Literotica Cemetary

[JennyOmanHill]

Ex-NHL Player Gaetan Duchesne Dies at 44

http://assets.sjsharks.com/assets/community/alumni_association/zettler%20mug.jpg

QUEBEC (AP) -Gaetan Duchesne, who played in the NHL for 14 seasons and helped the Minnesota North Stars reach the 1991 Stanley Cup final, died while training at a gym Monday. He was 44.

Duchesne collapsed and could not be resuscitated, said his former junior team, the Quebec Remparts. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Duchesne played for five NHL teams - Washington, Quebec, Minnesota, San Jose and Florida - and retired after the 1994-95 season. The forward appeared in 1,028 NHL games, totaling 179 goals and 254 assists. He was in 84 playoff games.

Duchesne, born in Quebec, was an eighth-round draft pick of the Capitals in 1981 and made the NHL club out of his first training camp. After six seasons with Washington, he was traded to the Nordiques with Alan Haworth and a first-round draft pick - that turned out to be Joe Sakic - for Dale Hunter and goalie Clint Malarchuk.

After helping Minnesota advance to the Stanley Cup final, where the North Stars lost to Pittsburgh in six games, he finished his career with the Sharks and Panthers.

Duchesne later worked as an assistant coach with the defunct Quebec Rafales of the IHL and the Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

Duchesne is survived by his wife, a daughter and a son, Jeremy, who is a goaltender with the Val d'Or Foreurs of the QMJHL.

 

[phrodeau]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1769561620070418

Japan mayor dies in suspected gangster shooting
Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:39PM BST
By Chisa Fujioka

TOKYO (Reuters) - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki died early on Wednesday after being gunned down by a suspected gangster, stunning a nation where shootings are extremely rare.

Itcho Ito, 61, seeking re-election to a fourth term in an election this Sunday, was shot at least twice in the back outside his campaign office on Tuesday evening. Doctors said two bullets had reached his heart.

As mayor of the second city to suffer an atomic bombing near the end of World War Two, Ito was a strong advocate of Japan sticking to its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons.

His death sent shock waves across a nation where gun control laws are strict and violent attacks on politicians are infrequent.

Police arrested Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, who they said was the head of a local gang affiliated with Japan's largest "yakuza" group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, and seized a revolver he had with him.

The motive for the shooting remained unclear, and police declined to comment on details of the case.

 

[Faneros]

'Opera' Actress Kitty Carlisle Hart Dies at 96

'Opera' Actress Kitty Carlisle Hart Dies at 96
Delighted Audiences as Panelist on 'To Tell the Truth'

By ULA ILNYTZKY, AP

NEW YORK (April 18) - Kitty Carlisle Hart, whose long career spanned Broadway, opera, television and film, including the classic Marx Brothers movie "A Night at the Opera," died after a battle with pneumonia, her son said Wednesday. She was 96.
"She passed away peacefully" Tuesday night in her Manhattan apartment, said Christopher Hart, a director-writer-producer who was at her side. "She had such a wonderful life and a great long run. It was a blessing."

Hart was touring the country in her autobiographical one-woman show, "Here's to Life," until the pneumonia struck around Christmas, her son said. Broadway's theaters planned to dim their marquee lights Wednesday in honor of the longtime patron of the arts.

In 1991, she received the National Medal of Arts from the first President Bush. Hart's last gig was a December performance of her show in Atlanta.

David Lewis, Hart's longtime musical director, said she would be remembered "as the grande dame not only of show business but also in her philanthropy and her support for the American musical theater."

Well known for her starring role as Rosa Castaldi in the 1935 comedy "A Night at the Opera," her other film credits included "She Loves Me Not" and "Here Is My Heart," both opposite Bing Crosby ; Woody Allen 's "Radio Days"; and "Six Degrees of Separation."

But she was probably best known as one of the celebrity panelists on the popular game show "To Tell the Truth." She appeared on the CBS prime-time program from 1956 to 1967 with host Bud Collyer and fellow panelists such as Polly Bergen, Johnny Carson, Bill Cullen and Don Ameche.

The show featured three contestants, all claiming to be the same person, with the panelists quizzing the trio to determine which one was telling the truth. Hart later appeared in daytime and syndicated versions of the show.

"People remember me from television," she once said. "They don't even remember me from `A Night at the Opera.' They have no idea that I played the lead and did all the singing. But they do remember television, particularly `To Tell the Truth."'

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Brant Parker, 86; co-created 'Wizard of Id' comic strip

Cartoonist Brant Parker, who co-created the comic strip "The Wizard of Id" and rendered its medieval kingdom for more than three decades, has died. He was 86.

Parker died Sunday at a Lynchburg, Va., nursing home of complications related to Alzheimer's disease and a stroke suffered last year, announced Creators Syndicate, the strip's distributor.

His death came eight days after longtime "Wizard" collaborator Johnny Hart died of a stroke at 76.

The Kingdom of Id sprang to life in a New York hotel room when Parker and Hart papered the walls with two dozen "Wizard" panels. After touring the impromptu gallery, a syndicate executive bought the strip.

Launched in 1964, "Wizard" appears in more than 1,000 newspapers worldwide.

Hart was already drawing the Stone Age strip "B.C." when he sought out Parker to help wring humor from the Middle Ages. They had met in 1950 when Parker, an artist for the Binghamton Press newspaper in upstate New York, judged a high school art contest that Hart had entered.

While Parker drew the "Wizard" pictures, Hart came up with the gags that they refined together.

"It's two different kinds of thinking, always," Parker told The Times in 1986. "The trick is to find two people who are basically alike…. We both enjoy the same kind of humor so it's been a great relationship."

It endured until 1997, when Parker turned the "Wizard" drawing over to his son, Jeff, who had served a decade-long apprenticeship. "The Wizard of Id," which ran in The Times from 1968 to 1998, will continue as a collaboration between the Parker and Hart families, according to Creators Syndicate.

Set in a castle, "Wizard" follows the oppressed people of a run-down kingdom dominated by a small tyrant known as "the King."

"The original premise was built around the Wizard goofing up and everything backfiring on him. Everything kind of grew out of that," Parker said in 1986.

One of Parker's favorite "Wizard" characters was one he thought up — Spook, the prisoner in the dungeon who is always trying to escape.

"I think it's because of the pathos in Spook's situation. He's stuck in there for life, and he keeps trying to get out," Parker recalled. "I love pathos humor."

Brant Julian Parker was born Aug. 26, 1920, in Los Angeles. After attending the Otis Art Institute from 1939 to 1942, he served in the Navy during World War II.

His "main school of cartoon learning" was a two-year stint at Walt Disney Studios in the late 1940s "that was fun," Parker later recalled. He worked on several Donald Duck shorts and the 30-minute "Mickey and the Beanstalk" (1947).

