Obituaries of Note... 2005

Eugene McCarthy,  89;  former Senator & Presidential candidate

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SATURDAY, December 10, '05 - (Associated Press / C B S) - WASHINGTON, DC - Former Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday.   He was 89. MCCARTHY DIED IN HIS SLEEP at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael. EUGENE MCCARTHY CHALLENGED President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination; the challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.

CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT JOIE CHEN reports that McCarthy galvanized a youth movement against the Vietnam War. "WHAT McCARTHY'S CAMPAIGN DID was give them a legitimate outlet to express their opposition to the war so he brought new people into the arena," former McCarthy campaign volunteer Jo Freeman told Chen. The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books. "He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said. When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view." McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier. Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey. Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets. Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since. "It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview. "There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway — the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation. "But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others." Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on." Former Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., said McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement. "It was no longer a movement of concerned citizens, but became a national political movement," McGovern said Saturday. "He was an inspiration to me in all of my life in politics." McGovern won the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, when McCarthy ran a second time. Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who ran for vice president in 2004, said McCarthy "was a remarkable American, a man who spoke his conscience, and he was a great leader for my party." In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000. In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III." After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians. "You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians." In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick." In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems." McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota. He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery. He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books. With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration. In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery. "The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything." McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons... "they strut and waddle"... and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together. He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good. McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988. For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. "I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday. The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs. Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen." In recent years McCarthy had lived at Georgetown Retirement Residence, an assisted living center in Washington. He and his wife, Abigail, separated after the 1968 election. She died in 2001. Survivors include daughters Ellen and Margaret and six grandchildren, Michael McCarthy said.

Richard Pryor, 65; was a groundbreaking Black comedian, actor

SATURDAY, December 10, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Richard Pryor, the groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood’s biggest black stars, died of a heart attack Saturday.   He was 65. PRYOR DIED SHORTLY BEFORE 8 AM after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.

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MUSIC PRODUCER QUINCY JONES had recently described Pryor as a true pioneer of his art. "HE WAS THE CHARLIE PARKER OF COMEDY, a master of telling the truth that influenced every comedian that came after him," Jones said in a statement. "The legacy that he leaves will forever be with us." Pryor lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off. He was regarded early in his career as one of the most foul-mouthed comics in the business, but he gained a wide following for his universal and frequently personal routines. After nearly losing his life in 1980 when he caught on fire while freebasing cocaine, he incorporated the ordeal into his later routines. His audacious style influenced generations of stand-up artists, from Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock to Robin Williams and David Letterman, among others. A series of hit comedies and concert films in the '70s and '80s helped make Pryor one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood, and he was one of the first black performers to have enough leverage to cut his own deals. In 1983, he signed a $40 million, five-year contract with Columbia Pictures. His films included "Stir Crazy," "Silver Streak," "Which Way Is Up?" and "Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip." HUMOR EXAMINED RACISM... Throughout his career, Pryor focused on racial inequality, once joking as the host of the Academy Awards in 1977 that Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were the only black members of the Academy. Pryor once marveled "that I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that." But he battled drug and alcohol addictions for years, most notably when he suffered severe burns over 50 percent of his body while freebasing at his home. An admitted "junkie" at the time, Pryor spent six weeks recovering from the burns and much longer from his addictions. He battled multiple sclerosis throughout the '90s. In his last movie, the 1991 bomb "Another You," Pryor's poor health was clearly evident. Pryor made a comeback attempt the following year, returning to standup comedy in clubs and on television while looking thin and frail, and with noticeable speech and movement difficulties. In 1995, he played an embittered multiple sclerosis patient in an episode of the television series "Chicago Hope." The role earned him an Emmy nomination as best guest actor in a drama series. "To be diagnosed was the hardest thing because I didn't know what they were talking about," he said. "And the doctor said 'Don't worry, in three months you'll know.' "So I went about my business and then, one day, it jumped me. I couldn't get up. ... Your muscles trick you; they did me." A TRAILBLAZER... While Pryor's material sounds modest when compared with some of today's raunchier comedians, it was startling material when first introduced. He never apologized for it. Pryor was fired by one Las Vegas hotel for "obscenities" directed at the audience. In 1970, tired of compromising his act, he quit in the middle of another Vegas stage show with the words, "What the (blank) am I doing here?" The audience was left staring at an empty stage. He didn't tone things down after he became famous. In his 1977 NBC television series "The Richard Pryor Show," he threatened to cancel his contract with the network. NBC's censors objected to a skit in which Pryor appeared naked save for a flesh-colored loincloth to suggest he was emasculated. "I wish that every new and young comedian would understand what Richard was about and not confuse his genius with his language usage," comedian Bill Cosby said through a spokesman Saturday. In his later years, Pryor mellowed considerably, and his film roles looked more like easy paychecks than artistic endeavors. His robust work gave way to torpid efforts like "Harlem Nights," "Brewster's Millions" and "Hear No Evil, See No Evil." Recognition came in 1998 from an unlikely source: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington gave Pryor the first Mark Twain Prize for humor. He said in a statement that he was proud that, "like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to lessen people's hatred." Born in 1940 in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor grew up in his grandmother's brothel. His first professional performance came at age 7, when he played drums at a night club. Following high school and two years of Army service, he launched his performing career, honing his comedy in bars throughout the United States. By the mid-'60s, he was appearing in Las Vegas clubs and on the television shows of Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson. His first film role came with a small part in 1967's "The Busy Body." He made his starring debut as Diana Ross' piano man in 1972's "Lady Sings the Blues." Pryor also wrote scripts for the television series "Sanford and Son," "The Flip Wilson Show" and two specials for Lily Tomlin. He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the script for the movie "Blazing Saddles." Later in his career, Pryor used his films as therapy. "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling," was an autobiographical account of a popular comedian re-examining his life while lying delirious in a hospital burn ward. Pryor directed, co-wrote, co-produced and starred in the film. "I'm glad I did 'Jo Jo,"' Pryor once said. "It helped me get rid of a lot of stuff." TROUBLED LIFE... Pryor also had legal problems over the years. In 1974, he was sentenced to three years' probation for failing to file federal income tax returns. In 1978, he allegedly fired shots and rammed his car into a vehicle occupied by two of his wife's friends. Pryor was married six times. His children include sons Richard and Steven, and daughters Elizabeth, Rain and Renee. Daughter Rain became an actress. In an interview in 2005, she told the Philadelphia Inquirer that her father always "put his life right out there for you to look at. I took that approach because I saw how well audiences respond to it. I try to make you laugh at life."

Pat Morita, 73; comedian and actor in 'Karate Kid,' 'Happy Days'

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FRIDAY, November 25, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Actor Pat Morita, whose portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid" earned him an Oscar nomination, has died.   He was 73. MORITA DIED THURSDAY at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."

IN 1984, HE APPEARED in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills. MORITA SAID IN A 1986 INTERVIEW with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki "Pat" Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me." He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields." For years, Morita played small (and sometimes demeaning) roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina." "The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank. Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas," "Spy Hard," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998. Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II. "One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy 'Number 1'; being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece." After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons. Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time. "Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. " He is survived by his wife and by three daughters from a previous marriage.

Ralph Edwards, 92; broadcasting pioneer, producer and TV host

WEDNESDAY, November 16, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Broadcasting pioneer Ralph Edwards, who spotlighted stars and ordinary people as host of the popular 1950s show "This Is Your Life," died on Wednesday of heart failure.   He was 92. EDWARDS, whose career as producer and host included "Truth or Consequences" and "People's Court," died in his sleep in his West Hollywood home, publicist Justin Seremet said.

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EDWARDS FIRST HIT it big in radio in 1940 with "Truth or Consequences," a novelty show in which contestants who failed to answer trick questions — the "truth" — had to suffer "the consequences" by performing some elaborate stunt. THEN came television.   The Federal Communications Commission approved commercial broadcasts beginning on July 1, 1941, after a few years of experimental broadcasts, and NBC's New York station was the first to make the changeover. "Amazingly enough, I did 'Truth or Consequences' on television in July 1941. It was the first commercial show for NBC," Edwards recalled. "A 10-second commercial was $9," he said. The United States' entry into World War II five months later disrupted TV's progress. "Truth or Consequences," which prospered on radio in the interim, returned to television in 1950. Earlier that same year, the citizens of little Hot Springs, New Mexico, voted 1,294-295 to change the town's name to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Edwards had promised to broadcast the radio show from the town that agreed to the change. "In those days, nothing seemed impossible," he once said. "Truth or Consequences" later launched the career of Bob Barker, tabbed by Edwards as master of ceremonies in 1956. Barker, who went on to host "The Price Is Right," on Wednesday hailed Edwards as "one of the finest men I have ever met and a gentleman about whom I have never heard a word of criticism." SURPRISING CELEBRITIES AND ORDINARY PEOPLE... "This Is Your Life" also was born on radio and then migrated to television, running on NBC-TV from 1952 to 1961. It featured guests, many of them celebrities, who were lured in on a ruse, then surprised by Edwards announcing, "This is your life!" Relatives and old friends then would be brought on to reminisce about the guest. Among the people he caught unaware were Marilyn Monroe, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bob Hope, Andy Griffith, Buster Keaton, Barbara Eden, Bette Davis, Shirley Jones, Jayne Mansfield and Carol Channing. But not all guests were entertainers.   A 1953 episode profiled Hanna Bloch Kohner, a survivor of the Holocaust. "At least half of our guests were ordinary people," Edwards said. "In the beginning we didn't use celebrities at all. But when we did, I think it humanized the stars and gave them more appeal." Edwards said he and his staff used all kinds of subterfuge to surprise guests. Some would run away and be pulled back, all in fun, but broadcaster Lowell Thomas made headlines when he refused to play along on a 1959 show. "He saw instantly what was going on, and nobody puts anything over on Lowell Thomas," Edwards recalled years later. "He tore the show apart. I said, 'You're going to enjoy this,' and he said, 'I doubt that very much."' "His third-grade teacher said he knew every rock and rill in the Rockies. And he said, 'Yeah, and I knew every saloon, too,"' Edwards recalled. "The rating kept going up during the show as people called their friends to tune in." According to the reference book "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows," one person was off limits for the surprise treatment: Edwards himself. He told staff members he would fire every one of them if they put him on. Both "Truth" and "This Is Your Life" have periodically returned to television in syndicated form. Just last week, it was announced that a new version of "This is Your Life," with Regis Philbin ("Live with Regis and Kelly") as host, is planned by ABC. Philbin previously was host of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" for the network. CREATOR OF NUMEROUS SHOWS... Over the years, Edwards kept himself busy as a producer. Edwards had a hand in other shows, producing or creating "Name That Tune," "Cross Wits," "Superior Court," "It Could Be You," "Place the Face," "About Faces," "Funny Boners," "End of the Rainbow," "Who in the World," "The Woody Woodbury Show" and "Wide Country." In the '80s, Ralph Edwards Productions' show "The People's Court" made a star of retired Judge Joseph A. Wapner. "We've seen many changes and enjoyed them all," Edwards said in a 1999 interview. "I still find 'live' the most exciting, particularly for my type of shows." Edwards broke into radio in 1929 in Oakland as a 16-year-old high school student. He worked at KROW and KFRC in San Francisco while attending college at the University of California at Berkeley. "The changes in both radio and television are mind-boggling," Edwards said. He recalled that until 1948 his radio version of "Truth or Consequences" was done twice each Saturday, once for the east coast and again three hours later for the West Coast. "We would use the same script, but all new contestants," he said. Edwards said he went back to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, dozens of times over the years. Besides changing the name, townspeople made Edwards an honorary member of the Sheriff's Posse. The name continues a half-century later. Periodic efforts to reverse the change failed. "I am truly proud of my namesake city and have enjoyed a wonderful association throughout the years," he said. He also appeared in several motion pictures: "Seven Days Leave," "Radio Stars on Parade," "Bamboo Blonde," "Beat the Band," "I'll Cry Tomorrow," "Manhattan Merry-Go-Round" and "Radio Stars of 1937." Edwards' wife, Barbara, died in 1993 after 53 years of marriage. Their children are a son, Gary, who worked with Edwards; and two daughters, Christine and Laurie.

Skitch Henderson, 87;  Grammy-winning conductor, bandleader

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TUESDAY, November 2, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - NEW HAVEN, Connecticut - Skitch Henderson, the Grammy-winning conductor who lent his musical expertise to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby before founding the New York Pops and becoming the first "Tonight Show" bandleader, died Monday.   He was 87. HENDERSON DIED AT HIS HOME in New Milford of natural causes, said Barbara Burnside, director of marketing and public relations at New Milford Hospital.

BORN IN ENGLAND, Lyle Russell Cedric Henderson moved to the United States in the 1930s, eking out a living as a pianist, playing vaudeville and movie music in Minnesota and Montana roadhouses.

HE GOT HIS BIG BREAK in 1937, when he filled in for a sick pianist touring with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. When the tour wrapped up in Chicago, he used the original pianist's ticket and went to Hollywood. There he joined the music department at MGM and played piano for Bob Hope's "The Pepsodent Show." His friendship with Hope put him in touch with other stars of the day, including Crosby, who became a mentor to Henderson. He studied with the noted composer Arnold Schoenberg, and Henderson's talented ear brought him renown from some of the era's most successful musicians. "I could sketch out a score in different keys, a new way each time," Henderson said earlier this year. That quicksilver ability earned him the nickname "the sketch kid," which Crosby urged him to adapt to "Skitch." It stuck. WARTIME PILOT... During World War II, Henderson flew for both the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Corps. At his estate in New Milford, which he shared with his wife, Ruth, Henderson kept a collection of aviation memorabilia. Even at 87, he had said he hoped to fly the Atlantic once more. After the war, Henderson toured as Sinatra's musical director and lived what he called a "gypsy lifestyle," touring the country with various bands. It was Sinatra's phone call that lured Henderson to New York. _____________________-

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"Frank said, 'I'm moving the "Lucky Strike Show" to New York. Get rid of those gypsies and get back here where you belong,"' Henderson recalled in 1985. He served as musical director for the "Lucky Strike" radio show and "The Philco Hour" with Crosby. And when NBC moved to television, the studio brought Henderson along as musical director. In 1954, NBC pegged him as the bandleader for Steve Allen's "Tonight Show," which brought Henderson into the nation's living rooms every night. Even as the hosts changed from Allen to Jack Paar to Johnny Carson, Henderson was a constant. 'MUSIC THAT'S ACCESSIBLE'... He founded the New York Pops in 1983, using popular tunes to make orchestral music exciting. "People come to hear music that's accessible to them — old songs that are powerful and don't go away," he said. Even in his late 80s, Henderson maintained a tireless work schedule as music director for the Pops, where he regularly served as conductor. He also was a frequent guest conductor at a number of orchestras around the world. Said Henderson, "You can tell by the applause: There's perfunctory applause, there's light applause, and then there's real applause. When it's right, applause sounds like vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce." ________________________

Craig Dexter Calame, 56; aka Mugsy on TV's 'Uncle Floyd Show'

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THURSDAY, October 27, 2005 - (The Record) - Craig Dexter Calame, better known as Mugsy on TV's "Uncle Floyd Show", died Monday night.   He was 56. SOME 20 FRIENDS, including Floyd Vivino himself and many alumni from the show, came to Mugsy's bedside at his Hackensack home to say farewell. "WE ALL KNEW it was time," said colleague David Burd, who was Artie Delmar on the show. "We came to his bedroom, said what we had to say, and gave him a standing ovation. We said our goodbyes and left the room. Fifteen minutes later, he was gone."

