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Gary Bertini - (77) Israeli conductor and composer who played a significant role in shaping the musical life of Israel, who was a former music director of the Israel Chamber Ensemble and the Jerusalem Symphony and held posts with the Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Opera, the Frankfurt Opera, the Detroit Symphony, and the Rome Opera, died of lymphatic cancer in Tel Hashomer, Israel on March 17, 2005.
John Box - (85) Oscar-winning art director and production designer who re-created wintry Russia in midsummer Spain for “Doctor Zhivago,” winning the Academy Award for his work on that film as well as on “Lawrence of Arabia”, “ Oliver!,” and “Nicholas & Alexandra,” and who also won three British Film Academy Awards, died in Leatherhead, Surrey, England of natural causes associated with aging on March 7, 2005.
Carolyn Coates - (77) Actress who portrayed such strong women characters as Madam Irma in The Balcony and Hecuba in The Trojan Women at the Circle in the Square in NYC. She was also known for her roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard. In 1986, Coates took a nine-year sabbatical to volunteer in hospitals and on hot lines for the AIDS Project in Los Angeles and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York. She died of cancer in Branford, Connecticut, March 28, 2005.
Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. - (67) Attorney who was perhaps best known for his work as a defense attorney in the O.J. Simpson case and garnering him a not guilty verdict-including using the phrase “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”, who gained attention early in his career as an advocate for those who were the victims of police abuse, working hard to create changes in the Los Angeles police department, who was a dogged attorney Black Panther Pratt, who was convicted in 1972 of murdering a schoolteacher at a Santa Monica tennis court-eventually getting his conviction overturned in 1997, died of a brain tumor in Los Angeles on March 29, 2005.
Harold (Wright) Cruse - (89) Social critic who did not pull punches and who was perhaps best known for his collection of essays “The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual “, who used writing to explore issues of social justice and equality; relationships between blacks and Jews , who explored the unresolved race relationships in the United States, and who was fascinated by the commonality in the arts and social change, died of congestive heart failure in Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 26, 2005.
Jacqueline “Jackie” Donahue - (31) Half-sister of Grammy-winning rapper Nelly who worked as his stylist and was the inspiration for a campaign called “Jes Us 4 Jackie” which sought to find bone marrow donors for Donahue and others and to raise awareness about bone marrow donations, died of leukemia in St. Louis, Missouri on March 24, 2005.
Don Durant - (72) Actor who starred as gunslinger-turned-sheriff “Johnny Ringo” in the 1950s and also wrote and sang the television show_s theme song, who also appeared on the “Jack Benny Show,” “The Red Skelton Show,” and later worked in real estate and financial management, died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Orange County, California on March 15, 2005.
Jason Evers - (83) Actor who got his start in the Western series “Wrangler”, but who was best known for his role in the 1963 cult film “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”, and who was also in the film “Pretty Boy Floyd” and who remained a popular television guest star into the 1980’s, died of heart failure in Los Angeles on March 13, 2005.
Jetseta (Marrie) Gage - (10) Ten year-old girl who was known for her love of talking, kindness to others and her sunny personality but who suffered from a variety of physical and mental impairments, was allegedly abducted by Roger Bentley, a family acquaintance and registered sex offender, while her mother was at school at a nearby college, and whose body was found on March 27, 2005, and whose alleged abductor is awaiting trial on charges of second degree sexual-abuse charges.
Anthony George - (84) Actor who was perhaps best known for his work in the television shows Checkmate and The Untouchables, who got his start in the 1950’s doing bit parts in movies, including The Ten Commandments, and then who later took on roles in soap operas including “Search for Tomorrow" from 1970 to 1975 and Dr. Will Vernon in "One Life to Live" from 1977 to 1984, died of lung disease in Los Angeles on March 16, 2005.
Paul Henning - (93) Creator of the hit TV show “The Beverly Hillbillies,” who based the show on his encounters with residents of the Ozarks during camping trips as a youth and also wrote the show’s theme song, who also created “Petticoat Junction,” wrote for “The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show,” and wrote for numerous films, died in Burbank, California on March 25, 2005.