By the late 1940s, Parker and his wife, the former Mary Louise Sweet, had moved to New York. She survives him as do his five children, a brother, 13 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

He collaborated with other cartoonists, producing "Crock" and "Goosemeyer," but stayed with "The Wizard of Id." The strip has been packaged in more than 20 books.

"Humor is a … very important part of our survival and existence now," Parker said in 1986. "There's nothing that eases tension like a good laugh. It can just about solve all the problems if it were used right."

 

[KindaKinky]

Originally Quoted By JennyOmanHill:

His death came eight days after longtime "Wizard" collaborator Johnny Hart died of a stroke at 76.

That reminds me of stories where married couples die within weeks of each other, finding it unbearable to be without each other.

I wonder if Brant taught his grandchildren how to draw Id the same way Hart taught his family how to draw BC.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Former Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies

AP
MOSCOW (April 23) -- Former President Boris Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, died Monday. He was 76.

Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death and Russian news agencies cited Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration's medical center, as saying the former president died Monday of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital.

Although Yeltsin pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, many of its citizens will remember him mostly for presiding over the country's steep decline.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up the complexity of Yeltsin's in a condolence statement minutes after the death was announced. He referred to Yeltsin as one "on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors," according to the news agency Interfax.

Yeltsin was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption -- but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years as Russia's first freely elected president.

Yeltsin steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media. His hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has proven far more popular even as he has tightened Kremlin control over both Russia's industry and its press.

Yeltsin amassed as much power as possible in his office -- then gave it all up in a dramatic New Year's address at the end of 1999.

Yeltsin's greatest moments came in bursts. He stood atop a tank to resist an attempted coup in August 1991, and spearheaded the peaceful end of the Soviet state on Dec. 25 of that year. Ill with heart problems, and facing possible defeat by a Communist challenger in his 1996 re-election bid, he marshaled his energy and sprinted through the final weeks of the campaign. The challenge transformed the shaky convalescent into the spry, dancing candidate.

But Yeltsin was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day-to-day government and nearly always blamed Russia's myriad problems on subordinates.

Yeltsin damaged his democratic credentials by using force to solve political disputes, though he claimed his actions were necessary to keep the country together.

He sent tanks and troops in October 1993 to flush armed, hard-line supporters out of a hostile Russian parliament after they had sparked violence in the streets of Moscow. And in December 1994, Yeltsin launched a war against separatists in the southern republic of Chechnya.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the Chechnya conflict, and a defeated and humiliated Russian army withdrew at the end of 1996. The war solved nothing -- and Russian troops resumed fighting in the breakaway region in fall 1999.

In the final years of his leadership, Yeltsin was dogged by health problems and often seemed out of touch. He retreated regularly to his country residence outside Moscow and stayed away from the Kremlin for days, even weeks at a time. As the country lurched from crisis to crisis, its leader appeared increasingly absent.

Yet Yeltsin had made a stunning debut as Russian president. He introduced many basics of democracy, guaranteeing the rights to free speech, private property and multiparty elections, and opening the borders to trade and travel. Though full of bluster, he revealed more of his personal life and private doubts than any previous Russian leader had.

"The debilitating bouts of depression, the grave second thoughts, the insomnia and headaches in the middle of the night, the tears and despair ... the hurt from people close to me who did not support me at the last minute, who didn't hold up, who deceived me -- I have had to bear all of this," he wrote in his 1994 memoir, "The Struggle for Russia."

Yeltsin pushed through free-market reforms, creating a private sector and allowing foreign investment. In foreign policy, he assured independence for Russia's Soviet-era satellites, oversaw troop and arms reductions, and developed warm relations with Western leaders.

That was the democratic Yeltsin, who in August 1991 rallied tens of thousands of Russians to face down a hard-line Soviet coup attempt. Throughout his nearly decade-long leadership, he remained Russia's strongest bulwark against Communism.

But there was another Yeltsin.

He was hesitant to act against crime and corruption -- beginning in his own administration -- while they sapped public faith and stunted democracy. His government's wrenching economic reforms impoverished millions of Russians -- poor people whose wages and pensions Yeltsin's government often went months without paying.

In the course of the Yeltsin era, per capita income fell about 75 percent, and the nation's population fell by more than 2 million, due largely to the steep decline in public health.

Yeltsin was a master of Kremlin intrigues, and preferred the chess game of politics to the detail work of solving economic and social problems. He played top advisers off against each other, and never let any of them accumulate much power, lest they challenge him.

He fired the entire government four times in 1998 and 1999. The economy sank into a deep recession in summer 1998, but Yeltsin rarely commented on the troubles and never offered a plan to combat them.

He was quick to act if anyone threatened his hold on power, standing fast even when his traditional allies called on him to step down. He easily faced down an impeachment attempt by the Communist-dominated lower chamber of parliament in May 1999.

In foreign affairs, he struggled to preserve a role for his former superpower. He called for a "multipolar world" as a way to counterbalance what Russia perceived as excessive U.S. global clout, and in spring 1999 he sent Russian troops rushing to Kosovo -- ahead of NATO peacekeepers -- to underline that Moscow would not be elbowed out of European affairs.

He wrangled with the West in disputes over NATO expansion and Russia's relatively warm relations with Iran and Iraq. But as Russia's political and economic might withered, Yeltsin had little to offer other nations.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born Feb. 1, 1931, into a peasant family in the Ural Mountains' Sverdlovsk region. When he was 3, his father was imprisoned in dictator Josef Stalin's purges. His alleged crime was owning property before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Yeltsin was, by his own account, a garrulous, scrappy boy who loved pranks and was quick to fight. And from the start, he bucked authority.

He was expelled from elementary school for criticizing a teacher at a school assembly. Early in his career as a construction engineer, he was given written reprimands 17 times in one year -- "a new record," he would later recall proudly. And his long career as a Communist Party official was rife with battles with higher party officials.

He was educated as an engineer and married a fellow student, Naina Girina. They had two daughters.

At age 30, Yeltsin joined the Communist Party after a brief career in construction in Sverdlovsk city, now Yekaterinburg. He became a full-time party official in construction in 1969, and seven years later was named the region's party boss.

In 1985, Gorbachev, intent on his own reforms, brought Yeltsin to Moscow, where he shook up the city's party hierarchy. The strapping, silver-haired Yeltsin cut a popular figure in the capital, making a point of riding city buses instead of a limousine, standing in long lines in grocery stores and loudly demanding why managers were stashing away food for favored customers instead of selling it to ordinary consumers.

