Rockville, MD – Margaret “Peggy” McGrew of Rockville, Maryland, passed away on Friday, January 20, 2023, at the age of 93. She was the beloved wife of William M. McGrew (deceased) and loving mother of Kathleen Peterson (husband David), Mary Ellen Geoghegan and Eileen Daigneault (husband Michael). She is also survived by her grandchildren, Kevin Geoghegan, Kathleen Geoghegan, and Colleen Geoghegan; and her great-grandson Kai Adams Geoghegan.

Peggy raised her family in Rockville. She volunteered at St. Mary’s Church for many years, often using her sewing talents to create items for the church. She was a gardener and loved baking, especially desserts.

Relatives and friends will be received in Our Lady’s Chapel of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 520 Veirs Mill Road, Rockville, MD on Thursday, January 26, 2023 from 12-1pm followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at 1:00 pm. Interment in Gate of Heaven Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to St. Mary’s School, 600 Veirs Mill Road, Rockville, MD 2085

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Dr George Joseph passed away peacefully in his home on December 4, 2022 at the age of 93.  His last days were spent visiting with friends, loved ones and watching his beloved game of soccer in the matches of the World Cup.

Born December 25, 1928 in Brashov, Romania, Gyuri, as he was called by everyone who knew him, was a holocaust survivor, clinical associate professor in psychiatry at George Washington University, and part of the staff of Walter Reed Army Medical Center until his retirement at the age of 81.  He practiced in Romania, Israel and South Africa before coming to the US in 1963 to build a life in the greater Washington DC area.

Gyuri was an avid reader and understood history as well as most scholars.  His incredible warmth and love permeated his interactions with friends and family, infused with clarity and depth through his final days.  He loved playing bridge, listening to classical music, attending the opera and delighting in any all things related to his family.

As a young man, he was a talented swimmer and skier, loved riding his bike, and walking in nature.  He was an enthusiastic cook and host, tour guide of his adopted hometown of DC and world-wide traveler.  Never losing his intense curiosity, he even took a driving tour through Europe with his wife at the age of 89.  He also self-published three books in his 80’s which were loosely based on his early life experiences.

He would define his life in a word: courage.  He did not let fear stop him – from moving forward, taking chances, and reaping the rewards of a life lived in the constant pursuit of knowledge and authentic personal relationships.  He was uniquely proud of his courage in opening his private practice in Washington DC as a then recent immigrant in 1968.  After living through WW2 in Romania as a young Jewish boy, becoming a doctor and eventually leaving and finding his way to Israel where he would meet his wife Miriam (who he decided he would marry after knowing her for just 2 and ½ hours), he did not let fear hold him back and instead chose to come to the US to build a life. And through all he saw and experienced, he never lost his faith in himself and his belief in hope.

He is survived by his wife, Miriam, of 61 years, his three children Mark, Michelle and Susan and their spouses Keisha, Eric and Marc.  In addition, his sister Flora, nieces Limor and Yael Joseph and nephew Yann Balu.  In addition, he leaves six grandchildren – Rachel, Ben, Dylan, Mikayla, Devin and Miles.

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ylvester Modupe Broderick Jr (AKA Sundiata Modupe Broderick) was born on September 15, 1941, the first child of Dr. Sylvester Modupe Broderick, Sr. and Mrs. Fernanda Gladys Broderick, nee Nicol.  His only sibling, Mrs. Ore Awoonor Renner, nee Broderick, was born in 1944, the year the family moved from central Freetown (Pultney Street) to Brookfields — King Harman Road and later to 3 Main Motor Road, which was renamed Rasmusson Street.

He started his infants schooling in 1945 at Saint Anne’s School, which was a subsidiary of the St Joseph’s Convent. Later, he transferred to Buxton Infants at Charles Street.  In 1949 he commenced primary schooling at the Government Model School.  From there, he entered the Prince of Wales for his secondary education.  He left for the United States in 1959 to attend Otterbein College, now Otterbein University, from where he graduated with a double major–Bachelor of Arts in History/Government and French.  He pursued graduate studies in French at Universite Laval in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, from where he obtained a master’s degree.  He would later teach French at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical (A&T) State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.

While in North Carolina in the late sixties, a period fraught with much social unrest in the United States and when African American students were clamoring for Black Studies, he realized that his education was lacking in Africa Area Studies.  To address this lacuna, he embarked on a Ph.D. program in African Studies in 1970, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in Anthropology–African Oral Narrative Traditions and Linguistics, as well as African Written Literature, mainly of English and French expressions.  Fieldwork in Sierra Leone, 1973-74, yielded a Ph.D. dissertation entitled: The Tori:  Structure, Aesthetics, and Time in Krio Oral Narrative-Performance.  While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he taught graduate and undergraduate courses and could have continued teaching at this institution as he was offered a temporary position upon graduation.  But he had been away from Africa for a long time, and the call to return to Mother Africa was getting stronger by the day.  Accordingly, he accepted a position in the Department of English and European Languages at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria, where he headed the master’s program and where he produced the first three graduate students of the Department.

