final credits - december 2004

tsunami watch
Listings of the dead and the missing from the Boxing Day disaster.

Bob Karstens
Basketball entertainer
Karstens was one of the original creators of the Harlem Globetrotters' famous "Magic Circle" pre-game routine. The third white player to play for the Globetrotters (and the only one under a contract), Karstens joined the team in 1942 when Reece "Goose" Tatum was drafted into the Army Air Corp. during World War II. Karstens served as the team's "Showman" from 1942-43 and also developed the "Goofball" (a gag basketball filled with off-center weights), the "Yo-Yo" basketball and the behind-the-back trick shot. Karstens stayed with the team as manager until 1954, and in 1994 received the Harlem Globetrotter "Legends" ring. Karstens said that integrating the all-black team eight years before Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton became the first black in the NBA in 1950 posed no problem, but provided some interesting situations. He was once housed with teammates in all-black barracks while playing on an Army base, and ousted from the team's all-black railroad car by a conductor in Texas while talking with track star Jesse Owens.
December 31, 2004 at age 89. Natural causes.

George Wackenhut
Security entrepreneur
In 1954, Wackenhut founded a four-man detective agency after handling counterfeit money and bad-check cases for the FBI. Two years later, he expanded into security guard services, turning Wackenhut Corp. into a global corporation providing businesses and government agencies with contract services such as uniformed officers, investigations and background checks. He won security contracts in the 1960s for the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and the Atomic Energy Commission's test site in Nevada. Wackenhut then moved into the corrections business, privatizing prisons, and building and managing them. Annual sales reached nearly $3 billion before Wackenhut left in 2002, selling his company to a Danish firm.

Mr. Wackenhut was an outspoken political conservative with ties to powerful Republicans and high-ranking leaders of the military, FBI and CIA. His office, with chairs carved in the shape of elephants, reflected his political leanings. Frequent rumors that his company was in the employ of the CIA were never substantiated, but several of his senior executives were, in fact, former CIA operatives, and his company's board of directors included former FBI director Clarence Kelly, former National Security Agency director Bobby R. Inman, and former Defense secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci. Ironically, his company once had to move from the Miami suburb of Coral Gables to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in part because Miami's high crime rate made it difficult to attract good workers.
December 31, 2004 at age 85. Heart failure.

Gerald Roberts
Stunt double
Won two World Champion All-Around Cowboy titles in 1942 and 1948. Doubled for such actors as Glenn Ford, Arthur Kennedy and Jack Lemmon. Roberts worked on such films and TV shows as "The Lusty Men," "Cowboy," "Have Gun Will Travel," "Gunsmoke," "Maverick," "Boston Blackie" and "Rin Tin Tin." Returned to the world of rodeo after turning down a role in the pilot episode of the hit series "Rawhide."
December 31, 2004 at age 85.

Gerard Debreu
Nobel-winning economist
Debreu won a Nobel Prize in economics for mathematically proving the classic theory of supply and demand. His models showed how prices affect the supplies of goods bought and sold -- using numbers to demonstrate the marketplace's "invisible hand," first described by landmark 18th-century economist Adam Smith. Computer models based on Debreu's work are routinely used by the World Bank and other agencies for analyzing trends in national economies and world markets. The models predicted lasting changes in economics, making it a more formal and precise science.
December 31, 2004 at age 83. Complications from strokes.

Werner Possardt
German producer, director and actor
Possardt was found alive after being buried in debris for two days in Thailand's tsunami disaster. He died during surgery to repair injuries he sustained. Possardt produced such films as the horror movie "The Pool" and the comedy "Fandango." He also produced numerous shows for German TV. Mr. Possardt also wrote and directed the sci-fi comedy "Xaver."
December 31, 2004 at age 53. Complications from surgery.

Artie Shaw
Bandleader
Shaw's best-selling recordings such as "Begin the Beguine" (1938) and "Frenesi" (1940) were musical touchstones of the the Swing Era period. He was also one of the first bandleaders to hire black artists, among them Billie Holiday. Shaw won nearly as much attention for his mercurial personal life as for his music. Shaw married eight times: best-selling novelist Kathleen Winsor; Betty Kern, a daughter of composer Jerome Kern; and Hollywood stars Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, and Evelyn Keyes among others. Never comfortable with success, Shaw retired several times, finally giving up the clarinet for good when he was only 44. He liked to say, "For the sake of my sanity I had to get out of the Artie Shaw business." Shaw demonstrated a distinct ambivalence toward the music he played. He once described his attitude as a bandleader this way: "Sure it stinks, but it pays good dough, so the hell with it." For the last half of his life, Shaw pursued a career in writing. For more about his life and times, visit the Last Link Artie Shaw tribute page.
December 30, 2004 at age 94. Natural causes.

Gerald C. McLees
Survived submarine sinking
McLees was on board the USS Squalus as it was undergoing tests off the New Hampshire coast May 23, 1939. A mechanical problem sent the submarine to the ocean floor. He survived the 300-foot sinking of the vessel when he was rescued in a revolutionary bell-shaped container that was then newly developed. 26 of the 59 crewmen on board were lost. For 30 hours survivors waited inside the submarine as rescue plans were put into motion. Four divers hooked steel cables to the sub and a new, bell-shaped rescue chamber descended along the cables, lifting men to the surface in four trips. The event was documented in the Peter Maas book "The Terrible Hours" which served as the basis for the 2001 TV movie "Submerged" which starred Sam Neill. McLees was invited to the White House on May 16, 2001, for dinner with President Bush and a screening of the film in the White House theater.
December 30, 2004 at age 90.

Johnny Farrow
Songwriter
Farrow composed over 200 songs in his lifetime. One of his best known tunes was "I Have But One Heart," the song sung by actor Al Martino when he serenaded Talia Shire during the wedding scene of "The Godfather." Farrow's song "Monkey See, Monkey Do" was used in the 1965 Connie Francis film "When the Boys Meet the Girls."
December 30, 2004 at age 92. Complications of pneumonia.

Liddy Holloway
Writer/actress
A regular on numerous New Zealand soap operas inlcuding "Shortland Street." She also had a recurring role on the TV series "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." Holloway was recently embroiled in a fight over her credit on the Oscar nominated film "The Whale Rider." She claimed to be one of the film's original screenwriters and was fighting to receive a credit on the movie.
December 30, 2004 at age 59.

Margot Kaplan Burman
Activist and filmmaker
Burman took part in many political causes in the 1960s and 1970s. She was part of the National Committee to Abolish HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee), a founder of the Women's Report to Media and more recently, she had protested the war in Iraq. In the 1970s, she was a camera operator for an in-house documentary about NASA. She also participated in a documentary on West Indian writer and cultural historian C.L.R. James.
December 30, 2004 at age 64. Heart attack.

Meta Rosenberg
Meta Rosenberg
Nominated for three Emmy Awards, Rosenberg won for producing "The Rockford Files" which ran on NBC from 1974 to 1980. She was also an agent in Hollywood for nearly seven decades. She produced several series and shows for client James Garner, including "Nichols," an overlooked gem starring Garner as a motorcycle-riding sheriff at the turn of the century. Rosenberg also brought innovation to television with shows such as "Julia," starring Diahann Carroll as an African American nurse and single mother; "Hogan's Heroes," a comedy set in a World War II German prison camp; and "Ben Casey," among the first series showcasing medicine as drama. She also produced the film comedy "Skin Game," starring Garner and Louis Gossett Jr. One of Rosenberg's other Emmys was for being executive producer of the 1980 television movie "Off the Minnesota Strip," written by frequent "Rockford" scribe David Chase who later created "The Sopranos." Rosenberg also played a part in one of the darkest chapters of Hollywood's history, naming Oscar nominated writer/director Abraham Polonsky as being a member of the communist party.
December 30, 2004 at age 89.

Michael Stanley-Evans
Producer
After serving Britain in World War II, Stanley-Evans joined the Rank Organisation and became editor of their film trailers. He later became executive producer at Pinewood Studios with responsibility for all Rank's output. Stanley-Evans worked closely with Richard Attenborough, a partnership that resulted in "Oh! What a Lovely War" (1968), "Young Winston" (1972), "A Bridge Too Far" (1977) and "Gandhi "(1982).
Announced December 30, 2004 at age 85.

Anthony Williamson
Human geography expert
Anthony Williamson was a scholar in human geography and developed innovative techniques to help the indigenous inhabitants of Labrador and the Canadian Arctic press land claims and express their concerns to the government. Williamson used film and later videotape to record villagers telling their stories. He then invited them to view the raw footage and suggest what should be emphasized or changed. The visual documentation of conditions in their villages was then presented to the government and served as a template for evaluating the land claims of northern aboriginal people.
December 29, 2004 at age 69. Colon cancer.

Charles Bradstreet
Actor
Appeared in several films during the 1940s, including "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," "Till Clouds Roll By," "Undercover Maise," "Parole Inc.," "Gallant Bess" and "The Beginning or the End." Bradstreet turned to real estate after his film career.
December 29, 2004 at age 86. Heart failure.

Esther Thelen
Developmental psychologist
Thelen saw a child's development more akin to a jazz improvisation than to a biological process driven by genes, applying dynamic systems theory, popularly called "chaos theory," to the study of how babies learn to walk and interact. Her work had a major effect on physical therapy for babies and young children, prompting therapists to design individual exercises tailored to a child's body rather than using standard exercises for all children of a given age.
December 29, 2005 at age 63. Cancer.

Julius Axelrod
Won Nobel in Medicine
Axelrod shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work essential to the development of psychiatric drugs that led directly to the development of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the class of antidepressants that includes Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. In the 1940's Axelrod played a major role in identifying acetaminophen as the pain-relieving chemical in a common headache treatment of the day. The substance was later developed and marketed by Johnson & Johnson under the brand name Tylenol. Axelrod also helped to discover an enzyme system essential for metabolizing drugs in the liver, the hormone melatonin, and other critical biochemical processes and substances. Axelrod's work significantly altered the treatment of depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders. At a 1987 news conference, he responded to a questioner who asked whether Sigmund Freud was "dead." Axelrod responded "Not for people who want to spend their money on psychoanalysis, but for the treatment of severe mental illness, yes, he is."
December 29, 2004 at age 92.

Ruby Lee Drakeford
World's 10th-oldest person
Born Jan. 25, 1892, the former Ruby Markham graduated in 1912 from Trinity College, now Duke University, and had been the school's oldest graduate. She taught elementary classes near Goldsboro, North Carolina for one year and in Durham for 44, retiring in 1957. Her husband, William White Drakeford, died in 1956. The childless widow spent her retirement years reading, playing cards, solving puzzles and watching television. The Durham native had lived in the city's Hillcrest Convalescent Center since 1991, when she injured her back in a fall at her home. She had been unable to talk for two years but still recognized visitors and watched "Jeopardy" on television.
December 29, 2004 at age 112. Causes associated with aging.

William Boyett
Veteran television actor
Best known for playing Sgt. "Mac" MacDonald on the TV series "Adam-12," Boyett's career spans the golden age of television. Early television credits include "Playhouse 90," "Four Star Playhouse," "Perry Mason" and "Sea Hunt." He also had two recurring roles - as Officer Johnson and Sgt. Ken Williams - on the 1955-59 police drama "Highway Patrol," starring Broderick Crawford. During the 1960s, Boyett showed up frequently "Family Affair," "My Three Sons," "Emergency!" and "Knot's Landing." He also played the father of Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) on "General Hospital."

His early work with actor-producer Jack Webb on both the 1950s and '60s versions of "Dragnet" led Webb to cast Boyett as Sgt. MacDonald on "Adam-12," the 1968-75 police drama that starred Martin Milner and Kent McCord. Among Boyett's 200 film and TV other credits are the miniseries "How the West Was Won" and the films "The Rocketeer" and "The Hidden." His distinctive voice also was heard often in commercial voice-over work.
December 29, 2004 at age 77. Complications from pneumonia and kidney failure.

Cyril Dolman
Entertainer and realtor.
Performing as Slim Wilson, Dolman lead the Prairie Sons, finding fame all over Western Canada. Dolman/Wilson was also known as the Singing Cowboy, the Drifting Cowboy, and the Yodeling Cowboy, winning legions of fans with live radio broadcasts from Regina and at barn dances in Saskatchewan hamlets. That he did so with an English accent didn't seem to bother his audience at all. Born in Staffordshire, England, he would claim one of his earliest memories was the German Zeppelin raid of 1916 that killed 15 residents.

He made his radio debut on CFCN in Calgary in 1932. He later auditioned for CHWC in Regina, performing two tunes. Told to report the following morning, he rushed home to learn more songs as he had exhausted his repertoire during the audition. He performed a weekly show for the princely sum of $2. So difficult were the times that CHWC shared a frequency with rival CKCK, the two stations arranging a non-conflicting schedule and thus avoiding the expense of all-day broadcasting.

CJRM then hired Slim at $10 a week for a daily show. In 1938, he offered a free publicity photograph to every listener who wrote the station. More than 25,470 letters arrived from correspondents in the Prairie provinces, Montana, Minnesota and the Dakotas. In 1948, Dolman walked away from radio and his fame as a performer to become a car salesman, later becoming a realty agent. In 1994, he was presented with a Legend and Legacy Award from the Saskatchewan Country Music Association.
December 28, 2004 at age 91.