A bitter rivalry soon grew between him and the more cautious Gorbachev. When Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev at a party meeting in November 1987, accusing him of a sluggish approach to reform, Gorbachev fired him.

In the old days, that would have ended Yeltsin's career. But he stormed back to power in 1989, winning a Soviet parliament seat in the first real election in 70 years. The following year, Yeltsin dramatically quit the Communist Party, walking out of its final convention.

His popularity grew. Yeltsin was a natural with crowds, shaking hands and bantering in a booming voice. For many Russians, he had the unpolished charm of a "muzhik" -- a tough peasant with common sense and a fondness for vodka.

Even then, Yeltsin's career was punctuated by bouts of bizarre behavior that the public chalked up to alcohol. Red-faced pranks, missed appointments, inarticulate and contradictory public statements continued into his presidency, blamed by aides on jet lag, medication or illness.

Yeltsin won Russia's first popular presidential election in a landslide in June 1991. Russia still was part of the Soviet Union, but the central government had started ceding power to the 15 republics.

Kremlin hard-liners trying to stop that process launched the failed coup in August, putting Gorbachev under house arrest. But Yeltsin took control of mass protests in Moscow, leading the democratic opposition to victory.

Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and confiscated its vast property. The ban was lifted in court about a year later, but by then Yeltsin had dealt the death blow to the tottering Soviet state. He and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus formed the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991, declaring the Soviet Union extinct. Gorbachev resigned within the month.

Impatient to lead Russia into a new, prosperous era, Yeltsin quickly launched an economic-reform program that freed prices but sent them soaring, wiping out many people's savings. Inflation skyrocketed and production plummeted.

Years later, he expressed regret over the rush, and said he'd been "naive."

"I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich civilized future," he told the nation in a televised speech to announce his resignation on Dec. 31, 1999.

"I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt."

Tension grew between him and the Soviet-era parliament, climaxing in fall 1993 when Yeltsin disbanded the legislature. An armed standoff and street riots followed, and Yeltsin finally turned tanks against the parliament building. Scores of people were killed in the fighting.

Afterward, Yeltsin pushed through a constitution that guaranteed a strong presidency and allowed him to brush off any serious parliamentary challenges.

But growing hard-line influence led him to dump key reformers from his Cabinet, which alienated democratic forces. Their disillusionment grew after the start of the first Chechnya war and more hard-line gains in parliamentary elections in December 1995.

By early 1996, Yeltsin was deeply unpopular and presidential elections loomed in June. But true to form, Yeltsin rallied when things looked bleakest, manipulating the media, enlisting the aid of the so-called oligarchs who had enriched themselves on the spoils of the Soviet economy in a grueling campaign.

The campaign trips to Russian regions and exertion took a heavy physical toll, and by election day Yeltsin could not even make it to his scheduled polling station. Doctors later said he had suffered another mild heart attack during the campaign.

He underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in November 1996, but continued to suffer from a series of other ailments. He also had long-running back trouble, and seemed increasingly shaky, both physically and mentally.

Russians questioned who was running the country -- the doddering Yeltsin, or the aides and tycoons whom critics accused of exercising undue influence over Kremlin policy.

Yeltsin's increasing frailty seemed to reflect the declining fortunes of the country he led. During public appearances, he would often stumble, and his speeches were punctuated by long, inexplicable pauses -- even when he had the text in front of him.

Russians expected another halting speech on New Year's Eve 1999, but he stunned the nation and the world with his resignation -- having given no hint that he would ever give in to calls that he step down before his second term was up in spring 2000. He named his last prime minister, former KGB agent Putin, acting president -- giving him a huge incumbent's advantage over any would-be challengers.

"Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people," Yeltsin said.

"And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go."

After his dramatic exit, Yeltsin appeared rarely in public -- popping up now and again at an official ceremony, holiday reception or tennis tournament. He traveled several times to China for what were described as health-boosting trips, and he looked fitter in retirement than he had in years.

Yeltsin met about once a month with Putin, usually at his dacha in Barvikha outside Moscow, he told an interviewer with Russian state television on the second anniversary of his resignation. He said he felt stronger than during the presidency, less weighed down by stress, and never regretted his abrupt departure. He felt certain that the reforms he championed would continue under Putin, he said.

"If I had doubts that the reforms might be reversed, I would not have resigned," Yeltsin said.

Yeltsin is survived by his wife, Naina, two daughters and several grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Originally Quoted By JennyOmanHill:

That reminds me of stories where married couples die within weeks of each other, finding it unbearable to be without each other.

I wonder if Brant taught his grandchildren how to draw Id the same way Hart taught his family how to draw BC.

I had the same thoughts!

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Sports Writer Halberstam Killed in Crash

AP
SAN FRANCISCO (April 23) - David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from New York who chronicled the Vietnam War generation, civil rights and the world of sports, was killed in a car crash Monday, his wife and local authorities said.

Halberstam, who was 73, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said. The cause of death appeared to be internal injuries, he said.

The driver of the car carrying Halberstam and the person driving the car that crashed into his were injured, but not seriously.

Halberstam was being driven by a graduate journalism student from the University of California, Berkeley, which had hosted a speech by the author Saturday night about the craft of journalism and what it means to turn reporting into a work of history. They were headed to an interview he had scheduled with Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle.

Halberstam was working on a new book, "The Game," about the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, often called the greatest game ever played, said his wife, Jean Halberstam.

"For someone who obviously was so competitive with himself, the generosity with other writers was incredible," she said.

As word of Halberstam's death spread through the news industry, tributes and remembrances poured in for the veteran reporter whose baritone matched the heft of his nonfiction narratives.

"The thing about David Halberstam was that he stayed the course and he kept the faith in the belief in the people's right to know," said George Esper, who spent 10 years in Vietnam with the AP and was Saigon bureau chief when the city fell. "In the end, and I think we can all be very proud of this, he was proven right. The bottom line was that David was more honest with the American public than their own government."

Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in New York City to a surgeon father and teacher mother. His father was in the military, and Halberstam moved around the country during his childhood, spending time in Texas, Minnesota and Connecticut.

He attended Harvard University, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

After graduating in 1955, he launched his career at the Daily Times Leader, a small daily in West Point, Miss.

Halberstam went on to The Tennessean, in Nashville, where he covered the civil rights struggle, and then The New York Times, which sent him to Vietnam in 1962 to cover the growing crisis there.

In 1964, at age 30, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam.

He later said he initially supported the U.S. action there but became disillusioned. That was apparent in Halberstam's 1972 best-seller, "The Best and the Brightest," a critical account of U.S. involvement in the region.

Halberstam quit daily journalism in 1967 and wrote 21 books covering such topics as Vietnam, civil rights, the auto industry and a baseball pennant race. His 2002 best-seller, War in a Time of Peace, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

In 1964, Halberstam and Malcolm W. Browne, of the AP, won Pulitzers for their coverage of the war and the overthrow of the Saigon regime.