Paul Hester - (46) Drummer for the Australian rock band Crowded House, also known for his work in the New Zealand new wave group Split Enz in the early 1980s. Hester and Split Enz singer Neil Finn formed Crowded House in ’85, along with bass player Nick Seymour. It became one of Australia's most successful bands in the late '80s and early '90s, with international hits such as "Don't Dream It's Over," "Weather with You," and "Chocolate Cake". Hester apparently hanged himself in a park near his home in the southern city of Melbourne. The date is that of the body’s discovery, March 26, 2005.
Grant Johannesen - (83) Pianist best known for his performances of music by French composers. Johannesen went to New York to study with pianist and composer Robert Casadesus at age 17. He studied composition with Roger Sessions and Nadia Boulanger. His fame grew while touring with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos, as well as with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell. Despite being based in New York City for most of his life, Johannesen always maintained close ties to his hometown of Salt Lake City and the Utah Symphony. One of the last projects he completed was "Mormoniana," a piano suite by 16 composers who share roots in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Johannesen died while visiting friends in Berlin, apparently of natural causes, March 27, 2005.
Ken Johnson - (53) Drummer known as "The Snake", who worked for such acts as Ike & Tina Turner, the Steve Miller Band, Kenny Neal, and bluesmen James Cotton. Known for chomping on his trademark Juicy Fruit gum and for keeping the cymbals high to accommodate his long arms. Johnson played with the James Cotton Blues Band for 13 years, and recorded two albums with the Steve Miller Band ("Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book of Dreams"). He also played with the Chi-Lites at President Nixon's inauguration, and once traveled to Africa to perform at the request of the State Department. He died from complications of diabetes in Jonesboro, Georgia, March 19, 2005.
David Kossoff - (85) Actor best known for his role as Alf Larkin in the British television series “The Larkins,” who brought an amiable, soft-spoken manner to all his work on stage or screen as both an actor and writer, and who also was popular for telling Bible stories on radio and television, died in London, England on March 23, 2005.
Julian “Bud” Lesser - (90) TV and film producer and the son of famed Tarzan producer Sol Lesser, who produced “Massacre River,” “The Saint’s Return,” and the 1950s TV series “Bold Journey,” died in Rancho Mirage, California on March 22, 2005.
Barney Martin - (82) Film, TV, and stage actor who became known to millions of TV viewers in the 1990s as Jerry Seinfeld’s dad on the popular “Seinfeld” show, who was an NYC police detective who used humor to spice up speeches for deputy commissioners when he started in show business by writing on the side in the 1950s for “Name That Tune” and “The Steve Allen Show,” and who appeared in numerous films including “Arthur,” and “The Producers,” as well as in the original production of the Broadway musical “Chicago,” died of cancer in Studio City, California on March 21, 2005.
Peter MeryonRod Price - (57) British guitarist and founding member of the blues boogie band Foghat, whose solos drove the group to three platinum and eight gold records during the band’s 25-year career, and who more recently concentrated on his blues projects, cutting several CDs and giving private guitar lessons at his home, died in Wilton, NH after falling down a stairway at his home on March 22, 2005.
Anthony Kalani “Kal” Roberts - (65) Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who first worked as an actor, with roles in beach movies including “Monster from the Surf,” before later turning to photography, who took seven pictures of an attempted abduction of a woman in a Hollywood parking lot in 1973 that ended with the death of the assailant (which won him the Pulitzer), and who produced promotional images for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Tanya Tucker, and others, died of prostate cancer in Phoenix, Arizona on March 21, 2005.
Brenda Weathers - (68) Activist and writer; founder and first director of the Alcoholism Center for Women, a pioneering alcoholism and drug recovery center in Los Angeles, believed to be the first such facility in the country to primarily serve lesbians. Weathers began to write fiction after living in a house in Maine that she believed was haunted. Her novels included The House at Pelham Falls (1986); Miss Pettibone & Miss McGraw (1996); and Murder on the Mother Road (2005). A lifelong smoker, Weathers died of lung cancer in Long Beach, California, March 20, 2005.
