Literotica Cemetary

[Colonel Hogan]

Isn't that her in the picture?

Oh.....okay. Ha.

 

[Beco]

Sportscaster George Michael dies at 70;

Sportscaster George Michael dies at 70; was mainstay of D.C. sports TV scene
By Nafeesa Syeed (CP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — George Michael, a mainstay on the Washington, D.C., sports television scene for decades who reached a national audience with "The George Michael Sports Machine" highlights show, has died. He was 70.

Michael's daughter, Michelle Allen, said Michael was surrounded by family and friends when he died Thursday morning from complications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia at Sibley Memorial Hospital.

"He waged his battle against cancer with the same drive and determination that made him a one-of-a-kind in the broadcasting industry," the family said in a statement. "Whether it was covering a sports story, working on his horse farm, or spending time with family and friends, he approached everything in life with passion."

"Sports Machine" began shortly after Michael's arrival at WRC TV in Washington in 1980 as "George Michael's Sports Final," a late-night local feature. Then in 1984 it grew into the first nationally syndicated sports highlights show, eventually airing in 194 markets across the United States and in 10 foreign countries.

It was a trendsetting program, gaining its footing in the days before cable television and ESPN were widely available. The show was also the first to give regular national TV exposure to once obscure sports like NASCAR and professional rodeo.

In a statement, WRC called Michael a pioneer in sports broadcasting and a dynamic force in its newsroom.

"He was a gifted interviewer, a master storyteller, and one of the hardest working journalists out there," the station said.

Washington Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder said Michael was a "consummate reporter and a valuable friend." Michael regularly interviewed the team's coaches and served as the longtime Redskins Welcome Home luncheon master of ceremonies.

"I doubt we'll ever again see a sports reporter who was so admired by the people he covered," Snyder said in statement.

Michael won more than 40 Emmy Awards and members of the "Sports Machine" staff received more than 100 Emmys for their work on the show. He also helped jump-start the TV careers of several national sports personalities, including David Aldridge, Bonnie Bernstien, Tony Kornheiser, Joe Theismann and Michael Wilbon.

Jeff Martinez, 40, of Sterling, Va., who worked on "Sports Machine" first as an intern and later as an associate producer from 1991 to 1995, said Michael was a perfectionist.

"You had to bring your A-game every day," Martinez said. Michael had no problem letting a staffer know "if you weren't performing what he thought your potential was."

Martinez also said Michael was supportive when he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which affects the digestive system, allowing him to take a leave of absence.

"He definitely took care of his own ... he was very very caring," he said. "Rather than pressuring me to come back to work sooner than I needed to, he was always

 

[Batch]

Dan O’Bannon, 63, Who Wrote Screenplay for ‘Alien,’ Is Dead

Died December 17, 2009

By BRUCE WEBER
Published: December 20, 2009

Dan O’Bannon, whose screenplays for “Alien,” “Total Recall,” “The Return of the Living Dead” and other films made him a cult hero among science fiction aficionados, died on Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 63.


The Writers Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn’s disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O’Bannon endured for 30 years, his wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O’Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he and the director John Carpenter, students at the time at the University of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film “Dark Star,” which was released as a feature in 1974.

After working as a computer animator for the director George Lucas on “Star Wars” and trying, unsuccessfully, to develop a film based on the Frank Herbert novel “Dune,” Mr. O’Bannon created the story of “Alien” with the screenwriter Ronald Shusett and wrote the screenplay on his own.

The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, is about a spaceship with a vicious monster loose onboard. (The creature begins as a parasite that explodes from a crew member’s chest.) It became a box office hit, a classic of science fiction and horror, and the progenitor of a lucrative Hollywood franchise, with its several sequels.

“I love gore films and I grew up with ’50s monster movies,” Mr. O’Bannon told the journal Cinefantastique in 1979, speaking of the film’s origins. “The idea for the monster in ‘Alien’ originally came from a stomach ache I had.”

In 1985 Mr. O’Bannon wrote and directed “The Return of the Living Dead,” part homage to the George Romero zombie film “Night of the Living dead” and part genre spoof. In 1990 he teamed with Mr. Shusett again, among others, to write “Total Recall,” a violent, futuristic tale set partly on Earth and partly on Mars and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone.

Daniel Thomas O’Bannon was born in St. Louis on Sept. 30, 1946. He attended Washington University in St. Louis and MacMurray College in Abilene, Tex., before earning an M.F.A. from U.S.C.

His other screenwriting credits include “Blue Thunder” (1983); “Lifeforce” (1985) and “Invaders From Mars” (1986), both directed by Tobe Hooper (who directed “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Poltergeist”); “Screamers” (1995); and “Bleeders” (1997).

He also directed “The Resurrected” (1992), based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft, whom Mr. O’Bannon called “the greatest horror writer who ever lived.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Adam.

 

[Batch]

Lester Rodney, 98

As a writer for the American Communist Party newspaper in the 1930s and '40s, Rodney pressed club owners and league officials to end baseball's color barrier.
By Dennis McLellan

December 25, 2009
Lester Rodney, the sports editor and columnist for the American Communist Party newspaper the Daily Worker who crusaded to end segregation in major league baseball in the 1930s and '40s, has died. He was 98.

Rodney died of age-related causes Sunday at his home in a retirement community in Walnut Creek, Calif., said his daughter, Amy Rodney.

Beginning in the decade before Jackie Robinson suited up with the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke baseball's color barrier in 1947, Rodney began pressing for the desegregation of baseball via columns and stories in the Daily Worker's sports pages.

He called the ban against blacks in the major leagues "un-American" and "the crime of the big leagues."

"None of the mainstream papers in the `30s made anything out of the fact that in the land of the free, midway through the 20th century, a great athlete with the wrong pigmentation of his skin couldn't play in our national pastime," Rodney said in a 2005 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

When a sports reporter asked Joe DiMaggio who was the best pitcher he had ever faced, the Yankee power hitter unhesitatingly responded by saying, "Satchel Paige." (DiMaggio had faced the great Negro League pitcher in postseason exhibition games.)

While other newspapers ignored DiMaggio's comment, Rodney ran a big headline over the story in the Daily Worker the next day: "Paige the Greatest I Have Faced -- DiMaggio."

Rodney also reported Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher’s admission to him that the Dodgers would sign black players "in a minute, if I got permission from the big shots."

In his columns, Rodney pressured club owners and baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to end baseball's color barrier.

Rodney and the Daily Worker's campaign to induce the major leagues to integrate baseball included launching petition drives targeting baseball owners and executives and organizing informational picket lines at ballparks.

Through it all, Rodney, the communist, was shunned by some of his fellow sportswriters.

He also had to use pseudonyms to publish two baseball books for children in the early 1950s: "The First Book of Baseball," under the name Benjamin Brewster; and "The Real Book About Baseball," under the name L y man Hopkins.

For decades, Rodney was considered little more than a historical footnote, a man whose efforts to help break the color ban in baseball was forgotten because he was a communist.