Halberstam's reporting from Vietnam was a major irritant to the Kennedy Administration, which had tried unsuccessfully to pressure the Times to transfer him from the war zone.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

`Monster Mash' Singer Pickett Dies at 69

Apr 26, 3:29 PM (ET)

NEW YORK (AP) - He does the "Monster Mash" no more.

Bobby "Boris" Pickett, whose dead-on Boris Karloff impression propelled the Halloween anthem to the top of the charts in 1962, making him one of pop music's most enduring one-hit wonders, has died of leukemia. He was 69.

Pickett, dubbed "The Guy Lombardo of Halloween," died Wednesday night at the West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital, said his longtime manager, Stuart Hersh. His daughter, Nancy, and his sister, Lynda, were at Pickett's bedside.

"Monster Mash" hit the Billboard chart three times: when it debuted in 1962, reaching No. 1 the week before Halloween; again in August 1970, and for a third time in May 1973. The resurrections were appropriate for a song where Pickett gravely intoned the forever-stuck-in-your-head chorus: "He did the monster mash. ... It was a graveyard smash."

The novelty hit's fans included Bob Dylan, who played the single on his XM Satellite Radio program last October. "Our next artist is considered a one-hit wonder, but his one hit comes back year after year," Dylan noted.

The hit single ensured Pickett's place in the pantheon of pop music obscurities, said syndicated radio host Dr. Demento, whose long-running program celebrates offbeat tunes.

"It's certainly the biggest Halloween song of all time," said Demento. The DJ, who interviewed Pickett last year, said he maintained a sense of humor about his singular success: "As he loved to say at oldies shows, 'And now I'm going to do a medley of my hit.'"

Pickett's impression of Karloff (who despite his name was an Englishman, born William Henry Pratt) was forged in Somerville, Mass., where the boy watched horror films in a theater managed by his father.

Pickett used the impersonation in a nightclub act and when performing with his band the Cordials. A bandmate convinced Pickett they needed to do a song to showcase the Karloff voice, and "Monster Mash" was born - "written in about a half-hour," said Dr. Demento.

The recording, done in a couple of hours, featured a then-unknown piano player named Leon Russell and a backing band christened The Crypt-Kickers. It was rejected by four major labels before Gary Paxton, lead singer on the Hollywood Argyles' novelty hit "Alley Oop," released "Monster Mash" on his own label.

The instant smash became a sort-of Christmas carol for the pumpkin and ghoul set. In a 1996 interview with People magazine, Pickett said he never grew tired of it: "When I hear it, I hear a cash register ringing."

While Pickett never re-created its success, his "Monster's Holiday," a Christmas follow-up, reached No. 30 in December 1962. And "Graduation Day" hit No. 80 in June 1963.

He continued performing through his final gig in November. He remained in demand for Halloween performances, including a memorable 1973 show where his bus broke down outside Frankenstein, Mo.

Beside his daughter and sister, Pickett is survived by two grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Valenti Was Also White House Aide

LOS ANGELES -- Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85.

Valenti had a stroke in March and was hospitalized for several weeks at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore.

Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America said Valenti died of complications from the stroke at his Washington, D.C., home.

Valenti was a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson when he was lured to Hollywood in 1966 by movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim.

At the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti abolished the industry's restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today's letter-based ratings system.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Mstislav Rostropovich Cellist and Conductor, Dies at 80

N.Y. Times Obit.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Cardinals Reliever Hancock Killed in Car Crash

ST. LOUIS (April 29) - The St. Louis Cardinals are mourning a teammate for the second time in five years, and it isn't any easier this time.

Josh Hancock, a relief pitcher who helped the team win the World Series last season, died early Sunday when his sport utility vehicle slammed into the back of a tow truck, bringing back painful memories of Darryl Kile's death in June 2002.

"There's a big hole that's going to be there," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. "This is brutal to go through."

The Cardinals postponed their home game Sunday night against the Chicago Cubs. La Russa informed Hancock's family of the accident.

"What words can you give somebody in a situation like this?" Cubs manager Lou Piniella said.

Police said the 29-year-old Hancock was alone in his 2007 Ford Explorer when the SUV struck the rear of a flatbed tow truck at 12:35 a.m. The tow truck was in the left lane with its lights flashing while assisting another car that had crashed, Police Chief Joe Mokwa said.

Hancock died upon impact, Mokwa said. The driver of the tow truck, whose name was not released by police, was in the truck at the time of the crash but was not injured. Mokwa said the truck driver saw Hancock's SUV swerve just before it hit the tow truck.

Mokwa said it appeared Hancock was driving at or just above the speed limit, and there were no alcohol containers in his vehicle.

"We may never know what occurred," Mokwa said. "It appears that he just merely didn't see the tow truck."

The medical examiner's office said an autopsy had been scheduled. Services were planned for Thursday in Tupelo, Miss., where Hancock's family lives. Hancock was single.

"All of baseball today mourns the tragic and untimely death of St. Louis pitcher Josh Hancock," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. "He was a fine young pitcher who played an important role on last year's World Series championship team."

The Cardinals will wear patches with Hancock's No. 32 on their sleeves for the rest of the season. The team also planned a memorial for the bullpen, which already features a tribute to Kile.

A Cardinals-Cubs game also was postponed five years ago after Kile was found dead in his hotel room in Chicago. The 33-year-old pitcher died of a coronary artery blockage.

General manager Walt Jocketty said the Cardinals, who are off Thursday, plan to charter a plane to Hancock's funeral. The team begins a three-game series in Milwaukee on Monday and returns to St. Louis on Friday.

"Obviously, this is very difficult for all of us, especially those of us who were here five years ago when we lost Darryl Kile," said Jocketty, his eyes red. "There's no way we could have played tonight's game."

La Russa met with players shortly before a news conference Sunday afternoon to provide details of the accident and share memories. Late in the afternoon, two Cardinals jogged together in the outfield in a nearly empty Busch Stadium.

"This has obviously been a very difficult time," St. Louis pitcher Braden Looper said. "Josh was a great teammate and a great friend to everybody, and he was a key part of our success."

News of Hancock's death began to circulate around the majors on Sunday morning. Seattle Mariners pitcher Jeff Weaver, who won the World Series clincher for St. Louis in October, got a call from Cardinals reliever Randy Flores.

"I never really had a phone call like that before. It's kind of mind-boggling. Just a few days ago I had talked to him on the phone, touching base again because we were pretty good friends at the time," Weaver said. "We spent a lot of time together. It was just hard to believe."