CALAME, who battled cancer on and off for more than 10 years, was one of the cutups who helped make "The Uncle Floyd Show," which began on Channel 68 in 1974, an underground phenomenon for more than 20 years - and not just in New Jersey. John Lennon and David Bowie were reportedly Floyd fans; they caught the show late at night in their hotel rooms. Abetting Floyd, with his porkpie hat, bow tie and honky-tonk piano stylings, and a constellation of guest rock bands (Jon Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper and The Ramones all made appearances) was a raucous supporting cast: among them Netto, Oogie the puppet, Looney Skip Rooney, Michael T. Wright, Charlie Stoddard and Scott Gordon. And  Mugsy. "He was a great writer, a great creative mind and the nicest, biggest-hearted guy you could ever meet," Wright said. A guitarist and percussionist, Calame brought his musical as well as comedic talents to the show. But one of his greatest talents, Burd recalls, was causing a ruckus. "When Floyd was playing piano, he would sneak under the cameras and poke him in the [butt] with a stick," Burd said. "He was the 'bad boy' of the Floyd show." Originally from West Orange, Mugsy got his nickname because of the red "Bowery Boys" cap he wore, which made him look like a gangster. He never liked his real name, "Chris", friends recall. On the show, one of Mugsy's specialties was impersonating rock stars and parodying their songs. He came up with characters years before "Weird Al" Yankovic arrived on the scene. "He could always find the cloud in any silver lining. But he had this little-boy sense of humor. When he had the opportunity to disrupt things, play pranks, that's when he came alive." After "The Uncle Floyd Show" went off the air, Mugsy created his own cable TV show, "The 11th Hour." Calame was married twice.

Rosa Lee Parks, 92; matriarch of US Black civil rights movement

MONDAY, October 24, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - DETROIT - Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening.   She was 92. MRS. PARKS DIED AT HER HOME during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years. PARKS WAS AGE 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."

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AT THAT TIME, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North. THE MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA SEAMSTRESS, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus December 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her." "A GENTLE WOMAN"... The Rev. Al Sharpton called Parks "a gentle woman whose single act changed the most powerful nation in the world. ... One of the highlights of my life was meeting and getting to know her." Speaking in 1992, Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long." Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. "At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in." The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement. The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations. After taking her public stand for civil rights, Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights. "Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."

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She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."

THE FATEFUL CONVERSATION... The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest. "Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked. "No," Parks answered. "Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said. "You may do that," Parks responded. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments. In 1994, Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem. The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity — the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement — routinely cost more money than the institute could raise. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to www.rosaparks.com. After losing the OutKast lawsuit, attorney Gregory Reed, who represented Parks, said his client "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court. She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP. "A MORE COMPLACENT ATTITUDE"... Looking back in 1988, Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted. Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude. "We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today." At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."

Nipsey Russell, 82?; comedian, poet, acted in 'Car 54,' 'The Wiz'

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TUESDAY, October 4, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - NEW YORK - Nipsey Russell, who played the Tin Man alongside Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in "The Wiz," as part of a decades-long career in stage, television and film, has died. THE ACTOR, who had been suffering from cancer, died Sunday afternoon at Lenox Hill Hospital, said his longtime manager Joseph Rapp.

RAPP PUT RUSSELL'S AGE in his early 80s, possibly 82, but couldn't be more specific since his birth certificate was missing. Born in Atlanta, Russell launched his television career as Officer Anderson in the 1961 series "Car 54, Where are You?" He also appeared in the 1994 film version. Appearances on other shows, including "What's My Line", "The Match Game," and "The Dean Martin Show," followed. Russell quickly became a fixture on television game and talk shows from Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" to "Hollywood Squares," where he was welcomed for his poetic delivery that earned him the moniker, the "Poet Laureate of Television." He also took his signature four-line poetry on the road for readings and performances. Russell also appeared in the films "Nemo" in 1984, "Wildcats" in 1986 and "Posse" in 1993. He settled in New York after graduating from the University of Cincinnati and serving as a captain in Europe during World War II, Rapp said. Russell never married. "He always said, 'I have trouble living with myself, how could I live with anyone else?, Rapp said. "But he was a wonderful guy, very quiet, never bragged."

Leo Sternbach, 97;   was Valium inventor at Hoffmann-La Roche

THE  VALIUM M O L E C U L E

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FRIDAY, September 30, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - TRENTON, NJ - Leo Sternbach, the inventor of the benzodiazepine class of tranquil- izers which includes Librium and Valium, has died at his Chapel Hill, North Carolina home.   He was 97. EARLIER THIS YEAR, Sternbach was inducted into the National Invent- ors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.

STERNBACH, AN AWARD-WINNING CHEMIST who helped the Swiss drug conglomerate Roche Group build its U.S. headquarters in Nutley, NJ, after fleeing the Nazis during World War II, died after a short illness late Wednesday. His wife, Herta, sons and other relatives were at his side, according to the company. EARLIER THIS YEAR, Sternbach was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. An Austrian native who said he loved chemistry from his youth, Sternbach led development of more than a dozen important drugs during a six-decade career with Roche. His other breakthroughs include the sleeping pills Dalmane and Mogadon, Klonopin for epileptic seizures and Arfonad for limiting bleeding during brain surgery. Valium was the country's most prescribed drug from 1969 to 1982. Nicknamed "Mother's Little Helper" after being popularized in the 'Rolling Stones' song, it was more than three times more potent than its predecessor, Librium. Roche sold nearly 2.3 billion Valium pills stamped with the trademark "V" at its 1978 peak. (In the early 1980's, Roche's exclusive patents on the drug expired.) "It gave you a feeling of well-being," Sternbach told The Associated Press in 2003, the 40th anniversary ___________________

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of Valium. "Only when the sales figures came in, then I realized how important it was." Sternbach was born in 1908 in Abbazia, part of the Austrian Empire that today is Croatia, and earned a doctoral degree in organic chemistry at the University of Krakow in Poland. He began working at Roche's Basel headquarters in 1940 and in June 1941 fled to the United States with his new bride and the rest of Roche's Jewish scientists. He and Herta settled in Montclair, near Roche's U.S. operations, called Hoffmann-La Roche, raised two sons and lived there until 2003, when they moved to North Carolina, where son Daniel works as a chemist for GlaxoSmithKline. Named one of the 25 most influential Americans of the 20th century by U.S. News & World Report, Sternbach's credits include 241 patents, 122 publications, honorary degrees and other awards. As recently as 1994, products for which Sternbach held the patent brought in more than one-quarter of Roche's worldwide pharmaceutical revenues. Sternbach is also survived by another son, Michael, and five grandchildren. _____________________

CLICK:   Press release issued by Hoffmann La-Roche regarding Dr. Sternbach's death...

Don Adams,  82;  was television's Maxwell Smart on 'Get Smart'

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MONDAY, September 26, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES, CA - Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s television spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," has died. He was 82. ADAMS DIED OF A LUNG INFECTION late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his friend and former agent Bruce Tufeld said Monday, adding that the actor broke his hip a year ago and had been in ill health since.

AS THE INEPT AGENT 86 of the super-secret federal agency CONTROL, Adams captured TV viewers with his antics in combatting the evil agents of KAOS. When his explanations failed to convince the villains or his boss, he tried another tack:   "Would you believe... ?"   It became a national catchphrase. SMART was also prone to spilling things on the desk or person of his boss — the Chief (actor Edward Platt). Smart"s apologetic "Sorry about that, chief" also entered the American lexicon. The spy gadgets, which aped those of the Bond movies, were a popular feature, especially the pre-cell-phone telephone-in-a-shoe [photo: below-right], and the oft-malfunctioning 'Cone of Silence' [photo: below-left]. Smart"s beautiful partner, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon, was as brainy as he was dense, and a plot romance led to marriage and the birth of twins later in the series. "He had this prodigious energy, so as an actor working with him it was like being plugged into an electric current," Feldon said from New York. "He would start and a scene would just take off and you were there for the ride. It was great fun acting with him." Adams, who had been under contract to NBC, was lukewarm about doing a spy spoof. When he learned that Mel Brooks and Buck Henry had written the pilot script, he accepted immediately. "Get Smart" debuted on NBC in September 1965 and scored # 12 among the season"s most-watched series and # 22 in its second season. "Get Smart" twice won the Emmy for best comedy series with three Emmys for Adams as comedy actor.

CBS picked up the show but the ratings fell off as the jokes seemed repetitive, and it was canceled after four seasons. The show lived on in syndication and as a cartoon series. In 1995 the Fox network revived the series with Smart as chief and 99 as a congresswoman. It lasted seven episodes. Unfortunately, Adams never had another showcase to display his comic talent. "It was a special show that became a cult classic of sorts, and I made a lot of money for it," he remarked of "Get Smart" in a 1995 interview. "But it also hindered me career-wise because I was typed. The character was so strong... that nobody could picture me in any other type of role."

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He was born Donald James Yarmy in New York City on April 13, 1923, Tufeld said, although some sources say 1926 or "27. The actor"s father was a Hungarian Jew who ran a few small restaurants in the Bronx. In a 1959 interview Adams said he never cared about being funny as a kid: "Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all. I did movie star impressions as a kid in high school. Somehow they just got out of hand." In 1941, he dropped out of school to join the Marines. In Guadalcanal he survived the deadly blackwater fever and was returned to the States to become a drill instructor, acquiring the clipped delivery that served him well as a comedian.

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After the war he worked in New York as a commercial artist by day, doing standup comedy in clubs at night, taking the surname of his first wife, Adelaide Adams. His following grew, and soon he was appearing on the Ed Sullivan and late-night TV shows. Bill Dana, who had helped him develop comedy routines, cast him as his sidekick on Dana"s show. That led to the NBC contract and "Get Smart." Adams also served as the voice for the popular cartoon series, "Inspector Gadget." In 1980, he appeared as Maxwell Smart in a feature movie, "The Nude Bomb," about a madman whose wea- pon destroyed people"s clothing.

He had been married and divorced three times, and he had seven children.

Simon Wiesenthal, 96; famed Nazi hunter, fought anti-Semitism

TUESDAY, September 20, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - VIENNA, Austria - Simon Wiesenthal, who after surviving five Third Reich death camps helped track down Nazi war criminals and then spent the rest of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died on Tues- day.   He was 96. WIESENTHAL, WHO HELPED FIND one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center  in Los Angeles.

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"I THINK HE'LL BE REMEMBERED as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice," Hier told The Associated Press. AFTER BEING LIBERATED from the Mauthausen death camp in May 1945, Wiesenthal dedicated himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust. WIESENTHAL spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity. Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice. "When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis were not able to kill millions of people and get away with it,"   he once said. Calls of condolences poured into Wiesenthal's office in Vienna, where one of his longtime assistants, Trudi Mergili, struggled to deal with her grief. "It was expected," she lamented.   "But it is still so hard." The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wiesenthal "brought justice to those who had escaped justice." "He acted on behalf of 6 million people who could no longer defend themselves," ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. "The state of Israel, the Jewish people and all those who oppose racism recognized Simon Wiesenthal's unique contribution to making our planet a better place." Austria's parliament speaker said "an important voice for remembrance and humanity has been silenced." Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said,   "His voice will be missed in the future." "Simon Wiesenthal, like few others... personally felt the shadow of history in its brutality," Kohl said in a statement. "Despite this, I was always touched by the fact that he was not bitter and fought for justice admirably." Wiesenthal was first sent to a concentration camp in 1941, outside Lviv in what's now Ukraine. In October 1943, he escaped from the Ostbahn camp just before the Germans began killing all the inmates. He was recaptured in June 1944 and sent back to Janwska, but escaped death as his SS guards retreated with their prisoners from the Soviet Red Army. Wiesenthal's quest began after the Americans liberated Mauthausen in Austria. It was his fifth death camp among the dozen Nazi camps in which he was imprisoned, and he weighed just 99 pounds when he was freed. He said he quickly realized "there is no freedom without justice," and decided to dedicate "a few years" to that mission. "It became decades,"   he added. Even after turning 90, Wiesenthal continued to remind and to warn. While appalled at atrocities committed by Serbs against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the 1990s, he said no one should confuse the tragedy there with the Holocaust. "We are living in a time of the trivialization of the word 'Holocaust'," he told AP in 1999. "What happened to the Jews cannot be compared with all the other crimes. Every Jew had a death sentence without a date." Wiesenthal was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town near Lviv, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932 received a degree in civil en- gineering. He apprenticed as a building engineer in Russia before returning to Lviv to open an architectural office. Then the Russians and the Germans occupied Lviv and the terror began. After the war, working first with the Americans and later from a cramped Vienna apartment packed with documents, Wiesenthal tirelessly pursued fugitive war criminals. He was perhaps best known for his role in tracking down Eichmann, who organized the extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was found in Argentina, abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and hanged for crimes against humanity. Wiesenthal often was accused of exaggerating his role in Eichmann's capture. He did not claim sole responsibility, but said he knew by 1954 where Eichmann was. Eichmann's capture "was a teamwork of many who did not know each other," Wiesenthal told the Associted Press in 1972.   "I do not know if and to what extent reports I sent to Israel were used." Among others Wiesenthal tracked down was Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and sent her to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died. Wiesenthal decided to pursue Silberbauer in 1958 after a youth told him he did not believe in Frank's existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal could find the man who arrested her. His five-year search resulted in Silberbauer's 1963 capture. Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target -- Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades. Wiesenthal's long quest for justice also stirred much controversy.

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In Austria, which took decades to acknowledge its own role in Nazi crimes, Wiesenthal was ignored and often insulted before being honored for his work when he was in his 80s. In 1975, then-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, himself a Jew, suggested Wiesenthal was part of a "certain mafia" seeking to besmirch Austria. Kreisky even claimed Wiesenthal collaborated with Nazis to survive. Ironically, it was the furor over Kurt Waldheim, who became president in 1986 despite lying about his past as an officer in Hitler's army, that gave Wiesenthal stature in Austria.