But that changed in 1997 when he was invited to speak at a national conference at Long Island University in Brooklyn celebrating the 50th anniversary of Robinson's debut as a Dodger.

The same year saw the publication of "Jackie Robinson: A Biography," by Arnold Rampersad, who wrote that "the most vigorous efforts [to integrate baseball] came from the Communist press . . . an unrelenting pressure for about 10 years in the Daily Worker, notably from Lester Rodney."

Rodney went on to be invited to speak at baseball symposiums and was frequently interviewed.

He also was the subject of a 2003 biography by Irwin Silber: "Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports."

In 2005, Rodney was inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals by the Baseball Reliquary, a nonprofit educational organization in Pasadena.

Rodney "was a very early voice in the American journalistic community to talk on a regular basis for the need for major league baseball to integrate and include African Americans playing side by side with Caucasian players," Terry Cannon, the organization's founder, told The Times this week.

"This was not something that the regular newspapers in America were delving into," Cannon said. "He was very much a pioneer in this respect."


Born in Manhattan on April 17, 1911, Rodney lived in the Bronx until he was 6 and his family moved to Brooklyn, where he became a die-hard Dodgers fan.

He covered sports for his high school newspaper and earned a partial athletic scholarship to Syracuse University. But he had to turn it down and go to work after his father lost his silk factory and the family home in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash.

Rodney took night courses at New York University while working various jobs, including as a lifeguard, clerk and chauffeur.

In 1936, he wrote a letter to the New York City-based Daily Worker that was critical of its sports coverage. An invitation to air his views with the editor led to an offer to write for the paper on a trial basis. Six months later, he was made sports editor.

In joining the paper, Rodney also joined the Communist Party.

"When you were at NYU in the 1930s -- at any of the New York schools -- if you didn't have serious questions about the workings of capitalism, you were sort of brain-dead," he said in the 2005 Chronicle interview.

During World War II, Rodney served as an Army combat medic in the Pacific theater. But he was back home in New York to cover Robinson's debut as a Brooklyn Dodger on April 15, 1947.

"It's hard this Opening Day to write straight baseball and not stop to mention the wonderful fact of Jackie Robinson," Rodney wrote. "You tell yourself it shouldn't be especially wonderful in America, no more wonderful, for instance, than Negro soldiers being with us on the way overseas through submarine-infested waters in 1943."

Rodney, who covered all sports during his career, including the historic 1938 Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight, later pressed other ball clubs to integrate.

He quit the Daily Worker and the Communist Party in 1958 -- reportedly joining other editors in quitting when details of the late Soviet leader Josef Stalin's human rights abuses became known and the party refused to report and debate the issue in the paper -- and moved with his family to California.

After stints at the Santa Monica Evening Outlook and a Beverly Hills advertising company, Rodney worked at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, where he served as religion editor. He retired in 1974.

Rodney's wife of 58 years, Clare, died in 2004.

In addition to his daughter, Amy, he is survived by a son, Ray; a granddaughter; and his companion, Mary Harvey.

A memorial service is pending.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

 

[Batch]

Alice Schiller dies at 95; businesswoman ran the Pink Pussycat

The hostess and co-owner elevated the striptease house into an L.A. landmark that attracted the Rat Pack, politicians and wealthy businessmen.
By Elaine Woo

December 26, 2009 | 8:01 a.m.



Alice Schiller was a bit of a prude, who didn't swear, drink or smoke, much less endorse women disrobing for entertainment. So when her husband told her he wanted to turn his struggling Hollywood nightclub into a striptease house, she cried.

But once she dried her tears, she got down to business, transforming an erstwhile Latin dance and jazz club on a rundown stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard into a Los Angeles landmark: the Pink Pussycat.

Opened in 1961, it was pink through and through, just like the inside of Schiller's house and her entire wardrobe. For the next two decades, Schiller was the club's hostess extraordinaire, who took pride in marketing burlesque to fit mainstream tastes.

"She came to see burlesque as an art form and fun entertainment. She treated people with respect and dignity and wanted to make the place something she was proud of," Carole Feld said of her aunt, who died in her sleep Dec. 19 in Washington, D.C. She was 95.

Schiller owned the club with her husband, Harry, a former traveling salesman who ran a Beverly Hills haberdashery before he plunged into the nightclub business in the late 1950s. Although it was his idea to turn what had been Club Seville, and then Jazz Seville, into a strip club, his wife had the vision that elevated it into a classy burlesque and supper house where husbands brought their wives for a night on the town.

When guests came through the door, Schiller, coiffed and dressed to the nines, greeted them along with pink-clad "Pussycats" who planted two pink feathers in each guest's hair.

She also invented unique stage names for the strippers -- including Fran Sinatra, Samya Davis Jr., Dina Martin, Peeler Lawford and Joie Bishop -- that drew on the popularity of Frank Sinatra and the other members of the so-called Rat Pack of the era's leading entertainers. That helped draw the Hollywood set, including the Rat Packers themselves, as well as politicians, sports figures, visiting dignitaries, wealthy businessmen and droves of tourists.

Comedian Bob Hope confirmed the club's status when he quipped at the 1964 opening of the downtown Music Center, "L.A. needs culture and the Pink Pussycat can't do it alone."

She was born Alice Feld to Polish immigrants in Indiana Harbor, Ind., on July 14, 1914. She moved to California when she married a doctor. The marriage didn't last, but she remained in Los Angeles, where she met Harry Schiller. They were married in the mid-1950s and repeated their vows several times over the next 30 years. "He was the love of her life," her niece said.

In a 1967 article for The Times, writer Burt Prelutsky described the well-matched couple: "If Harry is easygoing and eternally good-natured, Alice is determined and ambitious. He's the perennial father of the bride; she's the eternal mother-in-law. They make an unbeatable team."

Their club arrived at a time when America's sexual mores were loosening. Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine was nearing 1 million in circulation and the first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960. When the Pink Pussycat opened the following year, it quickly drew national attention. A feature in Time magazine in 1961 focused on the club's striptease school, run by Sally Marr, mother of comedian Lenny Bruce, who taught such courses as "The History and Theory of the Striptease" and "Dynamic Mammary, Navel and Pelvis Rotation." Along with the intricate moves, the Pussycats were taught not to fraternize with the customers or to touch themselves while performing their dances.

Schiller schooled the waitresses herself, giving tips on personal grooming and beauty. "I've probably glamorized 1,000 pussycats. Twenty of my pussycats married multimillionaires," she told The Times in 1967.

Schiller and her husband drove a pink Cadillac and a pink Rolls-Royce, which bore the words "Follow Us to the Pink Pussycat." She knew Mayor Sam Yorty, who made her an official city hostess. She was a mystery guest on the TV game show "What's My Line?" and stumped the panelists, Feld said, because she looked more like a socialite than a striptease operator.

When the Pink Pussycat folded in the late 1970s, Schiller turned it into the discotheque Peanuts, which broke ground by welcoming gays and lesbians. It was succeeded in the late 1980s by Club 7969. Its sale last year ended the family's nearly half-century in the nightclub business.

