 ROSEAU, Dominica -- Eugenia Charles, the former prime minister of Dominica, who gained widespread attention when she stood beside President Ronald Reagan as he announced the invasion of Grenada, died Tuesday on the island of Martinique. She was 86. She died at a hospital where she had been taken for treatment of a broken hip, said Dr. Bernard Yankey, a longtime associate. Dame Eugenia, the first woman to become a prime minister in the Caribbean, was known as the region's "Iron Lady." She survived two coup attempts during her tenure, which stretched from 1980 to 1995. She was made a dame of the British Empire in 1992. She stood with President Reagan at the White House on Oct. 25, 1983, when he announced the invasion of Grenada. She then dismissed critics who scorned her for supporting the United States military action. "The Grenadians wanted it, and that's all that counts," she told The Associated Press in a 1995 interview. "I don't care what the rest of the world thinks."
Mary Eugenia Charles was born May 15, 1919, in the village of Pointe Michel, the youngest of four children of John-Baptiste and Josephine Charles. Her father founded a cooperative bank for peasants and became mayor of Roseau, the capital, and a legislator. She graduated from the University of Toronto and studied at the London School of Economics, returning to become a lawyer in 1949. She became prime minister in 1980, two years after Dominica declared independence from Britain. A firm anti-Communist, she refused to accept scholarships offered by Fidel Castro to Dominican students. "I am not going to allow my students to study in Cuba where they will learn revolution," she said.
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