Jerry Orbach
Singer and actor
Starting out as a song and dance man, Jerry Orbach will perhaps be best remembered for his portrayal as the sardonic, seen-it-all cop 'Lennie Briscoe' that he played for 12 years on TV's "Law & Order." On Broadway, the Bronx-born Orbach starred in hit musicals including "Carnival," "Promises, Promises" (for which he won a Tony Award), "Chicago" and "42nd Street." Earlier, he was in the original cast of the off-off-Broadway hit "The Fantasticks," playing the narrator. The show went on to run for more than 40 years. Among his film appearances were roles in "F/X," "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "The Flamingo Kid," "Last Exit to Brooklyn," "The Sentinel," "Dirty Dancing," "Prince of the City" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Orbach said he didn't know "where I stop and Lennie starts, really. ... I know he's tougher than me and he carries a gun. And I'm not an alcoholic." "I know I wouldn't want to be him," Orbach summed up. "I guess THAT'S where I stop and he starts."

"I'm immensely saddened by the passing of not only a friend and colleague, but a legendary figure of 20th Century show business," said Dick Wolf, creator and executive producer of the "Law & Order" series. "He was one of the most honoured performers of his generation. His loss is irreplaceable."

According to Audrey Davis, a public relations spokesperson for the show, the early episodes for NBC's upcoming spinoff "Law & Order: Trial By Jury" that Orbach had already completed will air when the series premieres later this season.

In 1987-88, he starred in the series "The Law and Harry McGraw," a spinoff featuring a character he created in "Murder, She Wrote." In 1990, a shot on "The Golden Girls" brought him an Emmy nomination as best guest actor in a comedy series. Although Orbach originally appeared as a defense attorney in the second season of "Law & Order," he returned a few years later to tackle the role of Briscoe, a twice-divorced alcoholic cop who broke in numerous partners and earned an Emmy nomination in 2000 for outstanding lead actor in a drama series.

Through his many roles on stage, film and TV, Orbach developed a reputation for playing the quintessential New Yorker, and has been celebrated as such with awards from the Mayor's Office of Film, Television and Broadcasting, the Friar's Club of New York and the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which named him a Living Landmark.
December 28, 2004 at age 69. Prostate cancer.

Donald Hollowell
Civil rights attorney
In the 1950s and '60s, Hollowell served as one of the lead lawyers in the desegregation of schools in the state of Georgia. He represented Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 after the civil rights leader was jailed on a traffic charge, freeing him from prison. He was attorney for Charlayne Hunter (later Hunter-Gault) and Hamilton Holmes Jr. as they integrated the University of Georgia. Hollowell's firm worked to desegregate Augusta's buses and Macon's schools and won a landmark case requiring Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital to admit black doctors and dentists to its staff. During WWII, Hollowell served with the 10th Cavalry, one of two all-black Army regiments known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
December 27, 2004 at age 87. Heart failure.

Ferenc Beddenyei
Actor
The Hungarian was considered to be one of his country's greatest stage actors, being declared "The Nation's Actor" by the Communist party. He also appeared in over 60 films and TV shows. Most of his work was not released internationally, and he may best known to Western audiences for voice work he did in the 1976 animated film "Hugo the Hippo."
December 27, 2004 at age 85.

Hank Garland
Guitarist
Walter Hank Garland began learning the guitar as a child and by the age of 12 was appearing on radio shows. While still in his teens, he scored his first million-selling hit at 19 with the country tune "Sugar Foot Rag." During the 1950s and 1960s, Garland was a star session musician in Nashville, working on Elvis Presley's "A Fool Such As I," "It's Now Or Never," "Are You Lonesome Tonight," "Little Sister" and "Big Hunk of Love," Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and "I Fall to Pieces," the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love," and Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" and "Only The Lonely." Garland also worked with Jim Reeves, Brenda Lee, Mel Tillis, Marty Robbins, Boots Randolph, Conway Twitty and Hank Williams Sr. A pioneer of the electric guitar and the rock 'n' roll genre, Garland also dabbled in jazz, performing with Charlie Parker and George Shearing.

In 1961, while working on the soundtrack to Presley's movie "Follow That Dream" Garland was involved in a car crash that left him in a coma for months. When he awoke, he had to overcome his injuries and a long period of rehabilitation that meant re-learning everything from walking and talking to playing the guitar. Garland's family members have maintained that the car crash was a murder attempt. Their attempts to produce a film version of their side of the story, with Jerry Reed in the title role, never got off the ground.

In his final years, Garland fought illness and royalty battles with record companies. Before his death Garland had filed a federal lawsuit over authorship of the 1957 Christmas song "Jingle Bell Rock," claiming he had co-written it with Bobby Helms. For more about this guitar legend, visit Garland's official site [opens in new window].
December 27, 2004 at age 74. Staph infection.

Heorhiy Kirpa
Ukraine transport minister
Kirpa was alleged by Ukraine's opposition party to have helped engineer voting fraud in recent presidential elections. Kirpa's body was found in his country house just outside the Ukrainian capital on December 27, a day after the national election that Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - whom Kirpa supported - lost to opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. A gun was found near Kirpa's body, and possible foul play is being investigated. Petro Poroshenko, a key Yushchenko ally, claimed that Kirpa helped engineer the vote fraud by siphoning off government funds to finance Yanukovych's campaign and allocating trains to ferry Yanukovych supporters to polling stations.
December 27, 2004 at age 58. 'Apparent suicide.'

Martin Landau
UC Berkeley political science professor
Landau challenged the idea that streamlined organizations run better than those with some duplication. Professor Landau, born in Brooklyn in 1921, shared a famous name and typically identified himself as "the schoolteacher, not the actor." Landau's central theory was that large-scale public organizations run better when there is some duplication of expertise, of communication flow and of accountability -- just as electronics require backup systems for maximum efficiency. Landau was also expert in the areas of organization theory -- why Silicon Valley had success, for example, while other high-tech experiments did not -- and decision theory -- recognizing that different dilemmas must be matched to appropriate tactical responses, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Landau also lent his expertise to governments from Nepal to France. He helped Hong Kong prepare for the 1997 handover of the British-led government to China. Professor Landau once responded that Sir Isaac Newton had written the United States Constitution. "It was because Newtonian physics demonstrated the idea of force and counterforce, changing the way we think about systems. The American system of governance is based on checks and balances -- it's the key idea in the Constitution."
December 27, 2004 at age 83. Cancer.

Peggy Phillips
Actress/screenwriter/novelist/theatrical press agent
Was one of the pioneer female press agents, representing a number of famous Broadway plays starting in the 1950s. Phillips wrote for a number of TV series including "Lassie," "National Velvet," "The Donna Reed Show" and "Days of Our Lives." An avid scuba diver, she once saw a woman in trouble and saved her from drowning. It turned out that the woman saved was director Leni Riefenstahl. Phillips wrote a novel based on the incident.
December 27, 2004 at age 88. Complications from a stroke.

Barry Lloyd Jones
Journalist
Lloyd Jones was a journalist who ran many UK newsrooms and fought relentessly for higher standards. Reporters who worked for him never forgot the experience. He was known to smash telephones in irritation and throw dictionaries at those too lazy to look up words they could not spell. Lloyd Jones believed newspapers were a force for good, and trained his reporters to track down conmen, crooks and corrupt officials. Some investigations, and meticulous cross-checking of facts and documents, would take weeks; in between producing daily stories of crime, local government and politics, reporters would dig deeper into community affairs. One of his campaigns was against a British Electricity Board, which was misusing its statutory powers to break down the doors of people who would not or could not pay their bills. This exposure caused a change in the law to protect vulnerable consumers, and in 1972 brought him a journalist of the year award. After retiring from active publishing, he trained journalists from the developing world, running courses to foster the free press and democracy. Lloyd Jones was killed as a result of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December, 2004.
December 26, 2004 at age 69.

Dame Hilary Cropper
Businesswoman
One of Britain's most respected businesswomen. As chairman and chief executive of the computer services group Xansa, she set out to give women the opportunity to develop careers in the largely masculine world of computing. With Dame Stephanie Shirley, Cropper offered part-time and home-based work for women who had, like herself, computer programming skills as well as children to care for. Stephanie Shirley signed herself "Steve" to gain acceptance with male clients, but for many years she employed no men. Cropper was appointed CBE in 1999 and raised to DBE in 2004.
December 26, 2004 at age 63. Ovarian cancer.

Eddie Layton
Organist at Yankee Stadium
A sports institution in New York, Layton worked 37 years as organist at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Gardens. When he was hired in 1967 to play for the Yankees, Layton had never been to Yankee Stadium and knew nothing about baseball. "I thought that a sacrifice fly had something to do with killing an insect," he recalled in an interview with National Public Radio. He played the organ at the Gardens from 1967 to 1985 for Knicks and Rangers games. He also played at Islanders games in the Nassau Coliseum for a few seasons in the 1990's. After serving in the Navy, he pursued a career as a professional organist and played for many soap operas on CBS. Layton was not supposed to play during the baseball action, but once he just got lost in the moment with the Yankees' Reggie Jackson at bat. Reggie looked up at the booth, and the umpires looked up at the booth. Reggie threw down the bat and he started dancing at home plate.
December 26, 2004 at age 79.

Frank Pantridge
Cardiologist
In the 1950s, Pantridge noted that the majority of coronary deaths were sudden, and thus occurring outside of hospitals. Most coronary deaths resulted from ventricular defibrillation, a disturbance of the heart rhythm which might be corrected by the application of an electric shock of momentary duration across the chest. In 1965 he produced the first "portable" defibrillator. It operated from car batteries and weighed 70 kilos. Among early patients benefiting from the device was President Lyndon Johnson when he suffered a heart attack while on a visit to Virginia in 1972. Pantridge was labelled the "father of emergency medicine" and his device was rapidly adopted in America and elsewhere.

While serving Britain in WWII, Pantridge was captured at the fall of Singapore. He spent much of his captivity in the slave labour camps on the Siam-Burma Railway, including some months in the notorious death camp at Tanbaya on the Siam-Burma border. He survived the usually fatal affliction cardiac beriberi, an experience which may have initiated his special interest in heart disease. The only politician for whom he had any regard was Harry S. Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb in August of 1945, Pantridge believed, saved the lives of the POWs.

After the war, Pantridge was appointed Physician to the Royal Victoria Hospital in England, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. His use of mouth-to-mouth ventilation, with chest compression to maintain the circulation (now known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR) aroused much interest in the North American 1960s. He maintained that any lay individual who could perform CPR was capable of using a defibrillator; and a defibrillator should be beside every fire extinguisher. Using a miniature capacitor manufactured for NASA, in 1968 he designed an instrument weighing only 3 kilos.
December 26, 2004 at age 88.

Garard Green
Actor
For nearly half a century, Green was one of the most distinctive voices of British radio drama. He had more than 4,000 BBC broadcasts to his credit, as well as more than 1,000 film and TV commentaries, narrations and voice-overs. Severe arthritis restricted his mobility -- and a promising stage career -- so Green focused on films, TV and radio. His 40-odd films included "The Prince and the Showgirl" and "A Town Like Alice," and such TV credits as "Z Cars" and "Only Fools and Horses." But it was radio that made his reputation and where his phenomenal talent for accents, (particularly Indian accents), came into its own. Alongside his radio work Green recorded some 250 audio-books. His biggest challenge was the unabridged War and Peace - more than 70 hours of tape, by the end of which, he said, "My fourteenth century Frenchman was indistinguishable from my nineteenth Russian."
December 26, 2004 at age 80.

Gennady Strekalov
Cosmonaut
Veteran Soviet cosmonaut Gennady Strekalov's career was filled with triumphs, disappointment and near certain death. His first space flight was a two-week mission from November 27 to December 10, 1980 aboard a Soyuz-T-3 spacecraft, docking the Soyuz with the Salyut-6-Process-11 orbital complex. On his next mission his Soyuz T-8 craft which launched in April 1983, failed to dock with the orbiting Salyut-7 space station. On September 26, 1983 his Soyuz booster rocket caught fire on the launchpad of the Baikonur cosmodrome only 15 seconds before take-off. He managed to eject with his comrade Vladimir Titov four seconds before it exploded. The pair plunged though a wall of fire as they bailed out but, conscious that their every word was being recorded, were careful to avoid swearing.

The following year Strekalov took part in a week-long visit to the Salyut-7 station as part of an international crew which included Rakesh Sharma, India's first astronaut. From August until December, 1990 he served on the Solyut-TM-10 and Mir stations. In 1995 his last mission was conducted jointly with the Russians, travelling to Mir on a Soyuz and returning on the space shuttle. During the trip, Strekalov was concerned about the safety of the equipment on Mir and flatly refused to make a spacewalk. As a result, on his return to Earth, he had his pension and benefits reduced.
December 26, 2004 at age 64.