In addition to her niece, Schiller is survived by a grandnephew, Alexander Wolf Levy.

Funeral services will be held Sunday at Mount Sinai Memorial Park, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles. Memorial donations may be sent to the City of Hope in memory of her nephew Joshua Solomon Feld.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

 

[phrodeau]

Died December 17, 2009

By BRUCE WEBER
Published: December 20, 2009

Dan O’Bannon, whose screenplays for “Alien,” “Total Recall,” “The Return of the Living Dead” and other films made him a cult hero among science fiction aficionados, died on Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 63.


The Writers Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn’s disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O’Bannon endured for 30 years, his wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O’Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he and the director John Carpenter, students at the time at the University of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film “Dark Star,” which was released as a feature in 1974.

After working as a computer animator for the director George Lucas on “Star Wars” and trying, unsuccessfully, to develop a film based on the Frank Herbert novel “Dune,” Mr. O’Bannon created the story of “Alien” with the screenwriter Ronald Shusett and wrote the screenplay on his own.

The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, is about a spaceship with a vicious monster loose onboard. (The creature begins as a parasite that explodes from a crew member’s chest.) It became a box office hit, a classic of science fiction and horror, and the progenitor of a lucrative Hollywood franchise, with its several sequels.

“I love gore films and I grew up with ’50s monster movies,” Mr. O’Bannon told the journal Cinefantastique in 1979, speaking of the film’s origins. “The idea for the monster in ‘Alien’ originally came from a stomach ache I had.”

In 1985 Mr. O’Bannon wrote and directed “The Return of the Living Dead,” part homage to the George Romero zombie film “Night of the Living dead” and part genre spoof. In 1990 he teamed with Mr. Shusett again, among others, to write “Total Recall,” a violent, futuristic tale set partly on Earth and partly on Mars and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone.

Daniel Thomas O’Bannon was born in St. Louis on Sept. 30, 1946. He attended Washington University in St. Louis and MacMurray College in Abilene, Tex., before earning an M.F.A. from U.S.C.

His other screenwriting credits include “Blue Thunder” (1983); “Lifeforce” (1985) and “Invaders From Mars” (1986), both directed by Tobe Hooper (who directed “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Poltergeist”); “Screamers” (1995); and “Bleeders” (1997).

He also directed “The Resurrected” (1992), based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft, whom Mr. O’Bannon called “the greatest horror writer who ever lived.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Adam.

Alas, poor Pinback.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Vic Chesnutt Confirmed Dead

The New York Times confirmed on Friday that singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt has indeed passed away at the age of 45, following a brief coma that was the result of an overdose on muscle relaxers earlier this week. Family spokesperson, Jem Cohen, did not specify if the overdose was intentional but Chesnutt, a paraplegic who often sang about death, had admitted in interviews that he had attempted suicide several times before. A tweet written on Thursday morning by his good friend and long-time collaborator, Kristen Hersh, states in part, "this time, he left a note."

Entrenched in the Athens, Ga. music scene, Chesnutt was a songwriter's songwriter; he first earned the admiration of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe in the late '80s and since then was praised by countless other notable songwriters and musicians, many of which eventually collaborated with him. His most recent band included members of Fugazi, Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra, but over the years he collaborated with members of Widespread Panic, Cracker, Lambchop, Throwing Muses, M. Ward, Cowboy Junkies and many more.

Chesnutt's national profile was elevated in 1996 when his songs were covered by an impressive list of contributors -- including Madonna, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage -- for a Sweet Relief compilation album that benefited musicians without health insurance. Ironically and tragically, Chesnutt had health insurance and wasn't personally eligible for financial help from Sweet Relief, despite struggling to cover his significant health care costs. A car accident at the age of 18 left Chesnutt in a wheelchair, with a lifetime of complications.

He told Spinner earlier this year that "right now, I am in huge trouble in that the hospital is suing me for $35,000 for payment, which is terrifying -- and the rub is that I have health insurance." His heath care debt reportedly totaled more than $50,000 and his struggles with suicide and substance abuse have been well documented.

Chesnutt's catalog features 13 studio albums, including this year's critically acclaimed 'At the Cut,' which he was recently out on the road supporting. In a live review of one of those shows, the New York Times noted that Chesnutt's songs were contemplations on "not just mortality but also the broader inevitability of collapse and decay."

In an interview with Spinner this past September, Chesnutt admitted that, as an artist, he was difficult to pigeonhole into one specific genre. "I was labeled as alt-country for years but I never saw that at all," he said. "I like it when you're confused by an artist for a minute. I like it when everything popping out of your iPod from a band is not the same crap over and over. That makes me happy."

Vic Chesnutt -- both the man and his music -- made many people happy. We will remember him for that, and his songs will continue to give us moments of catharsis and release.

 

[Batch]

Dennis Brutus dies at 85; South African poet, political prisoner fought apartheid

The writer, imprisoned at Robben Island with Mandela, remained an activist well after the fall of their country's racist system.
By Associated Press

December 27, 2009
Dennis Brutus, the South African poet and former political prisoner who fought apartheid in words and deeds and remained an activist well after the fall of his country's racist system, has died. He was 85.

Brutus died in his sleep today at his home in Cape Town, according to his publisher, Haymarket Books. No cause of death was given.

Brutus was an anti-apartheid activist imprisoned at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela in the mid-1960s. His activism led Olympic officials to ban South Africa from competition from 1964 until apartheid ended nearly 30 years later.

Born Nov. 28, 1924, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, Brutus was the son of South Africans who moved back to their native country when he was still a boy. He majored in English at Fort Hare University, which he attended on full scholarship. By his early 20s, he was politically involved and helped create the South African Sports Assn., formed in protest against the official white sports association.

Brutus was banned from South Africa in 1961, fled to Mozambique, but was deported back to South Africa and nearly died after he was shot trying to escape police custody and was forced to wait for an ambulance that would accept blacks. His poetry collections "Sirens, Knuckles and Boots" and "Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison" were published while he was incarcerated.

Exiled from South Africa in 1966, Brutus later moved to the United States and taught literature and African studies at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh. A distinctive figure in old age with his flowing white hair and beard, Brutus engaged in protests against world financial organizations and called for stronger action against global warming.

Over the years, he completed more than a dozen collections of poetry, including "A Simple Lust," "Stubborn Hope" and "Salutes and Censures." In 2006, Haymarket published a compilation of his work, “Poetry and Protest."

He received numerous honorary prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture. But in 2007 he rejected induction into the South Africa Sports Hall of Fame. "It is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time -- indeed long past time -- for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation," he said.

Brutus is survived by his wife and eight children.

 

[Batch]

Esther Chavez dies at 76; activist decried murders of women in Ciudad Ju

Chavez drew attention to the 1990s killings of several hundred women, which were largely ignored by Mexican authorities, and founded her region's first rape crisis center.
Esther Chavez

By Tracy Wilkinson

December 27, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City - Esther Chavez, a vocal champion of human rights who against enormous odds drew attention to the killings and rapes of hundreds of women in the violent border city of Juarez, has died. She was 76.

