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Eddie Barclay - (born Edouard Ruault) (84) flamboyant French music producer whose stable of singers included Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour; born in 1921 in Paris, Barclay started his production house in the '50s and marketed artists from the US company Mercury; after selling 1.5 million copies of The Platters' "Only You," Barclay's label rose to become France's top music production company at the time; was famous for wearing white and holding exclusive parties in St.-Tropez where guests also wore white; Barclay started his career as a jazz pianist. He suffered from urinary and pulmonary infections in recent weeks; died May 12, 2005.
Maurice Catarcio - (76) former professional wrestler and weight-lifter who gained national fame for his feats of strength after he was diagnosed with cancer in his later years. Catarcio began putting on public displays of strength after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1991 and at 65, the 5-ft-11, 210-lb Catarcio swam the backstroke while tugging the Delta Lady (an 80-ft sightseeing boat) across a lake; at 72, he dragged a 27,000-lb bus down an NYC street on the The Late Show with David Letterman; Catarcio's feats landed him in The Guinness Book of World Records. Catarcio was also a fixture in the Republican Party in southern NJ for decades; was a GOP state committeeman, but never ran for public office, preferring to work behind the scenes. Catarcio died of cancer May 12, 2005.
Omer Kavur - (61) Turkish filmmaker and screenwriter whose psychological dramas were featured in prominent international festivals; the films by the French-educated director probed the depths of human existence and psychology and helped to win international praise for Turkish cinematography; Kavur's film Night Journey (1987) chronicled the story of a filmmaker working in solitude as he dealt with the past, while Journey in the Hour Hand (1997) was the story of a watchmaker who witnesses a murder in which the body goes missing; both were shown at the Cannes Film Festival; Kavur's other films were shown at festivals in the US and Canada; had been suffering from lymph node cancer; died May 12, 2005.
Rusty Kay - (60) award-winning graphics designer widely known for his extensive collection of vintage motorcycles and cars; a Montecito, Calif. resident, Kay was founder of Rusty Kay & Associates, an internationally recognized design firm specializing in corporate identity programs and packaging. Kay died of cancer May 8, 2005.
June MacCloy - (95) statuesque actress whose glamorous looks typified the Golden Age of Hollywood and whose mannish voice set her apart. Appearing in several movies, among those "Reaching for the Moon", with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.; MacCloy's singing in that film of Irving Berlin's "When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down," after renditions by a young Bing Crosby-who had last billing-caused the LA Times to write, "With a little encouragement, she would have stolen the picture." She also sang in Florenz Ziegfeld's last production, Hot-Cha!, and spent much of the '30s as a touring band singer. MacCloy died May 5, 2005.
Jay Marshall - (85) magician-ventriloquist, dean of the Society of American Magicians, a 14-appearance veteran of The Ed Sullivan Show, and the first entertainer to open for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas; although Marshall was a noted historian of stage magic and wrote several books on the subject, his own act did not incorporate the spectacular illusions and escape stunts popular when he was a young vaudevillian; instead, he concentrated on the magic of card tricks and sleight of hand, combining it with ventriloquism and often self-deprecating patter; liked to bill himself as one of the better of the cheap acts". Marshall and his wife ran Magic Inc., a shop for professional magicians on Chicago's North Side. Marshall had suffered a series of heart attacks and died May 10, 2005.
Jimmy Martin - (77) pioneering bluegrass singer and guitarist who performed with the Blue Grass Boys and many other musicians; Martin formed his own band, the Sunny Mountain Boys, and recorded with Decca records for 18 years; recorded several bluegrass standards, including "Rock Hearts," "Sophronie," "Hold Watcha Got," "Widow Maker," and "The Sunny Side of the Mountain"; Martin was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Assoc.'s Hall of Honor in 1995; his life was also the subject of an independent documentary film, "King of Bluegrass: The Life & Times of Jimmy Martin (2003)"; in the late '50s and '60s, Martin performed on both the Louisiana Hayride and WWVA Wheeling Jamboree, well-known country music shows; also made guest appearances on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry but never became a regular cast member, his childhood dream; died more than a year after he was diagnosed with bladder cancer May 14, 2005.
George James Miller Jr. (37) man convicted of beating and stabbing an Oklahoma City motel clerk and pouring acid down his throat; Miller was found guilty of killing Kent Dodd (25) during a 1994 robbery;Miller had maintained his innocence; a final appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied. The case against Miller was based on circumstantial evidence. Miller received an injection of deadly chemicals on May 12, 2005 and was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m.
Alfredo Rastelli - (83) one of the best-known musical clowns in the sawdust ring, During a career spanning 70 years, Rastelli appeared in variety, pantomime, ice shows, and circuses across the world;Prince Rainier awarded Rastelli a citation in recognition of his career; and in 2002, Rastelli won the Golden Clown award in Copenhagen; Rastelli died on May 1, 2005.
Michael Bruce Ross - (45) a convicted serial killer who abandoned his appeals and died willingly after 18 years on death row. Miller said he wanted to ease the pain of the families of the eight teenage girls and young women he strangled in the early '80s.Ross was executed by lethal injection May 13, 2005
Philip Spaulding - (92) naval architect who designed some of the world's largest ferry boats, some of which are still in use after nearly half a century; Spaulding was the designer of the first Boeing Co. hydroplane test vessel, various oceangoing ships, and ferries for Alaska, BC, and Washington state; was best known for the 440-ft jumbo-class Washington state ferries Walla Walla and Spokane; won the Society of Naval Architect & Marine Engineers' David W. Taylor Award as "one of the world's most innovative and inventive naval architects". Spaulding died May 5, 2005.