Wiesenthal's failure to condemn Waldheim as a war criminal drew international ire and conflict with American Jewish groups. But it made Austrians realize that the Nazi hunter did not condemn everybody who took part in the Nazi war effort. Wiesenthal did repeatedly demand Waldheim's resignation, seeing him as a symbol of those who suppressed Austria's role as part of Hitler's German war and death machine. But he turned up no proof of widespread allegations that Waldheim was an accessory to war crimes. Wiesenthal's work exposed him to danger. His house and office have been guarded by an armed police officer since June 1982, when a bomb exploded at his front door, causing severe damage but resulting in no injuries, according to the Wiesenthal Center Web site. One German and several Austrian neo-Nazis were arrested. He pursued his crusade of remembrance into old age with the vigor of youth, with patience and determination. But as he entered his 90s, he worried that his mission would die with him. "I think in a way the world owes him and his memory a tremendous amount of gratitude," Hier said. Wiesenthal earned many awards, including Austria's Golden Decoration of Merit, which was presented by President Heinz Fischer at Wiesenthal's home in June. He also wrote several books, including his memoirs, "The Murderers Among Us," in 1967, and worked regularly at the small downtown office of his Jewish Documentation Center even after turning 90. "The most important thing I have done is to fight against forgetting and to keep remembrance alive," he said in the 1999 interview with the AP. "It is very important to let people know that our enemies are not forgotten." Wiesenthal's wife, Cyla, whom he married in 1936, died in November 2003. A memorial service will be held in Vienna's central cemetery on Wednesday. Funeral services will be in Israel, Mergili said. Fischer said Wiesenthal's mission will continue through his work and his documentation center. "The name of Simon Wiesenthal... will live on,"   he said.

Chris Schenkel, 84; was veteran ABC Sportscaster SUNDAY, September 11, 2005 - (Associ- ated Press) - INDIANAPOLIS, IN - Sports- caster Chris Schenkel, whose easygoing baritone won over fans during a more than six-decade broadcasting career in which he covered everything from bowling to the Olympics, died on Sunday following a long battle with emphysema.   He  was  82. SCHENKEL'S WIFE, FRAN, said she and the couple's two sons were at her husband's side when he passed away early Sunday at Lutheran Hospital in Ft. Wayne, IN, where he had been hospitalized for two weeks after undergoing surgery for a bleeding ulcer. SCHENKEL'S RADIO AND TELEVISION CAREER included virtually every major sports competition and several pioneering broadcasts. HE WAS THE FIRST to cover the Masters Tournament on television, in 1956; the first to call a college football game coast to coast on ABC; and the first to serve as live sports anchor from the Olympics, in Mexico City in 1968. His career highlights included calling gymnast Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10 at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and calling the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants. He was also the longtime voice of the Professional Bowlers Association, entertaining a generation of viewers with his Saturday afternoon broadcasts. George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN, Inc. and ABC Sports, called Schenkel a pioneering sportscaster and a "true gentlemen." ___________________________________

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"Everyone at ABC and ESPN mourns the loss of a great friend and colleague. Chris was a pioneer in sports television and was the pre-eminent play-by-play announcer to a generation of sports fans," Bodenheimer said in a statement. "More importantly, he was a true gentleman, beloved by all. He treated everyone with respect and friendship." Schenkel was born August 21, 1923, on his parents' farm in Bippus, IN, one of six children. His parents, second generation German immigrants, managed a grain and feed business. He attended Purdue University and fought in the Philippines during World War II and later in Korea, as an infantry platoon leader. He returned home to find a radio job in Richmond, IN, before moving into tele- vision in Providence, RI. In 1947, he assumed TV play-by-play duties for Harvard University football. Five years later, he began a 13-year run as the television voice of the New York Giants. Schenkel also had a long association with the Indianapolis 500. During the 1971 race, Schenkel, astronaut John Glenn and Tony Hulman, the late owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, were passengers in the Dodge Challenger pace car when it skidded into a bleacher full of photographers. Twenty-two people were injured, including Schenkel. Schenkel was inducted into 16 halls of fame, including the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters and College and Pro Football halls, and he won an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1993. During the past couple of years, Fran Schenkel said her husband received numerous letters from soldiers serving in Iraq whom she said apparently had seen some of his film appearances. Aside from his work on sports documentaries, Schenkel portrayed himself in several films, including the 1996 comedy "Kingpin." In addition to his wife, Schenkel is survived by sons Ted and John, daughter Tina and several grand- children. _____________________________________

Bob Denver, 70;  TV actor, was 'Maynard G Krebs'  and 'Gilligan'

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WEDNESDAY, September 7, 2005 - (Asso- ciated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Bob Denver, the bumbling namesake of "Gilligan's Island" who embarked on what was sup- posed to be a three-hour tour and en- deared himself to generations of television fans, has died.   He was 70. BOB DENVER DIED FRIDAY at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Caro- lina of complications from cancer treat- ment, his agent, Mike Eisenstadt, told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

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DENVER, who for the last several years had lived in Princeton, WV, also underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year. His wife, Dreama, and his children Patrick, Megan, Emily and Colin were with him when he died. "HE WAS MY EVERYTHING and I will love him forever," Dreama Denver said. Denver's signature role was Gilligan, but when he took the role in 1964 he was already widely known to TV audiences for another iconic character, Maynard G. Krebs, the bearded beatnik friend of Dwayne Hickman's Dobie in the "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. Krebs, whose only desire was to play the bongos and hang out at coffeehouses, would shriek every time the word "work" was mentioned in his presence. Gilligan, on the other hand, was industrious but inept. And his character was as lovable as he was inept. Viewers embraced the skinny kid in the Buster Brown haircut and white sailor hat. So did the skipper, who was played by Alan Hale Jr. and who always referred to his first mate affectionately as "little buddy." It was an affection that carried over into real life, the show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, and several of Denver's surviving cast mates said Tuesday. "I found him to be a dear, sweet generous, loving man," said Russell Johnson, who played the professor on "Gilligan's Island." Hickman said the two remained friends although they were as different in real life as their characters had been in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." "I just loved him. He was wonderful. One of my dear, dear friends. I feel like a part of me died," Hickman said. California state Sen. Sheila James Kuehl, who played Dobie's love-struck pursuer Zelda Gilroy, remembered Denver as a mentor, both in acting and life. "What he taught me about acting was when you work to make the other person look good, you end up looking good yourself," she said. "What he taught me about life was that you could love your work, but it was really more important to love your friends and family." Denver went on to star in other TV series, including "The Good Guys" and "Dusty's Trail," as well as to make numerous appearances in films and TV shows. But he never escaped the role of Gilligan, so much so that in one of David Letterman's top 10 lists - "the top 10 things that will make you stand up and cheer" - the "Late Show" host once simply shouted out Denver's name to raucous applause. The show's success, according to Schwartz, was rooted in the fact that seven people of entirely different backgrounds were thrown together each week in a comedic setting. He also credited Denver's acting talent with helping drive the series. "He was a complex man. He was not a guy who just slipped on banana peels," Schwartz said Tuesday. "He knew most people thought of him as a funny guy who could do funny things. But he was really an intellectual at heart." TV critics saw the show as anything but intellectual, dismissing the idea of a group of tourists being stranded on an uncharted desert island as inane. After it was canceled by CBS in 1967, "Gilligan's Island" found new audiences over and over in syndicated reruns and reunion films, including 1981's "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island." (It also led to the recent TBS reality series "The Real Gilligan's Island.") "As silly as it seems to all of us, it has made a difference in a lot of children's lives," Dawn Wells, who played castaway Mary Ann Summers, once said. "Gilligan is a buffoon that makes mistakes and I cannot tell you how many kids come up and say, 'But you loved him anyway.'" One of the most recent film sequels was 2001's "Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three Hour Tour in History," in which other actors portrayed the original seven-member cast while Denver, Wells and Johnson narrated and reminisced. The original show's other castaways were Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, as rich snobs Thurston and Lovey Howell, and Tina Louise, as bosomy movie star Ginger Grant. Denver's death leaves Wells, Johnson and Louise as the cast's surviving members. Denver was born in New Rochelle, New York, on Jan 9, 1935. He discovered acting while studying law at Loyola University in Los Angeles in the 1950s. While struggling to make it as an actor, he taught private school and worked at the post office. After landing a small role in the 1959 Sal Mineo film "A Private Affair," he was cast as Krebs in "Dobie Gillis." His career took off from there. Denver is survived by his wife and children and a granddaughter, Elana.

William H. Rehnquist,  80;  Chief Justice  of U. S. Supreme Court

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SUNDAY, September 4, 2005 - (C N N) - WASHINGTON, DC - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who quietly ad- vanced the conservative ideology of the U.S. Supreme Court under his leadership, died Saturday evening.   He was 80. THE JUSTICE, diagnosed with thyroid cancer, had a tracheotomy and received chemotherapy and radiation as part of his treatment. SUPREME COURT SPOKESPERSON Kathy Arberg said Rehnquist had "continued to perform his duties on the court until a precipitous decline in his health the last couple of days."

THEN with his three children beside him, the justice died at his suburban Arlington, Virginia, home, the court spokesperson said. REHNQUIST had become increasingly frail after his cancer diagnosis last October, but his office had refused to characterize the seriousness of his illness. Meanwhile, he had worked from home for several months and missed oral arguments in a number of cases. "America will honor his memory," President Bush said Sunday. He praised Rehnquist as "a man of character and dedication" who "led the judicial branch of government with tremendous wisdom and skill." Bush said he would move quickly to choose a "highly qualified" candidate as his replacement on the Supreme Court. Hours after leaving the hospital in July following treatment for fever, he made a decree: "I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement," he said in a written statement. "I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits." He went to work the next day. Four months earlier, when Rehnquist joined the other justices for the first time after a break, he showed no emotion, paid sharp attention to arguments and asked eight or nine technical questions. Despite the tracheotomy tube in his throat to help him breathe, his voice was fairly strong. MOVED COURT IN CONSERVATIVE DIRECTION... President Nixon appointed Rehnquist to the Supreme Court in 1972, and in 1986, President Reagan tapped him as chief justice to replace Warren Burger. In that role, Rehnquist led the closed-door conferences where justices discuss and vote on cases; assigned who wrote the majority rulings; managed the docket; controlled open court arguments; and supervised the 300 or so court employees, including clerks, secretaries, police and support staff. Rehnquist, who belonged to a loose, 5-4 conservative majority, was the second-oldest man to preside over the nation's highest court. Early in his tenure, he often was the lone dissenter, despite the presence of two other Republican appointees. David Yalof, a constitutional law professor at the University of Connecticut, credited Rehnquist with moving the court in a consistent, conservative direction. "He was able, over time, to gather colleagues together cordially, manage tension, build a majority and turn them over to his point of view," Yalof said. Rehnquist followed the legal philosophy of judicial restraint, which interprets the U.S. Constitution narrowly. He believed the only rights the Constitution protects are those the document names specifically, and justices should consider the framers' original intent when making rulings. Shortly after Nixon named him as an associate justice, Rehnquist and Justice Byron White were the only dissenters in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established that a woman's right to an abortion was protected under the right to privacy. "To reach its result, the court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the 14th Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the amendment," Rehnquist wrote in his dissent. 'UNIFYING FIGURE' ON COURT... In 1999, Rehnquist became the second chief justice in U.S. history to preside over a presidential impeachment -- that of President Clinton, who was acquitted. Having already sat on the court for 14 years, Rehnquist quickly matured in the role of chief justice. He cut the number of cases the court agreed to hear, streamlined conferences and sought clearer, strongly reasoned opinions. Jay Jorgensen, a former clerk for the chief justice, said it was the little things Rehnquist did that built personal trust, loyalty and respect among justices who were often sharply divided ideologically. "He set up a system during conferences where every justice, one by one, in order of seniority, is allowed to weigh in on a case," Jorgensen said. "There is no free-for-all debate; the chief justice does not allow bickering." On Saturday night, Ruth Wedgwood, a constitutional lawyer and close friend of Rehnquist's, said, "He was an interesting man. He had an interesting life. Over time, I think he became a much more unifying figure in the court." His death, she said, puts a "great burden" on the Senate, which will be responsible for confirming a replacement.

Robert A. Moog,  71;  engineer, perfected electronic synthesizer

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SUNDAY, July 21, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - RALEIGH, N.C. - Robert A. Moog, whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died.   He was 71. MOOG DIED SUNDAY at his home in Asheville, according to his company’s Web site. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumor, detected in April. A CHILDHOOD INTEREST in the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments, would lead Moog to a create a career and business that tied the name Moog as tightly to synthesizers as the name Les Paul is to electric guitars.

DESPITE traveling in circles that included jet-setting rockers, he always considered himself a technician. "I’m an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers," he said in 2000. "They use the tools." As a Ph.D. student in engineering physics at Cornell University, Moog in 1964 developed his first voltage-controlled synthesizer modules with composer Herbert Deutsch. By the end of that year, R.A. Moog Co. marketed the first commercial modular synthesizer. The instrument allowed musicians, first in a studio and later on stage, to generate a range of sounds that could mimic nature or seem otherworldly by flipping a switch, twisting a dial, or sliding a knob. Other synthesizers were already on the market in 1964, but Moog’s stood out for being small, light and versatile. The arrival of the synthesizer came as just as the Beatles and other musicians started seeking ways to fuse psychedelic-drug experiences with their art. The Beatles used a Moog synthesizer on their 1969 album, "Abbey Road"; a Moog was used to create an eerie sound on the soundtrack to the 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange". Keyboardist Walter Carlos demonstrated the range of Moog’s synthesizer by recording the hit album "Switched-On Bach" in 1968 using only the new instrument instead of an orchestra. "Suddenly, there was a whole group of people in the world looking for a new sound in music, and it picked up very quickly," Deutsch, the Hofstra University emeritus music professor who helped develop the Moog prototype, said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. "A lot of people today don’t realize what this man brought to the masses," Carlini said. "He brought electronic music to the masses and changed the way we hear music."

The popularity of the synthesizer and the success of the company named for Moog took off in rock as extended keyboard solos in songs by Manfred Mann, Yes and Pink Floyd became part of the progressive sound of the 1970s. "The sound defined progressive music as we know it," said Keith Emerson, keyboardist for the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer. "He’s like an Einstein of music," Carlini said. "He sees it like, there’s a thought, an idea in the air, and it passes through him. Passing through him, he’s able to build these instruments."

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But the now-pervasive synthesizer’s ability to mimic strings, horns, and percussion has also threatened some musicians. In 2004, musicians extracted a promise from the Opera Company of Brooklyn to never again use an advanced kind of synthesizer, called a virtual orchestra machine, in future productions. Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky "eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still." He went on to attach his name to a long list of synthesizers developed over the years — among them Micromoog, Minitmoog, Multimoog and Memorymoog. Moog, who had set up shop in suburban Buffalo, New York, sold R.A. Moog in 1973 and moved five years later to a remote plot outside Asheville, a scenic Appalachian Mountain city and center for new-age pursuits that Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed "America’s new freak capital." A deliberate man with brushed-back white hair and a breast pocket packed with pens, Moog drove an aging Toyota painted with a snail, vines and a fish blowing bubbles. "When I drive that thing around, people smile at me," he said. "I really feel I’m enhancing the environment." He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville before turning full-time to running his new instrument business, which was renamed Moog Music in 2002. Moog is survived by his wife, Ileana; his children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa and Renee Moog; a stepdaughter, Miranda Richmond; and his former wife, Shireleigh Moog.

Peter Jennings, 67;  anchored ABC's nightly news for 2 decades

SUNDAY, August 7, 2005 - (ABC News) - ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings died today at his home in New York City. He was 67. On April 5, Jennings announced he had been diag- nosed with lung cancer. HE IS SURVIVED BY HIS WIFE, Kayce Freed, his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, and his sister, Sarah Jennings. IN ANNOUNCING Jennings' death to his ABC colleagues, News President David Westin wrote: "For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways. None of us will be the same without him.