Chavez died early Christmas morning of cancer, her hometown newspaper El Diario reported Saturday on its website.

Chavez is widely acknowledged as a pioneer, the first activist to document and decry the 1990s murders of several hundred women. Most were young, poor workers in U.S.-owned assembly plants in the border city whose deaths were largely ignored by authorities.

A former accountant for an American food-processing company, Chavez began compiling files in 1993 on women whose bloodied, battered bodies kept turning up in the harsh desert surrounding Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. She badgered officials, pressured police, comforted victims' families, led street demonstrations and, in 1999, founded the first rape crisis center in the region.

Juarez politicians were dismissive; they didn't want to do anything that might damage business with the maquiladoras, or assembly plants clustered mainly along the border, and their U.S. and Japanese owners. Police, notoriously corrupt, were uninterested. Most of the dead women were migrants from other parts of Mexico, so they had no local family to advocate on their behalf. They had only Chavez.

Early in her activism, Chavez speculated that the tendency of the maquiladoras to hire women (smaller hands were better for the assembly work, it was argued by the companies) may have contributed to a macho backlash that explains some of the killings.

"Women are occupying the space of men in a culture of absolute dominance of men over women," she told The Times in 1999. "This has to provoke misogyny."

For years, it seemed in Ciudad Juarez that men could snatch young women from the streets with impunity, rape and kill them and suffer no consequence. The phenomenon came to be known as "femicide" -- woman-killing. Thanks largely to Chavez and a few other activists, a handful of arrests were made over the years. But the killing never really stopped, and most cases went unsolved.

Petite and persistent, Chavez opened Casa Amiga in 1999 for rape victims, and it later developed into a center for women suffering from domestic abuse. She remained highly critical of the complicity or inefficiency of police and other authorities.

In 2008, Chavez won Mexico's National Human Rights Award, and just a few months ago she blasted the decision of President Felipe Calderon to name Arturo Chavez Chavez as national attorney general. Arturo Chavez Chavez had served as state prosecutor overseeing Ciudad Juarez at the height of the killings.

Early this month, in what may have felt like vindication for Esther Chavez, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Mexico violated human rights conventions by failing to adequately investigate the murders of three women in Ciudad Juarez in 2001. The court ordered Mexico to pay more than $200,000 to each of the victims' families.

Lydia Cacho, a journalist and activist who has gained fame denouncing pedophile and human-trafficking rings, said Chavez was a "nurturing and loving mother" for a generation of human rights defenders, and an "international beacon" shedding light on the brutalities of Ciudad Juarez.

"She was the one who showed us the way," Cacho wrote Saturday in El Universal newspaper. "It was Esther who intuited that the symbolic sewers [of Mexico] were not underground, under the streets, but were the institutions of the Mexican state -- men capable of murdering for pleasure and for power."

Chavez was the model for a character in "El Traspatio," a movie about the killings of women in Juarez that is Mexico's Academy Award entry this year. In the movie, a middle-aged social worker hounds the city police, showing up periodically with boxes full of photos of dead women and meticulous reports on their lives and deaths.

Chavez was born in 1933 in the city of Chihuahua, in the state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juarez is also located. She moved to Juarez in the 1980s.

On the Casa Amiga website, Chavez wrote about her decision to fight on behalf of women.

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth," she wrote. "Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice" to be heard.

"This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't . . . and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."

Survivors include a brother. A memorial service was held Saturday and another will take place today in the offices of Casa Amiga. Chavez will be cremated today, El Diario reported.

 

[Batch]

Percy Sutton, Eminent Black Politician, Dies at 89

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: December 27, 2009

Percy E. Sutton, who displayed fierce intelligence and exquisite polish in becoming one of the nation’s most prominent black political and business leaders, died on Saturday, The Associated Press reported. He was 89.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Mr. Sutton, center, with David N. Dinkins, left, and Charles B. Rangel at a fund-raiser for Mr. Dinkins’s campaign for mayor in 1989.

Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for Gov. David A. Paterson, confirmed Mr. Sutton’s death but said she did not know the cause, according to The A.P.

Mr. Sutton stood proudly at the center of his race’s epochal struggle for equal rights. He was arrested as a freedom rider; represented Malcolm X as young lawyer; rescued the fabled Apollo Theater in Harlem; and became a millionaire tycoon in the communications business to give public voice to African Americans.

He was also an eminent politician in New York City, rising from the Democratic clubhouses of Harlem to become the longest serving Manhattan borough president and, for more than a decade, the highest black official in the city. In 1977, he was the first seriously regarded black candidate for mayor.

His supporters saw his loss in that mayoral race as a stinging rebuff to his campaign’s strenuous efforts to build support among whites. But David N. Dinkins, who was elected the first black mayor in 1989, called Mr. Sutton’s failed bid indispensable to his own success.

“I stand on the shoulders of Percy Ellis Sutton,” Mr. Dinkins said in an interview.

Edward I. Koch, who won the 1977 mayoral vote, said only complicated political maneuvering stifled Mr. Sutton’s bid. He explained that incumbent Mayor Abraham Beame did not step aside as Mr. Sutton had expected, but ran himself, costing Mr. Sutton votes.

“I’m glad God intervened and I became mayor,” Mr. Koch said in an interview. He called Mr. Sutton “one of the smartest people I have met in politics or outside of politics.”

Mr. Sutton’s business empire included, over the years, radio stations, cable television systems and national television programs. Another business invested in Africa. Still another sold interactive technology to radio stations.

Mr. Sutton had an immaculately groomed beard and mustache; tailored clothing; and a sonorous, slightly Southern voice that prompted the nickname “wizard of ooze.” Associates called him “the chairman,” and he liked it.

Percy Ellis Sutton, the last child in a family of 15 children, was born on Nov. 24, 1920, in San Antonio, Tex. His father, Samuel Johnson Sutton, was born into slavery and became principal of a black high school. His mother, Lillian, was a teacher.

The 12 children who survived to be adults went to college, with the older ones giving financial and moral support to the younger.

S. J. Sutton, an early civil rights activist who did not use his first name for fear it would be shortened to Sambo, farmed, sold real estate and owned a mattress factory, funeral home and skating rink — in addition to being a full-time principal.

Percy milked the cows, then rode around San Antonio with his father in the same Studebaker used for funerals, distributing milk to the poor. He liked to attach strings to cans to pretend to be a radio broadcaster. He was an Eagle Scout.

At 12, he stowed away on a passenger train to Manhattan where he slept under a sign on 155th Street. Far from being angry, his family regarded him as an adventurer, he said.

His family was committed to civil rights, and he bristled at prejudice. At 13, while passing out N.A.A.C.P. leaflets in an all-white neighborhood, he was beaten by a policeman.

He took up stunt-flying on the barnstorming circuit, but gave it up after a friend crashed. He attended three traditionally black colleges without earning a degree. Their present names are Prairie View A & M University in Texas, Tuskegee University in Alabama and Hampton University in Virginia.

