
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990                   TAG: 9005130060
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEIRUT, LEBANON                                LENGTH: Short

WIFE OF LEBANON'S PRIME MINISTER DIES; WAS SOCIAL WORKER

Leila Hoss, the wife of Prime Minister Salim Hoss and a social worker who cared for Lebanon's orphans and elderly, died at American University Hospital on Saturday. She was 61.

The premier's office said Leila Hoss was admitted to the hospital on Thursday. Sources close to family, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she had been suffering from lung cancer and diabetes.

Hoss was a highly respected social worker. She supervised an orphanage and a home for the aged in Moslem west Beirut. She also was on the board of several schools that cared for needy children.

While many other politicians' wives fled Lebanon's vicious 15-year-old civil war, Hoss never left the country, even though her husband narrowly escaped death in three bombings between 1984 and 1989.

Hoss was born in Deir el-Kamar, a village in the mostly Druse Moslem Chouf mountains of southeast of Beirut, and was raised as a Greek Catholic. She converted to Islam to marry her husband, a Sunni Moslem, in 1957.

The couple had one daughter, Wadad, 30, who was born in the United States.

Funeral services will be held today at the Imam Ouzai mosque, in south Beirut, according to the premier's office.

by CNB