Jan Eisenhardt
Fitness pioneer
A native of Denmark who came to Canada in 1927, Eisenhardt was the first national director of physical education and fitness for the federal government, a position created for him after he set up the Canadian military fitness program during World War II. Eisenhardt would become a victim of a secret Cold War blacklist in Canada at the height of McCarthyism and the "red menace" in the U.S. He was fired from the crown corporation Canadair in 1952 after being assigned there to set up a company fitness program. No reason for his dismissal was ever given and he sought unsuccessfully to get reparation from the Government of Canada. Eisenhardt's good name was restored when he was given the Order of Canada in 1999 and a lifetime achievement award from Sport Canada. Some may recall the 1973 television commercial in which the average 60-year-old Swede was found to be in better shape than a 30-year-old Canadian. Eisenhardt was 66 at the time, appearing as that Swede.
December 26, 2004 at age 98.

John Kimbro
Author
A prolific author, Kimbro used various pseudonyms to write more than 80 books, hitting stride in a series of 40 gothic romance novels starting with "Augusta the First" and ending with "Belinda the Impatient." He wrote under at least eight different names -- Ann Ashton, Jean Kimbro, Milt Jaxon, Charlotte Bramwell and Zoltan Lambec, among others -- but his most enduring pen name was Katheryn Kimbrough, author of the Gothic series published under the umbrella title of "Saga of the Phenwick Women." The average length of his novels was 70,000 to 90,000 words, taking Kimbro from two to four weeks to write. Kimbro stopped writing the gothic novels more than 20 years ago but at one point wrote a TV miniseries based on the Phenwick stories, but it was never produced. He continued writing about spiritualism and became an activist for senior citizens.
December 26, 2004 at age 75. Complications after surgery.

Manuela Brandenstein
Screenwriter and actress
Brandenstein worked primarily in German television. She dubbed the voice of character Lieutenant Alyssa Ogawa of the TV series and film "Star Trek: The Next Generation" into German for broadcast in her native land. With her longtime partner and co-writer Helmut Schweiker, Brandenstein co-wrote the German TV series "Sport is Murder" and "Sitte Die," and they also wrote the made for TV film "Am Ende die Wharheit." Brandenstein was killed by the tsunami during a vacation in Khao Lak, Thailand.
December 26, 2004 at age 47.

Mary MacKinnon
Crime victim
On September 12, 1922, Mary MacKinnon and her sister saw their policeman father shot to death outside their home in Coleman, Alberta. For the next 80 years she never fully told her story. When MacKinnon learned in 2003 that the Calgary Opera was planning a production -- titled Filumena -- based on the event, she broke her long silence. The cold-blooded murder resulted in a 43-year-old rum-runner and his 22-year-old female accomplice being sent to the gallows, but their guilt has been debated. Historians believe Florence Lassandro assumed blame for a murder she did not commit because she thought authorities would not execute a woman. Lassandro became the last woman to be hanged in Alberta. MacKinnon feared the opera might glorify Filumena and cast doubt over the conviction, but the sisters reported two years ago that they never had any doubt about the guilt of the couple.
December 26, 2004 at age 94. Stroke.

Otto Marchi
Author, journalist and teacher
Marchi is believed to have died in the tsunami disaster that struck Asia last month, his family announced Saturday [January 15, 2005]. He was swept away when the deadly wave struck the tourist resort of Khao Lak, Thailand said a death notice published in the Neue Luzerner Zeitung newspaper. His best known literary work was "Schweizer Geschichte fuer Ketzer," or "Swiss History for Heretics" published in 1971.
December 26, 2004 at age 61.

Robert Whymant
Journalist and author
Whymant was one of Fleet Street's most productive chroniclers of Japan, covering that country's complex period of transformation through 14 different prime ministers, the inflation of the world's biggest ever economic bubble and its eventual collapse. From staggeringly complicated electoral bribery cases to the Imperial family to robotic pets, Whymant was able to bring all facets of Japan to life for his readers in Great Britain.

Whymant wrote the acclaimed study "Stalin's Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Ring" in 1996 after spending 20 years researching the man he believed to be the world's most successful spy. After winning an Iron Cross in the First World War, Sorge converted to communism. He infiltrated the German Embassy in Tokyo by posing as a Nazi journalist. When Stalin ignored Sorge's intelligence on the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it cost millions of lives. So when Sorge reported that the Japanese had decided not to attack Siberia, Stalin paid heed and sent his eastern divisions west to save Moscow. Sorge was abandoned by Stalin when caught by the Tokyo secret police, and Sorge was hung in 1944.

Whymant died while holidaying with his wife, Mineko, in Sri Lanka when the two were washed away by the tsunami tidal waves that followed the Sumatra earthquake on Boxing Day.
December 26, 2004 at age 60.

Robin Needham
Head of CARE Nepal
In 1971, Needham travelled by bus to India. During his stay he worked for Mother Teresa's mission and drove supply lorries to Dacca. He went on to work for UNICEF in Thailand, and in 1980 he joined CARE. CARE is an international charity which was founded to help survivors of the Second World War and is active in more than 70 countries. In the early 1980s, Needham became heavily involved in efforts to draw public attention to poverty in Africa, including accompanying Bob Geldof to Mozambique. He was appointed director of CARE Nepal in 1998. Needham and his wife Lucy Bucknell lived at Golden Buddha beach on Ko Phra Thong, a small island north of Phuket. Needham sensed the tremor on Boxing Day some time before the waves came; he was last seen urging others away from the beach, and his body was found three days later.
December 26, 2004 at age 51.

Donald O. Pederson
Pioneered integrated circuitry
Pederson was perhaps best known for spearheading the development three decades ago of an integrated circuit computer simulation program known as SPICE (simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis). Using the program, engineers were able to quickly and accurately analyze and design complex electronic circuitry. The program helped improve the design of integrated circuits and led to advances in personal computers, cellphones, home appliances and vehicles. Pederson insisted on making Spice's code available to other engineers as long as they did not sell it and they sent back improvements. This made him one of the first practitioners of the approach now known as open source.
December 25, 2004 at age 79. Parkinson's disease.

Jane Gray Muskie
Wife, Senator Edmund Muskie
Senator Edmund Muskie first gained national prominence in 1968 when Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey chose him as a running mate (they lost to Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew). During the 1972 primary campaign in New Hampshire, the conservative Manchester Union Leader newspaper and its publisher William Loeb accused Muskie of making ethnic slurs and said his wife liked to smoke cigarettes and tell dirty jokes. The liberal candidate denied referring to French-Canadians as "Canucks" and vehemently defended his wife, choking up several times. "By attacking me and my wife," the senator said of Loeb in a speech atop a flatbed truck outside the newspaper, "he has proved himself to be a gutless coward." Edmund Muskie choked up several times during the speech, but a dispute has persisted for years whether it was tears or melted snowflakes on his face.

The Washington Post asserted that Muskie cried during the speech, and Republicans seized on the report to float claims that Muskie was emotionally unstable and unfit to be leader of the free world. Muskie insisted until his death (in 1996 at 81) that the shiny liquid seen on his face was not tears but melting snowflakes. "I was right at Muskie's shoes," recalled John Milne, then New Hampshire bureau chief for United Press International, "And I don't think he [cried]." Nevertheless, the campaign was doomed. Democratic rival and then Senator George McGovern won the nomination but lost the election to incumbent Republican President Richard M. Nixon.

The incident is now regarded as a historic example of how a presidential candidate could at one time be undone by displaying emotion. "Now it's quite acceptable for a man to show his emotions," said Jane Muskie in 1986. "President Reagan does it all the time." And tears visibly streamed down the face of President Bush during a 1999 CNN interview when the then-Texas governor spoke of Texas A&M students who were killed as they set up logs for a bonfire.
December 25, 2004 at age 77. Alzheimer's disease.

Augustine Marusi
Chairman of Borden Chemicals
Marusi steered Borden beyond milk and ice cream and into chemicals, ending the decline of company profits in the 1970s. Once best known for their dairy business, Borden's CEO Marusi abandonned a shrinking dairy market and put corporate mascot Elsie the Cow out to pasture. The company adopted a logo that connected the letters "R" and "D" in Borden to suggest research and development. The then company focused on resources making synthetic resins and adhesives for international use. During Marusi's tenure, Borden Chemical's earnings had risen 9 percent over previous years to a record $66 million. Borden Chemical is now owned by Apollo Management, a private investment firm, and Borden's food and dairy businesses have been divided and sold to various companies.
December 24, 2004 at age 91. Cancer.

John Deardourff
Republican party consultant
Deardourff was among the first to work as a national political consultant, specialising in working for moderate and progressive Republican candidates and contributed to more than 70 primary and general election campaigns. He helped orchestrate President Gerald R. Ford's late surge in 1976's presidential election. The Washington Post called Deardourff "the hottest hired gun the Grand Old Party can boast. His campaign and media planning was so disciplined and detailed that it would impress a Prussian general."
December 24, 2004 at age 61. Cancer.

Joseph Alessi
Trumpet innovator
In 1948, Alessi joined the New York Metropolitan Opera. There he noticed that in the trumpet solo in a Shostakovich concerto there was a very low note (an F-sharp, according to Joseph Alessi) that could not be reached by a trumpet, even with the trumpet mutes that were being manufactured at the time. Alessi thought e could solve the problem, and experimented with designing mutes until he found one that worked. Calling it a 'straight mute,' it was successfully adopted for brass instruments. Alessi eventually sold his mute business to a large music company. After Alessi moved west in search of a higher paying position, he found work with Red Skelton's band in Las Vegas, utilising his classical skills to transpose keys, a skill in short supply Vegas at the time. He ended up in a group that was called the Relief Band because it spelled other musicians each night, moving from one glittery hotel to another, day after day. Alessi retired in San Francisco where he taught trumpet for the last three decades.
December 24, 2004 at age 89.

Pete Palangio
Hockey player
Palangio was the oldest surviving player from the National Hockey League's pre-expansion six. He played only eight games with the Montreal Canadiens (in the 1928-1929 team photograph, Palangio was the only "spare" on a team of 14 players). After spending a number of years in junior leagues, principally with the St. Louis Flyers, he joined the Chicago Black Hawks mid-way through the 1936-37 season. Palangio was with the Hawks when they won the Stanley Cup in 1938, defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs. He later went on to operate Palangio Motors, a Chrysler dealership, moving on to own and operate a successful vending-machine business. On March 15, 1996 his brief career with the Canadiens was honoured, appearing at centre ice along with Guy Lafleur and Henri (The Pocket Rocket) Richard. The response by the fans was tremendous. Overwhelmed and feeling embarrassed, Palangio said he nearly fainted.
December 24, 2004 at age 96.

Colin Kirkland
Eurotunnel engineer
Kirkland was technical director of the Eurotunnel project from 1985 to 1991. Building on a career that began in 1952, it was Kirkland who led up to 198 banks through the process of financing the Channel Tunnel Group for the project of crossing the English Channel. He was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1992 for his services to civil engineering.
December 23, 2005 at age 68. Cancer.

Frank Orsatti
Stuntman and director
Orsatti was a stunt double for such stars as Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Bixby (whose series "The Incredible Hulk" Orsatti also directed a few episodes). He worked with Burt Reynolds on "Fuzz," "The Longest Yard" and "Cop and a Half" and was Arnold's stunt double on "The Terminator." Frank and his brother, stunt coordinator Ernie Orsatti worked together on "The Poseidon Adventure," "Planet of the Apes," "Bullitt," "Rosemary's Baby," "The Mechanic," "Freebie and the Bean," "Lenny," "Paint Your Wagon," "Soylent Green," "The Towering Inferno," "Rancho Deluxe," "Marathon Man," "The Gumball Rally," "Blue Collar," "The Beastmaster," "First Blood," "Point Break," "Lethal Weapon 2" and "Con Air."
December 23, 2004 at age 62. Respiratory failure.

John W. Duarte
Classical guitarist and composer
One of the most prolific 20th-century composers for the guitar, Duarte was also an author, a music critic and a teacher. Duarte graduated in chemistry at Manchester University, and during his student years he learned trumpet and double bass (playing the latter in the company of Coleman Hawkins and Django Reinhardt). After the war he was a founding member of the Manchester Guitar Circle where he was first introduced to Andrés Segovia, who became a lifelong friend. Over the years his musical output proliferated until his works had been recorded by some 60 artists in more than 20 countries. Duarte published more than 200 original works and arrangements, and his music was recorded by such recitalists as Segovia and John Williams. His critical writing included about 250 compact disc liner notes, and he contributed regularly to Gramophone magazine, covering not only guitar but also the harpsichord, Baroque music and interviews with distinguished performers. He also wrote for major international guitar journals and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
December 23, 2004, aged 85.

Leslie Gourse
Biographer
Gourse, a freelance writer and author of more than 20 books about jazz, was a workaholic of myriad interests. Based in New York, she wrote album liner notes and travel stories and contributed to magazines and newspapers, including Downbeat, JazzTimes, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Village Voice. She documented the lives of jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Nat "King" Cole, Art Blakey, Wynton Marsalis, Thelonious Monk, Joe Williams, Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. She spent five years writing and trying to persuade publishers to print "Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists." Oxford University Press released the book in 1995 to wide acclaim. Whereas many earlier books noted the contributions of pianists Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland, critics called the book a "groundbreaking study of women's role in jazz today."
December 23, 2004 at age 65. Respiratory ailment.