During World War II, he served with the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed all-black unit in the Army Air Forces, as an intelligence officer. He won combat stars in the Italian and Mediterranean theaters.

He entered Columbia Law School on the G.I. Bill on the basis of his solid grades at the colleges he attended. He transferred to Brooklyn Law School so he could work days. He worked at the post office from 4 p.m. until midnight, then as a subway train conductor until 8:30 a.m. He then reported to law school at 9:30. He kept this schedule for three years and became a lawyer.

This punishing pace so annoyed his wife, the former Leatrice O’Farrell, that she divorced him in 1950 — only to remarry him in 1952. In between, he married and divorced Eileen Clark.

Mr. Sutton’s survivors include his wife, Leatrice Sutton; a son from their marriage, Pierre; and a daughter from his second marriage, Cheryl Lynn Sutton.After graduating from law school, Mr. Sutton made what he termed “a major miscalculation.” He enlisted in the Air Force because he mistakenly thought he had flunked the bar exam.

He returned to Harlem in 1953 and opened a law practice. The initial going was tough: he had to work at supplemental jobs that included scrubbing floors.
Mr. Sutton threw himself into the civil rights movement. He represented more than 200 people arrested in Southern protests. He heard Malcolm X preaching at the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. He introduced himself, telling Malcolm he was his new lawyer.

Mr. Sutton represented Malcolm beyond his assassination in 1965, when cemeteries refused his body. Mr. Sutton arranged for his burial in Westchester County.

“Had it not been for Percy, I don’t know where Malcolm would have been buried,” Mr. Dinkins said.

Mr. Sutton represented Malcolm’s daughter Qubilah Shabazz when she was charged in 1995 with hiring a man to kill Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim leader she believed was involved in her father’s killing. Charges against her were dropped after she agreed to psychiatric treatment.

In 1997, Ms. Shabazz’s son, Malcolm, then 12, set a fire that killed his grandmother, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow. Mr. Sutton and Mr. Dinkins teamed up to represent him. At the end of each hearing, the lawyers made “a motion to hug” the boy.

Mr. Sutton took many controversial stands. When Mike Tyson, the boxer and convicted rapist, returned to Harlem from prison in 1995, Mr. Sutton was there to greet him. After the Rev. Al Sharpton refused to pay damages for slandering the prosecutor in the Tawana Brawley case, Mr. Sutton helped pay the fine. Mr. Sutton was arrested for civil disobedience in protesting the shooting and killing of Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant, by four police officers in 1999.

From the early 1950s, he worked in political campaigns, both for others and himself. Mr. Sutton lost seven times in 11 years in challenges to regular Democrats for a state assembly seat, finally winning by a slim margin in 1964. He was elected spokesman for the 13 black assemblymen.

In 1966, Mr. Sutton served as permanent chairman of the Democratic State Convention, the first time in American political history that a black had been selected as permanent chairman at a state convention.

During Mr. Sutton’s one term in the assembly, he helped establish open admissions at the city university; liberalize divorce and abortion laws; and get funding for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

In 1966, the Manhattan borough president, Constance Baker Motley, was appointed to a federal judgeship. The city council in September 1966 chose Mr. Sutton to replace her. He was elected two months later to serve the remaining three years of her term, then re-elected twice, in 1969 and 1973.

Mr. Sutton began investing in communications companies in 1971 when he and a group of prominent blacks bought The New York Amsterdam News, New York’s largest black newspaper. Critics said the borough president was using the weekly to further his own political career, but he insisted he wanted to “liberate” blacks by expanding their influence in the media.

(Skeptics couldn’t help noting that it didn’t exactly subvert Mr. Sutton’s political career when an Amsterdam News writer wrote that he had never seen “a more diligent or competent public official.”)

Mr. Sutton sold his stake in the paper in 1975, calling it “a political liability.”

In 1971, Mr. Sutton and others bought WLIB, a New York AM radio station, making it the first black-owned station in New York City. In 1974, they bought WBLS-FM, which soon became their main profit center with music that appealed to blacks, whites and others.

Mr. Sutton’s group, which he named the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation grew to own, at various times, 18 radio stations in other cities, and cable franchises in Queens and Philadelphia. Mr. Sutton’s principal partner in the various deals was Clarence B. Jones, a close associate of Martin Luther King.

In 1981, Inner City bought the Apollo, the celebrated Harlem theater famed for helping launch careers like those of Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown, at a bankruptcy sale for $225,000. Mr. Sutton presided over a $20 million renovation, which included building a cable television studio used to produce the syndicated TV program, “It’s Showtime at the Apollo.” The theater reopened in 1985.

In 1992, a non-profit group took it over after Mr. Sutton said he could no longer afford to run it. But he continued to produce a TV show, which seemed to draw on the Apollo mystique, though it was taped elsewhere. That sparked a tangled legal brouhaha, with New York State investigating members of the Apollo foundation’s board and Mr. Sutton. All were cleared of wrongdoing.

One of Mr. Sutton’s major controversies was his role in helping his friend, Charles B. Rangel, unseat Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in 1970. Ebony magazine said Mr. Sutton’s role in easing out the congressman known as “Mr. Civil Rights” — however stained he may have then been by ethics charges — “did little to endear him to blacks in New York and across the nation.”

Mr. Sutton insisted that he and Mr. Rangel were not to blame.

“We didn’t beat Adam,” he said. “The times beat Adam.”

Mr. Sutton’s great disappointment was losing his bid for mayor. He had been one of the closest allies of Mayor Beame in the mayor’s 1973 race, and had reason to hope that Mr. Beame would back his own bid in 1977.

Mr. Sutton saw his path to victory as combining minority support with the white liberals and organization Democrats who had supported Mr. Beame. But the mayor delayed in making a decision on running, causing Mr. Sutton to tell The New York Times, “It’s rather castrating to be waiting on others for your future.”

Mr. Beame finally threw his hat in the ring, but Mr. Sutton persisted in his strategy of appealing to whites by taking strong anticrime stands and championing white ethnic neighborhoods. But polls suggested that New Yorkers saw mainly the color of his skin. This, to Mr. Sutton, was “the most disheartening, deprecating, disabling experience.”

Forced to appeal mainly to minority voters, he brought in black politicians from around the nation. It wasn’t enough.

Mr. Sutton finished fifth, and Mr. Beame third. Mr. Koch defeated Mario M. Cuomo, the future governor, in a runoff.

Mr. Sutton blamed the media as much as his opponents. “It’s racism pure and simple,” he declared.

But Mr. Sutton never lost his charismatic smile. He liked to walk through the Uptown neighborhood he had first visited as a 12-year-old runaway, and greet people by name.

“Hey, Mr. Harlem!” they responded.

 

[Batch]

Knut Haugland, Kon-Tiki Crewman, Dies at 92

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 26, 2009

OSLO (AP) — A Norwegian museum official said Saturday that Knut Magne Haugland, the last of six crew members who crossed the Pacific Ocean in 1947 on board the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, had died. He was 92.

