IN MEMORIAM

Awful news has arrived: The remarkable originator of Through the
Eyes of Children: The Rwanda Project,
someone whose good works were beyond admiration, is dead.

His close friend, Jenifer Howard, writes, “It is with the heaviest heart that I let you know that
a terrible accident claimed the life of our friend, David Jiranek, on Saturday night. While on the
last night of his vacation in Canada, he went for a swim with friends and did not surface. … We,
his friends and family, are all reeling from this shocking news and trying to cope with the loss of
an amazing person. David touched so many lives during his brief time in this world and truly made
a difference.”

I knew David Jiranek too briefly and met him only once. But that once, a month ago, was
enough to confirm the deep generosity, personal warmth and rare humanity I sensed from our
e-mail exchanges. Given what I knew of the Rwanda Project, which enabled young orphans to
express themselves through photography, I had expected to meet an elderly
gentleman-philanthropist perhaps, possibly a Czech emigré who was a professional photographer.

Instead, David turned out to be a ruggedly handsome American in the bloom of life (he was
45), an actor-turned-writer with an amateur’s interest in photography. He told me he had traveled
to Africa and come upon the Imbabazi Orphanage only by chance. But he was so taken by the
spirit of the place, the kindness of its founder, Rosamond Halsey Carr,
and the openness of the children, that he never really left.

David came back to Connecticut, where he lived, and returned to the orphanage with a batch
of disposable cameras. He set up a photography workshop and taught the children how to take
pictures, the results of which can be seen here.

Then he started raising money for the orphanage. So little was needed to keep it going, he
said — perhaps $40,000 a year to finance salaries for the staff and food and clothing for the
children — that it would have been unthinkable not to devote himself to that task. 

We exchanged gifts. He gave me a print of “Gadi” by Jacqueline. I gave him a
book of photographs by my old friend Steve Deutch. Neither David nor I knew the other would
be bringing a gift. He invited me to the opening of “Lysistrata”
in September, which he was producing Off Broadway, and told me he would be
going back to Rwanda in November. We parted with the idea of getting to know each other
better.

His loss makes me feel so much sadder than our brief acquaintance would seem to warrant
that I can’t explain it. David’s untimely death is a devastating loss for the children of the Imbabazi
Orphanage and a tragedy for his family and friends.

AN
OBITUARY

Until moments ago, when I read an e-mailed draft of David Jiranek’s obituary, written
by his brother-in-law Joe Hooper, all I knew of David was what I wrote earlier today
(above). I had no idea of the breadth of his accomplishments. He never gave
me so much as a hint of them.  

Here is the complete obituary:

David Jiranek, a
Broadway producer, a writer, a photographer, and a highly successful businessman in the field of
brochure distribution, died on Sunday, August 17, 2003 in a swimming accident while vacationing
with his family in the summer community of North Hatley, Quebec. He was 45 and lived in Old
Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

David Jiranek was a
man of boundless energy and uncommon talent, making his mark in a number of fields in the
course of his abbreviated life. His professional theater life began early, just after he graduated
from New York University. Teaming up with his friend and colleague, Broadway producer David
Weil, and with theater legend John Houseman, Mr. Jiranek served as the associate producer for
the 1981 Broadway production of the William Alfred drama, “Curse of an Aching Heart.” The
production starred Faye Dunaway. With characteristic humor, Mr. Jiranek wrote in “Playbill,”
“After Miss Dunaway fired their limo driver, and the two producers froze their hands flyering the
TKTS line, the show closed.” In 1982, Mr. Jiranek co-produced the New York premiere of the
David Mamet play, “Edmond,” for the Off-Broadway Provincetown Theater which won two Obie
Awards, one for best play. Persuaded that the theater world could market its product with more
ingenuity, Mr. Jiranek and Mr. Weil in 1984 founded their own marketing firm, CTM Brochure
Display, with Mr. Jiranek as President and Mr. Weil as CEO. In time, the company outgrew its
niche in the theater business to become the second largest brochure distribution company in the
nation, indeed in the world. The company, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with thirteen
offices in the U.S. and Canada, operates brochure stands in hotel lobbies and transportation hubs,
advertising Broadway shows, ski vacations and tourist attractions of every description.