In 1981, after four years in Nigeria, he returned to the U.S. and married Amelia Fitzjohn, a Foreign Service Officer with the United States Information Agency.  The union produced two children, Vania Ayodele Lesana and Ahovi Modupe.   As his wife was posted to Brazil, he decided to leave Nigeria for Brazil where he taught Social Studies at the American School of Brasília and headed the Social Studies Department.  He would later accept a position to teach at the University of Bahia, in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where he taught research methods on Oral Narrative Traditions to graduate students.

Following Brazil, Modupe had a stint in Washington DC during which he taught courses on Language and Culture at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute in Rosslyn, Virginia to young American diplomats newly assigned to African countries.  Then he and his spouse returned to Africa where he started working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on a contract in the Republic of Benin.  He would later switch careers from academia by joining USAID as a Foreign Service Officer and worked in nine countries in Africa.  His greatest satisfaction was derived from working in Africa as an academic and as a Foreign Service Officer.  He was able to give back to young Africans the skills-set for academic work and for work in International Development.

Dr. Modupe Broderick followed in his father’s footsteps in sports and education.  Growing up in Freetown as a teenager in the fifties he became an avid cricket and tennis player. He played cricket on the Prince of Wales school team and for Granville House and continued his tennis at Otterbein University where he played on the varsity team. His father had exceled as a long-distance runner on the Otterbein University track team in the early twenties before he returned to Sierra Leone in 1928 to work in the Education Department, where he rose to the position of Assistant Director of Education, the second Sierra Leonean to hold that position during the colonial era. Modupe enjoyed social gatherings and traveling, discussions on literary studies, African and African American History, and Socio Linguistics; and developed an eclectic appreciation for musical genres; particularly classical music, jazz and Afro Beat. At Otterbein University he was a member of the Men’s Glee Club.

After several years of research on his family tree, using Ancestry.com and family sources, in 2022, he achieved a life dream of publishing his memoirs: Trodden Paths: A Journey from Brookfields by Modupe Broderick (New Generation Publishing, available online on Amazon).

He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Amelia; daughter, Vania; son, Ahovi, and sons-in-law Ismail Dursun and Kevin Marshall-Broderick; granddaughter, Zara, grandson, Troy; Sister: Ore Awoonor-Renner, nephews: Lauris and Julian, niece: Liesel.  Relatives include the following families: Broderick, Awoonor-Renner, Lewis, Scott-Boyle and Boyle, Peters/Mahoney in the Gambia, Roy-Macaulay, McCormack, and Parkinson, and by marriage: the Fitzjohn family, families of Donald Eleady-Cole, Effuah Davies, James and Hannah Amara, the Bernard-Jones, Dursun, Lebbie, Marshall, Caulker, Eyamide (Isaiah) John, Faulkner, and Jenkins-Johnston. 

Family Friends: Maduka and Filomina Steady, Eugene and Lorna Terry, Freddie Noah, Nelson-Okrafors, Evangeline (John) Bankole-Jones, Ahovi Kponou, Tunde and Dorothy Zack-Williams; the Kamara family of Kingtom, Donald and Beatrice Hamilton, Marian Johnson, William and Tabitha Lewis, Edwin and Matilda Bruno-Gaston, Mimie (Jere) Williams, Adelaide Dworzak, Harriet and Wilfred Thomas, Chukudinka and Waltina Spencer, Cecil Blake, Louis Bankole-Jones, Martial and Nirvah Pierre.

Personal friends: John Moorhead, Henderson Patrick, Mbye Cham, Don Marshall, Nqobisizwe Adekayode, Sia Barbara Kamara, Deirdre LaPin, Winfield Collins. 

The family thanks his health carers in his final years, especially Olive Sawyerr Nicol, Jackie Yawavi Assari, Marissa Wang, and Rhodora Guevarra.

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Stanley Sporkin of Rockville, Maryland,died of heart failure at a hospice center in Rockville, MD on March 23. He was 88. A graduate of Penn State University and Yale University School of Law, Sporkin had a 50-plus year career as director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission, general counsel of the CIA, and as a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan.  When he retired from the bench in 2000, he entered private practice, and became ombudsman for BP to hear worker complaints from Alaska and elsewhere. He worked as an attorney until his death. At the SEC, he helped create the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, persuading more than 600 companies to make voluntary disclosures of questionable foreign payments. In 1978 he won the Rockefeller Public Service Award for administering justice and reducing crime. The following year he won the Presidents Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service.  Sporkin is survived by his wife, Judith, sister, Barbara, daughter Elizabeth, sons Daniel and Thomas, and five grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the American Heart Association. Burial will be private. A memorial service will be held at a later time.

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