Weaver said Hancock called him three or four days ago just to chat, and asked if Weaver had received his World Series ring yet.

"He was quiet, kind of soft-spoken, but definitely a good guy," said Brewers pitcher Jeff Suppan, the NL championship series MVP with St. Louis last year. "It's a sad day. Your feelings go out toward his family and his teammates now. That's tough to get through."

Atlanta Braves ace Tim Hudson played with Hancock at Auburn. They helped lead the school to the 1997 College World Series.

"It feels like being punched in the stomach right now," Hudson said. "Josh was such a good person. I saw him a few times a year going back to Auburn for football games. It's really a shock."

Hancock was remembered at ballparks around the country. The Cleveland Indians observed a moment of silence before their game against the Baltimore Orioles, with Hancock's picture displayed on a giant scoreboard. There also was a moment of silence for Hancock at Yankee Stadium.

"It's terrible, another terrible event," said Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, who was the Colorado hitting coach when Kile was a part of the Rockies' staff in 1998 and 1999. "The young man had done so well last fall and had a promising career. It's just terrible."

Hancock, who pitched three innings of relief in Saturday's 8-1 loss to the Cubs, played for four major league clubs. He went 3-3 with a 4.09 ERA in 62 regular-season appearances for the Cardinals last season and pitched in three postseason games. He was 0-1 with a 3.55 ERA in eight games this season.

La Russa said Hancock's final outing was typical of a reliever whose role frequently called for mop-up duty.

"We didn't get embarrassed because of him, and that was said several times," La Russa said.

Three days before Hancock's death, the Cardinals got a scare that some teammates said reminded them of Kile - Hancock overslept and showed up late for a day game in St. Louis. Hancock told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he thought the starting time was later and didn't get up until the "20th call" from anxious teammates.

"We were all a little nervous," closer Jason Isringhausen said earlier this week. "We don't care if you're late. That happens. We want to know that you're OK."

Hancock made his offseason home in St. Louis. He was the only player to attend the premiere of a DVD documenting the Cardinals' unlikely run to their 10th World Series championship after winning only 83 regular-season games.

Hancock joined the Cardinals in spring training last season after Cincinnati released him for violating a weight clause in his contract. He had been a starter the previous year with the Reds, but missed 133 games because of groin and elbow injuries. He also pitched for Boston and Philadelphia.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Actress Anne Pitoniak Dies at 85

Actress Anne Pitoniak, best known for her role of Thelma Cates in the original Broadway production of Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother, died of cancer on Sunday, April 22 in New York. She was 85.

Born on March 30, 1922 in Westfield, Massachusetts, Pitoniak graduated from what is now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She spent two years as a civilian actress immediately after World War II, touring Japan, the Philippines and Korea for the Army's Special Services division. She met her future husband, Jerome Milord, then a soldier, when they were both in a U.S.O. show in Japan.

In 'night, Mother, which opened in 1983, she played a woman who desperately tries to keep her daughter from killing herself. The play had its premiere at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then moved to Broadway. Both Pitoniak and co-star Kathy Bates received Best Actress Tony Award nominations for their work.

In 1994, Pitoniak received a second Tony nomination for her performance as Helen Potts in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Picnic. She also appeared on Broadway in Agnes of God, The Octette Bridge Club, Amy's View, Uncle Vanya, Dance of Death, and Imaginary Friends.

She performed frequently at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, in such plays as Norman's Getting Out, D.L. Coburn's The Gin Game, and Jane Martin's Middle Aged White Guys. She also worked steadily in film and television. (In the 1985 film version of Agnes of God, she appeared as the mother of Jane Fonda's character.)

In 2000, Pitoniak told TheaterMania: "I have never put 'actress' on any form of identification. I'm not trying to be coy, but I always felt that it would have been stretching things a bit to identify myself that way. But after Amy's View, for the first time, I felt that if I had to get a passport today, I'd put it down. I'd say that I am an actress."

She is survived by a son, Christian, and a daughter, Susan, as well as a grandson, two sisters, and a brother.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Johnny Carson Foil Tommy Newsom Dies

AP
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (May 1) - Tommy Newsom, the former backup bandleader on "The Tonight Show" whose "Mr. Excitement" nickname was a running joke for Johnny Carson, has died. He was 78.

Newsom died of cancer at his Portsmouth home Saturday, according to his nephew, Jim Newsom.

Newsom, who played saxophone, joined "The Tonight Show" in 1962 and rose from band member to assistant music director. He retired along with Carson in 1992.

"The Tonight Show" received five Emmy awards during Newsom's years on the show.

"I hope he will be remembered as a gifted musician," Jim Newsom said Monday in a telephone interview. "I'm sure he will be remembered for his wit and deadpan humor on `The Tonight Show.' And to some of us a certain age, he will always be remembered as Mr. Excitement."

That was the nickname Carson gave Newsom to make light of his low-key personality and drab brown and blue suits - a sharp contrast to the flashy style of bandleader Doc Severinsen.

"He became a running character in Carson's monologue," Jim Newsom said. "Tommy enjoyed that."

Not long after the Carson era ended in 1992, Newsom remarked that his image as an ordinary guy was "fairly accurate - compared to Rambo."

"I realize things have to end sometime," Newsom said at the time. "I felt regrets at it ending and there was a sense of relief in a way."

Along with his work on "The Tonight Show," Newsom arranged and composed music for Skitch Henderson, Woody Herman, Kenny Rogers, John Denver and other performers.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Character Actor Dabbs Greer Dies At 90

Roles Included Minister On "Little House On The Prairie"

PASADENA, Calif., May. 1, 2007
(AP) Dabbs Greer, a veteran character actor who played the Rev. Robert Alden in the TV show "Little House on the Prairie," has died. He was 90.

Greer, a Missouri native, died Saturday at Huntington Hospital after a battle with kidney and heart disease, his neighbor, Bill Klukken, told the Los Angeles Times. B.J. Goodwin, coroner for McDonald County, Mo., confirmed the death to The Associated Press.

Greer played "everyman" roles, from bus drivers to preachers and shopkeepers, in nearly 100 movies and hundreds of TV show episodes. He played a prison guard in the 1999 movie "The Green Mile."

He played storekeeper Mr. Jonus on "Gunsmoke" and also was the minister who married Mike and Carol Brady in 1969 on TV's "The Brady Bunch."

Most of his work was in supporting roles, but Greer told the Albany, N.Y., Times Union in 2000: "Every character actor, in their own little sphere, is the lead."

Born Robert William Greer on April 2, 1917, in Fairview, Mo., Greer moved to Anderson as an infant with his family. He was 8 when he began acting in children's theater productions.

He made his film debut as an extra in the 1938 movie "Jesse James," which was filmed mainly in Pineville.