 

Even before Mr.
Jiranek and Mr. Weil sold CTM Brochure Display in 2000, they were directing their energies back
into the theater. In 1999, the pair, with Cricket Hooper Jiranek, Mr. Jiranek’s wife and business
partner, formed a theater production company, CTM Productions. That year, the group
co-produced the Broadway blues revue, “It ‘Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues,” which played first at the
Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center and then at the Ambassador Theater. Later that year, the trio
produced a Broadway revival of “Fool Moon,” a two-man show starring Bill Irwin and David
Shine, which won a Tony Award for Special Theatrical Event. This past spring, Mr. Jiranek and
company co-produced comic Bill Maher’s biting and critically-praised one-man show, “Victory
Begins at Home,”  at the Virginia Theater.
Mr. Jiranek was slated to direct a production of “Lysistrata” from his own translation for the
Off-Off-Broadway Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre Company, where he served as president of
the board. He had completed a draft of the script days before his death. The production is
scheduled to go forward at the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre October 24, 2003, through
February 5, 2004. Mr. Jiranek was also a member of the League of American Theatres and
Producers. 

 

Beside his love for
the theater, David Jiranek had a passion for photography, for adventure and for working with
disadvantaged children. Improbably, he combined all three with his recent Project – Through the
Eyes of Children.  Three years ago, he
traveled to African nation of Rwanda to document in photographs the after-effects of the horrible
genocide of 1994. While there, Mr. Jiranek befriended the children of the Imbabazi Orphanage
and taught the children, who had never seen a camera, how to take pictures. The Imbabazi
Orphanage is founded and still run by 90-year-old American matriarch Rosamond Carr, to care
for the young survivors of the Hutu-Tutsi genocide. (In “Gorillas in the Mist,” the film about
gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, the Rosamond Carr character is played by the actress Julie Harris.)
The photography experiment with the orphanage yielded a trove of astonishingly beautiful images
created by the children which became the basis for a photography exhibition in Rwanda’s capital
city and at various galleries in the U.S., most recently this past June at the Freida and Roy Furnam
Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater in the Lincoln Center. (The photographs can be seen on
the Rwanda Project Web
site.)

 

Mr. Jiranek took a
special interest in one of the orphans, Frederick Ndabaramiye, a teenager and aspiring artist who
managed to draw and take photographs without the use of hands, having lost those to a group of
machete-wielding Hutus. (Frederick is himself a Hutu; he was punished for disobeying orders to
help murder a busload of Tutsis.) Mr. Jiranek played an important role in surmounting political
and logistical obstacles to bring Frederick to the United States last year to be outfitted with
prosthetic hands. ABC News and Charles Gibson filmed a segment about Frederick and his story
at that time. Mr. Jiranek had hoped to see the piece air on “20/20” to help raise awareness for the
plight of these extraordinary children in Rwanda.

 

Mr. Jiranek believed
so strongly in helping the Rwandan orphans achieve a better future that he subsidized the entire
Rwanda Project himself. He also raised money for the children by soliciting donations, using the
children’s photographs as a fund-raising vehicle. It is the wish of his family and his colleagues
involved with the Rwanda Project that the Project should endure, for the sake of the children and
as a fitting legacy for David Jiranek.

 

David Jiranek is
predeceased by his father, prominent furniture designer Leo A. Jiranek of Old Greenwich, and by
his half-brother Henry Heald. He is survived by his wife Cricket Hooper Jiranek and their two
daughters, Harriet Carrington “Cat” Jiranek, age 7, and Sailor Jennings Jiranek, age 4, of Old
Greenwich, his mother Elaine “Jen” Jiranek, of Old Greenwich, and a large, extended family that
includes four half-brothers, Theodore “Teke” Hoffman, R. Todd Hoffman, Robert H. Jiranek, and
James Heald Jiranek.

 

There will be a private memorial service to be held
outdoors at Lucas Point Beach in Old Greenwich this Sunday, Aug. 24 at 2 p.m. In lieu of
flowers, donations should be made to the Rwanda Project. To make a contribution, visit how to help on the Web
site.