Richard Barnet
Co-founder of liberal think tank
After both leaving the Kennedy administration in 1963, Barnet and Marcus Raskin founded the Institute for Policy Studies at a time when such institutions were relatively rare. The pair preferred "speaking truth to power" from outside the citadels of authority. The institute immediately plunged into the movement that opposed the Vietnam War and tackled civil rights, education, and environmental issues. The Johnson administration responded to the organization's opposition to the war by dispatching FBI informers into its ranks and wiretapping its phones. Later, Mr. Barnet was on President Nixon's "enemies list." As Republicans increased their power in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies became, in the words of some, "the Pluto of think tanks, the one farthest from the Reagan sun." Today, the institute considers itself a key participant in efforts to oppose the war in Iraq.

Barnet also produced 15 books including "Global Reach" (1974); "The Giants" (1977), an assessment of Soviet-American relations; a book on the environmental movement called "Lean Years" (1980); and "Global Dreams" (1994), a portrait of five "imperial corporations" and their influence over world affairs.
December 23, 2004 at age 75. Kidney failure.

Sam Papich
Liaison between the FBI and CIA
Papich worked as the FBI's liaison with various divisions within the CIA and sat at the table with then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA directors Allen Dulles and Richard Helms. In 1963, he was involved in the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, coordinating CIA information for FBI agents investigating Lee Harvey Oswald.
December 23, 2004 at age 90.

Alice Strike
WWI veteran
Thought to be the last of Canada's female First World War veterans and also believed to be the oldest surviving female veteran of the war.
Died December 22, 2004 at age 108.

Paul Lopez
Costume supervisor
Lopez helped make the stars look great in films like "The Woman in Red," "Big Trouble in Little China," "I Heart Huckabees," "The Patriot," "The Wild Wild West," "Rush Hour," "X-Men 2," "Unlawful Entry," "Planes Trains and Automobiles" and "Maverick."
December 22, 2004 at age 56.

Paul Metivier
Canadian WWI veteran
Enlisted at 16 telling authorities he was 19. With his death, Canada has only six surviving World War One veterans. Despite failing health over the past several months, he still insisted on going to the cenotaph at the National War Memorial for the celebration of November 11 and further insisted on accepting an invitation to the Governor General's for tea afterwards. Metivier's son Roland was killed in action in 1942.
December 22, 2004 at age 104.

Lucile Layton
Actress, showgirl
The former Ziegfeld Follies girl appeared in several silent films directed by D.W. Griffith and also appeared in a silent version of "The Sign of the Cross." In the 1920s moved to Broadway, and appeared as one of Flo Ziegfeld's girls from 1921 through 1924.
December 21, 2004 at age 101.

Mack Vickery
Singer, songwriter
Wrote such hits as George Strait's "The Fireman", Ricky Van Shelton's "I'll Leave This World Loving You", Johnny Paycheck's "I'm The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised", and Jerry Lee Lewis' "Rockin' My Life Away." In 2003, was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, where his walk-of-fame star is displayed next to Lionel Richie's.
December 21, 2004 at age 66. Heart attack.

Susan Sontag
Author and activist
Sontag remembered her childhood as "one long prison sentence." She skipped three grades and graduated from high school at 15. Her mother warned if she did not stop reading she would never marry. Her 1964 piece "Notes On Camp" established her as a major new writer and popularized the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture. She was deeply involved in politics, even after the 1960s. When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie's death because of the alleged blasphemy of "The Satanic Verses," she helped lead protests in the literary community. Days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers. Sontag appeared as herself in Woody Allen's mock documentary "Zelig."
December 21, 2004 at age 71. Complications of acute myelogenous leukemia.

Alexander Marshack
Anthropologist
Marshack, a self-taught anthropological researcher, advanced the notion that prehistoric man was more inventive than previously thought. In the 1960's, using novel scientific techniques, Marshack analyzed small incisions made on bone plaques found in southwest France which dated from the Paleolithic Period (about 30,000 years ago, in the latter part of the last ice age). While most anthropologists and archaeologists interpreted the markings as decorative, Marshack found that the notches were carved at varying times using a variety of tools. Their groupings and sequences also seemed to record the waxing and waning of the moon. He concluded that the plaques were lunar calendars - that humans were keeping records 25,000 years before the beginning of formal writing and almost 20,000 years before the start of agriculture. Though Paleolithic man was the first modern human in the evolutionary sense, he had been viewed as a brutish hunter-gatherer largely incapable of such advanced thinking.

Marshack's then innovative methods, included the use of high-powered microscopes and ultraviolet light to detect cave paintings obscured by calcite, have become common. Marshack later traveled to dozens of countries to study similar materials in caves and museum collections. His studies culminated in his book "The Roots of Civilization," published by McGraw-Hill in 1972.
December 20, 2004 at age 86. Heart failure.

Arlon Ober
Composer, orchestrator and music editor
Worked mostly on B-movies such as Larry Cohen's "Q: The Winged Serpent." Composed the score for Paul Bartel's cult classic "Eating Raoul," and other cinematic greats including "Hospital Massacre," "Child's Play," "Deep Star Six," "Nightbeast" and "Robotech."
December 20, 2004 at age 61.

Frank 'Son' Seals
Blues guitarist
The license plate on his car read, "BAD AXE." He formed his first band, the Upsetters, in 1959, and started working regularly around Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. He worked in bands led by Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk and the guitarist who became his mentor, Albert King. Recorded the album "The Son Seals Blues Band" in 1973 with Alligator Records who released seven other Seals albums. He left the label for Telarc in 2000, when he recorded "Lettin' Go," his last studio album. He was nominated for a Grammy Award as one of the performers on the 1981 live album "Blues Deluxe," and received the W. C. Handy Blues Awards in 1985, 1987 and 2001. He also performed at the Clinton White House.

Mr. Seals played guitar "like his life depended on it," said Bruce Iglauer, Alligator founder and president. "Part of it was his sheer intensity. He didn't really play the guitar, he attacked it. And that's the way he approached his vocals, too. He didn't ask you to listen, he bullied you into it." Mr. Seals' last 10 years were marked by misfortunes. A 1995 automobile accident severely injured his left hand. In 1997, he was shot in the jaw by an ex-wife as he slept, forcing months of reconstructive surgery. His left leg was amputated below the knee in 1999 because of diabetes. More recently his motor home was destroyed by fire after a show in Miami, and his custom-made guitar was stolen. And despite all this, Seals still had reason to play the blues.
December 20, 2004 at age 62. Complications from diabetes.

Howard Feuer
Casting director
Among his nearly 80 credits, Feuer cast some of the best films of the last three decades: "The Warriors," "Hair," "All That Jazz," "Altered States," "Bad Boys," "Places in the Heart," "Moonstruck," "Married to the Mob," "Mississippi Burning," "Dead Poets Society," "The Abyss," "Miami Blues," "Billy Bathgate," "Basic Instinct," "Philadelphia," "That Thing You Do!" "Silence Of The Lambs," "The Truman Show," and "The Dreamers." Feuer was nominated for the Casting Society of America's Artios Award eleven times and winning four.
December 20, 2004 at age 56. Colon cancer.

Jack Newfeld
Newspaper columnist
Described as a muckraking newspaper columnist and an expert on New York, he was also the author of books about such leaders as Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and New York City mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani. In July of 1963, Newfeld spent two days in a Mississippi jail for participating in a civil rights sit-in. Was also arrested for throwing a typewriter from the window of his Chicago hotel at police he saw beating demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic Convention. As a columnist for the Village Voice, often wrote lists including "The Ten Worst Judges" and "The Ten Worst Landlords." He also skewered boxing corruption and impresario Don King in the 1995 book "Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King," and won an Emmy for his related PBS documentary, "Don King: Unauthorized," in 1991. Newfield lambasted Koch in the 1988 book he wrote with Wayne Barrett, "City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York," and offered a kinder appraisal of a subsequent mayor in his 2003 "The Full Rudy: The Man, the Mayor, the Myth."
December 20, 2004 at age 66. Cancer.

Tony van Bridge
Stage actor
The acclaimed Canadian stage actor and director appeared on both the Stratford and Shaw festival stages, spending 15 seasons with Stratford shortly after it began and when it was still performing under a tent. He later moved to the Shaw Festival, acting as artistic director during the 1974-1975 season. van Bridge spent more than 20 seasons at the Shaw. He also appeared on TV, including three seasons as the title character of the CBC-TV series Judge. van Bridge also appeared in one of Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theater" episodes: "The Pied Piper of Hamilin." Other TV roles included guest roles on "Mission Impossible" and "The Quartermass Experiment." Named a member of the Order of Canada in 2000.
December 20, 2004 at age 87.

Alvin Howell
Led spy balloon project
1957, Howell led the first team to send a 400-foot-tall unmanned balloon around the world. Although the mission was a triumph, he never got a chance to revel publicly in the achievement: it was a top-secret spy flight funded by the Air Force to gather intelligence on the former Soviet Union. The balloon circled 20 miles over the earth's surface at 100 miles per hour, taking photographs through a telescope at programmed intervals. Twenty-eight days later, the photographic equipment detached from the balloon and parachuted down to the surface of the Pacific, where it was retrieved. After his spy flights, Howell adapted his balloons to make high-altitude spectrographic examination of the moon for NASA before the first moon landing.
December 19, 2004 at age 96. Heart failure.

Herbert C. Brown
Chemist
In 1936 he graduated from the University of Chicago, and his future wife gave him a book, "The Hydrides of Boron and Silicon." Later, he discovered that boron compounds could be enlisted in synthesizing carbon-containing molecules. The compounds that Dr. Brown developed, known as organoboranes, have provided a low-cost way of making many molecules used in drugs and agricultural chemicals, including the antidepressant Prozac and the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor. Dr. Brown liked to point out that the three primary elements involved in the reactions - hydrogen, carbon and boron - were the initials of his name. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 for the work.
December 19, 2004 at age 82. Heart attack.

Janice Knowlton
Believed father killed the Black Dahlia
Knowlton died March 5, but the death escaped public notice until a Los Angeles magazine ran an article in November of 2004 about the 1947 murder of Hollywood hopeful Elizabeth Short whose body was found in a vacant lot in southwest Los Angeles, bisected at the waist and drained of blood. More than 40 years later, Knowlton inserted herself into one of the city's most sensational and gruesome unsolved murder mysteries. She said horrifying, long-repressed memories had convinced her that George Knowlton, who died in a 1962 car crash, had murdered Short. In 1991, she persuaded skeptical police detectives to search for evidence of the Black Dahlia murder - and that of another murder she believed her father committed - by excavating a vacant lot, the site of her former home. Nothing to warrant a criminal investigation was found.

The "Black Dahlia" name evolved from Short's black hair and black attire. Some say she was named the Black Dahlia before her murder in January of 1947, others say the name was applied by journalists to sensationalize the crime. For more about this bizarre and unsolved case, visit the Black Dahlia or Black Dahlia Solution web sites. [Both links open in new windows].
Death revealed December, 2004, died March 5, 2004 at age 67. Suicide.

Johnny Lee Williams
Drifter
Williams was a recording and performing member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group, The Drifters. The tenor was just 18 years old when he replaced Ben E. King in the touring version of the group in mid-1959. He sang lead on the recording of "(If You Cry) True Love, True Love," and sang background on "Dance With Me", "This Magic Moment", "Save The Last Dance For Me" and "I Count The Tears". When the Drifters toured outside of Alabama in 1960, Williams became homesick and decided to leave the group. Williams was preceeded in death by two of his fellow 1959-60 Drifters, bass Elsbeary Hobbs (1936-1996), and baritone Dock Green (1934-1989).
December 19, 2004 at age 64.

Larry Boufford
Kiteboarder
Larry loved windsurfing, snowboarding and kiteboarding - and just being outdoors. It was during his pursuit of that love that Larry died in a freak windstorm at Lac Ste. Anne, located northwest of Edmonton, Alberta. Winds reaching a record-breaking 117 kilometres per hour (73 miles per hour) picked Bouffard up and threw him into an abandoned church at Alberta Beach. Associates of Bouffard described him as very safety-conscious, having set out kite lines in advance to determine that wind conditions were absolutely safe.

The windstorm also blew out 110 outer-glass panels on the City Hall pyramid in Edmonton, sent two small planes flying into the air in Villenueve, toppled a radio tower in Mayerthorpe, knocked out power for 25,000 customers from Edson to Wainwright, and flipped over a $70,000 mobile home a few kilometres out of Millet. Environment Canada reported thunder and lightning in and around the Edmonton area as temperatures dropped from 9 C (49 F) to -16 C (-13 F) inside of an hour. Just outside of Edmonton at the Rabbit Hill Snow Resort, gusts derailed one of the ski slope's chairlifts, forcing the rescue of 45 people.
December 19, 2004 at age 46. Severe blunt force trauma.

Mel Gabler
Textbook activist
For more than 40 years, Gabler and his wife, Norma, pored over textbook publishers' offerings at their Texas kitchen table, looking for factual errors and examples of left-wing bias (one and the same, as far the couple was concerned). They also set in motion a process of review and selection, founding the nonprofit Educational Research Analysts and becoming almost as well known as Phyllis Schlafly, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, or James Dobson, founder of the Christian organization Focus on the Family. Because Texas public schools make up the second-largest textbook market in the U.S., publishers often made their Texas offerings the template for the rest of the nation. And those books bore the unofficial Gabler seal of approval. As recently as last month, the Gabbers' research group led a successful effort to force textbook publishers to define marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman. The group objected to the term "married partners."
December 19, 2004 at age 89. Massive brain hemorrhage.