"They were paying $5 a day a day to local people for being extras. That was really good money in those days, more money than we had seen in a long time," he told the Neosho Daily News in 2002.

He moved to Pasadena in 1943.

Greer never married and had no survivors.

 

[Juliangel]

Actor Tom Poston Dies At 85

http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=96294

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as "Newhart" and "Mork and Mindy," has died. He was 85.

Poston, who was married to Suzanne Pleshette of "The Bob Newhart Show," died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday. The nature of his illness was not disclosed.

Poston's run as a comic bumbler began in the mid-1950s with "The Steve Allen Show" after Allen plucked the character actor from the Broadway stage to join an ensemble of eccentrics he would conduct "man in the street" interviews with.

Don Knotts was the shaky Mr. Morrison, Louis Nye was the suave, overconfident Gordon Hathaway and Poston's character was so unnerved by the television cameras that he couldn't remember who he was. He won an Emmy playing "The Man Who Can't Remember His Name."

But when Allen moved the show from New York to Los Angeles in 1959, Poston stayed behind.

"Hollywood's not for me right now; I'm a Broadway cat," he told a reporter at the time.

When he did finally move west, he quickly began appearing in variety shows, sitcoms and films.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'Right Stuff' astronaut Wally Schirra

May. 3, 2007 02:30 PM

SAN DIEGO - Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr., who as one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts combined the Right Stuff — textbook-perfect flying ability and steely nerves — with a pronounced rebellious streak, died Thursday at 84.

He was the only astronaut to fly in all three of NASA's original manned spaceflight programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Although he never walked on the moon, Schirra laid some of the groundwork that made the lunar landings possible and won the space race for the United States.

Schirra died of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, said Ruth Chandler Varonfakis, a family friend and spokeswoman for the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

In 1962, the former Navy test pilot became the fifth American in space — behind Alan Shepard, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter — and the third American to orbit the Earth, circling the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours.

Schirra returned to space in 1965 as commander of Gemini 6. Some 185 miles above Earth, he guided his two-man capsule to within a few feet of Gemini 7 in the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit.

On his third and final flight, aboard Apollo 7 in 1968, he helped set the stage for the landing of men on moon during the summer of 1969.

Of the Mercury Seven, only Glenn and Carpenter are still alive.

Schirra was named one of the Mercury Seven in 1959. Supremely confident, he sailed through rigorous astronaut training with what one reporter called “the ease of preparing for a family picnic.”

“He was a practical joker, but he was a fine fellow and a fine aviator,” Carpenter recalled Thursday. “He will be sorely missed in our group.”

Roger Launius, a space historian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said Schirra “had a personality that was fun and effervescent. He had the gift of gab. He was able to take complex engineering and scientific ideas and translate that to something that was understandable.”

During the mid-December 1965 Gemini 6 flight, Schirra and crewmate Thomas Stafford unnerved Mission Control when they reported, slowly and in deadpan fashion, seeing some kind of UFO consisting of “a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit” — Santa Claus.

Then Schirra and Stafford played “Jingle Bells” on a tiny, smuggled-aboard harmonica and a set of sleigh bells.

Earlier in 1965, Schirra also helped smuggle a corned beef sandwich onto Gemini 3 that Grissom took a few bites during the flight, according to a NASA history.

“At times he gave us a hard time during his flight; technically what he did was superb,” Kraft said.

Schirra's Apollo mission in October 1968 restored the nation's confidence in the space program, which had been shaken a year earlier when three astronauts, including Grissom, were killed in a fire on the launch pad.

The Apollo 7 crew shot into space atop a Saturn rocket, a version of which would later carry men to the moon. But Schirra and his two fellow crewmembers were grumpy for most of the 11-day trip. All three developed bad colds that proved to be a major nuisance in zero gravity.

The following year, Schirra left NASA and retired from the Navy with the rank of captain, having logged 295 hours in space. He became a commentator with CBS.

“Mostly it's lousy out there,” Schirra said in 1981 on the occasion of the first space shuttle flight. “It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you. The outside temperature goes from a minus 450 degrees to a plus 300 degrees. You sit in a flying Thermos bottle.”

Born in Hackensack, N.J., Schirra was practically born to fly. His father was a fighter pilot during World War I and later barnstormed at county fairs with Schirra's mother, who sometimes stood on the wing of a biplane during flights.

Schirra took his first flight with his father at age 13 and already knew how to fly when he left home for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Schirra flew 90 combat missions during the Korean War. He was credited with shooting down one Soviet MiG-15 and possibly a second. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals.

In 1984, he moved to the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, serving on corporate boards and as an independent consultant. His favorite craft became the Windchime, a 36-foot sailboat.

In one of his last interviews, last month with the Associated Press, Schirra said he was struck by the fragility of Earth and the lack of borders.

“I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth,” he said.

Survivors include his wife, Josephine, daughter Suzanne and son Walter Schirra III.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

1950s 'Tarzan' Gordon Scott Dies at 80

http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/ap/thumbnails//Obit_Scott.sff_NYET155_20070503135154.jpg

May 3, 4:23 PM (ET)

BALTIMORE (AP) - Gordon Scott, a handsome, muscular actor who portrayed an "intelligent and nice" Tarzan in 1950s movies, has died. He was 80. Scott, who had been living in a working class section of south Baltimore, died Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital of post-heart surgery complications, a hospital spokesman said.

Scott made 24 movies including "Tarzan and the Lost Safari" (1957), "Tarzan's Fight for Life" (1958), "Tarzan and the Trappers" (1958), "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" (1959) and "Tarzan the Magnificent" (1960).

The cast in the 1959 movie included Sean Connery and Anthony Quayle.

Tarzan, the vine-swinging hero of the jungle, was created by the author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Scott was among a long line of actors, including Johnny Weissmuller, Elmo Lincoln and Larry "Buster" Crabbe, who portrayed him.

"He was an absolutely wonderful Tarzan who played the character as an intelligent and nice man who carried himself well, much as my grandfather had originally written it," Danton Burroughs told The (Baltimore) Sun.

Scott was a lifeguard at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas when he was discovered by Hollywood producer Sol Lesser, said Scott's brother Rayfield Werschkull of Portland, Ore.

He was signed to a seven-year-contract after he outperformed 200 other international candidates.

During the 1954 production of his first film, "Tarzan's Hidden Jungle," he fell in love with co-star Vera Miles. The couple married that year and divorced four years later.

After the Tarzan movies, Scott appeared in Westerns and gladiator films.

Scott's later years were spent in Baltimore, in the row house of Roger and Betty Thomas, who had befriended him.