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"AS you all know, Peter learned only this spring that the health problem he'd been struggling with was lung cancer. With Kayce, he moved straight into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. He knew that it was an uphill struggle. But he faced it with realism, courage, and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not. "We will have many opportunities in the coming hours and days to remember Peter for all that he meant to us all. It cannot be overstated or captured in words alone. But for the moment, the finest tribute we can give is to continue to do the work he loved so much and inspired us to do." REPORTED WORLD-SHAPING EVENTS... As one of America's most distinguished journalists, Jennings reported many of the pivotal events that have shaped our world. He was in Berlin in the 1960s when the Berlin Wall was going up, and there in the '90s when it came down. He covered the civil rights movement in the southern United States during the 1960s, and the struggle for equality in South Africa during the 1970s and '80s. He was there when the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965, and on the other side of the world when South Africans voted for the first time. He has worked in every European nation that once was behind the Iron Curtain. He was there when the independent political movement Solidarity was born in a Polish shipyard, and again when Poland's communist leaders were forced from power. And he was in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and throughout the Soviet Union to record first the repression of communism and then its demise. He was one of the first reporters to go to Vietnam in the 1960s, and went back to the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1980s to remind Americans that, unless they did something, the terror would return. On Dec. 31, 1999, Jennings anchored ABC's Peabody-award winning coverage of Millennium Eve, "ABC 2000." Some 175 million Americans watched the telecast, making it the biggest live global television event ever. "The day belonged to ABC News," wrote The Washington Post," with Peter Jennings doing a nearly superhuman job of anchoring." Jennings was the only anchor to appear live for 25 consecutive hours. Jennings also led ABC's coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and America's subsequent war on terrorism. He anchored more than 60 hours that week during the network's longest continuous period of news coverage, and was widely praised for providing a reassuring voice during the time of crisis. TV Guide called him "the center of gravity," while the Washington Post wrote, "Jennings, in his shirt sleeves, did a Herculean job of coverage." The coverage earned ABC News Peabody and duPont awards. OVERSEAS, AND AT HOME... Jennings joined ABC News on Aug. 3, 1964. He served as the anchor of "Peter Jen- nings with the News" from 1965 to 1967. He established the first American television news bureau in the Arab world in 1968 when he served as ABC News' bureau chief for Beirut, Lebanon, a position he held for seven years. He helped put ABC News on the map in 1972 with his coverage of the Summer Olympics in Munich, when Arab terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage. In 1975, Jennings moved to Washington to become the news anchor of ABC's morning program "A.M. America". After a short stint in the mornings, Jennings returned overseas to Rome where he stayed before moving to London to become ABC's Chief Foreign Correspondent. In 1978 he was named the foreign desk anchor for "World News Tonight." He co-anchored the program with Frank Reynolds in Washington, D.C., and Max Robinson in Chicago until 1983. Jennings was named anchor and senior editor of "World News Tonight" in 1983. In his more than 20 years in the position he was honored with almost every major award given to television journalists. His extensive domestic and overseas reporting experience was evident in "World News Tonight's" coverage of major crises. He reported from all 50 states and locations around the globe. During the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 War in Iraq, his knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs brought invaluable perspective to ABC News war in Iraq and the drug trade in Central and South America. The series also tackled important domestic issues such as gun control policy, the politics of abortion, the crisis in funding for the arts and a highly praised chronicle of the accused bombers of Oklahoma City. "Peter Jennings Reporting" earned numerous awards, including the 2004 Edward R. Morrow award for best documentary for "The Kennedy Assassination — Beyond Conspiracy." Jennings also had a particular interest in broadcasting for the next generation. He did numerous live news specials for children on subjects ranging from growing up in the age of AIDS, to prejudice and its effects on our society. After the events of September 11, and again on the anniversary, he anchored a town hall meeting for children and parents entitled, "Answering Children's Questions." Jennings was honored with many awards for news reporting, including 16 Emmys, two George Foster Peabody Awards, several Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and several Overseas Press Club Awards. Most recently, "World News Tonight" was recognized with two consecutive Edward R. Murrow awards for best newscast, based on field reporting done by Jennings on the California wildfires and the transfer of power in Iraq. Jennings was the author, with Todd Brewster, of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller, "The Century." It featured first-person accounts of the great events of the century. In 1999, he anchored the 12-hour ABC series, "The Century," and ABC's series for The History Channel, "America's Time." He and Brewster also published "In Search of America," a companion book for the 6-part ABC News series.

King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, 84; Saudi Arabia monarch since 1982

MONDAY, August 1, 2005 - (Associated Press) - RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, who cultivated a close relationship between his oil-rich nation and the United States died early on Monday, the Saudi royal court said.   He was 84. SINCE FAHD SUFFERED A STROKE in 1995, the king's half brother Crown Prince Abdullah, had been Saudi Arabia’s de factor ruler. Abdullah was appointed the country’s new monarch upon news of Fahd's death. "WITH ALL SORROW AND SADNESS, the royal court in the name of his highness Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and all members of the family announces the death of the custodian of the two holy mosques, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz," according to a statement read on state-run Saudi TV by the country’s information minister.

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FAHD DIED about 2:30 AM EDT, a senior Saudi official in Washington told The Associated Press. President Bush was alerted within minutes of Fahd’s death, the official told The AP on condition of anonymity. The king’s funeral was to be held Tuesday evening, he stated. PRESIDENT BUSH called newly appointed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Monday to express condolences over the death of King Fahd and to congratulate Abdullah on his succession to the throne. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who announced the phone call, said a U.S. delegation would attend Fahd’s funeral. He said the delegation hadn’t been chosen yet. Bush will not attend the services, McClellan said. Saudi TV broke with regular broadcasting to announce Fahd’s death. Quranic verse recitals followed the announcement by the minister, Iyad bin Amin Madani, whose voice wavered with emotion as he read the statement. Madani said only that the king died of an illness. Fahd died at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, where he was admitted on May 27 for unspecified medical tests, an official at the hospital told The AP on condition of anonymity because news of the monarch’s death had not been officially announced at the time. At the time of his widely publicized hospitalization that caused concern at home and abroad, officials said he was suffering from pneumonia and a high fever. RISE OF EXTREMISM... During his rule, the portly, goateed Fahd, who rose to the throne in 1982, inadvertently helped fuel the rise of Islamic extremism by making multiple concessions to hard-liners, hoping to boost his Islamic credentials. But then he also brought the kingdom closer to the United States and agreed to a step that enraged many conservatives: the basing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The close relationship Fahd nurtured with the United States deteriorated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and many in the U.S. administration blamed the strict strain of Islam that has developed in Saudi Arabia, called Wahabism, for fueling terrorism. Crown Prince Abdullah has led the country’s battle against Islamic extremism and terrorism. Abdullah oversaw a crackdown on Islamic militants after followers of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden launched a wave of attacks, beginning with the May 2003 bombings of Western residential compounds in Riyadh. Abdullah also pushed a campaign against extremist teaching and introduced the kingdom’s first elections ever — municipal polls held in early 2005. STRONGER U.S. TIES... Before assuming power, Abdullah had not been happy with Saudi Arabia’s close military alliance with Washington and a perceived bias toward Israel, but has recently rebuilt the kingdom’s ties with the U.S. He visited President Bush twice at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, most recently in April 2005. Visitors who saw King Fahd after his stroke reported he was barely aware of what was going on around him and could not recognize those who shook hands with him. Foreign dignitaries usually were allowed brief meetings with him, their visits lasting only as long as it took to film TV footage for the state-run stations. On newscasts, the king was shown seated as he extended his hand to visitors or sipped coffee. Occasionally, policy statements, comments or speeches were issued in his name. Fahd was proclaimed the fifth king of Saudi Arabia on June 13, 1982, three years after two events that would fuel the rise of Islamic extremism in Saudi Arabia. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini founded the Islamic Republic in Shiite Iran and, in the same year, radical Muslims briefly took over the holy mosque in Mecca, proclaiming the royal family not Islamic enough to rule. Those developments, coupled with the king’s reputation as a former gambler and womanizer, made the liberal-leaning Fahd move toward appeasing the country’s powerful religious establishment, including the morals police who enforce the strict social codes that oblige women to veil and ban men and women from mingling. TRYING TO TAKE THE INITIATIVE... Saudi Arabia did not want Shiite Iran to be seen as more Islamic than the Sunni kingdom, birthplace of Islam. So Fahd took the title "custodian of the two holy mosques" — referring to Islam’s holiest shrines at Mecca and Medina — and he poured millions of dollars into the religious establishment and into enlarging fundamentalist universities. In the 1980s, Riyadh, Washington and Islamabad mobilized Islam to fight Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Rihayd donated generously to that effort and thousands of Saudis joined the jihad, including bin Laden, in a recruitment drive encouraged by the government. The king’s official biography says Fahd was "an ardent supporter" of the Afghan mujahedeen. But after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Fahd, like U.S. and Pakistani officials, gave little attention to the mujahedeen, who turned that country into a training ground for their attacks, including the 9/11 suicide hijackings. Earlier in his rule, Fahd was credited with turning Saudi Arabia into one of the Middle East’s most modern states despite resistance from Islamic fundamentalists and tribal powers. In 1985, his nephew, Prince Sultan bin Salman, went into space aboard the U.S. shuttle Discovery as the first Arab and Muslim astronaut. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and looked like he also might take Saudi Arabia, Fahd was persuaded by the United States to allow hundreds of thousands of U.S. and other Western troops into his country to fend off the Iraqis. The move spawned the first potent opposition to Fahd’s rule. Demonstrations were quelled and hundreds of clerics detained. Radicals set off bombs at two U.S. military posts in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, killing 25 Americans. Bin Laden, who had earlier been stripped of his Saudi citizenship by Fahd’s government, became even more determined in his opposition to the Saudi royal family. The Persian Gulf crisis also cost Saudi Arabia financially. The $60 billion bill, coupled with lower oil prices, forced Fahd to scale back popular social benefits — things like free education, free medical treatment and free lots for homes and businesses. It was only in late 2004, amid high oil prices, that the Saudi Cabinet declared its first deficit-free budget in nearly a decade. The stroke left Fahd with short-term memory loss and an inability to concentrate for long stretches. Fahd also suffered from arthritis, diabetes and a bad knee. The overweight monarch got around in a wheelchair and used a cane for short walks in his later years. He underwent eye cataract surgery once in 2002 in Geneva and a year later in Riyadh. A few days before the Geneva surgery, he was operated on to remove a blood clot from one of his eyes. A MONARCH'S LIFE... Fahd, one of 42 sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdul-Aziz, got an elementary school education with a heavy emphasis on religion at a school set up by his father. He traveled often and enjoyed years of high living. But when he was in his late 20s, he was told that to maintain his place in the succession he had to shape up. In 1953, he became the nation’s first education minister, laying the foundation for a nationwide school system that grew from 30,000 students to over 3.2 million students today enrolled at all levels. In 1962, he became interior minister and then crown prince in 1975 when King Faisal was slain by a deranged nephew. Fahd was de factor ruler during the seven-year reign of his brother Khaled, a devout and apolitical man, and took the throne formally at Khaled’s death in 1982. The monarch always appeared in the traditional flowing white robe and "mishlah" — the camel-colored cape adorned with spun gold. He was a night-owl who slept during the day and often opened weekly ministerial meetings near midnight. His short working hours and centralized style — he insisted on approving even minor details — created a constant bottleneck of paperwork. Details about Fahd’s private life are little known, but he is believed to have had three wives and eight sons. His eldest son, Faisal, died in 1999 of a heart attack.

William Westmoreland, 91; led American troops in Vietnam War

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MONDAY, July 18, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - COLUMBIA, S.C. - Retired Gen'l William Westmoreland, who commanded American troops in Vietnam - the nation's longest conflict, and the only war America did not win - died on Monday night. He was 91. WESTMORELAND DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES at Bishop Gads- den retirement home, where he had lived with his wife for several years, said his son, James Ripley Westmoreland. THE SILVER-HAIRED, jut-jawed officer, who rose through the ranks quickly in Europe during World War II and later became superintendent of West Point, contended the United States did not lose the conflict in Southeast Asia.

"IT'S MORE ACCURATE to say our country did not fulfill its commitment to South Vietnam," he said. "By virtue of Vietnam, the U.S. held the line for 10 years and stopped the dominoes from falling." As commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, Westmoreland oversaw the introduction of ground troops in Vietnam and a dramatic increase in the number of U.S. troops there. American support for the war suffered a tremendous blow near the end of Westmoreland's tenure when enemy forces attacked several cities and towns throughout South Vietnam in what is known as the Tet Offensive in 1968. Though Westmoreland fought off the attacks, the American public remained stunned that the enemy had gained access to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, even if only for a few hours. After the event, President Lyndon Johnson limited further increases in troops; Westmoreland was recalled to Washington to serve as the U.S. Army Chief of Staff after asking for reinforcements in response to the attacks. He would later say he did not know how history would deal with him. 'NO APOLOGIES'...   "Few people have a field command as long as I did," he said. "They put me over there and they forgot about me. But I was there seven days a week, working 14 to 16 hours a day. "I have no apologies, no regrets. I gave my very best efforts," he added. "I've been hung in effigy. I've been spat upon. You just have to let those things bounce off." Later, after many of the wounds caused by the divisive conflict began to heal, Westmoreland led thousands of his comrades in the November, 1982, veterans march in Washington to dedicate the Vietnam War Memorial. He called it "one of the most emotional and proudest experiences of my life." William Childs Westmoreland was born near Spartanburg, S.C., on March 26, 1914, into a banking and textile family. LOVE OF UNIFORMS BEGAN EARLY...   He was an Eagle Scout and attended The Citadel for a year before transferring to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1936 and, during his senior year, held the highest command position in the cadet corps. Westmoreland saw action in North Africa, Sicily and Europe during World War II. He attained the rank of colonel by the time he was 30. As commander of the 34th Field Artillery Battalion fighting German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, he earned the loyalty and respect of his troops for joining in the thick of battle rather than remaining behind the lines at a command post. He was promoted to brigadier general during the Korean War and later served in the Pentagon under Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor. Westmoreland became the superintendent of West Point in 1960 and, by 1964, was a three-star general commanding American troops in Vietnam. After his four-year tour in Vietnam, Westmoreland was promoted to Army chief of staff. He retired from active duty in 1972 but he continued to lecture and participate in veterans' activities. Westmoreland was married to the former Katherine "Kitzy" Van Deusen and the couple had three children. BATTLE WITH CBS...   A decade after his retirement, Westmoreland fought another battle involving Vietnam. In 1982, he filed a $120 million lawsuit against CBS over a documentary "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," which implied he had deceived President Johnson and the public about enemy troop strength in Vietnam. At the time, Westmoreland said the question "is not about whether the war in Vietnam was right or wrong, but whether in our land a television network can rob an honorable man of his reputation." After an 18-week trial in New York City, the case was settled shortly before it was to go to the jury. The settlement was characteristic of the general's ambivalent relationship with the press. In his autobiography, "A Soldier Reports," Westmoreland wrote that in Vietnam, while he "tried to avoid any ven- detta against the press," he sometimes resented the time he had to spend correcting "errors, misinterpretations, judgments and falsehoods" contained in news reports. But he wrote that the press is "such a bulwark of the American system, that it is well to tolerate some mistakes and derelictions to make every effort to assure that total freedom and independence continue to exist." In later years, Westmoreland often spoke to Vietnam veterans' groups, accepting invitations to visit veterans' groups in all 50 states, his son "Rip" Westmoreland said. "That became, in effect, his raison d'etre," the younger Westmoreland recalled. "He did have a point of view on Vietnam but he did not speak about that. He was not out there trying to justify anything."