Renata Tebaldi
Soprano with 'Voice of an Angel'
Overcoming polio at age 3, and despite a public feud with established diva Maria Callas and vocal exhaustion at the height of her career, Renata Tebaldi leaves behind an unlikely-to-be-rivalled legacy more fully detailed at this special Last Link Renata Tebaldi tribute page.
December 19, 2004 at age 82. Failing health after a long illness.

Richard Best
Film editor
Cut such famous films as "The Dam Busters," "Look Back In Anger" and television series such as "The Avengers." In 1936, Best worked with a young ex-newsreel editor by the name of David Lean on Paul Czinner's "As You Like It" with Elizabeth Bergner and Laurence Olivier. Best edited "Desert Victory," winning the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1943. In 1951, he edited "The Magic Box" which was based on the life of William Friese-Greene, the inventor of the movie camera. The film starred Robert Donat and Richard Attenborough, and was nominated for a Best Picture BAFTA award. Best's lasting legacy was made with Michael Anderson's 1954 production of "The Dam Busters," the first film of note to use direct cuts between sequences, dispensing with fades and dissolves. This distinction has been usually (but erroneously) offered upon Robert Wise's 1963 "The Haunting."
December 19, 2004 at age 88.

William Berry
Jack of all trades
Berry was a sound engineer for Warner Brothers Studios during the 1930s and later went to work for Howard Hughes as a project manager on the Spruce Goose cargo plane. He was on board the plane when Howard Hughes took it for its only flight in the Los Angeles Harbor in 1947. Berry was also the father of Jan Berry, half of the rock duo Jan and Dean. Jan died March 26 of this year.
December 19, 2004 at age 95.

Barry Corbet
Adventurer
Corbet was born in Vancouver, Canada, and attended Dartmouth College. Besides being a pioneering alpinist, he was a climbing guide, a filmmaker and a skier who saw his promising outdoor career end when he was paralyzed below the waist after a helicopter crash in 1968. He was a member of the 1963 Everest team - the first team of Americans to conquer Everest - though he gave up his chance to reach the summit to other climbers, assuming he would be back. But he never got the chance. Corbet had traveled around the world and tackled many tough climbs, including Mount Tyree (15,919 feet), the second highest peak in Antarctica. A double black-diamond ski run (Corbet's Couloir) on Rendezvous Peak in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is named after him. Corbett produced or co-produced more than 100 films and was editor of New Mobility, a magazine on disability culture and lifestyle.
December 18, 2004 at age 68. Natural causes.

Gretchen Bender
Artist
Bender was an artist who worked in several photographic and film mediums. The credits she designed for the television show "America's Most Wanted" may have originated the rapid-fire hyperediting now pervasive in film, television and video art. She produced, directed and edited music videos for Babes in Toyland and Martha Wash; edited music videos for R.E.M., New Order and Megadeth. Bender's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Menil Collection in Houston.
December 18, 2044 at age 53. Cancer.

Princess Kikuko
Member of Japanese royal family
The oldest member of the Japanese royal family and the aunt of Emperor Akihito, Kikuko was the granddaughter of Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the last shogun (feudal lord) of the Edo period (1603-1868). Married Prince Takamatsu, a son of Emperor Taisho, in 1930. Prince Takamatsu's diaries were found four years after his death, and many Japanese were shocked by her 1995 decision to publish his diaries -- written before and during World War II and containing criticism of Japan's wartime military -- despite opposition from the Imperial Household Agency. In 2002, after Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako had a daughter, Princess Kikuko was the first royal to publicly call for changes to a postwar law that allows only male heirs to assume the Chrysanthemum Throne, arguing that having an empress was "not unnatural" because women had assumed the throne in the past, most recently in the 18th century. Japan's tradition-bound royal family is the world's oldest hereditary monarchy.
December 18, 2004 at age 92. Blood poisoning resulting from kidney problems.

Sheldon Margen
Nutritionist
A pioneer in nutritional science, in the 1960s Dr. Margen helped to establish the minimum daily requirements of protein, trace minerals and other components of a healthful diet that are now listed on packaged foods. Margen recommended a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains and low in saturated fat. He corrected a misconception that grapefruit burns fat, saying that no food can do that, and was also cautious about vitamin supplements, saying in interviews that he personally did not take vitamin C, beta-carotene or other antioxidants. In one of his quirkier studies, funded by NASA in 1965, Margen compared the effects of a liquid diet and a diet of solid foods. The immediate goal was to determine the best option for astronauts. Volunteers who took part in the project favored the liquid food option.
December 18, 2004 at age 85. Cancer.

David Johnson
Meteorologist
He was one of four founding members of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Center. During his tenure, the center launched two series of weather satellites. They provided observations of the entire earth twice daily to weather services around the world, as well as minute-by-minute time-lapse motion photography. Johnson also pressed for the development of geostationary weather satellites, now built, launched and operated by a total of six nations or organizations. He also helped establish a "weather hotline" for the exchange of weather data between the U.S. Weather Bureau and its counterpart in Russia.
December 17, 2004 at age 80. Alzheimer's disease.

Dick Heckstall-Smith
Saxophonist
British saxophonist Richard Malden Heckstall-Smith was a founding member of Alexis Korner's Blues Inc., a staple of the Marquee club in London, whose initial line-up included Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts (later of the Rolling Stones), Cyril Davies and Jack Bruce (later of Cream). Between 1963 and 1967, Heckstall-Smith worked with the Graham Bond Organisation, bringing improvisation to blues-based rock music seen as the start of jazz-rock.

John Mayall asked Heckstall-Smith to join his Bluesbreakers band and contributed to Mayall's acclaimed 1968 album "Bare Wires." Heckstall-Smith then joined drummer Jon Hiseman to form Colosseum (1968 to 1971). Their albums "Those Who Are About To Die Salute You" and "Daughter of Time" were best-sellers and influenced Led Zeppelin and Chicago. His signature piece was playing two horns at the same time. Heckstall-Smith played on Jack Bruce's 1970 solo album "Things We Like" and also played on albums by Davey Graham and Chicken Shack. When Colosseum disbanded following a disastrous show in Italy, Heckstall-Smith made a solo album and then formed a new band, Manchild.

In 1992 Heckstall-Smith underwent heart surgery and then suffered two strokes. He returned to the recording studio with Jack Bruce and joined the original line-up of Colosseum when they reformed for a European tour and then an album. In 2000, Heckstall-Smith made the album "Blues and Beyond," produced by Pete Brown and featured Jack Bruce, Paul Jones (ex-Led Zeppelin), Mick Taylor (ex-Rolling Stones), John Mayall, Peter Green (ex-Fleetwood Mac) and members of Colosseum. He called it "the record he had always wanted to make" and, considering the artists on board, it was like a musical history of his life.
December 17, 2004 at age 70. Cancer.

James J. Ling
Conglomerate executive
Ling was a Dallas tycoon who was a pioneer of the modern-day conglomerate. Once ran LTV Corp., a now-defunct business that became Fortune magazine's 14th-largest industrial company with $3.8 billion in revenue. LTV, America's first billion-dollar conglomerate, once held Braniff Airlines, Wilson Sporting Goods, and National Car Rental among other ventures.
December 17, 2004 at age 81. Esophageal cancer.

Johnnie Carl
Conductor
Carl, the near-30 year conductor of the Crystal Cathedral Orchestra located in Garden Grove, California, got into an argument with another employee, fired four shots in his office before barricading himself in a bathroom, then committing suicide as police officers tried to talk to him. Authorities said he was grappling with depression. The nine-hour standoff started just before a Christmas pageant was to begin. Carl directed the music for Rev. Robert Schuller's internationally televised "Hour of Power" which is broadcast from the cathedral. Carl also arranged or recorded music for such artists as Celine Dion, John Tesh, Michael Crawford, the London Symphony and Lee Greenwood. He was an arranger and orchestrator on Tesh's "Live from Red Rocks" and was an arranger on Dion's Christmas special "These Are Special Times."
December 17, 2004 at age 57. Self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Freddie Perren
Composer, arranger, and record producer
Won a Grammy Award for producing two songs on the 1977 "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. Wrote and produced "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, which won the Grammy for Best Disco Recording in 1979. Perren was a member of the Motown production group The Corporation, which wrote and produced the first Jackson Five hit records including "I Want You Back" and "ABC." Also produced Peaches and Herb's "Reunited" and "Shake Your Groove Thing"; the Sylvers's "Boogie Fever" and "Hot Line"; and Tavares's "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel." Perrin suffered a massive stroke 11 years ago.
December 16, 2004 at age 61.

Lawrence O'Brien
Canadian Member of Parliament
O'Brien was first elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in a 1996 byelection, and re-elected in the 1997, 2000 and 2004 elections. Before entering federal politics, O'Brien had been a provincial civil servant, a teacher and a town councillor in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. In October, O'Brien and a nurse were flown on a government jet from Quebec, where he had been receiving cancer therapy, so that he could vote with other Liberal MPs in what was expected to be a tight confidence vote over Martin's throne speech. O'Brien's death leaves the Liberals with 133 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. With support from 19 New Democrats, they could get 152 votes, three short of a majority.
December 16, 2004 at age 53. Cancer.

Martha Carson
Singer
She was born Irene Ethel Amburgey but was best known as "The Rockin' Queen of Happy Spirituals" and "The First Lady of Gospel Music." She was a member of The Sunshine Sisters, the first all female sister string band when they began in 1936. Carson also played with The Coon Creek Girls and The Hoot Owl Holler Girls. Soon after a difficult divorce, Martha was inspired to write a song called "Satisfied" on the back of some blank checks she found on the floor of a car. The song became one of the first million selling gospel songs sung by a woman and the song would be noted by the Smithsonian Institute for its popularity and number of album sales. "Satisfied" has been recorded by some 165 different artists, ranging from Elvis Presley to Don Gibson to the Blackwood Brothers to Barbara Mandrell.

From late 1954 into 1955, Martha toured the south with an up and coming artist known as Elvis Presley. "He asked me to show him the move I did at the close of my show," says Martha, "I would go down on one knee and hold the mic stand at an angle. He went on to do that pose a lot on his shows." Carson also toured with the likes of Ferlin Husky, Little Jimmy Dickens, Patsy Cline and Del Reeves, and appeared on some of the earliest televised editions of the Grande Ole Opry, The Steve Allen Show, Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, and the Arthur Godfrey Show.
December 16, 2004 at age 83.

Ray Rude
Diving board innovator
As a teenager Rude worked as a tool engineer for aircraft companies. In 1948, he developed an aluminum diving board from a discarded airplane wing panel. His Nevada-based Duraflex diving company made thousands of the diving boards, used in the Olympics since 1960. Rude recently donated $1 million to the Stanley, North Dakota medical facility where he eventually died.
December 16, 2004 at age 88.

Smokey 007 Leroy Cleveland McKenzie
Singer
Smokey 007 was a pioneer of modern Bahamian music, churning out numerous classic re-makes in his own unique style. He produced more than 200 recordings, which to date reportedly sold more than one million copies. The man with the golden voice is best known for such hits as "Laura", "Help Me Make It Through The Night" and "Take The Ribbon From Your Hair".
December 16, 2004 at age 59. Illness stemming from a brain tumor.

Arthur "Bo" Agee
Father of 'Hoop Dreams' player
Arthur "Bo" Agee Sr., 52, was shot Wednesday in an alley located several garages from his own in the western Chicago suburb of Berwyn. He was the father of a high school basketball player whose life was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary "Hoop Dreams." His son was Arthur Agee Jr., whose high school basketball exploits and life in public housing were the subject of the 1994 film. The elder Agee appeared in the documentary along with his son. Ten years ago he overcame a cocaine habit and later was ordained a minister. Eight years ago, he moved to the Berwyn home his son bought with proceeds from the movie. The family was recently interviewed for a DVD version of the documentary, expected to be released in April, 2005.
December 15, 2004 at age 52. Murdered.

George Campbell
Spoke 44 languages
Was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records during the 1980s as one of the world's greatest living linguists and could speak and write fluently in at least 44 languages and had a working knowledge of perhaps 20 others. In school -- from elementary through high school, teachers thought Campbell was a dunce because of his stammer. They relegated him to the back of the classroom and ignored him, which allowed him to devour language books on his own. His best schoolboy friend was deaf, and because Mr. Campbell rarely talked, taunting schoolmates labeled them "the deaf and the dumb."
December 15, 2004 at age 92. Pneumonia.

Lorenzo Ponza Jr.
Inventor, pitching machine
Lorenzo "Larry" J. Ponza Jr.'s 1952 invention, the "Power Pitcher," became the prototype for pitching machines he and others built. His 1974 machine, "The Hummer," became a batting practice staple for players from Little League to the Major League because it could be set to replicate fast balls, ground balls and pop-up flies. Ponza kept tinkering with his designs, producing the "Casey" in 1983, the "Ponza Swing King" in 1987 and the "Rookie" in 1988.
December 15, 2004 at age 86. Cancer-related illness.