Ahmen Zak - (55) One of Egypt's most acclaimed actors, who portrayed former Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Zaki broke the color barrier in Egyptian cinema when he became the first black actor to play the leading roles usually reserved for light-skinned Egyptians. Diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2004, he had been hospitalized since March 8, and suffered a brain hemorrhage almost two weeks later. Before slipping into a coma earlier in the month, Zaki had received calls from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and celebrities flocked to his hospital room. He died in Cairo, March 27, 2005.
Stanley Sadie - (74) Music critic and expert scholar on Mozart who edited the New Grove Dictionary of Music-a 21 volume publication which took ten years to compile, who became the music critic at the London Times in 1969 after teaching at the Trinity College of Music, died of motor neuron disease in Cossington, England on March 21, 2005.
Czeslaw Slania - (83) Engraver of more than 1,000 postage stamps, a Polish immigrant to Sweden who was then appointed the court engraver, who used his talents to forge documents for the Underground in Nazi-invaded Poland during World War II as well as creating bank notes for ten countries, producing stamps of famous people and monarchs for many countries and postal jurisdictions including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and China, died in Stockholm, Sweden on March 17, 2005.
Kenzo Tange - (91) Architect who was perhaps best known for his design of the stadiums for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Chicago's AMA building, who won the Pritzker Prize in architecture in 1987, whose Olympic stadiums seemed to be roofed with sweeping ships’ hulls in order to connect two busy Tokyo districts, who created a building in Hiroshima only four years after the bombing called the Peace Center, died of heart failure in Tokyo, Japan on March 22, 2005.
Louise M. Rosenblatt (100) Teacher of literature and a pioneer of reading theory, who maintained that the act of reading was a dynamic "transaction" between the reader and the text and that the meaning of the words was not in the text but rather how the reader interpreted it-a theory that was at odds with popular theories of the day, whose books, Literature as Exploration (1938) and The Reader, the Text, the Poem (1978) were groundbreaking works on the subject, died February 8, 2005, in Arlington, Virginia of congestive heart failure.
Rolf Lidberg (74) Painter known as the “Daddy of the Trolls” for his whimsical paintings of Swedish trolls, and who wrote several children’s books, and over the years began to seem to emulate the trolls he was painting with his long white hair and stooped posture and easy manner, died of cancer on February 15, 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Henry G. Greene - (93) Architect and developer who designed the ABC Entertainment Center in Century City, a complex that included the Shubert Theatre and several movie theater whichc was built in 1970 and then demolished 30 years later, who designed nearly 80 buildings for the company, and who created the Cine Capri in Phoenix, Arizona, which could seat 800, died in Scarsdale, New York, on March 13, 2005.
LaMar Harrington - (87) Art museum curator who was known to bring new works to the Northwest area of the United States, who was the director of the Bellevue Arts Museum from 1985-1990 and took the struggling museum from a $70,000 deficit to having a $1 million budget by bringing in exibits like “Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas”, who in 1957 started working at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery, where she eventually became art director, died in Port Townsend, Washington on March 23, 2005.
Rudolf Ekstein - (93) Viennese-trained psychoanalyst who became a fixture at LA’s Reiss-Davis Child Study Center and was a well-known expert in treating emotionally disturbed children, who wrote a number of books, including “Children of Time & Space, of Action and Impulse,” who also taught medical psychology at UCLA, was the president of the Topeka Institute of Psychoanalysis, and was active for many years at both the LA Psychoanalytic Institute and the Southern California Psychoanalytical Institute, died in Los Angeles, California on March 18, 2005.
Edward Frank - (87) Owner of Frank Bros., an internationally recognized name in home furnishings based in Long Beach, California and one of the first southern California retailers to feature contemporary Scandinavian furniture and designs by such architects as Charles and Ray Eames and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose store became a magnet for architects, interior decorators, and magazine editors in the 1950s, died of pneumonia in Los Alamitos, California on March 21, 2005.
Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones - (92) Physician who helped develop the program that led to America's first "test-tube baby". She and her husband, Dr. Howard Jones, established the in-vitro fertilization program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1978. In 1981, the couple announced the birth of Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the country's first baby conceived outside the mother's body. (By that time, the world's first "test-tube baby" had recently been born in England.) Work that Dr. Jones she performed in the 1930s laid the foundation for the development of home pregnancy tests used today. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the '90s; she died of cardiac arrest in Richmond, Virginia, March 26, 2005.
Gordon Kay (88) Movie producer for Republic and Universal Pictures who produced Westerns, who started at the bottom in Hollywood as a gopher on Westerns, moving his way up to producer at Republic where he produced the first 26 Allan “Rocky” Lane pictures starting in 1947, then moved to Universal where he produced seven Westerns starring Audie Murphy as well as several starring Fred MacMurray, Rory Calhoun and Tony Young, died in Woodland Hills, California on March 8, 2005.
Katherine Gray Lathrop - (89) Pioneering researcher in nuclear medicine, Lathrop was a member of a University of Chicago team that developed an isotope widely used to locate and diagnose cancers. A versatile scientist with degrees in biology, chemistry, and physics, Lathrop was named a professor of radiology at Chicago, where she taught for 40 years without having earned a doctorate. She participated in the Manhattan Project (1945ú46) as a junior chemist in the metallurgical laboratory in Chicago, studying the effects of radioactive materials on animals. She died of advanced dementia in Las Cruces, New Mexico, March 10, 2005.
Robert Morrisey - (78) Founder, first editor and publisher of the Wine Spectator, an influential magazine for wine consumers. He developed his interest in fine wine in the early 1970s, and started writing a column about it for the San Diego Union-Tribune. In ‘76, he decided to start a publication devoted to his passion. He sold the magazine to an investor in 1979. Morrisey died of congestive heart failure in San Diego, California, March 26, 2005.
Edwards Park -(87) Founding editor and columnist who was one of the first four employees hired by the magazine’s editor, who, including his various projects for the magazine after retirement, put in 30 years with the magazine, who was an authority on aviation, sailing, history and Australia, and who wrote five books including “Nanette: Her Pilot’s Love Story” which is a detail of his experiences as a World War II fighter pilot, died of following a fall on February 15, 2005 in Washington.
Sir Leslie Porter - (84) Former chairman of British retailer Tesco and the husband of Dame Shirley Porter, the company heiress, who also served as chancellor of Tel Aviv University and was known for his extensive charity work, died on March 20, 2005.
Lim Por-yen (93) Founder of Asia Television, Ltd., Hong Kong’s second largest television network, who began his career as a garment manufacturer, who eventually was the founder of the Lai Sun Group, but who had to sell off his stake in ATL when he was brought up on charges of corruption in one of Taiwan’s biggest bribery scandals-he was convicted of bribing officials in the hopes of gaining millions of dollars in wrongful government payments involving a land deal, and who was given a 2 year prison sentence which he wasn’t yet serving due to the appeals process (the charges where dropped following his death), died February 18 in Hong Kong.
Neva Rogers - (62) English teacher who was among those killed by a student gunman. The teen had killed his grandfather and the grandfather’s girlfriend, then went to Red Lake High School and shot Ms. Rogers, a security guard, and five students before killing himself. Rogers died at the school near Bemidji, Minnesota, March 21, 2005.
Saul Israel Holiff (80) Johnny Cash’s manager for 13 years between 1960 and 1973, when he thought Cash’s career was over (a decision which he came to regret), who also managed Tommy Hunger and the Statler Brothers, died in British Columbia, Canada on March 17, 2005.