Sir Edward Heath, 89;  British Prime Minister in the early 1970s

SUNDAY, July 17, 2005 - (Associated Press) - LONDON - Sir Edward Heath, the prime minister who led England into what is now the European Union but lost the Conservative Party leadership to Margaret Thatcher, died on Sunday. He was 89. HEATH, WHO GOVERNED ENGLAND from 1970-1974, died at his home in the southern cathedral city of Salisbury. A CARPENTER'S SON who broke the tradition of blue bloods leading the British Conservative Party, he was a born politician whose major achievement was to negotiate Britain's 1973 entry into the European Community. The entry into what became the European Union overturned years of resistance domestically and by France, which had vetoed Britain's entry in 1967.

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IN 1992, he became Sir Edward, a member of the country's most prestigious order of chivalry, the knights of the Garter. THATCHER, who successfully challenged him for the party leadership in 1975, offered warm words for her former rival, saying he was a "political giant" and "in every sense the first modern Conservative leader." "We are all in his debt," Thatcher said in a statement. Heath came to power in 1970 pledging to end Britain's long cycle of post-World War II decline, but he was thwarted and, in the end, brought down by militant unions seeking higher pay. "He was a man of great integrity and beliefs he held firmly from which he never wavered, and he will be remembered by all who knew him as a political leader of great stature and importance," Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday. In 1974, with Britain reduced to a three-day week by striking coal miners, Heath called an election demanding "who governs?" in a challenge to the unions. He lost to Harold Wilson's Labour Party and lost again when Wilson called an election in October that year. In all, Heath had taken the party to defeat by Labour three times since becoming leader of the party in 1965. The Tories rebelled and Thatcher, another outsider, took over. Heath remained in the House of Commons as a rank-and file legislator, a bulky, unforgiving figure sniping ineffectively at his right-wing successor. "This rather shy, rather withdrawn man, felt deeply affronted," said the late William Whitelaw, who served as Thatcher's loyal deputy. Whitelaw died in 1999. During Thatcher's 15 years as party leader, Heath's name disappeared from the Conservatives' official folklore. The 1987 election manifesto, for example, described the history of Conservative policy toward Europe without mentioning Heath. Edward Richard George Heath was born in Broadstairs, a harbor town in the southeast England county of Kent, on July 9, 1916, the elder of two sons.

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Encouraged by his mother, Heath began piano lessons as a small boy.   It became a lifetime interest. From his state school, Heath won a scholarship to Oxford University. Like Mrs. Thatcher, he emerged from Oxford with an upper-class accent. After World War II service as an artillery officer, Heath worked briefly as a civil servant, then as an editor of the Anglican Church Times. Heath, who never married, was elected to the House of Commons for Bexley and Sidcup in 1950, and represented the solidly Conservative south England district through his long political career. To the end, Heath remained an unusual politician in that he never tried to be liked.

Awkward silences would fall during interviews with journalists. In the Thatcher era, he would often sit staring glumly ahead during party conventions. Both as prime minister and leader of the opposition he conducted symphony orchestras. He had two Steinway pianos in his house, Arundells, in Salisbury, and another in his apartment in London's Belgravia district. His 1976 book, "Music, a Joy for Life," was a best seller. So was one he wrote on yachting after taking his yacht Morning Cloud to victory in Australia in the Hobart-Sydney race. Stripped of power, he was sensitive to suggestions that his life was lonely or empty. "I enjoy my own company," he said, looking back in a 1989 newspaper interview. "I don't think I ever regret not getting married. A lot of politicians seem to regret they've got wives." Heath's funeral was scheduled for July 25 at the Salisbury Cathedral.

Luther Vandross, 54;  R&B artist, 4-time Grammy award winner

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SATURDAY, July 2, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - NEW YORK - Grammy award winner Luther Vandross, whose deep, lush voice on such hits as "Here and Now" and "Any Love" sold more than 25 million albums while providing the romantic backdrop for millions of couples worldwide, died Friday.   He was 54. VANDROSS DIED at John F Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey, said hospital spokesman Rob Cavanaugh. He did not release the cause of death but said in a statement that Mr Vandross "never really recovered from" a stroke some two years ago.

SINCE THE STROKE in his Manhattan home on April 16, 2003, the R&B crooner stopped making public appearances - but amazingly managed to continue his recording career. In 2004, he captured four Grammys as a sentimental favorite, including best song for the bittersweet "Dance With My Father." VANDROSS, who was still in a wheelchair at the time, delivered a videotaped thank you. "Remember, when I say goodbye it's never for long," said the weak-looking singer. "Because" - he broke into his familiar hit - "I believe in the power of love." Vandross also battled weight problems for years while suffering from diabetes and hypertension. He was arguably the most celebrated R&B balladeer of his generation. He made women swoon with his silky yet forceful tenor, which he often revved up like a motor engine before reaching his beautiful crescendos. Jeff O'Conner, Vandross' publicist, called his death "a huge loss in the R&B industry. He was a close friend of mine, and right now it's shocking." O'Conner said he received condolence calls Friday from music luminaries such as Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. Singer Roberta Flack, on tour in Japan, said she was mourning the loss of her friend of more than 20 years. "He was a musician who couldn't help but give you all he had," she said by telephone. "He was the kind of guy who was born to do what he did musically and let the world know about it. He was not born to keep it smothered in the chest." Vandross was a four-time Grammy winner in the best male R&B performance category, taking home the trophy in 1990 for the single "Here and Now," in 1991 for his album "Power of Love," in 1996 for the track "Your Secret Love" and a last time for "Dance With My Father." The album, with its single of the same name, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts while he remained hospitalized from his stroke. It was the first time a Vandross album had topped the charts in its first week of release. In 2005, he was nominated for a Soul Train Music Award for a duet with Beyonce on "The Closer I Get To You." Vandross' sound was so unusual few tried to copy it; even fewer could. "I'm proud of that - it's one of the things that I'm most proud of," he told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview. "I was never compared to anyone in terms of sound." Vandross' style hearkened back to a more genteel era of crooning. While many of his contemporaries and successors belted out tunes that were sexually charged and explicit, he preferred soft pillow talk and songs that spoke to heartfelt emotions. "I'm more into poetry and metaphor, and I would much rather imply something rather than to blatantly state it," he said. "You blatantly state stuff sometimes when you can't think of a a poetic way to say it." A career in music seemed predestined for the New York native; both his parents were singers, and his sister, Patricia, was part of a 1950s group called the Crests. But he happily toiled in the musical background for years before he would have his first hit. He wrote songs for projects as varied as a David Bowie album ("Fascination") and the Broadway musical "The Wiz" ("Everybody Rejoice [Brand New Day]"), sang backup for acts such as Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand, and even became a commercial jingle singer. Vandross credited Flack for prodding him to move into the spotlight after listening to one of his future hits, "Never Too Much." "She started crying," he recalled. "She said, 'No, you're getting too comfortable [in the background]. ... I'm going to introduce you to some people and get your career started."' Over the years, Vandross would emerge as the leading romantic singer of his generation, racking up one platinum album after another and charting several R&B hits, such as "Superstar," "Give Me the Reason" and "Love Won't Let Me Wait." Yet, while Vandross was a household name in the black community, he was frustrated by his failure to become a mainstream pop star. Indeed, it took him until 1990 to score his first top 10 hit - the wedding staple "Here & Now." Another frustration for Vandross was his lifelong battle with obesity. Health problems ran in his family, and he struggled for years to control his waistline. When he first became a star, he was hefty; a few years later, he was almost skinny. His weight fluctuated so much that rumors swirled that he had more serious health problems than the hypertension and diabetes caused by his large frame. Vandross' two sisters and a brother died before him. The lifelong bachelor never had children but doted on nieces and nephews.

Jack Kilby, 81; inventor of integrated circuit, won a Nobel Prize

MONDAY, June 20, 2005 - (Texas Instruments Press Re- lease) - DALLAS, TX - Jack Saint Clair Kilby, whose work on integrated circuits in the 1950s ushered in our digital era, died on Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer.   He was 81. THERE ARE VERY FEW MEN whose insights and professional accomplishments have changed the world. Jack Kilby is one of these men. His invention of the monolithic integrated circuit - the 'microchip' - some 45 years ago at Texas Instruments (T.I.) had laid the conceptual and technical foundation for the entire field of modern microelectronics. IT WAS THIS BREAKTHROUGH that made possible the sophisticated high-speed computers and large-capacity semiconductor memories of today's in- formation age.

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MR KILBY GREW UP IN GREAT BEND, Kansas.   With B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin respectively, he began his career in 1947 with the Centralab Division of Globe Union Inc. in Milwaukee, developing ceramic-base, silk-screen circuits for consumer electronic products. In 1958, he joined T.I. in Dallas. During the summer of that year working with borrowed and improvised equipment, he conceived and built the first electronic circuit in which all of the components, both active and passive, were fabricated in a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. The successful laboratory demonstration of that first simple microchip on September 12, 1958, made history. Jack Kilby went on to pioneer military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. He headed teams that built both the first military system and the first computer incorporating integrated circuits. He later co-invented both the hand-held calculator and the thermal printer that was used in portable data terminals. __ In 1970, he took a leave of absence from T.I. to work as an independent inventor. He explored, among other subjects, the use of silicon technology for generating electrical power from sunlight. From 1978 to 1984, he held the position of Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Mr Kilby officially retired from T.I. in the 1980s, but he has maintained a significant involvement with the company that continues to this day. Jack Kilby is the recipient of two of the nation's most prestigious honors in science and engineering. In 1970, in a White House ceremony, he received the National Medal of Science. In 1982, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, taking his place alongside Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and the Wright Brothers in the annals of American innovation. Mr Kilby holds over 60 U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He has been awarded the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal, the NAE's Vladimir Zworykin Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Holley Medal, the IEEE's Medal of Honor, the Charles Stark Draper Prize administered by the NAE, the Cledo Brunetti Award, and the David Sarnoff Award. On the 30th anniversary of the invention of the integrated circuit, the Governor of Texas dedicated an official Texas historical marker near the site of the T.I. laboratory where Mr Kilby did his work. In 2000, Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. From Jack Kilby's first simple circuit has grown a worldwide integrated circuit market whose sales in 2004 totaled $179 billion. These components supported a 2004 worldwide electronic end-equipment market of $1,186 billion. SUCH is the power of one idea to change the world.

Anne Bancroft, 73;  stage, screen, television actress; won Oscar

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TUESDAY, June 7, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" but achieved greater fame as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate," has died.   She was 73. SHE DIED OF CANCER on Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital, John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, Mel Brooks, said Tuesday. BANCROFT WAS AWARDED THE TONY for creating the role on Broadway of poor-sighted Annie Sullivan, the teacher of Keller, who was born deaf and blind.   She repeated her portrayal in the film version.

YET despite her Academy Award and four other nominations, "The Graduate" overshadowed her other a- chievements. Dustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend’s mother was coming on to him in a hotel room:   "Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me...   Aren’t you?" Bancroft complained to a 2003 interviewer: "I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about ‘The Miracle Worker.’ We’re talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world...   I’m just a little dismayed that people aren’t beyond it yet." Her beginnings in Hollywood were unimpressive. She was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1952 and given the glamour treatment. She had been acting in television as Anne Marno (her real name: Anna Maria Louise Italiano), but it sounded too ethnic for movies. The studio gave her a choice of names; she picked Bancroft "because it sounded dignified." After a series of B pictures, she escaped to Broadway in 1958 and won her first Tony opposite Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seesaw." The stage and movie versions of "The Miracle Worker" followed. Her other Academy nominations: "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); "The Graduate" (1967); "The Turning Point" (1977); "Agnes of God" (1985). Bancroft became known for her willingness to assume a variety of portrayals. She appeared as Winston Churchill’s American mother in TV’s "Young Winston"; as Golda Meir in "Golda" onstage; a gypsy woman in the film "Love Potion No. 9"; and a centenarian for the TV version of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All." HAPPY UNION WITH MEL BROOKS... After an unhappy three-year marriage to builder Martin May, Bancroft married comedian-director-producer Brooks in 1956. They met when she was rehearsing a musical number, "Married I Can Always Get," for the Perry Como television show, and a voice from offstage called: "I’m Mel Brooks." In a 1984 interview she said she told her psychiatrist the next day: "Let’s speed this process up — I’ve met the right man. See, I’d never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple." A son, Maximilian, was born in 1972. Bancroft appeared in three of Brooks’ comedies: "Silent Movie," a remake of "To Be or Not to Be" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It." She also was the one who suggested that he make a stage musical of his movie "The Producers." She explained that when he was afraid of writing a full-blown musical, including the music, "I sent him to an analyst." When Bancroft watched Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick rehearse "The Producers," she realized how much she had missed the theater. In 2002 she returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, appearing in Edward Albee’s "Occupant." She was born Sept. 17, 1931, in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents. She recalled scrawling "I want to be an actress" on the back fence of her flat when she was 9. Her father derided her ambitions, saying, "Who are we to dream these dreams?" Her mother was the dreamer, encouraging her daughter in 1958 to enroll at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts. Live television drama was flourishing in New York in the early 1950s, and Bancroft appeared in 50 shows in two years. "It was the greatest school that one could go to," she said in 1997. "You learn to be concentrated and focused." In mid-career Bancroft attended the Actors Studio to heighten her understanding of the acting craft. Later she studied at the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women at UCLA. In 1980 she directed a feature, "Fatso," starring Dom De Luise.   It received modest attention. Among her notable portrayals: a potential suicide in "The Slender Thread"; Mary Magdalene in Franco Zeffirelli’s miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth"; actress Madge Kindle in "The Elephant Man"; Anthony Hopkins’ pen pal in "84 Charing Cross Road"; feminist U.S. senator in "G.I. Jane"; the Miss Haversham role in a modernized "Great Expectations." Despite all her memorable performances, Bancroft was remembered most for Mrs. Robinson. In 2003 she admitted that nearly everyone discouraged from undertaking the role "because it was all about sex with a younger man." She viewed the character as having unfulfilled dreams and having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband. She added: "Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we’ll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we’d do and become will never come to be — and that we’re ordinary."

