SILENT KEYS

[IK0ZCW]

Ellen White, W1YL passed away on 6 November. She would have turned 96 next month. Licenced since 1946, she "devoted over 75 years of her life to ham radio, including more than 25 years on the headquarters staff for ARRL. She retired in 1978 as Deputy Communications Manager and became the editor of the column 'How's DX?' for ARRL's membership journal, QST". An accomplished CW operator who loved contesting and DXing, she joined FOC (the First Class CW Operators' Club) in 1966, and in 2019 was granted the Al Slater G3FXB Memorial Award. In the same year she was inducted into the CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame as "the grand dame of DXing", and was awarded the Russian E.T. Krenkel Medal "for outstanding global contributions to amateur radio". Her husband Bob White, W1CW (ARRL DXCC Manager from 1952 until 1976) passed away twenty years ago, followed in 2004 by their son Jim White, K4OJ
(founder and first president of the Florida Contest Group).
On 8 November the Kuwait Amateur Radio Society reported the news of the passing of Ahmad Abdul-Jabbar Mansour Marafi, 9K2DZ. He was the "Last Voice from Kuwait", the amateur radio operator who risked his own life to handle health-and-welfare messages in and out of Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation (1990-1991). In 1992 he received the ARRL International Humanitarian Award, awarded to those who, by use of amateur radio skills, provide "extraordinary service for the benefit of others in times of crisis or disaster".