"My husband has been a fan of his since he was a child. When we were in Hollywood about eight years ago, we looked him up," said Betty Thomas. "We invited him for a visit. He came and never left."

Thomas said she last saw Scott in the hospital on Saturday. She told him, "'Gordon, we love you, and so does the dog and the bird.' He opened one eye for a moment and gave me a wink."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Boxer Dies in Motorcycle Accident in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS (AP) -Diego "Chico" Corrales, who won titles in two weight classes and was involved in one of the most memorable fights in recent times, died Monday in a motorcycle accident, his promoter said. He was 29. Gary Shaw said Corrales was driving his motorcycle at a high rate of speed when he ran into the back of a car about 10 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip on Monday night.

"He's laying there as we speak with a helmet on his head under a sheet," Shaw said. "It appears he was thrown a great distance."

Shaw said Corrales, whose career had faltered in recent fights, had recently bought a racing motorcycle, which he was apparently riding at the time he was killed.

"He fought recklessly and he lived recklessly," Shaw said. "That was his style."

Las Vegas police spokesman Jose Montoya said the victim in the accident was wearing a helmet, and it was not known if drugs or alcohol was involved.

"No tests have been done. We're still investigating," Montoya said.

The lanky Corrales, who stood 5-10½ but fought most of his career at 130 pounds, was a big puncher best known for getting up after two 10th-round knockdowns to stop Jose Luis Castillo in one of the most thrilling fights ever.

The fight took place May 7, 2005, exactly two years from the night he died. It was named by the Boxing Writers Association of America and numerous boxing publications as the fight of the year.

Corrales, though, was knocked out by Castillo in the rematch and lost a big payday when he failed to make weight for his next fight. He lost his last three fights, including his last fight on April 7 against Joshua Clottey in Springfield, Mo. He had moved up two weight divisions to welterweight for that fight, but dropped a decision.

Corrales, who was born in Sacramento, Ca., but lived in Las Vegas in recent years, was a big puncher who won his first 33 fights and held a piece of the 130-pound title before he was stopped by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a unification fight in January 2001.

Corrales was sent to jail on a domestic abuse charge after that fight, and didn't fight again for two years. He came back to fight a trilogy against Joel Casamayor, losing two of the three fights, and split a pair of fights with Castillo.

After failing to make weight and then losing in the ring to Casamayor in a lightweight fight last October, Corrales made the unusual step of moving up two weight classes to fight Clottey. He was knocked down in the ninth and tenth rounds and lost a unanimous decision.

"He always cared about the fans and gave them their money's worth," Shaw said. "He was a true warrior. He was what boxing stood for, and what boxing is all about."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Famed Televangelist Dies at Age 73

AP
LYNCHBURG, Va. (May 15) - The Rev. Jerry Falwell , the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

Falwell had made careful preparations for a transition of his leadership to his two sons, Jerry Falwell , Jr., now vice-chancellor of Liberty University, and Jonathan Falwell , executive the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

One daughter, Jeannie Falwell Savas, Surgeon, Richmond, Va. Godwin said. "He has left instructions for those of us who had to carry on, and we will be faithful to that charge," Godwin said.

Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents.

"Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said Tuesday.

Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that included the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.

Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.

Sen. John McCain, the school commencement speaker last year, said Tuesday that his prayers were with Falwell 's family.

"Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country," McCain said.

Last year, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: "Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?"

Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.

In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.

The case was depicted in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt."

With Falwell 's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on "non-moral issues."

Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.

Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Falwell essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized.

In 1999, he told a evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.

Falwell was re-energized after moral values issues proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.

The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.

"He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry," said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Daughter Dies at 51

AP
ATLANTA (May 16) - Yolanda Denise King, daughter and eldest child of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center.

King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 51.

Klein said the family did not know the cause of death but thinks it might have been a heart problem.

Andrew Young, a lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr.'s during the civil rights movement who remained close to the family after the civil rights icon's death, said Yolanda King had just spoken at an event for the American Heart Association.

Last year, Yolanda King became a spokeswoman for the organization, and promoted a campaign to raise awareness, especially among blacks, about stroke.

"She was on the way to spend the night with Dexter," Young said, referring to her younger brother. "I understand she got to his house and came in and collapsed in the doorway. They were not able to revive her."

Born on Nov. 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., King was just an infant when her home was bombed during the turbulent civil rights era. She was a young girl during his famous stay in the Birmingham, Ala., jail. She was 12 years old when Martin Luther King Jr. died.

"She lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an aide of Martin Luther King Jr. "The movement was in her DNA."

As an actress, she appeared in numerous films and even played Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King." She also appeared in "Ghosts of Mississippi."

King -- an actor, speaker and producer -- was the founder and head of Higher Ground Productions, billed as a "gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation." On her company's Web site, King described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.

Young said King was really trying to live her own life.

"She didn't want to be a child of the movement, she wanted to be what God wanted her to be," Young said. "She could never escape being a child of the movement, though. She was really feeling that she didn't just want to be the daughter of Coretta and Martin King. That was her struggle."

King was also an author and advocate for peace and nonviolence, and held memberships in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference _ which her father co-founded in 1957 _ and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Her death comes more than a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King.

King understood well what her father was about, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. Lewis said he last saw King at Easter Sunday services for New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, where King's sister, the Rev. Bernice King, preaches.

Yolanda King is survived by her sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King; two brothers, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King; and an extended family.

Arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a statement.

Yolanda King was the most visible and outspoken among the Kings' four children during activities honoring this year's Martin Luther King Day in January, the first since Coretta Scott King's death.

At her father's former Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, she performed a series of one-actor skits on King Day this year that told stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala.

She also urged the audience at Ebenezer to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday each year in January to ask tough questions about their own beliefs on prejudice.

"We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other," King said.

When asked then by The Associated Press how she was dealing with the loss of her mother, King responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength."

A flag at The King Center, which King's mother founded in 1968 and where she was a board member, was lowered to half-staff on Wednesday.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Don Ho's Daughter Found Dead

HONOLULU -- Don Ho's daughter, Dayna Ho-Henry, 51, was found dead last Friday morning, according to family members.

Ho-Henry was a central figure at her father's memorial service last week.

Friends said Ho-Henry adored her father and was distraught. After his ashes were placed in the sea, she joined others swimming in the carpet of flowers.

Ho-Henry died early on Friday morning at a friend's house in Waialua, where she had been staying after her father's death, family members said.

Her brother, Dwight, said the family is trying to make sense of her death and is asking for privacy while they grieve.

She was a 1973 graduate of Kamehameha Schools.

Dwight Ho said Ho-Henry was the family peacemaker and the one with the biggest heart.

Ho-Henry had been working as a caregiver.