The director of the Kon-Tiki Museum, Maja Bauge, said that Mr. Haugland, a former Norwegian resistance fighter and explorer, died in an Oslo hospital on Friday.

Mr. Haugland, decorated by the British in World War II for helping prevent the German nuclear program from acquiring heavy water to make weapons, joined the expedition of a Norwegian anthropologist, Thor Heyerdahl, as a radio operator.

The Kon-Tiki team sailed the raft with basic equipment 4,900 miles to Polynesia from Peru in 101 days to prove Mr. Heyerdahl’s theory that ancient mariners may have migrated across ocean stretches.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Avenged Sevenfold Drummer James 'The Rev' Sullivan Found Dead at 28

California rockers Avenged Sevenfold have confirmed the passing of founding member and drummer James 'The Rev' Sullivan. He was found dead at his home on Dec. 28, and police believe he died from natural causes. Sullivan was 28 years old.

"It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we tell you of the passing today of Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan," the band says in a statement confirming their drummer's death. "Jimmy was not only one of the world's best drummers, but more importantly he was our best friend and brother. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jimmy's family and we hope that you will respect their privacy during this difficult time."

The Orange County Register was the first media outlet to report on Sullivan's unexpected death. Police were notified by firefighters who'd responded to Sullivan's home at approximately 1 PM PT. He is survived by a wife.

The Orange County Coroner's Office will be looking into what exactly caused the death. Avenged Sevenfold recently finished tracking their fifth album. In 2005, the band broke out from the underground with their major label debut 'City of Evil.'

Fans of the band took to social networking sites late Monday to express their condolences. Papa Roach, via Facebook, commented that it was "a sad day for rock and roll" and said Sullivan "would be greatly missed."

http://missucha.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/therev19.jpg

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Erik Gates dies in a freak accident

Erik Gates, the 47-year-old rocketry expert who appeared on Discovery Channel's 'MythBusters' died Sunday in a freak accident.

Gather reports that Gates fell 30 feet to his death through a rooftop skylight on which he and a colleague were working. Gates suffered blunt force chest injuries, but was still talking after the fall, according to the report. He died later at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Gates owned Gateco Electric and he and the company's CFO appeared as an amateur expert. On the show, myths, rumors and other pop cultural phemon are put to the test, such as whether a banana peel can actually make a person slip. Team experiments are then labeled as "busted," "plausible" or "confirmed."

The show has since expressed its condolences on Twitter.

"Team MB wishes to express our deepest sympathies on the passing of our beloved rocket expert, Erik," the show wrote. "You were an honorary MythBuster and will be sorely missed."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Mega-savant Kim Peek

Kim Peek, one of Utah's most celebrated and unusual citizens, died December 19th at the age of 58 from an apparent heart attack.

Kim first leapt into the national and then international spotlight 21 years ago when he was acknowledged as one of the primary inspirations for Dustin Hoffman's character in that year's hit movie, "Rain Man," about a savant.

A savant is an eminent scholar. Scientists and researchers called Kim a "mega-savant" because of his phenomenal knowledge in 15 broad categories, including math, literature, sports, classical music, history and geography. His brain was a literal file cabinet, his prodigious memory photographic, and he stored everything from ZIP codes and road maps, military commanders, a perpetual calendar, every tidbit of sports minutiae he ever read and more. He memorized the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants in their entirety, along with more than 12,000 other books, his dad said.

But unlike a file cabinet you rifle through to find a folder, he had instant recall and could dazzle audiences as he answered their questions on almost any topic. An acquaintance could name a date and he could rattle off day of the week it fell on and quite possibly recite other historical events that occurred that day, if those facts had caught his fancy. For many years, Kim kept the payroll for a center that served people who had disabilities, doing all the calculations in his head.

But born with no connective tissue to bring the left and right sides of his brain together, he was unable to filter information and often had to twist a cord or hum to himself so he could block out distractions. And simple tasks like dressing himself or setting the table eluded him. His father, Fran Peek, said Kim was 16 before he mastered stairs.

Most surprising to many of the scientists who studied the workings and anatomy of his brain, including researchers from NASA, was the fact that he just kept learning as he got older. In recent years, Fran Peek said Kim learned to play the piano and to tell jokes — unexpected because he had always been very literal.

Much of what scientists learned about Kim came in recent years and they on occasion revised what they believed about him. For example, they discovered he was not autistic. Scientists also learned that Kim could hold a book within eight inches of his face and read the left page with his left eye, the right with his right eye at the same time. He devoured books that way.

One of Kim's favorite locations on Earth — he and his dad traveled just shy of 3 million miles and talked to nearly 60 million people worldwide — was the public library in Salt Lake City, where he amused himself by memorizing phone books and Cole directories. He also loved to pore over maps and if someone named a city, he'd list businesses, area codes, ZIP codes and historical data.

Kim and his dad first met screenwriter Barry Morrow at a convention in the '80s and within two years Morrow had written and sold the script for "Rain Man." To prepare for the role, Hoffman spent time with Kim and with other savants. Morrow later gave Kim the Oscar he won for Best Screenplay and Kim carried it with him on his travels.

Kim was the subject of 22 documentaries and more than 4,000 articles, as well as two books by his father. Readers responded to a recent profile in the Deseret News with dozens of fond recollections of his visits to local schools and service clubs. Monday, blogs lamented the death of a man who was both affectionate and who did everything his own unique way, whether he was "playing" with you by reciting related items and waiting to see if you could find the connection ("They're all on 17th Street in Idaho Falls," he'd say) or presenting you with only the violin's part in a musical composition.

Kim is survived by his father, Fran, his mother, Jeanne Willey Peek Buchi, and siblings Brian Peek and Alison Peek.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Jenny,

FYI, this is Eric Gates.

http://www.huliq.com/files/imagecache/article_main/files/ErikGates.jpg

I believe the photo you had was of MB co-host Adam Savage. Freaked me out at first.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Jenny,

FYI, this is Eric Gates.

http://www.huliq.com/files/imagecache/article_main/files/ErikGates.jpg

I believe the photo you had was of MB co-host Adam Savage. Freaked me out at first.

Thanks, Colonel.

Didn't mean to alarm anyone, but they kinda resemble each other.

 

[Igor_1066]

There are a ton of recaps out there right now. This one is quite comprehensive and very readable:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tallulah-morehead/dead-folks-2009-the-misse_b_409281.html

 

[CMatthews]

What is a Cemetary? There is no definition for it...

Carolyn

Do you mean Cemetery?

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Arnold Stang, Milquetoast Actor, Dies at 91

Arnold Stang, a character actor whose bespectacled, owlish face and nasal urban twang gave him a singular and recognizable persona, whether on radio or television, in the movies or in advertisements, or even in cartoons, died in December in Newton, Mass. He was 91 and lived in Needham, Mass.

The cause was pneumonia, said his son, David.

Mr. Stang considered himself a dramatic actor who could play serious roles. But even he was aware that with his signature heavy glasses and a manner that could be eagerly solicitous, despondently whiny or dare-you-to-hit-me pugnacious, his forte was comedy.

