"Haiti stole my soul; throw away the key!"
By profession, Ira Paul Lowenthal was a U.S.-born anthropologist and ethnologist whose years of research on Haitian families and death rituals made him a go-to -expert on the country’s cultural landscape But Lowenthal was more than just a Haiti scholar.
To those who knew him, he was a defender of the country’s culture who, when not promoting local artists and artisans, immersed himself in trying to help shape its decades-long struggle with democracy through various aid initiatives.
Lowenthal died Wednesday in Loxahatchee, a community in Palm Beach County, after a nearly four-year battle with cancer, said his only child, Alena Lowenthal, a former employee at the Miami Herald. He was 74.
Read more at the Miami Herald