Rick Hooper died as he lived — trying to bring peace in the Middle East. (Photo by Robert Zash)
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Friday, August 22, 2003
Rick Hooper, a New Yorker who worked on peacekeeping missions for the United
Nations, died on Tuesday, August 19, in the explosion of the U.N.’s headquarters
in Baghdad.
Hooper, 40, lived in Spanish Harlem, where he had moved three years ago with
his then-lover, photographer Robert Zash. The two were together for nearly
five years before breaking up last December.
Hooper had worked in Norway for Fafo, Norwegian for Institute for Applied
Social Science, while also serving as assistant to the head of the U.N.’s
special envoy to the Mideast peace negotiations between the Palestinian Authority
and Israel. He maintained apartments in Oslo and the Gaza Strip, before moving
to New York.
Once he began working for the U.N., he was quickly promoted as chief of staff
to the undersecretary general for political affairs. Hooper, who spoke and
wrote Arabic fluently (in addition to a working knowledge of French, German,
Norwegian and Czech), became a confidant of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan,
whom he advised on Mideast issues and for whom he wrote several speeches on
the issue.
He was in Baghdad to replace temporarily the assistant to Annan’s envoy
to Iraq, Vieira de Mello. Hooper had planned on being there for two weeks before
heading to Palestine for a long-delayed vacation.
Hooper was born in California but spent his childhood in Boise, Idaho, where
his parents still live. Active in local politics, he became involved in high
school politics, partly to oppose effort by local Mormons to set the curricula.
He worked on a potato farm at least one summer, said Barbara Hughes, an old
friend, and at a plant nursery for several years. “According to his family
(he always denied this), he was a pretty mean skier and tennis player in high
school but let both slide by college,” Hughes said in an e-mail.
He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and graduated from
Stevenson College (part of California’s public university system) in
1985. He spent a semester at Birzeit University on the West Bank, where he
learned Arabic, and Nimes, France.
He received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Damascus.
He also studied at the Center for American Studies Abroad at the American University
in Cairo. He received a master’s degree in international diplomacy from
Georgetown University. During his last semester at Georgetown he also worked
in New York for the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights on Palestinian
issues.
He immediately started working for the U.N. in the Gaza Strip. “He was
such an incredible supporter of peace,” Zash said. “In the Gaza
Strip during Desert Storm, he refused to wear a gas mask. During curfews, he
would drive around in a U.N. vehicle so people knew there was a U.N. presence.”
Zash said that since his death, he has heard from people all over the world
who had worked with Hooper.
Elizabeth Cousins and her husband, Bruce Jones, worked with Hooper at the
U.N. “Rick brought both of us to the Middle East,” Cousins said. “Rick
was one of the main reasons why my husband and I went to the Middle East, as
with so many people.” He was working with Terje Roed-Larsens, the U.N.’s
special envoy.
Cousins said Hooper was deeply critical of the Iraqi situation. “He
was one of the people who understood the extremely complex dynamics of the
region best,” she said.
Bruce Jones, who replaced him at a job at the U.N., had known Hooper also
for a long time. “He was absolutely committed to the peace process and
was extraordinarily knowledgeable about it,” Jones said. “It’s
an extraordinary loss, not just to the peace process, but more broadly, for
the whole question of the West’s relationship to the Arab world.”
Hooper is also survived by two brothers, a sister and a beloved grandmother,
Eileen Hooper. Zash is planning a memorial service in New York on his birthday
in mid-September.
Hooper was always out at the U.N., Zash said. Once, he was “outed” by
Arab journalists. “They said that he was a professional homosexual who
lured soldiers back to his home where he brainwashed them and planted them
back in the military as spies,” Zash said. He had to leave the region
for a few weeks.
“He was the most fearless person I’ve ever met,” Zash recalled. “He
would go headlong into risk in places where people were so afraid to go. He
was so incredibly selfless. There is no question that this world is a significantly
better place because he was here. He’s touched millions of people and
they don’t even know it.”
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