Eddie Albert, 99; actor, was Oliver Douglas on TV's Green Acres

FRIDAY, May 27, 2005 - (Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Eddie Albert was a versatile actor who moved smoothly from the Broadway stage to movies, but he found stardom as the constantly befuddled city slicker-turned-farmer in tele- vision’s classic "Green Acres". [ EDITOR'S NOTE: "Green Acres" may be, all things consider- ed, the funniest, most 'twisted' situation comedy of all the 1960s.   Or even those years beyond. ] ALBERT DIED OF PNEUMONIA Thursday at his home in the Pacific Palisades area, in the presence of caregivers including his son Edward, who was holding his hand at the time.

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"HE DIED so beautifully and so gracefully that literally this morning I don’t feel grief, I don’t feel loss," Edward Albert told The Associated Press. On "Green Acres," Albert played Oliver Douglas, a New York lawyer who settles in a rural town with his glamorous wife, played by Eva Gabor, and finds himself perplexed by the antics of a host of eccentrics, including a pig named Arnold Ziffel. He was nominated twice for Academy Awards as supporting actor in "Roman Holiday" (1953) and "The Heartbreak Kid" (1972). Besides the 1965-1971 run in "Green Acres," he costarred on TV with Robert Wagner in "Switch" from 1975 to 1978 and was a semi-regular on "Falcon Crest" in 1988. He was a tireless conservationist, crusading for endangered species, healthful food, cleanup of Santa Monica Bay pollution and other causes. Albert’s mother was not married when he was born, in 1906. After marrying, she changed his birth certificate to read 1908, the younger Albert said. Rarely the star of films, Albert often portrayed the wisecracking sidekick, fast-talking salesman or sympathetic father. His stardom came in television, especially with "Green Acres," in which, ironically, he played straight man. The show joined "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction" and other high-rated CBS comedies of the 1960s and ’70s. "Some people think that because of the bucolic background ‘Green Acres’ is corny," Albert told an interviewer in 1970. "But we get away with some of the most incredible lines on television." His break in show business came during the ’30s in the Broadway hit "Brother Rat," a comedy about life at Virginia Military Institute. Warner Bros. signed him to a contract and cast him in the 1938 film. According to Hollywood gossip, he was caught in a dalliance with the wife of Jack L. Warner and the studio boss removed him from a film and allowed him to languish under contract. The actor left Hollywood and appeared as a clown and trapeze artist in a one-ring Mexican circus. He escaped his studio contract by joining the Navy in World War II and served in combat in the South Pacific. He received a Bronze Star for his heroic rescue of wounded Marines at Tarawa, his son said. Albert managed to rehabilitate his film career after the war, beginning with "Smash-up" with Susan Hayward in 1947. Among his other films: "Carrie," "Oklahoma!" "The Teahouse of the August Moon," "The Sun Also Rises," "The Roots of Heaven," "The Longest Day," "Miracle of the White Stallions," "The Longest Yard" and "Escape to Witch Mountain." Edward Albert Heimberger was born in Rock Island, Illinois, grew up in Minneapolis and worked his way through two years at the University of Minnesota. Amateur theater led to singing engagements in nightclubs and on radio. During that time he dropped his last name "because most people mispronounced it as ’Hamburger'." Moving to New York, Albert acted on radio and appeared in summer stock before he broke into Broadway and the movies.

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"Green Acres" made Albert a rich man and allowed him to pursue his causes. He established Plaza de la Raza, a foundation in East Los Angeles that teaches arts to poor Hispanics. He helped Dr. Albert Schweitzer combat famine in Africa. He traveled the world for UNICEF. Concerned about seeing fewer pelicans on beaches where he was jogging, he went with ecologists and his son on a trip to Anacapa Island. "We discovered that in every nest all the eggs were crushed, and nobody knew why," the younger Albert said. "They took samples and tested them, and found DDT in all the eggs. ... An entire generation of species was being wiped out."

Albert began speaking about the harmful effects of the pesticide at universities around the country, and in 1972 the federal government banned DDT. He continued acting into his 80s, frequently appearing in made-for-television movies. "Acting was a tenth of his life. The majority of his life was committed to helping other people," said his son, also an actor. "This guy was, from the absolute depth of his soul, one of the true heroes of our world." Edward Albert, 54, who became a prominent actor in "Butterflies Are Free," "40 Carats" and other films, said he put his career on hold for the past eight years to aid his father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. On Friday, he remembered a moment several years ago in which the two sat in a garden together:   "I said to him ’You’re my hero.’ I saw him struggling to put together the words, and he looked at me and said: ’You’re your hero’s hero.’   I’ll take that to my grave." Albert was married to the dancer-actress Margo for 40 years until her death in 1985. In addition to his son, Albert is survived by a daughter, Maria Albert Zucht, and two granddaughters.

Frank Gorshin, 72; impressionist, was 'Riddler' on TV's 'Batman'

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WEDNESDAY, May 18, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - BURBANK, Calif. - Frank Gorshin, the impressionist with 100 faces best known for his Emmy-nominated role as the Riddler on the "Batman" TV series, has died.   He was 72. GORSHIN’S WIFE of 48 years, Christina, was at his side when he died Tuesday at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, his agent and longtime friend, Fred Wostbrock, said Wednesday. "HE PUT UP A VALIANT FIGHT with lung cancer, emphysema and pneu-monia," Mrs. Gorshin said in a statement.   [He was a cigarette smoker.]

Despite dozens of TV and movie credits, Gorshin will be forever remembered for his role as 'The Riddler', Adam West’s villainous foil in the question mark-pocked green suit and bowler hat on "Batman" from 1966 to 1969. The Riddler’s high-pitched laugh was based on his own, Gorshin told AP Radio in 1997. "I fooled around with all kinds of different laughs and then I found out that when I do laugh I get this high-pitched laugh and I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to use."’ "It really was a catalyst for me," Gorshin recalled in a 2002 Associated Press interview. "I was nobody. I had done some guest shots here and there. But after I did that, I became a headliner in Vegas, so I can’t put it down." West said the death of his longtime friend was a big loss. "Frank will be missed," West said in a statement.   "He was a friend... and fascinating character." In 2002, Gorshin portrayed George Burns on Broadway in the one-man show named "Say Goodnight Gracie." He used only a little makeup and no prosthetics. "I don’t know how to explain it. It just comes," he said. "I wish I could say, ‘This is step A, B and C.’ But I can’t do that. I do it, you know. The ironic thing is I’ve done impressions all my life — I never did George Burns." Gorshin’s final performance will be broadcast on Thursday’s CBS series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." Born in Pittsburgh, Gorshin broke into show business in New York. He did more than 40 impressions, including Al Jolson, Kirk Douglas, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin and James Cagney. Later, he took his impressions to "The Ed Sullivan Show" on a memorable evening — the same night the Beatles were featured. When asked by the AP how it felt to be the unlucky performer following the Beatles, he said, "I looked out the window of my dressing room and said, ‘Look at all the kids that came to see me!"’ He also did impressions in Las Vegas showrooms, opening for Darin and paving the way for other impressionists like Rich Little. Sammy Davis Jr. said it was Gorshin who taught him to do impressions, Wostbrock said. "He said you had to look like them and walk like them. Once you get that down, the voice comes easy," he said. Gorshin’s movie roles included "Bells are Ringing" (1960) with his idol Dean Martin and a batch of fun B-movies such as "Hot Rod Girl" (1956), "Dragstrip Girl" (1957) and "Invasion of the Saucer Men" (1957). "He was fun, fascinating, wild and always a class act," Wostbrock said. "Here’s a guy who always wore great clothes, stood up when a woman walked into the room — he was a gentleman. We did all our deals with a handshake.   There was never a signed contract." His other TV credits included roles on "General Hospital, "The Edge of Night" and "The Munsters" as well as guest appearances on "Donny & Marie," "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson," "Late Night with Conan O’Brien," "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," "Murder, She Wrote," "The Fall Guy," "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," "Wonder Woman," "Charlie’s Angels" and "Police Woman." Wostbrock said the funeral would be private and that Gorshin would be buried in the family plot in Pittsburgh.

APRIL 2, 2005... Pope John Paul II ...

Johnnie Cochran, 67;  was trial attorney from 'OJ Simpson Case'

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TUESDAY, March 30, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES, CA - Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who became a legal superstar after helping clear O.J. Simpson during a sensa-tional murder trial in which he uttered the now-famous quote: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," died Tuesday. COCHRAN DIED OF A BRAIN TUMOR at his home in Los An-geles his family said.   He was 67.

"CERTAINLY, JOHNNIE'S CAREER WILL BE NOTED as one marked by celebrity cases and clientele," his family said in a statement. "But he, and his family, were most proud of the work he did on behalf of those in the community." With his colorful suits and bold ties, his gift for courtroom oratory and a knack for coining memorable phrases, Cochran was a vivid addition to the pantheon of best-known American barristers. The "if it doesn't fit" phrase would be quoted and parodied for years afterward. It derived from a dramatic mo-ment during which Simpson tried on a pair of bloodstained "murder gloves" to show jurors they didn't fit. Some legal experts called it the turning point in the trial. Soon after, jurors found the Hall of Fame football star not guilty of the 1994 Brentwood slayings of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. For Cochran, Simpson's acquittal was a crowning achievement in a career notable for victories, often in cases with racial themes. He was a black man known for championing the causes of black defendants, and he was involved in several racial profiling cases in New Jersey. In 2003, state officials agreed to settle a civil suit with four black men for almost $13 million. Cochran and other attorneys representing the men charged that New Jersey state troopers stopped the men's vehicle and fired shots at them solely because they were black. The incident on April 23, 1998, sparked a nationwide outcry about racial profiling that culminated in an acknow-ledgement by Governor Christie Whitman, and other state officials in 1999 that some troopers stopped drivers because of their race. Cochran also won $800,000 from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority for Kindra Wright of Newark. Wright claim ed she was assaulted at a rest stop by a white state trooper in 1998. The Los Angeles-based attorney stayed active in other racial-profiling cases and protests. He once said of Carson Dunbar Jr., then the superintendent of the state police, "Dunbar continues to reside in the 51st state - the state of denial." Over the years, Cochran represented football great Jim Brown on rape and assault charges, actor Todd Bridges on attempted murder charges, rapper Tupac Shakur on a weapons charge and rapper Snoop Dogg on a murder charge. He also represented former Black Panther Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. When Cochran helped Pratt win his freedom in 1997 he called the moment "the happiest day of my life practicing law." But the attention he received from all of those cases didn't come even close to the fame the O.J. Simpson trial brought him. Cochran was born October 2, 1937, in Shreveport, Louisiana, the greatgrandson of slaves, grandson of a share-cropper and son of an insurance salesman. He moved out to Los Angeles with his family in 1949, and became one of two dozen black students integrated into Los Angeles High School in the 1950s. After graduating from UCLA, Cochran earned a law degree from Loyola University. He then spent two years in the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office before establishing his own practice, later building his firm into a person al injury giant with more than 100 lawyers and offices around the country.

Hunter S. Thompson, 67; edgy American novelist & journalist

SUNDAY, February 20, 2005 - (Associated Press) - DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sun-day night at his Aspen-area home, his son said.   He was 67. "HUNTER PRIZED his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," said Juan Thompson, in a statement as given to the Aspen Daily News. PITKIN COUNTY Sheriff officials confirmed to the Associated Press that Thompson had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.

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Besides 1972 drug-hazed classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant. 'GONZO JOURNALISM' PIONEER... Thompson is credited with pioneering New Journalism, or as he dubbed it "gonzo jour-nalism", in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appear-ed in Rolling Stone magazine. "Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it." An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections "Gen- eration of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998. Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and once said Richard Nixon represent-ed "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character." Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." His other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness." 'HE MADE UP FOR IT IN QUALITY'... "He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home. "It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party. "But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers." The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant, Deborah Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property. Born on July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner. APPETITE FOR ADVENTURE... Thompson's heyday had come in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts for stories that didn't materialize. It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion. While working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us." Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while." The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste." "That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he wrote.   "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."

~ BOOKS WRITTEN BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON ~ -- "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga" (1966) -- "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" (1972) -- "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" (1973) -- "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time" (1979) -- "The Curse of Lono" (illustrated by Ralph Steadman) (1983) -- "Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s" (1988) -- "Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream" (1990) -- "Silk Road: Thirty-three Years in the Passing Lane" (1990) -- "Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie (1993) -- "The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967" (1997) -- "The Rum Diary: The Long Lost Novel" (1998) -- "Screwjack and Other Stories" (2000) -- "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976" (2000) -- "The Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century"(2003) -- "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004)

Sandra Dee, 62; biggest female teen idol of late 1950s & '60s

SUNDAY, February 20, 2005 - (Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES - Sandra Dee, who at the height of her fame was arguably the biggest female teen idol of her time, has died, leaving a collection of film roles that includes "Gidget" and "Tammy and the Doctor." She was 62. DEE'S FAME SPANNED THE late 1950s and early 1960s. She was Gidget, and she was Tammy, and for a time she was young America's ideal," film historian Leonard Maltin once said of her. Dee later married another pop icon, singer Bobby Darin.

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DEE DIED OF COMPLICATIONS on Sunday morning from kidney disease at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, her family said. Steve Blauner, a longtime family friend who represents Darin's estate, said Dee had been hospitalized for nearly two weeks. She had been on dialysis for about four years, Blauner said. GIRL-NEXT-DOOR CHARM... With her squeaky-clean image and girl-next-door charm, Universal Studios cast Dee mostly in teen movies such as "The Reluctant Debutante," "The Restless Years," "Tammy Tell Me True" and "Take Her, She's Mine." Occasionally, she landed secondary roles in more mature films, such as "Imitation of Life," "A Portrait In Black" and "Romanoff and Juliet." Dee later made an independent film "Rosie!" (1968), with Rosalind Russell, but she never recaptured the star-dom of her teenage years. Her last film credit was for the 1983 movie "Lost." In 1960, Dee married Darin in Elizabeth, NJ, following a one-month courtship. A son, Dodd Mitchell, was born the following year. Born as Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, NJ, on April 23, 1942, Dee became a model while in grade school. In a mid-career interview with The Associated Press, she explained her name change. "I used to sign vouchers and sign-out sheets with 'Alexandra Dee,"' she recalled. "Somehow it stuck and when (producer) Ross Hunter signed me to my first picture ... 'Sandra Dee' was the name they gave me." Her name was resuscitated in 1978 with the film "Grease," which featured a song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee" that mocked her wholesomeness. But Dee didn't mind, Blauner said. "She always had a big laugh about it. She had a great sense of humor," he said. THE LOVE OF HER LIFE... Blauner said her favorite films were the ones she made with Darin, adding that the singer remained the love of her life despite their divorce. Darin, who had rheumatic fever as a child, died following heart surgery in 1973. He was 37. In 1965, with her divorce from Darin dampening her teen appeal, Dee was dropped by Universal. "I thought they were my friends," she said in a 1965 interview with the AP, referring to her former bosses. "But I found out on the last picture ('A Man Could Get Killed') that I was simply a piece of property to them. I begged them not to make me do the picture, but they insisted." Actor Kevin Spacey, who portrayed Darin in last year's biopic "Beyond the Sea," which he directed, said Dee had seen the movie and approved. "She called me last week and said she loved it," Spacey told an interviewer last year. Actress Kate Bosworth, who played Dee in the film, said at the time "She had this image but she was so tragic and lost and naive and she could have had such potential to tap into that, but nobody gave her the chance."