Preston Toledo
Navajo code talker
Member of the group that invented a military code based on the Navajo language to confound the Japanese during World War II. Toledo was awarded the Bronze Star, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal and the China Service Medal. He served from 1941 until 1945 but didn't receive the medals and recognition until about 10 years ago, family members said. Like Samuel Billison, code talkers were not allowed to discuss their work when they returned home after the war.
December 15, 2004 at age 81. Car accident.

Sidonie Goossens
Harpist
In 1924, according to Grove Music Online, she became the first harpist to broadcast a harp solo. In 1936, she was the first harp soloist to appear on television. Goossens also made news that year when the destroyer Gallant rescued her and 49 other Britons from Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War broke out. In 1991, when she was 91, she became the oldest person to perform at the Last Night of the Proms concert, televised by the BBC.

Goossens was the last surviving member of a musically distinguished family. Her father and her grandfather, both named Eugene, were principal conductors of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Her sister, Marie, who died in 1991, was also a harpist and held a succession of posts with British orchestras. A brother, Leon, who died in 1988, was a renowned oboe player who commissioned works from composers, including Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Another brother, Eugene, who died in 1962, directed symphony orchestras in the United States, and later was chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. A third brother, Adolph, who played French horn, was killed at 20 in World War I.

A founding member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Goossens was its principal harpist from 1939 to 1981. She was appointed a Member (of the Order of the) British Empire in 1974 and an Officer (of the Order of the) British Empire in 1981.
December 15, 2004 at age 105. Died in her sleep.

Agostino Straulino
Competed in six Olympics
Straulino was an Italian naval diver who competed in six Olympics and dominated dinghy racing in the 1950s. In 1946, the harbour of Taranto in southern Italy was rocked by an explosion which injured frogmen engaged in clearing the port of mines and Straulino was initially rendered utterly blind by the blast. Upon resuming sailing he began to refine his other senses to compensate for his lack of sight, training mostly at night, saying that what was important was to pay attention to the state of the sea and the strength and direction of the wind. Straulino competed in the 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960 and 1964 Games. His best year came in 1952 when he captured an unprecedented grand slam of the European, world and Olympic sailing titles, winning an Olympic Gold - Italy's last for 48 years.
December 14, 2004 at age 90.

Candice Daly
Actress
Daly was fired from the TV series "The Young and the Restless" in 1998 (she played Veronica Landers) for drug use. Some news sources implied foul play, specifically that the Los Angeles house (other reports say apartment) she was found in was not her own and that someone had "drugged" her.
December 14, 2004 at age 41. Suspected drug overdose.

Fernando Bauluz
Film director
Director Fernando Bauluz is best known for the 1998 award-winning Spanish film "Black Tears." Initially the project's production manager and second unit director, three weeks in the shooting the film's director Ricardo Franco died and Bauluz stepped into his shoes and finished the film. The pair was nominated for the Golden Spike Award for the film at the Valladolid International Film Festival. The film's lead actress, Ariadna Gil received a Best Actress Nomination at the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars: The Goya Awards.
Died December 14, 2004 at age 53.

Fernando Poe Jr.
Filipino film star and presidential candidate
A five-time winner of the local version of the Oscars and a star of more than 200 films in his native Philippines, Poe reluctantly agreed to become the main challenger to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in May, 2004 election but lost by 1.1 million votes. His campaign suffered from disorganisation and questions over his citizenship. Two months later, Poe asked the Supreme Court to nullify Arroyo's victory and declare him president. The court eventually threw out Poe's protest.
December 14, 2004 at age 65. Stroke.

Michael Combs
Rock guitarist
Boyfriend of actor-director Clint Eastwood's daughter Alison. Was reported missing December 13 after snowboarding with Alison Eastwood. Found in a gully just off a ski trail near the bottom of a Vail, Colorado mountain.
Found December 14, 2004, died at age 42. Seizure disorder.

Rene Cleitman
Producer
Produced over 20 films including the Gerard Depardieu version of "Cyrano de Bergerac." He appeared as himself in the documentary "Lost in La Mancha" which chronicled director Terry Gilliam's attempt to make the movie "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote."
December 14, 2004 at age 64.

Benjamin Slack
Actor
Appeared in over 70 films and TV shows during his career but may be best known for his recurring role as Mr. Ermin in the TV series "The Wonder Years." He played Ariel Sharon in the made for TV movie "Sadat" with Lou Gossett Jr. Slack also had a recurring role on both "All in the Family" and "Archie Bunker's Place," playing Floyd Mills. Other film and TV credits include "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "N.Y.P.D. Blue," "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," "Piranha," "Times Square," "Bachelor Party" and "The Practice."
December 13, 2004 at age 67.

David John Wheeler
Computer scientist
Following World War Two, while working Cambridge's Edsac (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer), he was responsible for the system that provided instructions to the computer, and the innovations he made at the time still form the basis of modern computer programming. Wheeler's "initial orders" allowed Edsac instructions to be provided in a simple language rather than by writing binary numbers, and made it possible for non-specialists to begin to write programs. This was the first "assembly language" and was the direct precursor of every modern programming language. Wheeler realised that lines of program code could often be reused, and created the subroutine and the idea of keeping frequently-needed subroutines in a separate library which could be called on as necessary. He also developed the "Wheeler Jump" to allow a program to pass control to a subroutine, the precursor of the "go to" statement known to everyone who has ever written a program in Basic. In October 2003, David Wheeler was inducted into the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum, California.
December 13, 2004 at age 77.

Donald S. Jones
Pilot
In the late 1960s, Admiral Jones was commanding officer of a U.S. helicopter antisubmarine squadron when he was ordered to develop night and all-weather astronaut recovery procedures for the Apollo program. He was the helicopter pilot who in 1969 plucked Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong from the Pacific Ocean after he returned from the moon. In 1986, he succeeded Colin Powell, as military assistant to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger. Four times in 1986, Weinberger secretly and illegally ordered his deputies -- including Admiral Jones, Powell, Richard L. Armitage, and Deputy Defense Secretary William H. Taft IV -- to transfer Army TOW anti-tank missiles and Hawk anti-aircraft components to the Central Intelligence Agency. The weapons were shipped by the CIA to Iran in exchange for American hostages held in Lebanon. The profits from the sale went to Nicaraguan Contras. Jones, who was not charged, retired from the military in 1987.
December 13, 2004 at age 76. Cancer.

Frank
Magazine
Canadian satirical gossip magazine Frank has printed its final edition. Paid circulation once reached about 16,000 during the Brian Mulroney years when it was considered a must-read in Ottawa. Final figures were reported at about 8,500. Launched in 1989, Frank was inspired by Britain's Private Eye magazine.
December 13, 2004 at age 15. Lack of circulation.

Hugh Foster
Trained code talkers
In 1941, Foster graduated from West Point and was commissioned to work with 14 Comanche Indians recruited to create a military code using their native speech. The Comanche were among a dozen tribes who served as code talkers.
December 13, 2004 at age 86. Brain tumour.

John Howard Wyman
CIA systems analyst
Wyman worked for the CIA from 1952 to 1982. He was instrumental in applying technology to photographic intelligence gathering. Through his initiative, the CIA obtained its first digital computer, which was a key component in analyzing photographs from U-2 spy plane missions and which confirmed the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963, Wyman received a certificate for meritorious service from President John F. Kennedy.
December 13, 2004 at age 80. Respiratory failure after surgery.

Arthur Lydiard
Jogging promoter, coach
One of the first to promote fitness through jogging. As a coach for some of his native New Zealand's best Olympic runners, Lydiard espoused a training philosophy of aerobic conditioning: run far, but not fast, a regimen track people call L.S.D. - long slow distance. He coached Peter Snell to world records in the mile and half-mile, and at 1960 Rome Olympics Snell won the 800 meters and Murray Halberg the 5,000 within a half-hour of each other.
December 12, 2004 at age 87. Heart attack.

Bert Reid
Musician
Bertram Charles Reid Jr. sang and played saxophone with The Crown Heights Affair, a funk/disco/R&B band of the 1970s. Had 1975 hit with "Dreaming A Dream" and lesser success with "Every Beat Of My Heart" and "Foxy Lady."
December 12, 2004. Pneumonia.

Frank Isola
Drummer
Although his recording career lasted a mere ten years, from 1947 to 1957, the drummer Frank Isola was one of the most significant musicians known principally through his work with Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. He produced a light, swinging backdrop to dozens of record sessions and concerts with the likes of Peggy Lee, Charlie Parker, Louis Prima, Elliot Lawrence, Mose Allison, John Williams, Claude Thornhill, Franz Jackson, and Marcus Belgrave.
December 12, 2004 at age 79. Congestive heart failure and liver disease.

Frits Helmuth
Actor
Won the Danish Bodil Award as Best Actor four times during his career. Starred in Kaspar Rostrup's 1988 film "Memories of a Marriage," which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.
December 12, 2004 at age 73. Liver failure.

Joe Beyrle
Paratrooper
World War II paratrooper whose gung-ho zest for leaping out of planes earned him the nickname "Jumpin' Joe." Was the only man to fight both for the United States and the Soviet Union. His war experience was nearly beyond imagination - visit the Last Link Joe Beyrle tribute page for more details of his exploits. After the war, worked as a supervisor for the Brunswick Corp., maker of bowling balls and pool tables.
December 12, 2004. Congestive heart failure.

Katherine Eames
Actress
Film credits include "The Big Heat," "Diary of a Mad Housewife" and "Starlight-The Musical." TV credits include the soap operas "The Secret Storm," "Love of Life," "Another World" and "Loving." Also appeared on the TV series "Sgt. Bilko," "The Bob Hope Chrysler Theater" and "The Armstrong Theater."
December 12, 2004 at ae 96. Natural causes.

Perry Grant
TV writer, producer
Wrote hundreds of scripts for more than 35 sitcoms, including "Maude," "The Jeffersons," "Good Times," "I Dream of Jeannie," "The Odd Couple" and "Happy Days." Met his writing partner, Dick Bensfield, at a cocktail party, and the duo began writing for the "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" in 1952. The Grant-Bensfield team worked together for 40 years. Grant also created games, including Bash!, Whosit? and Smess.
December 12, 2004 at age 80. Alzheimer's disease.

Rollin Hotchkiss
Biochemist who coined the phrase 'genetic engineering'
Beginning in the late 1930s, Hotchkiss worked at the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University), his base throughout a forty year career. His research helped remove doubts that hereditary material is passed on through DNA and not proteins. Using bacteria, he demonstrated that DNA not only carries a variety of traits, but it obeys the Mendelian processes of separation and linkage -- research that helped set the stage for the emerging field of genetic engineering, a phrase he coined in a 1965 paper.
December 12, 2004 at age 93.

John Culligan
Businessman
Rose from the mailroom to serve as the chief executive of the American Home Products Corporation, maker of familiar medications like Advil, Anacin and Preparation H. Transformed the business from a holding company of unrelated consumer products (like Chef Boyardee and Black Flag ant killer) to primarily a drug maker now known as Wyeth.
December 11, 2004 at age 88. Pulmonary fibrosis.

Joychan Roberson
Overcame morbid obesity
Roberson once weighed 900 pounds and had to be hospitalized because her lungs could no longer supply oxygen to her body. After being taken to a Los Angeles County medical center in a U-Haul truck (and hearing doctors say there was little they could do to help her) she trimmed down to 720 pounds in 18 months. Working with a professional trainer, she dropped another 200 pounds in a year through a regimen of walking, swimming and other exercises. She eventually lost 600 pounds, held workshops and seminars to help others through an organization called Life's Forgotten Angels, and appeared on Oprah Winfrey's talk show.
December 11, 2004 at age 50. Uterine cancer.

Danny Hayes
Trumpeter
Worked with Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, Reggie Johnson, Lionel Hampton, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis.
December 10, 2004 at age 58. Brain cancer.

Gary Webb
Journalist
Wrote a series of articles linking the CIA to the explosion of crack cocaine in Los Angeles, contending that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons of crack cocaine from Colombian cartels in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods and then funneled millions in profits back to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Wrote "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion," which was published in 1999.
December 10, 2004 at age 49. Gunshot wound to the head, ruled as suicide.

John Monks Jr.
Playwright, screenwriter
Monks was a co-author, with Fred F. Finklehoffe, of "Brother Rat," which was produced on Broadway in 1936 and starred Eddie Albert. The play ran more than 500 performances and was made into a 1938 movie starring Albert and featuring Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, who met on the film and later married. Among other movies that Monks co-wrote were "13 Rue Madeleine" and "West Point Story," both starring Jimmy Cagney, and "Knock On Any Door" with Humphrey Bogart which featured the famous line "Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse."
December 10, 2004 at age 94. Natural causes.

Capt. Miles Selby
Snowbird pilot
Selby joined the Canadian Forces in 1991. After training as a fighter pilot, he was posted to Cold Lake, Alberta, and flew missions in Kosovo and the Balkans. In 2004, joined the Snowbirds, Canada's elite fighter jet aerobatic team, with 2,650 hours of flight time. On December 10, 2004, two Snowbirds crashed in mid-air while on a routine practice flight over southern Saskatchewan. The pilot of the other jet, Capt. Chuck Mallett, 35, of Edmonton, Alberta was hospitalised with minor injuries. For more information, visit the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Snowbirds page. [opens in new window]
December 10, 2004 at age 31. Plane crash.

