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Friday September 11, 1998

Crash claims 2 Jews with ties to Bay Area

Two Jews with Bay Area ties were among the 229 victims on the ill-fated Swissair Flight 111.
Douglas Fine, 39, of Fremont and Nancy Topf, 55, of New York City were killed in the crash. Topf's niece is Joanna Schwartz, an

Fine was vice president of digital imaging and retail sales at SanDisk Corporation in Sunnyvale.

The Stanford graduate had earned a master's in business administration from Harvard University and spoke fluent Japanese. He had worked at the data-storage products firm for the past seven years. He was flying from New York's Kennedy airport to Geneva, Switzerland, for a SanDisk European sales conference.

"Doug had his entire future ahead of him, like a shining star, full of ideas and just reaching his prime as a father, a husband, and rising member of our management team," Eli Harari, SanDisk president and CEO, said in a statement to Fine's colleagues. "It's just mind-boggling to contemplate working without Doug -- he is irreplaceable."

Fine is survived by his wife, Tammy, the couple's 8-month-old son, Nicholas, and his parents, Morris and Beverly Fine of Phoenix. Funeral services were pending earlier this week.

Topf, a master-teacher, dancer and choreographer, was also a pioneer in body work, having developed the "Topf" body-alignment massage technique. "She was well-known in dance and body-work circles," Schwartz said.

Much of Topf's extended family, including Schwartz, gathered for an informal memorial on Saturday at the Manhattan loft shared by Topf and her husband, Jon Gibson. New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani stopped by to pay his respects.

"She was a very insightful, spiritual person," Schwartz said, mentioning their mutual love for nature and hiking. "We were very close."

Topf is survived by her husband, two sons, her mother and three sisters, including Schwartz's mother, Peggy Schwartz of Amherst, Mass.

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