Sister Lucia, 97; last surviving seer of the Virgin Mary, in 1917

-- WAS RECEIVER OF THE THREE SECRETS OF FATIMA --

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MONDAY, February 14, 2005 - (Catholic World News) - FAT-IMA, Portugal - Sister Lucia, the last survivor of three Port-uguese children to whom The Virgin Mary appeared at Fati-ma, has died. She was 97. SISTER LUCIA died on February 13 at her Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, after a long illness. Living in isolation in the cloistered convent, she had reportedly lost her eye-sight and hearing in the months preceding her death.

BORN ON MARCH 22, 1907, LUCIE dos SANTOS was only 10 years old when the Virgin appeared to her and her two young cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, on a field outside the town of Fatima, on May 13, 1917. The apparitions continued through October 13 of that same year, and the seers conveyed Mary's predictions of the Second World War, the rise of Russian Communism, and the urgent need for the faithful to pray the Rosary. SISTER LUCIA also revealed the famous third secret" of Fatima, which was kept secret by successive Popes until May 2000, when John Paul II revealed the text of a mystical vision involving a "bishop dressed in white" who was struggling toward the Cross, over the bodies of martyrs, until he himself was felled by gunfire. Pope John Paul concluded that the vision referred to the attempt on his own life. Some Catholics continue to insist that as-pects of the "third secret" have not yet been disclosed, although the Vatican insists that there is nothing more to reveal. SISTER LUCIA had spoken of the Fatima promises in four published memoirs, but kept the "third secret" hidden. She divulged that secret to the Bishop of Leira, Portugal, in January 1944; he confided the secret to Pope Pius XII. Sister Lucia had said that the secret should be revealed at the Pope's discretion, but not before 1960. The first Pontiff to meet privately with Sister Lucia was Paul VI, when he visited Fatima in May 1967. Pope John Paul II met with her on three separate occasions: in 1982, when he made a pilgrimage to Fatima to thank the Virgin for saving him from assassination; in 1991, on the 10th anniversary of the shooting; and in 2000, for the beatification ceremonies. Francisco and Jacinta Marto were beatified by Pope John Paul in ceremonies that took place at Fatima on May 13, 2000-- the anniversary of the first apparition there. Both Francisco and Jacinta had died in their youth-- in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Sister Lucia made a rare journey outside the Carmelite cloister to take part in the ceremony. After the Fatima apparitions, and subsequent personal visions of the Virgin in 1923 and 1929, Lucie dos Santos entered religious life... first in Spain and later, in 1948, as a Carmelite in Portugal. Questioned as to whether Sister Lucia could be canonized, as were the other two young Fatima seers, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins was non-committal. The prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints reminded reporters that the Church ordinarily requires a 5-year interval between an individual's death and the opening of a formal "cause" for beatification. Moreover, the Portuguese cardinal observed, "sanctity is a strictly personal thing." He added: "The fact that all three children saw the Holy Virgin does not show anything about the sanctity of each one."

Arthur Miller, 89; Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright

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FRIDAY, February 11, '05 - (The Associated Press) - ROX-BURY, Conn - Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play-wright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," who had come to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died. He was 89. MILLER, who had been hailed as America's greatest living playwright, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury of heart failure, his assistant, Julia Bolus, said on Friday. His family was at his bedside, she said. HIS PLAYS, with their strong emphasis on family, morality and personal responsibility, spoke to the growing fragmentation of American society.

"A LOT OF MY WORK GOES TO THE CENTER OF WHERE WE BELONG... if there is any root to life... because now-adays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long," Miller said in a 1988 inter v i e w . "Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing's really permanent." Playwright Edward Albee said Miller had paid him a compliment, saying "that my plays were 'necessary'. I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'." Miller's career was marked by very early success. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman" in 1949, when he was just 33 years old. UNWANTED PUBLICITY... His marriage to Marilyn Monroe in 1956 further catapulted the playwright to fame, though that was publicity he said he never pursued. In a 1992 interview with a French newspaper, he called her "highly self-destructive" and said that during their marriage, "all my energy and attention were devoted to trying to help her solve her problems. Unfortunately, I didn't have much success." "Death of a Salesman," which took Miller only six weeks to write, earned rave reviews when it opened on Broad-way in February 1949, directed by Elia Kazan. The story of Willy Loman, a man who was destroyed by his own stubborn belief in the glory of American capital-ism and the redemptive power of success, was made into a movie and staged all over the world. "I could not have predicted that a work like 'Death of a Salesman' would take on the proportions it has," Miller said in 1988. "Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world." In 1999, 50 years after it won the Tony Award as best play, "Death of a Salesman" won the Tony for best revi-val of the Broadway season. The show also won the top acting prize for Brian Dennehy, who played Loman. Miller, then 83, received a lifetime achievement award. "Just being around to receive it is a pleasure," he joked to the audience during the awards ceremony. FROM 'ALL MY SONS' TO 'THE CRUCIBLE'... Miller won the New York Drama Critics' Circle's best play award twice in the 1940s, for "All My Sons" in 1947 and for "Death of a Salesman." In 1953, he received a Tony Award for "The Crucible," a play about mass hysteria during the Salem witch trials, that was inspired by the repressive political environment of McCarthyism. That play, still read by thousands of American high-school students each year, is Miller's most frequently per-formed work. Miller and Monroe divorced after five years and in 1962 he married his third wife, photographer Inge Morath. That same year, Monroe committed suicide. Miller wrote the screenplay for the Monroe film "The Misfits," which came out in 1960, and reflected on their relationship in his 1963 play "After the Fall." Reminiscing about Monroe in his 1987 autobiography, "Timebends: A Life," Miller lamented that she was rarely taken seriously as anything but a sex symbol. "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was," he wrote. "Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes." Miller's success, so overwhelming in the 1940s and '50s, seemed to be on the wane during the next two decades. But the 1980s brought a renewal of interest, beginning with a Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman" star-ring Dustin Hoffman in 1984. Enthusiasm for Miller's work was particularly strong in England, which marked his 75th birthday in 1990 with four major productions of his plays. 'SALESMAN' GOES TO CHINA... Miller also directed a Chinese production of "Death of a Salesman" at the Beijing Peoples' Art Theatre in 1983. Those who saw the Beijing production may not really have identified with Loman's career, Miller wrote, but they shared his desire, "which was to excel, to win out over anonymity and meaninglessness, to love and be loved, and above all, perhaps, to count." In his later years, Miller became increasingly disillusioned with Broadway, and in 1991 he premiered a new play, "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan," in London -- the first time he had opened a play outside of the United States. Miller said at the time he opted for the London opening to avoid the "dark defeatism" of the New York theater scene. "There is an open terror of the critics (in New York) and of losing fortunes of money," Miller said in an interview that year. "I have always hated that myself. All in all, it seemed like we ought to do the play in London." He returned to Broadway in '94 with "Broken Glass," a drama about a dysfunctional family that won respectful reviews and a Tony nomination, but no big audiences. In London, it won an Olivier award as best play. Even in his later years, Miller continued to write. "It is what I do," he said in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press. "It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?" "Resurrection Blues" had its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minn in the summer of 2002 when Miller was 86. Set in an unnamed banana republic, the satire dealt with the possible televised execution of a revolutionary. REDISCOVERING MILLER... In recent years New York even rediscovered Miller's first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck," which was a four-performance flop in 1944, but had a successful revival, starring Chris O'Donnell, nearly six decades later. Last October, another new play, "Finishing the Picture," premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was based on an episode of his marriage to Monroe. In recent years New York even rediscovered Miller's first Broadway play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck." It was a four-performance flop in 1944 but had a successful revival, starring Chris O'Donnell, nearly six decades later. Miller's producer, David Reichenthal, said as recently as this week, he and Miller were working on a London revival of "Death of a Salesman." It will go on as planned in May, he said. "His loss is a little like the Manhattan skyline," Reichenthal said. "I'm at a loss for words." In accepting his lifetime achievement award at the 1999 Tony awards ceremony, Miller lamented that Broadway had become too narrow. "I hope that a new dimension and fresh resolve will inspire the powers that be to welcome fiercely ambitious playwrights," Miller said. "And that the time will come again when they will find a welcome for their big, world-challenging plays, somewhere west of London and somewhere east of the Hudson River." He was born Oct. 17, 1915, Miller was one of three children in a middle-class Jewish family. His father, a manu-facturer of women's coats, was hard hit by the Depression in the 1930s, and could not afford to send Miller to college when the time came. Miller worked as a loader and shipping clerk at a New York warehouse to earn tuition money, and eventually at-tended the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1938. He wrote his first plays in college, where they were awarded numerous prizes. He also published several novels and collections of short stories. He wrote several screenplays, including "The Misfits" (1961), which became Monroe's last movie, and "Playing for Time," (1981) a controversial television movie about the women's orchestra at Auschwitz. He also wrote a number of books with Morath, mainly about their travels in Russia and China. Miller had two children, Jane Ellen and Robert, by his first wife, Mary Slattery, and he and Morath, who died in 2002, had one daughter, Rebecca.

Ossie Davis, 87; Black stage & movie actor, civil rights activist

FRIDAY, February 4, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - NEW YORK - Ossie Davis, whose rich baritone and elegant, un shakable bearing made him a giant of the stage, screen and the civil rights movement -- often in tandem with his wife, Ruby Dee -- has died. He was 87. DAVIS WAS FOUND DEAD Friday in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla., according to officials there. He was making a film, "Retirement", stated Arminda Thomas, who works in his New Rochelle office and confirmed the death. MIAMI BEACH POLICE spokesman Bobby Hernandez said Davis' grandson called shortly before 7AM when Davis would not open the door to his room at the Shore Club Hotel. Davis was found dead, apparently of natural causes, Hernandez said.

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Davis wrote, acted, directed and produced for the theater and Hollywood. Even light fare such as the comedy "Grumpy Old Men" with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau was somehow enriched by his strong, but gentle presence. Davis and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobio-graphy, "With Ossie & Ruby: In This Life Together." Their partnership rivaled the achievements of other celebrated performing couples, such as Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Davis and Dee first appeared together in the plays "Jeb," in 1946, and "Anna Lucasta," in 1946-47. Davis' first film, "No Way Out" in 1950, was Dee's fifth. Both had key roles in the TV series "Roots: The Next Generation" (1978), "Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum" (1986) and "The Stand" (1994). Davis appeared in several Spike Lee films, including "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever," in which Dee also appeared. Davis had a guest role as the father of two women characters in Showtime's dramatic series, "The L Word." He appeared in one episode in the first season, then returned for three episodes for the season about to begin, where his character takes ill and dies. "We knew that we were working with a powerful, important actor," executive producer Ilene Chaiken said Fri-day. "Ruby Dee sat with me and watched as he filmed his death scene. It was extraordinary." Among Davis' more notable Broadway appearances was his portrayal of the title character in "Purlie Victori-ous" (1961), a comedy he wrote lampooning racial stereotypes. In it, he played a conniving preacher who sets out to buy a church in rural Georgia. In 1970, Davis co-wrote the book for "Purlie," a musical version of the play. A revival of the musical is planned for Broadway next season. "He's my hero," actor Alan Alda, who appeared in "Purlie Victorious," wrote in e-mail to The Associated Press. "I am sorry for his family and for all of us who have benefited from; his art and from his service to his country." Actors' Equity Association issued a statement Friday calling Davis "an icon in the American theater" and he and Dee "American treasures." House lights for Broadway marquees were to be dimmed Friday at curtain time. In 2004, Davis and Dee were among the artists selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors. PROMOTING CAUSE OF BLACKS IN ENTERTAINMENT... "His greatness as a human being went far beyond his ex-cellence as an actor," former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said Friday. "Ossie was a citizen of the country, first, and the world. He and his wife were activists and they took it seriously." Dee was in New Zealand making a movie at the time of Davis' death, said his agent, Michael Livingston. When not on stage, or on camera, Davis and Dee were deeply involved in civil rights issues and efforts to pro-mote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry. In 1963, Davis participated in the landmark March on Washington. Two years later, he delivered a memorable eulogy for his slain friend, Malcolm X, whom Davis praised as "our own black shining prince" and "our living, black manhood!" "In honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves," said Davis, who had reprised his eulogy in a voice-over for the 1992 Spike Lee film, "Malcolm X." Davis directed several films, most notably "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970). Other films include "The Cardin-al" (1963), "The Client" (1994) and "I'm Not Rappaport" (1996), a reprise of his stage role 10 years earlier. On television, he had appeared in "The Emperor Jones" (1955), "Miss Evers' Boys" (1997) and "Twelve Angry Men" (1997). He was a cast member on "The Defenders" from 1963-65, and "Evening Shade" from 1990-94, among other shows. "Since the loss of my father, no man has come close to represent the kind of man I hope to be some day," said Burt Reynolds, Davis' "Evening Shade" co-star. "I know he's sitting next to God now, and I know God envies that voice." Davis had just started a new movie on Monday, Livingston said. "Retirement," a comedy about an elderly group of friends, also starred Jack Warden, Peter Falk and George Segal. The oldest of five children, Davis was born in tiny Cogdell, Georgia, in 1917, and then grew up in the nearby Way-cross and Valdosta. He left home in 1935, hitchhiking to Washington, D.C., to enter Howard University, where he studied drama, intending to be a playwright. CATCHING THE ACTING BUG... His career as an actor began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem, then the center of black culture in America. There, the young Davis met or mingled with some of the most influ-ential figures of the time, including the preacher Father Divine, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. He also had what he described in the book as a "flirtation with the Young Communist League," which he said es-sentially ended with the onset of World War II. Davis spent nearly four years in service, mainly as a surgical technician in an Army hospital in Liberia, serving both wounded troops and local inhabitants. Back in New York in 1946, Davis debuted on Broadway in "Jeb," a play about a returning soldier. His co-star was Dee, whose budding stage career had paralleled his own. They had even appeared in a variety of productions of the same play, "On Strivers Row," in 1940. In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married. They already were so close that "it felt almost like an appointment we finally got around to keep-ing," Dee wrote in "In This Life Together." As black performers, they found themselves caught up in the social unrest fomented by the then-new Cold War and the growing debate over social and racial justice. "We young ones in the theater, trying to fathom even as we followed, were pulled this way and that by the swirling currents of these new dimensions of the Struggle," Davis wrote in the joint autobiography. STANDING BY DISCREDITED FRIENDS... He lined up with socialist reformer DuBois and singer Paul Robeson, re maining fiercely loyal to the singer even after Robeson was denounced by other black political, sports and show business figures for his openly communist and pro-Soviet sympathies. While Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the New York theater world became engulfed in McCarthyism controver-sies, Davis and Dee emerged from the anti-communist fervor unscathed. "We've never been, to our knowledge, guilty of anything -- other than being black -- that might upset anybody," he wrote. They were friends with baseball star Jackie Robinson -- Dee played his wife, opposite Robinson himself, in the 1950 movie "The Jackie Robinson Story" -- and with Malcolm X. In the book, Davis told how a prior commitment caused them to miss the Harlem rally where Malcolm was assass-inated in 1965. Davis delivered the eulogy at Malcolm's funeral, calling him "our own black shining prince -- who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so." He reprised it in a voice-over for the 1992 Spike Lee film, " M a l c o l m X . " Along with film, stage and television, the couple's careers extended to a radio show, "The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour," that ran on 65 stations for four years in the mid-1970s, featuring a mix of black themes. Both made numerous guest appearances on television shows.