Like Wally Cox, who was a friend, and Don Knotts, Mr. Stang was a natural for roles requiring a milquetoast, a pest or a nerd. At 5 foot 3 and never much more than 100 pounds, he once said of himself, “I look like a frightened chipmunk who’s been out in the rain too long.” And in a story he frequently told, after an auto accident in 1959 that left him needing extensive plastic surgery, he said to the doctor, “For God’s sake, don’t make me look pretty.”

His memorable moments as an actor were oddly varied signposts of popular culture. He was the spokesman for Chunky, the candy bar, in the 1950s, delivering the slogan: “Chunky! What a chunk o’ chocolate!”

In Otto Preminger’s 1955 film about drug addiction, “The Man With the Golden Arm,” he played Frank Sinatra’s pal Sparrow in a performance that is often cited as a precursor of Dustin Hoffman’s turn as Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy.”

On “Top Cat,” the animated television series of the early 1960s, he was the voice of T. C., a k a Top Cat himself, the leader of a mischievous cat gang. (The character was based on Phil Silvers’s Sergeant Bilko.)

He was one of two gas station attendants (Marvin Kaplan was the other) who witness the destruction of their station by Jonathan Winters in the 1963 lunatic film comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Most sources indicate that Mr. Stang was born in Chelsea, Mass., in 1925, but according to his family, though he had relatives in Chelsea, he was born in Manhattan on Sept. 28, 1918. His father was a lawyer until the 1929 stock market crash and earned a living afterward as a salesman.

The Chelsea story was one Mr. Stang perpetuated himself; he told interviewers that he got his first job in radio in 1934 at age 9 after he wrote to “Let’s Pretend,” a New York children’s radio show, and asked for an audition. Told he could audition when he was next in New York, he took the bus from Boston, alone, the following Saturday and was hired.

“We were married 60 years and I never managed to get him to correct that,” his wife, JoAnne Stang, said in an interview.

The truth, Ms. Stang said, was that her husband grew up mostly in Brooklyn and graduated from New Utrecht High School. He wrote the note asking for an audition from Brooklyn, and he was older than 9.

He began his show business career as a teenager — his first radio appearances were on the shows “The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour” and “Let’s Pretend” — and he went on to perform on dozens of radio programs in the 1930s and ’40s, including soap operas, mysteries and comedies, and was often called on to play more than one role.

He was probably best known at the time for “The Goldbergs,” the long-running family series set in Bronx on which he played the character Seymour Fingerhood, the teenage neighbor to the title family, and later as a sidekick to stars like Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and especially Milton Berle.

Mr. Stang was a regular on “The Henry Morgan Show,” a showcase for Morgan’s astringent satire, often playing a complaining, goofball New Yorker named Gerard who traded banter and one-liners with the host. After Berle moved his radio show to television, Mr. Stang appeared from 1953 to 1955, bringing along his character, Francis, a pain-in-the-neck stagehand who bugged the star relentlessly.

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1949 (Wally Cox, a skilled goldsmith, made their wedding rings, she said), and his son, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., Mr. Stang is survived by a daughter, Deborah Stang, of Brighton, Mass., and two granddaughters.

Mr. Stang landed on Broadway three times, the last being a revival of “The Front Page” in 1969. He was a regular on the 1960s comedy “Broadside,” a short-lived, distaff version of “McHale’s Navy,” and was a guest star on numerous series, including “Bonanza,” “Batman” and “The Cosby show.”

He was also the voice of many cartoon characters, including Nurtle the Turtle in the 1965 film “Pinocchio in Outer Space.” Other film credits include Otto Preminger’s 1968 gangster comedy “Skidoo,” with Jackie Gleason; “Hercules in New York” (1970), a comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger; and “Dennis the Menace” (1993), with Walter Matthau.

“He loved the cartoons, and he liked doing commercials, too,” Ms. Stang said of her husband. “But most of all, he loved radio. It offered him such a span of roles.”

http://www.derbydeadpool.co.uk/images/celebs/s/stanga.jpg

 

[KindaKinky]

What is a Cemetary? There is no definition for it...

Carolyn

Do you mean Cemetery?

Yes, I meant Cemetery. I have been corrected on this multiple times. However do not let Chat board cacography distract you from the purpose of this thread: to note certain passages of notable persons.

 

[Peregrinator]

RIP Edwin Krebs

Edwin G. Krebs, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for first describing the process of reversible protein phosphorylation, died at 91 on December 21 of complications from heart failure.

A longtime professor at the University of Washington, Krebs shared the Nobel with his colleague Edmond Fischer. Krebs' research served as "major foundation stones for what is now the 'signaling field,'" Bruce Kemp, a former postdoc of Krebs and professor at St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Australia, wrote in an email to The Scientist.



Krebs (not to be confused with the 1953 Nobel Laureate Hans Adolf Krebs, not related) was born in Lansing, Iowa in 1918 and spent much of his childhood in Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois for undergraduate studies and Washington University for medical school. There Krebs studied with Carl and Gerty Cori, who won the Nobel Prize in 1947 for discovering phosphorylase, the enzyme that catalyzes the production of glucose-1-phosphate from glycogen.

In 1948, Krebs joined the biochemistry department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Aside from an eight-year stint at the University of California, Davis, Krebs remained at Washington his entire career, the latter half as a member of the department of pharmacology.

After his arrival in Washington, Krebs paired up with his UW colleague Edmond Fischer to study phosphorylation reactions in rabbit skeletal muscle. They found that phosphorylase kinase and phosphatase were responsible for adding or removing, respectively, a phosphate from phosphorylase and controlling the enzyme's activity. "Because phosphorylase was calcium-dependent this provided a link between muscle contraction and metabolism," Kemp wrote.

After illustrating reversible phosphorylation, Krebs' lab went on to discover cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase.

Krebs moved to UC Davis to chair the department of biological chemistry in 1968 and stayed until 1977. During this time, Krebs's lab discovered that protein kinases determined their particular substrates based on surrounding amino acid residues, particularly arginine residues.

Twelve years after he left UC Davis and returned to the University of Washington, Krebs won the 1989 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. Three years later he and Fischer won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for contributions to "the opening up of novel insight into basic protein regulations at all levels and in all cells."

"That was the most amazing experience because of the outpouring of enthusiasm for his winning the award," Lee Graves, who was a postdoc with Krebs during that time, told The Scientist. Krebs and Fischer "really were the fathers of this field."

Graves, who is now a professor at the University of North Carolina, said he considers Krebs an academic grandfather, because his father, Donald Graves, was a graduate student with Krebs during the 1950s. "I really was fortunate to have had that opportunity to spend [time] with him," Graves said. "To hear some of the stories of when they first worked on phosphorylation--there was a lot of skepticism, and how much an effort it was."

Arthur Edelman, a former postdoc of Krebs who is now a professor at the State University of New York, Buffalo, said Krebs continued to do important work after his prizes. "Clearly he was well advanced in his career, while other investigators might be slowing down at this point." But in the 1990s, Krebs turned his attention to the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascade, including characterizing parts of the cascade and exploring the pathway's relationship to other kinase pathways. "It struck me how great this work was," Edelman said.