Henny Backus
Actress, widow of actor Jim Backus
Best known for her role as Cora Dithers in the 1960s TV comedy "Blondie" which also starred her husband, Jim Backus. Jim later played billionaire Thurston Howell III on the popular TV comedy "Gilligan's Island" and was the voice behind the bumbling, myopic Mr. Magoo in an animated TV series. After her husband died of pneumonia in 1989, Henny wrote "Care for the Caretaker," which offered practical suggestions for those taking care of seriously ill relatives or friends. According to one of several books they co-wrote, it was Mrs. Backus who persuaded Jim to use the upper-crust drawl that landed him the "Gilligan's Island" role. "Any Harvard man I ever went out with sounded like that," she explained, "like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and they forgot to take it out."

The pair appeared in several films together including "Don't Make Waves," "Hello Down There," "Meet Me In Las Vegas" and "The Great Man." Mrs. Backus made her Broadway debut under the name of Henrietta Kaye in the 1920s. She appeared uncredited as a teacher in the seminal 1950s teen movie "The Blackboard Jungle."
December 9, 2004 at age 93. Stroke.

Morgan Cavett
Composer
Cavett's various credits include the films "Melvin and Howard," "Swing Shift," Overboard" and "The Fourth Wise Man."
December 9, 2004 at age 60. Cancer.

Philippe Gigantes
Journalist & Senator
Born in Salonica, Greece Gigantes became a journalist for the London Observer. During the Korean War he was taken prisoner and spent 33 months in a North Korean prison camp despite his press credentials. Later emigrated to Canada and worked for the Globe and Mail. In the 1970s, became a speech writer and top aide to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In 1984 Trudeau appointed Gigantes to the Senate, where he served for the next 14 years.
December 9, 2004. Cancer.

Robert E. Ruskin
Physicist
During World War II, Ruskin was part of a research team that assisted in the Manhattan Project, and ultimately devised an early process for enhancing uranium needed in the first atomic bombs. Later helped develop the first blueprints for nuclear-powered submarines. In 1960, Ruskin and a research peppered clouds over Louisiana with powdered carbon and it rained. Residents and media proclaimed the scientists as rainmakers, but Ruskin said "We can't make it rain unless it's going to rain anyway."
December 9, 2004 at age 88. Pneumonia.

Willie Metcalf Jr.
Pianist, teacher and actor
Worked with Sonny Stitt, tutored Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison Jr., appeared in the movie "Ray" playing a teacher of Ray Charles as a child. Other film credits include Nicolas Cage's directorial debut "Sonny" and the up-coming football film "Glory Road." His life and career was examined in the documentary film "Getting It Together: The Willie Metcalf Story."
December 9, 2004 at age 74. Throat cancer.

Albert Joseph Kelley
NASA Engineer
Career began as Navy pilot during the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1947. Flew in Korean War, later becoming test pilot. Experiences as a pilot led to interest in the science of aviation and advanced technology, began working on the design of high-performance aircraft and missile systems for the Navy Bureau of Weapons. When Kelley arrived at NASA in 1960, the original seven astronauts were his peers and his combination of skills and experience would have made him a likely candidate, except for his height. At over 6 feet, he was too tall to fit into the capsule. He later served as a Boston College administrator and deputy undersecretary of defense.
December 8, 2004 at age 80. Pneumonia.

Bob James
Journalist and typography expert
As a newspaperman, James trained a generation of editors in the subtle art of typography and had a huge influence on the appearance of British newspapers for three decades. He was a founding father of the Editorial Centre, a training facility in England. A natural teacher, James imparted his expertise in typography and design to countless journalists. Great teachers inspire anecdotes and in James's case they are legion. For example, one of his pupils returning in triumph when sent to buy toothpaste, was told: "I am not using that!" Asked why, James replied: "Look at the way they have misused Optima." When he went for an eye test, James struggled to decipher the bottom line of the chart. "I can't read it," he told the optician, "but I can tell you it is in Gill Sans Bold."
December 8, 2004 at age 72.

Bruce Hoertel
CBS News photographer
Lensed many enduring images during his career. His Speed Graphic camera captured images of a Washington D.C. police officer shooting one of two Puerto Rican nationalists who attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman in 1950. When Vice President Richard M. Nixon had the "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, Hoertel filmed the event. Was imprisoned in a Cuban jail for shooting the abandoned U.S. Embassy, and filmed President John F. Kennedy's historic speech in Berlin.
December 8, 2004 at age 81. Renal failure.

Digby "Johns" McLaren
Head of the Geological Survey of Canada
An advocate for action involving some of the repercussions of technologies of the Industrial age, and who had hoped to see the end of the use of fossil fuels by the end of his lifetime. In 1987 he was awarded the Order of Canada.
December 8, 2004 at age 84.

Dimebag Darrell Abbott
Metal guitarist
His guitar riffs for Pantera and more recently Damageplan were a staple of heavy metal music. The Abbott brothers, Darrell and Vinnie Paul, and bassist Rex Rocker formed Pantera in 1983. Abbott and his brother left Pantera in 2003 and formed Damageplan. In recent years, he also made recording appearances on Nickleback's "The Long Road" and with one of his influences, KISS' Ace Frehley. Abbott was shot on stage. The gunman, 25-year-old Nathan M. Gale, also shot and wounded a bouncer who tried to tackle him. Gale then began firing into the crowd of the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. Three other people were fatally wounded before a police officer shot the gunman dead.
December 8, 2004 at age 38. Fatally shot while performing on stage.

Edgar A. Toppin
Historian
As president of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Dr. Toppin was instrumental in turning Black History Week into Black History Month in 1976.
December 8, 2004 at age 76. Congestive heart failure.

Jackson Mac Low
Poet and composer
A seminal figure in the American experimentalist movement of the 1950's and after. Was founding member of the avant-garde group Fluxus, and collaborated frequently with the composer John Cage.
December 8, 2004 at age 82. Complications from a stroke.

Frederick Fennell
Band conductor
In 1952 founded the famed Eastman Wind Ensemble where he raised band performance to an art form previously dismissed as lowbrow entertainment with an assembly-line feel. Regarded as the most famous band conductor since John Philip Sousa. Although just over five feet tall, he attracted attention with his almost shoulder-length white hair, and his conducting was equal to his flamboyant clothing style. He was also known for making pioneering records for the Telarc label in the early days of digital recording in the 1970's.
December 7, 2004 at age 90. Natural causes.

Jay Van Andel
Co-founder, Amway
With Richard DeVos, helped parlay neighborhood soap sales into a billion-dollar business. Van Andel and DeVos started selling diet supplements in the 1950s, coining the name Amway, short for "American Way." In 1959, expanded into cleaning products. In 1969, the Federal Trade Commission charged that the company was an illegal pyramid scheme, but after a six-year investigation ruled that it wasn't. In the 1980's, Canada charged the company with fraud in connection with unpaid customs duties. In 2004, Forbes magazine estimated Van Andel's worth at $2.3 billion, 231st on that years list of the America's wealthiest people. Amway operates in more than 80 countries with 13,000 employees and annual worldwide sales of $6.2 billion, relying on over three million devoted distributors around the world to selling everything from vitamins to Coca-Cola machines.
December 7, 2004 at age 80. [Parkinson's orAlzheimer's disease and/or heart failure].

<-- linked to from Paul Henning March 25, 2005-->

Jerry Scoggins
Singer
In 1946, Scoggins' trio, the Cass County Boys, was hired by Gene Autry for his "Melody Ranch" radio program and later performed in 17 of Autry's movies. In 1962, sang "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," which introduced the fish-out-of-water clan of the CBS TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies." The ballad, written by the show's creator Paul Henning, was sung by Scoggins while bluegrass stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played guitar and banjo. The song and the show, which starred Buddy Ebsen, were instant hits, drawing 60 million viewers at its peak and running until 1971. Scoggins came out of retirement to sing the theme again for a 1993 movie based on the TV series.
December 7, 2004 at age 93. Natural causes.

Keemaya
Elephant
Despite round-the-clock effort, staff at the Calgary (Alberta) Zoo were unable to sustain the life of their latest born-in-captivity elephant, Keemaya. Meaning "miracle" in Hindi, Keemaya was rejected by her mother at birth and Zoo staff maintained a constant vigil knowing the calf's chance of survival was no greater than 50 per cent. Keemaya's plight received world-wide attention, and a naming-right fundraising effort yielded $20,000. The couple who were awarded the right gave it over to 14 low-income kindergarten children attending Calgary's CUPS One World Child Development Centre.
December 7, 2004 at age 21 days. Complications from liver infection and intestinal problems.

Christine Wodetzky
Actress
Escaped from East Germany in 1962 where she appeared in over 50 films and TV series in Germany. Had limited success in the West, appearing with Jon Voight in "The Odessa File" and the 1970 Israeli remake of "Dybuk."
December 6, 2004 at age 61.

Hugh McIntyre
Bassist
Played for the Nihilist Spasm Band, an informal collection of friends using homemade instruments that have played every Monday night since meeting at Rochdale College in 1965. For 30 years, was a professional librarian with the London (Ontario) Public Library. McIntyre had extensive family in the Alberta area.
December 6, 2004 at age 68.

J.B. Nethercutt
Co-founder of Merle Norman Cosmetics
Born in South Bend, Indiana, Jack Boison Nethercutt moved to Southern California when he was 9 to live with his aunt, Merle Nethercutt Norman. Norman, working out of her house, started a small business producing cosmetics for sale locally in 1931. Nethercutt eventually dropped out of college and joined the venture, helping establish Merle Norman Cosmetics. Nethercutt subsequently bought out his aunt, her husband and the other shareholders in the company and eventually created a firm with $100 million in sales with 2,000 Merle Norman franchises across the country. Nethercutt is perhaps better known for his other passion, the automobile. The Nethercutt Collection and Museum contains nearly 250 automobiles, a mecca for car enthusiasts and collectors since it opened in the 1970s. Visit the Last Link Nethercutt Collection page for more information about the museum.
December 6, 2004 at age 91.

John Marabuto
Musician
Played accordion, saxophone, piano and was an arranger and composer. Worked with Zoot Sims, Cal Tjader, Earl Hines, Gil Evans, and Mel Lewis.
December 6, 2004 at age 75. Heart failure.

John Norton
U.S. Army General
Norton's name is tied to two of military's best known helicopters: the Huey and the Black Hawk. During World War II, Norton was a paratrooper who, with the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, jumped behind German lines on D-Day. Received certification as an airplane and helicopter pilot in 1956. In 1962, as a member of the Howze Board, outlined the future use of helicopters in combat. Report was put into practice in Vietnam in 1966. From 1970 to 1973, oversaw the early steps of building the Black Hawk helicopter and the M1 Abrams main battle tank.
December 6, 2004 at age 86. Cancer.

Richard Dunlap
TV director/producer
Produced or directed over 1000 TV shows and specials, including the annual Oscar telecast every year between 1960 and 1972. Won 4 Emmy Awards during his lengthy career.
December 6, 2004 at age 81. Heart disease.

Bill Maybray
Drummer, bassist, singer
Was a member of The Jaggers. After changing their name to The Jaggerz in 1970, had hits with "The Rapper" (5 million copies) and "Baby I Love You."
December 5, 2004 at age 60. Complications from cancer.

Clayton E. Thomas
Horseshoer
Shod horses used in the movies and TV shows "The Lone Ranger" and The Cisco Kid."
December 5, 2004 at age 91.

Manzanita
Flamenco guitarist
Born José Ortega Heredia, began accompanying world stars like Enrique Morente and Lola Flores when he was just 11. In the 1970s, formed Los Chorbos, pioneering a style of flamenco known as "the Caño roto sound," modernising an old form whilst remaining true to gypsy roots. Made his first solo album in 1978. His music sold well but brought him no riches, and during the 1990s he abandoned his art to become a street trader, and a preacher in the Evangelical Church. Appeared in the final sequence of Carlos Saura's 1995 film "Flamenco." A 2002 comeback album covered celebrated Cuban classics, and his last album in 2004 interpreted works by Bob Marley and Ruben Blades.
December 5, 2004 at age 48. Heart attack.

Richard 'Big Boy' Henry
Bluesman
Inspired by Blind Boy Fuller, singer, composer and guitar player Big Boy made his first recordings in 1947 while working at a radio shop (finally issued in 1988 on the Swingmaster label). Recorded with two other well-known Piedmont bluesmen, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at a 1951 session. Disappointed that the recordings were not issued, he gave up music for 20 years. (The recordings were released decades later.) Worked as a fisherman and operated a grocery store before returning to music in 1971.
December 5, 2004 at age 83.

Robert Dhery
Actor/director
One of France's top comedians during the post-WWII era. Best known for the few comedic films he wrote, directed and acted in: "The American Beauty," "Bernard and the Lion" and "The Mad Adventures of the Bouncing Beauty."
December 5, 2004 at age 83. Heart disease.