Johnny Carson, 79; longtime host of NBC's 'The Tonight Show'

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SUNDAY, January 23, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - LOS ANGELES, CA -- Johnny Carson, the quick-witted "Tonight Show" host who became a national institution putting his viewers to bed for 30 years, with a smooth nightcap of celebrity banter and heartland charm, died Sunday. He was 79. CARSON DIED EARLY Sunday morning, according to his nephew, Jeff Sotzing. "He was surrounded by his fam- ily, whose loss will be immeasurable," Sotzing told The Associated Press. HE did not provide further details, but NBC said Carson died of emphysema, a respiratory disease that can be attributed to smoking, at his Malibu home.

CARSON often had a cigarette in hand in the early years of "Tonight," eventually dropping the on-air habit when smoking on TV became frowned on. But he remained a heavy smoker for some years afterward, said a former associate who spoke on condition of anonymity. The boyish-looking Nebraska native with the disarming grin, who survived every attempt to topple him from his late-night talk show throne, was a star who managed never to distance himself from his audience. His wealth, the adoration of his guests, particularly the many young comics whose careers he launched, the wry tales of multiple divorces: Carson's air of modesty made it all serve to totally enhance his bedtime intimacy with viewers. President Bush described Carson as "a steady and reassuring presence in homes across America for three dec- ades. His wit and insight made Americans laugh and think and had a profound influence on American life and entertainment." "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" was the booming announcement from sidekick Ed McMahon that ushered Carson out to the stage. Then the formula: the topical monologue, the guests, the broadly played skits such as "Carnac the Magnif icent" or as "Art Fern" hosting the 'Tea Time Movie'. WENT OUT ON TOP... But America never tired of him; Carson went out on top when he retired in May 1992. Act ress-singer Bette Midler, who had memorably serenaded Carson on his next-to-last show with "One More For My Baby," recalled him warmly. "I was his last guest, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. He had it all. A little bit of devil, a whole lot of angel, wit, charm, good looks, superb timing and great, great class," Midler said in a statement. His generosity to up-and-coming comics who got their big break on "Tonight" was lauded by Bill Cosby and many others. "Johnny was responsible for the beginning and the rise of success for more performers than anyone. I doubt if those numbers will ever be surpassed," Cosby said in a statement. McMahon said Sunday that Carson was "like a brother to me." "Our 34 years of working together, plus the 12 years since then, created a friendship which was professional, family-like and one of respect and great admiration," McMahon said in a statement. "When we ended our run on 'The Tonight Show' and my professional life continued, whenever a big career decision needed to be made, I al- ways got the OK from 'The Boss."' Carson's personal life could not match the perfection of his career. Carson was married four times, and divorced three. In 1991, one of his three sons, 39-year-old Ricky, was killed in a car accident. Nearly all of Carson's professional life was spent in television, from his postwar start at Nebraska stations in the late 1940s to his three decades with NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."

AVOIDED THE LIMELIGHT... Carson choose to let "Tonight" stand as his career zenith and his finale, withdrawing into a quiet retirement that suited his private nature and refusing involvement in other show business projects. In 1993, he explained his absence from the limelight. "I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time." Carson spent his retirement years sailing, traveling and socializing with a few close friends including media mogul Barry Diller and NBC executive Bob Wright. He simply refused to be wooed back on stage.

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Carson did find an outlet for his creativity: He would send a joke occasionally to Letterman, who lost the battle for "Tonight" but remained a Carson friend. Some bits made it into Letterman's monologue. He also wrote short humor pieces for The New Yorker magazine, including "Recently Discovered Childhood Let- ters to Santa," which purported to give the youthful wish lists of William Buckley, Don Rickles and others. Carson made his debut as "The Tonight Show" host in October of 1962 and quickly won over audiences. He even made headlines with such clever ploys as the 1969 on-show marriage of eccentric singer Tiny Tim to Miss Vicki, which won the show its biggest-ever ratings. In 1972, "Tonight" moved from New York to Burbank. Growing respect for Carson's consistency and staying pow-er, along with four consecutive Emmy Awards, came his way in the late 1970s. His quickness and his ability to handle an audience were impressive. If his jokes missed their target, the smooth Carson won over a groaning studio audience with a clever look or sly, self-deprecating remark. Politics provided monologue fodder for him as he skewered lawmakers of every stripe, mirroring the mood of vo- ters. His Watergate jabs at President Nixon were seen as cementing Nixon's fall from office in 1974. He made presidential history again in July of 1988 when he had then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton on his show a few days after Clinton came under widespread ridicule for a boring speech at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton traded quips with Carson and played "Summertime" on the saxophone, in what was hailed as a stunning comeback. TAKING ON ALL LATE-NIGHT COMERS... Competing networks tried a variety of formats and hosts to challenge Carson, but never managed to best "Tonight." There was the occasional battle with NBC: In 1967, for instance, Carson walked out for several weeks until the network managed to lure him back with a contract that reportedly gave him $1 million-plus yearly. In 1980, after more walkout threats, the show was scaled back from 90 minutes to an hour. Carson also eased his schedule by cutting back on his work days; a number of substitute hosts filled in, including Joan Rivers, Jerry Lewis and Jay Leno, Carson's eventual successor. Rivers was one of the countless comedians whose careers took off after they were on Carson's show. After she rocked the audience with her jokes in that 1965 appearance, he remarked, "God, you're funny. You're going to be a star."

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"If Johnny hadn't made the choice to put me on his show, I might still be in Green-wich Village as the oldest living undiscov-ered female comic," as she recalled in an Associated Press interview twenty years later. She tried her own talk show in 1986 quickly becoming one of the challengers who could not budge Carson. In the 1980s, Carson was reportedly the highest-paid performer in television his-tory with a $5 million "Tonight" show sal-ary alone. His Carson Productions com-pany created and sold pilots to NBC.

He also performed in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and was host of the Academy Awards five times in the 1970s a n d '8 0 s . UGLY BATTLE TO BE HIS SUCCESSOR... Carson's graceful exit from "Tonight" did not avoid a messy, bitter tug-of-war between Leno and fellow comedian David Letterman to take over his throne. Leno took over the program on May 25, 1992, becoming the fourth man to hold the job after Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Carson. David Letter-man landed on rival CBS. Born in Corning, Iowa, and raised in nearby Norfolk, NE, Carson started his show business career at age 14 as the magician "The Great Carsoni." After World War II service in the Navy, he took a series of jobs in local radio and TV in Nebraska before starting at KNXT-TV in Los Angeles in 1950. There he started a sketch comedy show, "Carson's Cellar," which ran from 1951-53 and attracted attention from Hollywood. A staff writing job for "The Red Skelton Show" followed. The program provided Carson with a lucky break: When Skelton was injured backstage, Carson took the comedi-an's place in front of the cameras. Producers tried to find the right program for the up-and-coming comic, trying him out as host of the quiz show "Earn Your Vacation" (1954), the variety show "The Johnny Carson Show" (1955-56), the game show "Who Do You Trust?" (1957-62). A few acting roles came Carson's way, including one on "Playhouse 90" in 1957, and he did a pilot in 1960 for a prime-time series, "Johnny Come Lately," that never made it onto a network schedule. STEPPING INTO HIS LATE-NIGHT ROLE... In 1958, Carson sat in for "Tonight Show" host Paar. When Paar left the show four years later, Carson was NBC's choice as his replacement. After his retirement, Carson took on the role of Malibu-based retiree with apparent ease. An avid tennis fan, he was still playing a vigorous game in his 70s. He and his wife, Alexis, traveled frequently. The pair met on the Malibu beach in the early 1980s; he was 61 when they married in June 1987, she was in her 30s. Carson's first wife was his childhood sweetheart, Jody, the mother of his three sons. They married in 1949 and split in 1963. He married Joanne Copeland Carson that same year, but divorced nine years later. His third marri-age, to Joanna Holland Carson, took place in 1972. They divorced in 1985. On the occasion of Carson's 70th birthday, former "Tonight" bandleader Doc Severinsen, who toured with music-ians from the show, said he was constantly reminded of Carson's enduring popularity. "Every place we go people ask ‘How is he? Where is he? What is he doing? Tell him how much we miss him.' It doesn't surprise me," Severinsen said. Carson won a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1992, with the first President Bush saying, "With decency and style he's made America laugh and think." In 1993, he was celebrated by the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for career achievement.

Louis Bay II, 92; Hawthorne, New Jersey mayor for 40 years

SATURDAY, January 8, 2005 - (The Herald) - HAWTHORNE, NEW JERSEY - Louis Bay 2nd, a borough icon and its mayor for 40 years, died Thursday, just a week before his 93rd birthday. BAY WAS HOSPITALIZED last week at St Joseph's Wayne Hospital and died of pneumon- ia, current Mayor Fred Criscitelli said Friday. BAY, a Republican, was the town's dominant political force from just before World War 2 through the 1980s and one of the state's longest-serving mayors. In an interview, Bay once called himself a "benevolent monarch, an above-board, on-the-table, straight-from-the-shoulder form of government that people want." With a gleaming bald head and dramatic pencil mustache, Bay had a reputation for being "tough and fair-tough-shelled, at least," said Criscitelli. He was passionate about the borough and kept taxes low, he said. "He was a legend in Hawthorne," said Councilman John Bertollo. "He ruled with an iron hand, but he was probably one of the most gentle men you'd ever want to meet. He had a passion for the town." Bertollo and Council President Richard Goldberg recalled Bay's visible presence from the time they were children. He ate almost daily at local luncheonettes and drove through town with his recognizable license plate, " BAY 1 ". "We used to joke that the mayor would drive through town in his Cadillac waving with both hands - that we don't know how he drives," Goldberg said. "To me, Mayor Bay will always be the mayor of Hawthorne. He was just be loved by so many in town." Bay got his start in politics in 1940 when he was elected to the school board. At the time, Hawthorne was govern- ed by a three-member commission, in which residents elected commissioners who in turn elected the mayor. Bay became a commissioner in 1943 and mayor in 1947, and was reelected until he stepped down in 1987. Soon after the town changed its form of government to a seven-member council with a popularly elected mayor. His activities as mayor extended far beyond Hawthorne, a 3.4-square-mile borough with about 18,000 residents. In the 1950s, Bay was a Passaic County freeholder and served as the Freeholder Board's director. He served on the executive board of the National League of Cities and as the president and executive officer of the N J State League of Municipalities. He attended the state league's annual conventions for sixty straight years, until 2003. In Hawthorne, he was a founder of the Boys Club and belonged to the Elks Lodge, the Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club, the Hawthorne Columbus Circle and the Chamber of Commerce. The town named the library after him in recognition of his years of support. He was an active library trustee until his death. Asked how Bay maintained his reign as mayor, Criscitelli said he was tough to beat as an incumbent and he was simply passionate about the borough. Residents said he never forgot a baby's name and ran a tight ship. But Criscitelli said the push to change Hawthorne's government was in part a response to Bay's long tenure, and the desire to accomplish more and have more voices heard. The former mayor was born in Paterson and raised in Hawthorne by his aunt and uncle. As a youth he worked as a dyer during the day and at night attended the Pratt Institute of Science and Technology in Brooklyn. He even-tually became vice president of the Essex Chemical Co. in Clifton. Bay's wife Emeline, or "Emmy," died in 2003. Survivors include his daughter, Barbara Donohue of Hawthorne, three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Shirley Chisholm, 80; first Black woman elected U S Congress

MONDAY, January 3, 2005 - (The Associated Press) - MIAMI, FL - Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and an outspoken advocate for women and min-orities during seven terms in the House, died on Saturday near Daytona Beach, friends said. She was 80.

"SHE WAS OUR MOSES THAT OPENED THE RED SEA FOR US" Robert E. Williams, president of the N.A.A.C.P. in Flagler County, said late Sunday. He did not have the details of her death. CHISHOLM, who was raised in a predominantly Black New York City section, and was elected to the House in 1968, was a riveting speaker, who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive. She told voters: "My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one should not al-ways discuss for reasons of political expediency."

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She went to Congress the same year Richard Nixon was elected to the white House and served until two years into Ronald Reagan's tenure as president. "Anyone that came in contact with her, they had a feeling of a careness, and they felt that she was very much a part of each individual as she represented her district," William Howard, her longtime campaign treasurer, said Sunday. Newly elected, she was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee, which she believed was irrelevant to her urban constituency. In an unheard of move, she demanded reassignment and was switched to the Veterans Affairs Committee. Not long afterward she voted for Hale Boggs, who was white, over John Conyers, who was Black, for majority leader. Boggs then rewarded her with a place on the prized Education and Labor Committee, and she was its 3rd-ranking member when she left. She ran for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1972. When rival candidate and ideological opposite George Wallace was shot, she visited him in the hospital - an act that appalled her followers. "He said, 'What are your people going to say?' I said: 'I know what they're going to say. But I wouldn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone.' He cried and cried," she recalled. And when she needed support to extend the minimum wage to domestic workers two years later, it was Wallace who got her the votes from Southern members of Congress. Pragmatism and power were watchwords. "Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want," she said during her presidential campaign. When Bella Abzug challenged Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1976 Democratic Senate primary, Chisholm caused a stir by backing Moynihan. "Where was Abzug when I ran for president?" she asked, when questioned about her choice. In her book, "Unbought and Unbossed," she recounted her concerns about Congress: "Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men." The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Chisholm was a "woman of great courage." "She was an activist and she never stopped fighting," Jackson said from Ohio, where he is set to lead a rally to-day in Columbus. "She refused to accept the ordinary, and she had high expectations for herself and all people around her." Her leadership traits were recognized by her parents early, she recalled. Born Shirley St. Hill in New York City on Nov. 30, 1924, she was the eldest of four daughters of a Guyanese father and a Barbadian mother. Her father was an unskilled laborer in a burlap bag factory, and her mother was a domestic, both of whom scrimp-ed to educate their children. At age 3, Shirley was sent to live on her grandmother's farm in Barbados. She attended British grammar school and picked up the clipped Caribbean accent that marked her speech. She moved back to New York City when she was 11 and went on to graduate cumlaude from Brooklyn College and earn a master's degree from Columbia University. She started her career as director of a day care center, and later served as an educational consultant with the city's Bureau of Child Welfare. She became active in local Democratic politics and ran successfully for the state Assembly in 1964. When she left 14 years later, she complained that many of her constituents misunderstood her, that she was a "pragmatic politician" whose influence was waning in conservative times. And she said she wanted more time for her family life. She was married twice. Her 1949 marriage to Conrad Chisholm ended in divorce in February 1977. And Later that year she married Arthur Hardwick Jr. She had no children. Hardwick died in 1986. Once discussing what her legacy might be, she commented, "I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."