David Rodman Scott - ("Roddy") (30) As a writer and director for MTV, Scott worked on promotions for such shows as Spring Break '05 and The Osbournes. In five years with MTV he directed such stars as Jack Black, Drew Barrymore, Adam Sandler, and Gwen Stefani, and worked on promotions for the movies "50 First Dates" and "Napoleon Dynamite". His promotion for MTV's Spring Break '05 was filmed at Quebec's Ice Hotel, which is built entirely of ice and snow. Two days after his death, Scott received a New York City Addy Award, which honors the best advertising campaigns, for his Osbournes promotion. He died in New York City from complications of type-one diabetes, March 21, 2005.
Myra Sohappy - (79) Indian rights advocate who lived a subsistence lifestyle with her husband which brought them into the cross hairs of a federal lawsuit because they claimed rights to fish on their section of the Columbia River-which was banned, which eventually led to a federal decision in 1974 which allocated half the salmon harvest to tribes under 19th Century treaties, died following a fall in Toppenish, Washington on March 25, 2005.
Bob Vetrone - (79) Sportswriter who worked for years under the pseudonym “Bob The Bartender”, who began his career as a copy boy and covered college basketball for the Philadelphia Evening Edition until it folded in 1982, then moved on to write for the Philadelphia Daily News, eventually ending up as an assistant sports information director at LaSalle University, died in Philadelphia on March 23, 2005.
Bruce McM. Wright - (86) Sometimes unpopular New York judge who raised the ire of police unions with his bail policies for low income and minority defendants, who was sometimes called “Turn ‘em Loose Bruce” by police organizations, but who held that his policies upheld the 8th amendment requirements that state “excessive bail shall not be required,” died in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, on March 24, 2005.
James Callaghan - (92) British Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979 who lost the election in 1979 because of party in-fighting, strikes, and financial crises, who went from humble beginnings to become Lord Callahan of Cardiff, died in East Sussex county in England on March 26, 2005-just 11 days following the death of his wife.
John Michael Vowles “Chips” Carpenter - (83) Squadron Leader for Britain’s Royal Air Force, who accounted for at least eight enemy aircraft in the Battle of Britain and the siege of Malta during World War II and who was noted for his many heroic feats, died in Devon, England on February 11, 2005.
Ernest Childers - (87) Native American veteran who won the Medal of Honor while serving with the Army’s 45th Infantry Division in Italy during World War II, died in Tulsa, Okla. after a series of strokes on March 17, 2005.
Howell Heflin - (83) Former Democratic U.S. senator from Alabama (1979-97). A popular politician who served three terms in Washington, D.C., he served on the panel that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Heflin also served during the confirmation fight over the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to his election to the Senate, he spearheaded judicial reform in Alabama as the state's chief justice. Heflin had undergone heart procedures in recent years and had been hospitalized for the last couple of days. He died in Montgomery, Alabama, March 29, 2005.
Maj. Gen. Arthur G. Salisbury - (88) Retired USAF officer who commanded American fighters in one of the legendary air battles of WWII in Europe. Salisbury led the 57th Fighter Group in the battle known as "The Palm Sunday Massacre," in which 76 German transport planes and 13 fighters were shot down. He himself was shot down three times during the war. He was promoted to major general in 1964 and was assigned to the Pentagon before heading to Colorado as deputy chief of staff for the Air Defense Command. Prior to his 1974 retirement, Salisbury commanded USAF Southern Command in Panama. He died in Colorado Springs March 20, 2005.
Eula Pearl Carter Scott - (90) Oklahoma aviation pioneer who, at age 13, became one of the nation's youngest female pilots. Her love of flying began with her first plane ride in 1927, which was piloted by aviation legend Wiley Post. One year later, she soloed and earned her own pilot's license. She quit flying when her second child was born. She was one of the first seven paid employees of the Chickasaw Nation in the early 1970s, and later became the first woman elected to the Chickasaw legislature. In ‘72, she started another career as a community health representative with the Chickasaw Nation. She died in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, March 28, 2005.