She is survived by her brothers and sisters and her two children, ages 21 and 11.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'Soul Food' Actor Carl Wright Dies at 75

CHICAGO (May 21) -- Actor Carl Wright, who began his career as a tap dancer and comedian and later appeared in movies including "Barbershop" and "Big Momma's House," has died, his family confirmed Sunday. He was 75.

Wright died of cancer at his home Saturday in Chicago, according to his daughter, Kia Wright.

Wright's film credits also include "Soul Food," "Barbershop 2: Back in Business" and "The Cookout."

Born in Orlando, Fla., Wright traveled the world as a young man working as a tap dancer, and he once danced with a one-legged partner as a team called the Three-Leggers, his daughter said. He also worked as a comedian, emcee and songwriter.

His movie career began late in his life, his daughter said.

"He's done so many things," she said. "He worked with everyone from Elvis Presley to Frank Sinatra."

Wright is survived by his wife, Shirley, two other daughters and a granddaughter.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Comic Actor Charles Nelson Reilly Dies at 76

Frequent Game Show Guest Was a Tony Award Winner

Charles Nelson Reilly, who acted and directed on Broadway but came to be best known for his campy television appearances on talk shows and “Match Game,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his partner, Patrick Hughes, who is his only immediate survivor. Mr. Reilly had been ill for more than a year, he said.

Long before moving west to become what he somewhat ruefully described as a “game show fixture,” Mr. Reilly was an actor and an acting teacher in New York City. In 1962, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Bud Frump in the original Broadway production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

But he was proudest of “The Belle of Amherst,” a one-woman play starring Julie Harris based on the life of Emily Dickinson, which he directed on Broadway at the Longacre Theater in 1976, said Timothy Helgeson, who collaborated with him on the show. Two decades later, Mr. Reilly directed Ms. Harris and Charles Durning in a revival of “The Gin Game” at the Lyceum Theater. He was nominated for a Tony for best director in 1997, and Ms. Harris was nominated for best actress.

His final work was an autobiographical one-man show, “Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly,” in which he recounted his difficult childhood. Born in the Bronx, the only child of a Swedish mother and an Irish father, Mr. Reilly told of the pain of being considered the oddest member of a decidedly odd family.

He explained the title of his show by saying that, when he was a child, his mother would often cut him off from speaking by admonishing him to “save it for the stage.” His father, he told audiences, never got over having passed up a chance to move to Hollywood and work with a budding animation artist named Walt Disney.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Reilly, with his ascots, oversize spectacles and over-the-top penchant for double-entendres, was a regular on television. He appeared more than 95 times on the “Tonight” show with Johnny Carson and was a panelist on game shows like “Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares.”

In a 2001 interview with The Advocate, the national gay magazine, Mr. Reilly reflected on the effect those shows had on his professional prospects. “You can’t do anything else once you do game shows,” he said. “You have no career.”

Mr. Reilly’s openly gay persona was many years ahead of its time on television, and it had its risks. He recalled being dismissed early in his career by a network executive, who told him that “they don’t let queers on television.” Paul Linke, who directed the one-man show, said Mr. Reilly later had the last laugh when he would page through TV Guide and count how many times he was on the air that week.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Body of Patriots' Hill Found in Lake Pontchartrain

Player Was Missing in Louisiana After Jet Ski Accident
AP Sports
NEW ORLEANS (May 28) - The body of New England Patriots player Marquise Hill was found Monday, a day after he was reported missing following a jet ski accident on Lake Pontchartrain.

Hill's body was discovered by searchers about a quarter of a mile from where the 24-year-old former LSU star and a female companion were involved in the accident, Capt. Brian Clark of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department said.

"We have suffered a stunning and tragic loss," Patriots coach Bill Belichick said in a written statement Monday evening. "Marquise will be remembered as a thoughtful and caring young man who established himself as one of the year-round daily fixtures of our team. I send my deepest condolences to the Hill family."

The Coast Guard was called Sunday night, Petty Officer Tom Atkeson said. The search began immediately, using boats and helicopters.

By the time the body was found, the Coast Guard, Wildlife and Fisheries, the New Orleans Police Department and Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department were involved, Clark said.

Loved ones including Hill's fiancee, Inell Benn, and friends, including Patriots teammate Randall Gay, waited anxiously along the shoreline as the search went on. They consoled one another when authorities told them Hill had been found dead.

"Right now's a terrible time," Benn said. "I don't know what to feel right now."

Gay, who also played with Hill at LSU, had planned to spend the holiday weekend in Baton Rouge, but drove to New Orleans on Monday to monitor the search.

"Knowing that I have to go back to work and go look at his locker this week, it's tough," Gay said.

Hill's body was taken to the Orleans Parish Coroner's office, but phone messages left there and on coroner Frank Minyard's cell phone were not immediately returned.

Hill's agent, Albert Elias, said he had been told Hill and a young woman were jet skiing Sunday in the lake when both of them went into the water, which had a strong current.

Authorities said the woman was able to make it to a pylon and hang on until she was rescued, while Hill was last seen floating away from the scene.

Hill played on LSU's national championship team and was a second-round draft pick by New England in 2004. Hill had yet to start for the Patriots, playing in 13 games in his NFL career.

"We are absolutely heartbroken," Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a statement. "Marquise was a very respectful young man who worked hard to improve and was always eager to contribute to the team, both on the field and in the community."

The woman, whose identity was not available Monday, was rescued and sent to Tulane Medical Center where she told them Hill had tried to keep her calm as the two were drifting away from each other.

Neither Hill nor the woman wore a life preserver, Atkeson said.

"It's so important to have a life jacket and a signaling device," Atkeson said. "One keeps you afloat and the other helps us find you."

Elias said Hill, a defensive end, spent much of his time since Hurricane Katrina helping rebuild the homes of family members including his mother, Sherry, and the mother of his 2-year-old son.

"From what I hear he's done a lot to help with things after Katrina and I know he had a great passion for the city of New Orleans," said former LSU quarterback Matt Mauck, who was Hill's teammate at LSU. "Off field he was a really kind person, kind of like a gentle giant. And not only for LSU, but for New England and everyone who got chance to meet him throughout his life, everyone has to be extremely saddened and disappointed to hear the news."

After going to the NFL, Hill continued to do much of his offseason training at LSU's Baton Rouge campus, about 80 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, and was known and admired by current Tigers players, university athletics spokesman Michael Bonnette said.

"His presence meant a lot for some of the younger guys. He gave them someone to look up to and he was always there for them," Bonnette said. "Here's a 6-foot-6, 300-pound guy, as intimidating as can be, and yet every time you approached him he always welcomed you with big old smile. In between the lines, he had his game-face on, but outside the lines, in the community or in the weight room, he was always smiling and having good time."