient than its metal counterpart.

DAVID TRUMAN, 90, provost and dean at Columbia University during student uprisings in 1968, died Aug.28 in Sarasota. A rising university administrator, he suffered a career setback when police officers ended the protest forcefully, causing hundreds of arrests and injuries. The students were protesting Columbia's ties to the Vietnam-era Defense Department.

AMRAM DUCOVNY, 75, an author and father of The X-Files star David Duchovny, died Aug.23 in Paris. At age 73, he published a lauded first novel, Coney, a semiautobiographical account of an adolescent's lurid adventures among Coney Island misfits on the eve of World War II. Before turning to fiction, he wrote 10 nonfiction books.

RAMON SERRANO SUNER, 101, a former Spanish foreign minister, brother-in-law of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco and a key figure of his regime in the early years, died Monday in Madrid. He was a top-ranking member of the fascist Falange party that governed Spain following the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.

RAND BROOKS, 84, an actor who played Scarlett O'Hara's shy first husband, Charles, in Gone With the Wind, died Monday in Santa Ynez, Calif. He was known to Western fans of the 1940s and '50s as Lucky Jenkins in Hopalong Cassidy movies and Cpl. Randy Boone in the TV series Rin Tin Tin.

JACK P. EISNER, 77, a Holocaust survivor and import-export businessman who wrote a book about his experiences that was turned into a Broadway play and a movie, died Aug. 24 in New York City. His autobiography, The Survivor, was published in 1980. The Broadway play of the same name, written by Susan Nanus, debuted in 1981, and the 1985 movie, War and Love was directed by Moshe Mizrahi.

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