Thomas DeStefano
Musician
The well-known Florida area blues musician was affectionately known as Big Daddy. Worked with Cookie & The Vagrantz and The Invaders. Later fronted a group of his own, Big Daddy & the Reign.
December 5, 2004 at age 50. Necrotising fasciitis (flesh eating disease) resulting from a spider bite.

Carl Esmond
Actor
Appeared in more than 50 films in Germany and the United States over a 50-year period. Debuted in the 1933 German-language movie internationally titled "The Emperor's Waltz." After making 16 films that made him a matinee idol in Germany and Austria (including Fritz Lang's classic film noir "Ministry of Fear"), made his U.S. film debut in 1938 version of "Dawn Patrol," starring Errol Flynn. Final movie was the 1985 "My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn." Esmond also acted in early 1950s television anthologies such as "Lux Video Theatre," where he played Victor Lazlo in a 1955 presentation of "Casablanca." Also had guest roles in TV series "Soldiers of Fortune," "77 Sunset Strip," "Maverick," "The Big Valley" and "MacMillan and Wife."
December 4, 2004 at age 97. Natural causes.

Othello Phillip Dickert
Airplane model builder
Dickert's interest in aviation began in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. He entered a newspaper contest for airplane model-building and using his father's tools, he made two models with scraps of wood and won two first-place medals. In 1928 at age 19, Dickert went to work for Boeing as their first model airplane builder, making models for display as well as for testing in wind tunnels with a precision measured in the thousandths of an inch. Some of his models were displayed at the Museum of Flight and the Museum and History & Industry. He worked for Boeing for 38 years, after which he worked as a traveling sales representative and model builder for his own company, Hobby Specialties Unlimited. Dickert was also known for his first ascents of Northwest Washington peaks, including an 8,200-foot ascent of North Cascades' Spire Point in 1938; a 9,300-foot ascent of Mount Goode in 1936; and an 8,400-foot ascent of Mount Challenger in 1936.
December 4, 2004 at age 95. Complications from loss of circulation in his legs

Robert Perry Gemberling
FBI special agent
Co-ordinated Dallas investigation of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald's role. Following his retirement from the FBI in December 1976, Gemberling continued to defend the notion that Oswald acted alone.
December 4, 2004 at age 82. Stomach cancer.

Serge Lavoie
Dancer
A former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, Lavoie was ballet master for the past seven years with the Columbia City Ballet in South Carolina. Having a history of heart problems and bad knees, he no longer danced. In addition to serving as ballet master, he instructed at the Columbia Conservatory of Dance and taught at South Carolina's Litchfield Dance Arts Academy.

Born in Lachine, Quebec, Lavoie was tap dancing at the age of five when his school suggested he take ballet lessons. Though ballet was considered "sissy stuff" he was the biggest one in his class so nobody bothered him. Joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1982 where he was principal dancer from 1988 to 1997.

At six-foot-one, Lavoie was described as husky, a hunk, brawny, athletic, powerfully built and hairy-chested - looking more like a quarterback or hockey player than a classical ballet dancer. He once did a Honda TV commercial which greatly added to his fame outside ballet circles. Tag line for the spot read "The curves of a dancer's body with the nice shape of the Accord."
December 4, 2004 at age 41. [Heart attack].

Harold R. Shire
Attourney and inventor
Began career as a prosecutor with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office in the late 1930s. In the mid-1950s, invented a flexible connector that was helpful in the de-icing of airplanes. From 1956 until 1973 he manufactured O-rings as president and chairman of his company, General Connectors Corp.
December 3, 2004 at age 95. Natural causes.

Maria Perschy
Actress
Appeared in the films of master directors as well as in low-budget horror films. Co-starred with Jason Robards in Gordon Hessler's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," appeared with Christopher Lee in cult director Jesus Franco's "The Castle of Fu Manchu," and was the lone female in the WWII film "633 Squadron" with Cliff Robertson. Mainstream audiences may know her best for John Huston's bio-pic "Freud" and Howard Hawks' sex comedy "Man's Favorite Sport?" with Rock Hudson.
December 3, 2004 at age 66.

Ralph Blizard
Tennessee fiddle player
Renowned fiddler began his career playing on the radio at age 7. Worked in Tennessee's tri-cities area with his band, the Southern Ramblers. In the 1950's he stopped performing, taking a 30-year break to raise a family.
December 3, 2004 at age 85.

Willem Duyn
Musician
Was 'Mouth' of the Dutch pop duo Mouth & McNeal, who had a 1971 international Top Ten hit with "How Do You Do."
December 3, 2004. Heart attack.

Alicia Markova
Ballerina
Born Lilian Alicia Marks in London, she was 10 when she made her stage debut. Joined Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1925 at age of 14 and adopted more exotic name of Markova. In 1935, with Anton Dolin, Ms. Markova founded the Markova-Dolin Ballet, the first of several companies that led to the foundation in 1950 of the Festival Ballet, later renamed the English National Ballet. After her retirement from dancing, Markova served as director of New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet from 1963 to 1969. Named a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963.
December 2, 2004 at age 94.

David Vienneau
Journalist
Covered Canadian national political affairs under six different prime ministers. Spent 23 years covering federal politics for Global National and the Toronto Star. At the Star, Vienneau covered stories of Nazi war criminals taking refuge in Canada. His coverage convinced federal government to track down and prosecute war criminals from the Second World War. Last held position was as Ottawa bureau chief for Global Television Network.
December 2, 2004 at age 53. Cancer.

Kevin Coyne
Singer/songwriter
Virtually unknown in America, Coyne recorded over 35 albums in Britain. His songs dealt primarily with outsiders: men, women, and children arbitrarily shunted to the fringes of society, or worse, locked away and left alone. After leaving art school (mandatory training ground for Brit-rockers), Coyne was employed briefly as a socio-therapist for alcoholics and the emotionally disturbed. Sent a tape to influential BBC DJ John Peel but, in typical Sixties fashion, forgot to include a return address. Peel was so impressed by the demo that he took to pasting "wanted" notices on lamp-posts around London. In 1969 his first band, Siren, Peel's specialty label Dandelion. In 1973, Coyne began a relationship with the newly-formed Virgin Records and for the next eight years, recorded some of his best music, attaining a modicum of commercial success. His haunting singing style (somewhere between Roger Chapman of Family and Joe Cocker), his blues-infused open-tuned guitar playing and his intense live performances earned him a dedicated following in France, Belgium and Germany, where he settled in the mid-Eighties. Coyne's later recordings are nearly impossible to find and inquiries into last activities are usually met with "Who's Kevin Coyne?" Coyne was once offered the job of lead singer for The Doors following death of Jim Morrison. He turned the job down because he didn't like the idea of wearing tight leather pants.
December 2, 2004 at age 60. Lung fibrosis.

Larry Buchanan
Indie film director/producer/writer/editor
Cut from the same cloth as filmmakers Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Doris Wishman, Buchanan directed a multitude of low budget and exploitation films. Early work included everything from lurid nudies to grade-Z horror films, later turning to bio-pics and docu-dramas. Spent the last 30 years trying to complete religious epic "The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene," finishing post-production on the film shortly before his death. Long list of credits include "Mars Need Women," "Zontar: The Thing From Venus," "The Eye Creatures" and "Curse of the Swamp Creature." Directed the nudie film "Naked Dallas," shot in Jack Ruby's club, featuring a stripper named Jada whose mysterious death is often used by JFK conspiracy theorists to prove that Oswald was a patsy.
December 2, 2004 at age 81. Complications from a collapsed lung.

Margaret Fane Rutledge
Aviator
Inspired by the wonders of flight after seeing an airplane aloft early in childhood, Rutledge became the first woman west of Toronto to earn a commercial pilot's license. However, even the smallest airlines refused to hire a woman pilot. She, instead, learned to operate a ham radio and is regarded as the first woman to do so for an airline in Canada, if not the world. Once in the airline's employ, she managed to pilot several commercial flights without mishap.

Rutledge was born in Edmonton on April 13, 1914. Both her mother and father had flown as passengers in the first airplane to arrive in the Alberta capital. Her father later built a glider with his own hands. She enrolled at the Edmonton and Northern Alberta Aero Club, which had First World War ace Wop May as president and chief instructor. On Oct. 12, 1933, she was issued private pilot's license No. 1317. On Aug. 29, 1935, she was issued commercial license A1236, becoming the first woman in Western Canada to be so qualified. Pleased to discover six other licensed women pilots in Vancouver, Rutledge organized an all-woman club called The Flying Seven. After the outbreak of war, some of the women were rebuffed in their attempt to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as pilots or instructors. A bush plane company Rutledge was working for was one of 10 gobbled up to form Canadian Pacific Airlines -- where she would enjoy a 20-year career, during which she became superintendent of reservations.
December 2, 2004 at age 90.

Nadine Renee
Singer/songwriter
Born Nadine Shamir, released her first album "Say You'll Stay" at the age of 16. In 1996, with George Acosta, performed as Planet Soul, and co-wrote the US Top 30 hit single "Set U Free".
December 2, 2004 at age 32. Complications following childbirth.

Bhetty Waldron
Actress
Appeared in a number of TV shows including "All in the Family," "The Jeffersons," "Good Times," "Sanford and Son," "B.L. Stryker," "C.S.I.: Miami" and the films "Hit Man" and "The Suitor." Founded the Quest Theater & Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida to promote the production of Black plays, and taught drama to elementary-school children.
December 1, 2004 at age 63. Lung cancer.

Dennis McCarten
Bassist
Member of Hot Spring Water (who changed their name to Heavy Hand and then to Necromandus). First spotted in the early 1970s by Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. When Ozzy Osbourne first split from Black Sabbath, McCarten and former Necromandus members formed Blizzard Of Ozz project that was shelved when Osbourne re-joined his former band. Spent the past 11 years working as a painter in London, England.
December [1?], 2004 at age 54. Kidney illness.

Emma Verona Calhoun Johnston
Oldest person in United States, second oldest in the world
Born on Aug. 6, 1890, Johnston was the eighth of nine children born to Civil War veteran Joseph Calhoun and Emma Speer Calhoun. Voted in every election since women earned the right to vote in 1920, even cast an absentee ballot in November's Presidential race. She never used the deductible on her health insurance policy and reportedly had the thinnest file on record at her doctor's office. In 1900 her father told her "You better be excited about this turn of the century because you'll never see another one." With Johnston's death, the title of oldest living American goes to Bettie Wilson, 114 who was born Sept. 13, 1890. The world's oldest person remains Hendrijkevan Andel-Schipper of the Netherlands who was born June 29, 1890 and is 114.
December 1, 2004 at age 114.

Fathi Arafat
Doctor, brother of late Palestinian leader
Founder of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. A physician, he was director at the Palestine Hospital in suburban Cairo.
December 1, 2004 at age 67. Stomach cancer.

Norman Newell
Songwriter and producer
Pop music mover and shaker whose influence in the U.K. reached its height before the Beatles explosion in 1963. Credited with discovering Petula Clark, The Beverley Sisters and Peter And Gordon. Newell's songs included "More" from the film "Mondo Cane" (for which he won an Oscar nomination), "A Portrait of My Love" and "This is My Life." Produced recordings by EMI Shirley Bassey and Noël Coward. At one point in the 1950s he had three versions of the same song, "Sailor," in the Top Ten at the same time (by Petula Clark, Ann Shelton and the Andrews Sisters). With George Martin, ran EMI Abbey Road studios. In the early 1960s, launched EMI's budget-price "Music For Pleasure" subsidiary. Lifetime body of work with Columbia and EMI reflected in a Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe award, three Ivor Novello Awards, six BMI awards, and an OBE in February, 2004.
December 1, 2004 at age 85.

PrinceBernhard
Father of the queen of Netherlands
During the Nazi occupation was top aide in Queen Wilhelmina's exiled government in London. Raised funds to help rebuild the devastated country after the war. Helped found the World Wildlife Fund in 1961 and became its first president. Apparent acceptance in 1976 of a bribe [of either $100,000 or $1 million, currency unknown] from Lockheed for steering business to the aerospace company, sparked an international scandal. In 1995, researchers found documents in the US National Archives that said Prince Bernhard was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1937, when he married Princess Juliana. In an open letter earlier this year, Prince Bernhard dismissed rumors that he had any contact with Nazis during the war as nonsense. But Prince Bernhard said he "wasn't in a position" to deny having an illegitimate daughter in Paris. "I look back with satisfaction on my life," he wrote. "I'm sure this [letter] will provoke new reactions, but frankly, I don't give a damn."
December 1, 2004 at age 93. Cancer.

William Sackheim
Film and television producer/writer
A two-time Emmy Award winner whose television career spanned the 1950s through the 1990s. Sackheim won Emmys for producing an episode of "The Alcoa/Goodyear Theatre" (1959) and the TV movie "The Law" (1975). Along the way, produced television's "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun," and dramatic series such as "Delvecchio" and "The Senator." Film writing credits the first Rambo movie, "First Blood" and "The Competition." Had a keen eye for spotting talent. In the mid-1960s, he gambled on a young Sally Field to star in the "Gidget" series. While producing "Night Gallery," the 1969 pilot for the Rod Serling TV series, Sackheim saw a short film titled "Amblin" and hired its young maker, Steven Spielberg, to direct Joan Crawford in one of the pilot's three stories.
December 1, 2004 at age 84. Degenerative brain disease.

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