Maj. Gen. Winant Sidle -(88) Army general who decided to come out of retirement to lead a commission to recommend news coverage of military campaigns, who was trained as a journalist and did five tours of duty at the Pentagon, took up the offer to head up the commission that was offered by Gen. John W. Vessey Jr. who was the chief of staff at the time, and who took part in the commission-made up of seven military representatives and six media representatives-to decide what to handle media issues after the Pentagon barred media from covering the invasion of Grenada, and determined that having press pools-both for safety and for logistical purposes-was the best choice, died of a stroke in Southern Pines, North Carolina on March 19, 2005.
Walter Thabit - (83) Leader among city planners in "advocacy planning", a movement whose stated goals are to press cities for low-cost housing and to encourage diversity in blighted areas. As a consultant and offering his technical skills, Mr. Thabit helped members of more than a dozen communities in New York City, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to create their own development plans in response to city redevelopment proposals that threatened to displace many residents. He died in New York of Barrett's esophagus, in which esophageal cells change because of irritation, March 15, 2005.
Andrew Toti - (89) Inventor who designed the inflatable life vest, known as the Mae West, which was credited with saving the lives of thousands of WWII pilots, including former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. In addition, Mr. Toti held more than 500 patents for inventions, including one for the pull tab on soda and beer cans, and the automatic chicken plucker, which revolutionized the poultry business. He was co-inventor of the Endo-Flex endotracheal tube, a breathing tube used during surgery. Mr. Toti died in Modesto, California, March 20, 2005.
Lt. Col. Richard van der Horst (38) Commander commanding officer of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service involved in planning the special forces operations in the Iraq war of 2003, who had been honored for his service in Iraq, was leaving a “swimmer delivery vehicle”-a small submarine that allows troops to enter territory undetected-during a training mission in Norway when he had some kind of diving accident on March 7 and he died seven days later on March 14.
Grand Rabbi Naftali Halberstam - (74) Grand rabbi who took over as head of the Bobov Hasidic sect, based in southern Poland, after the death of his father in 2000 (the elder Halberstam was credited with reviving the sect in NYC after it was decimated by the Nazis during WWII), who, along with his father, escaped death at the hands of the Nazis and settled in Brooklyn, NY where they helped rebuild the sect and saw it flourish, died after suffering from multiple medical problems in Brooklyn, NY on March 23, 2005.
Edward Head - (85) Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo (New York) beginning in 1973 and retiring in 1995, whose leadership lead to the Catholic charities doubling its budget and the number of people it served, who created the Diocesan Council for Those with Disabilities, the Link Program for divorced Catholics, and the diocesan Office of Black Ministry, and who remained active in his charity projects until November of last year, died in Tonawanda, New York on March 39, 2005.
Norman Mager - (78) Former basketball player tarnished by a gambling scandal, who helped to propel an unheralded City College of New York team to the NIT and NCAA basketball championships in 1950, but then saw his professional basketball career cut short when he was arrested on charges of taking money from gambles to win games by smaller margins than the established betting lines, died of cancer in Boynton Beach, Fla. March 17, 2005.
Wayne Miyata - (63) Surfer who appeared in the cult surfing film “The Endless Summer” in 1966, who was one of the first surfers to be filmed doing a successful “tube ride” through a large wave as it curls over and was well known for his fine hand-crafted surfboards, died in Hermosa Beach, California after suffering from cancer of the esophagus on March 21, 2005.
Adrian Kragen - (97) Leading expert on American income tax law, who worked for the firm of Loeb & Loeb as a lawyer for the film industry, representing 11 major studios and handling actors like Mickey Rooney and William Holden, but left his lucrative law practice to teach at UC Berkeley Law School for one-fifth of his lawyer salary, and remained at the school for the next 50 years, who wrote extensively on the topic of taxation and was widely published in professional journals, died in Walnut Creek, California on March 25, 2005.
Kathryn Underwood Silber - (78) Wife of longtime Boston University President John Silber, she was also his top adviser and chief critic. In 25 years at the university, she hosted hundreds of functions with efficiency and wit, mixing with heads of state and eminent academics. She also campaigned extensively during her husband's run for governor in 1990, which he narrowly lost. In 2001, she received an honorary doctorate. She died in Boston following an earlier stroke, March 26, 2005.