For nearly three decades he held editorial positions for the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He is survived by his wife Deedy and three children.

Krebs was known as a hands-off advisor who was judicious with giving out compliments. "He was not given to effusive statements," Edelman said. Still, he was "immensely likeable" and admired by his lab members, Kemp wrote. "The only time Ed ever came into the laboratory on a Saturday, we were so pleased to be noticed for our diligence," Kemp wrote, "but it came with an unexpected cost. He was there to centrifuge some terrible homemade wine and we had to taste it in little glass beakers."

Krebs was also a cautious and thoughtful scientist who did not get carried away by the excitement of discovery, Edelman said. "What happens in science is we all get enamored of our own work...and Ed would ask, 'how important is this really?' He wasn't selling his own work, but thoughtfully evaluating it."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Remy Zero Drummer Gregory Slay Dies at 40

Former Remy Zero drummer Gregory Slay passed away New Year's Day following a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis. He was 40.

In spite of the illness, Slay found immediate success with the Birmingham, Ala.-based band when the group's demo famously landed in the hands of Radiohead, who were so impressed they invited Remy Zero to join them on their 'Bends' tour. From there, Remy Zero went on to record three albums, scoring hit singles with 1998's 'Prophecy' and 2001's 'Save Me.' The latter would be their last hit; they disbanded in 2003. While there was talk of reuniting in 2006, the band decided to make the hiatus permanent and continue with their individual projects.

For Slay, that meant working on his own music as Sleepwell and various other projects, including his Emmy-nominated work on the theme song for the television series 'Nip/Tuck.' He also worked frequently with his former Remy Zero band mates, most recently teaming up with guitarist Jeffrey Cain on an album produced for Mobile, Ala. musician Eliot Morris called 'All Things In Time.'

The strong bond between the group is evidenced by the statement they issued on Slay's passing.

"Our beloved friend, partner, brother, master musician, beautiful artist -- passed away this morning, January 1, 2010. He was in a peaceful place and surrounded by his family. We are so grateful for the time we were allowed with each other and for the wonderful opportunity to create with him for so many years. Gregory inspired all who had the chance to see him perform, to hear the music that he made or just to be around his bountiful spirit. He will be greatly missed.With our deepest love ... Jeffrey Cain, Cedric LeMoyne, Cinjun Tate and Shelby Tate -- the members of Remy Zero."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Tila Tequila's Fiancee Casey Johnson Dies

Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson, who was said to be engaged to reality star Tila Tequila, was found dead at the age of 30 on Monday morning in Los Angeles. A spokesman for her father, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, confirmed the family was in mourning in a statement.

A law enforcement source has told TMZ that Johnson may have died days ago.

Tequila all but confirmed the news earlier in the evening with a post on Twitter, saying "R.I.P. my Angel ... we will Marry when I see U in Heaven." Johnson became a familiar name thanks to her relationship with Tequila.

At first, Tequila responded to the swirling news reports of Johnson's death by saying "I just got news that my fiance is not dead but currently in a coma!!!"

Johnson had reportedly battled with substance abuse for years.

In November, Johnson was arrested for grand theft after she allegedly stole a handful of items -- including lingerie, jewelry and electronics -- from a former girlfriend. She was also in a protracted battle with her mother, Sale Johnson, for custody of an adopted daughter.

PopEater's Rob Shuter, who knew Johnson, says he last saw her eight months ago, and that "she was a lost little girl who just wanted to be loved. Unlike Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, who have found happiness, Casey always seemed a troubled soul."

Shuter says that Johnson "had a difficult relationship with her family huge wealth -- loving the life it gave her but making everything she did feel worthless. She had the 'why bother' attitude. Nothing she ever did could live up to what her family had done. She once described her family money as the 'golden handcuffs,' which made me really sad. She was the ultimate little lost rich girl."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'ABC's Extreme Makeover' Winner Buried

Church Travels 200 Miles To Say Goodbye

BRANDON, Miss. -- The winner of "ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" was laid to rest at her church Saturday.

Sabrena Jones died last week from surgery complications.

ABC producers said they selected Jones for the show in 2007 because of her devoted life to others.

Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people packed Crossgates Baptist Church in Brandon.

Main Street Church members drove from the Mississippi Coast to pay their respects. They spoke highly of Jones because she helped build another church for them, after the building was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

Her church members say getting new home didn't change her.

"To be around Sabrina was to feel the love of God... Jesus walked like 10 feet in front of her," Tim Johnson said. "Whenever she came into the room there was a radias of God's love around her... And whenever she would greet you, she would greet you with a blessing."

Even U.S. Representative, Gregg Harper had kind words.

"She would always come up to me and hug my neck... She would say to me, 'hello precious child of God'"

Congressman Harper described his fellow church member as "one of the most giving people" he'd ever known.

Sabrena Jones is survived by her two sons and daughter.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Art Bartlett, Founder of Century 21 Real Estate Franchise, Dies at 76

Art Bartlett, the founder of real estate giant Century 21, died in Coronado, Calif. on Dec. 31. He was 76 years old.

Bartlett changed the competitive landscape of the residential real estate business. His vision helped local residential real estate brokers compete toe-to-toe with major regional and national chains. With this mission, his business thrived.

Bartlett opened his first Century 21 office with his business partner, Marshall Fisher, in Santa Ana, Calif. in 1971. In just six years, he and his partner had signed franchise agreements with more than 6,000 brokers. By 1978, Century 21's licensing fees and its share of brokers' commissions brought in $23 million.

By persuading independent real estate brokers to join the Century 21 umbrella and share advertising, training, contracting and selling, he enabled independent agents to compete against major players both nationally and internationally. Without a nationwide organization, local real estate outfits have little chance to compete for corporate listings and other major contracts. Instead they must depend solely on the business they can generate locally. by being featured in Century 21 ads and being part of the company's network, local brokers were able to get national attention.

In 1979, Bartlett sold Century 21 to Trans World Corp. for $89 million. Today, Century 21 is a subsidiary of the Realogy Corp. and has more than 120,000 sales agents in 7,700 franchise offices across the globe, including Britain, Japan and Brazil.

Three years after Bartlett sold Century 21to Trans World, he started a second franchise called Mr. Build International. But the home improvement company never quite got off the ground and closed its doors in 1980. Bartlett also made several real estate investments including a Tustin, Calif. shopping center, but he never got involved in a national company again.

Bartlett was born in Glens Falls, NY, on Nov. 26, 1933. He was one of three children of Raymond and Thelma Williams Bartlett. His father was a truck driver and his mother was a hairdresser. The real estate bug bit Bartlett in 1960 and he became a sales agent for Forest Olson in the San Fernando Valley, which at that time was the largest residential real estate company in the state. He is survived by his second wife Nancy Sanders and daughter, his brother Ray and his sister Millie Schneider, as well as a stepson, granddaughter and three step-grandchildren.