Monica Zetterlund - (67) jazz singer who became one of Sweden's best-known artists during a career that spanned 50 years, she won international acclaim after touring the US in 1960.Zetterlund suffered from scoliosis, a disabling disease that twists the spine, making it difficult to move; and over the last years of her career, she often had to be helped onto the stage, and sang sitting down. Zetterlund died in an apartment fire May 12, 2005.
Tristan Egolf, (33) a political activist and author whose first novel at age 27 won him comparisons to William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. Egolf received literary acclaim after the 1998 publication of his first novel, "Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Corn Belt," a manic tale about a Kentucky farm boy. Egolf's second book, a frenetic love story called "Skirt and the Fiddle," was published in 2002, and a third novel, "Kornwolf," about a werewolf in Amish country, is slated for release next year. Egolf was known in Pennsylvania as the leader of the Smoketown Six, a group of men arrested during a visit by President Bush in July when they stripped down to thong underwear and formed a human pyramid to protest the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal. Egolf had been suffering from depression, and died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound May 7th, 2005.
Elizabeth Orton Jones - (94) illustrator and author of books for children; as an illustrator, Jones won the 1945 Caldecott Medal, awarded for outstanding children's literature, for Prayer for a Child, with text by Rachel Field and published by Macmillan; Jones wrote or illustrated more than 20 books, including Twig, her novel for children about a girl who turns over a tomato can and finds a fairy house inside; the 1948 Little Golden Books edition of Little Red Riding Hood featured her illustrations; died May 10, 2005.
Lady Jean Medawar - (92):British author, a former chairman of the Family Planning Assoc. (FPA), and widow of Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate in medicine and director of the National Institute for Medical Research;the Medawars became the center of an extensive circle of leading intellectual, scientific, and musical minds. Jean Medawar published (with David Pyke) "Hitler's Gift: Scientists Who Fled Nazi Germany", which told the story of how some of the best-known physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and chemists fled Nazi Germany to Britain and America. Medawar died on May 3, 2005.
Stephen Donnellan Moss - ("Steve") (56) founder of two alternative weekly newspapers on California's Central Coast who dared would-be authors to master the 55-word short story; Moss was diagnosed with epilepsy at 13, and wrote openly about it in San Luis Obispo's New Times, the alternative weekly he started almost 20 years earlier with two friends and a few thousand dollars from his retirement account; in 2000, he founded the Santa Maria Sun, a weekly community newspaper whose mission he compared to creating a "town square where everybody could participate", Moss thought up a succinct short-story contest- "storytelling at its leanest," he said-that brought entries to the New Times from as far away as Sri Lanka and Pakistan; each story had to be 55 words or less and contain the classic ingredients associated with the best short stories: a setting, a character or characters, conflict, and resolution. These stories were compiled into two books: "The World's Shortest Stories" (1998), the first of two anthologies he edited; and "The World's Shortest Stories of Love & Death" (2000).Moss had struggled with depression caused by his medication; and died of epilepsy Apr. 24, 2005.
Campbell M. Lucas - (80) former appellate court justice whose skills as a mediator and arbitrator kept him in demand in retirement as a private judge specializing in entertainment cases taking on cases involving such Hollywood figures as Aaron Spelling, Elizabeth Taylor, Rip Torn, and Dennis Hopper. Lucas once served for 18 months as discovery referee in the dispute between the Walt Disney Co. and former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg over bonuses, and also mediated a dispute between former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and a former Ovitz employee, also mediated a dispute between the Beach Boys' Mike Love and Brian Wilson over song authorship; and between the National Enquirer and a host of celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor and Brad Pitt. Lucas died of melanoma May 10, 2005.
David McGowan - (44) California DA's investigator who shot five family members in the head as they slept before killing himself; McGowan had no apparent marital or financial problems, police and relatives said; investigators are still baffled about why McGowan, an investigator for the Riverside County DA's office, killed his wife, mother, and three children.Colleagues said McGowan, who helped prosecutors to prepare cases for trial, gave no clues that anything was wrong; a model employee, he had just returned from a week's vacation and had received an outstanding review. Date is that of discovery May 10, 2005.
Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster - (90) US military officer who led Army troops in WWII and Vietnam, oversaw US military operations in Europe in the early '70s, was called out of retirement to run the military academy at West Point; Goodpaster commanded troops in North Africa and Italy during WWII; held various positions in the US and Europe in the 20 years after the war; was sent to Vietnam in July 1968 as deputy commander of US forces; in 1969, he was assigned to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, where he was supreme allied commander, Europe, responsible for military operations there and in the Middle East; retired in December 1974 and became a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington; also taught at The Citadel; was recalled to active duty in June 1977 to become 51st superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, his alma mater; retired again in 1981; among his decorations were a Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor; a Distinguished Service Cross; a Purple Heart; a Silver Star; and distinguished service medals from the Army, Navy, and USAF; died May 16, 2005.
José M. Lopez - (94) WWII veteran awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly killing more than 100 German soldiers in a single skirmish; Lopez won the nation's highest military honor for his heroics during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944; was the oldest living Hispanic recipient of the Medal of Honor and among a dwindling group of recipients from WWII. He was being treated for cancer and died May 16. 2005.
Cindy Marano - (57) nationally known advocate for equal pay and economic self-sufficiency for women along with the literacy and training to achieve it; Marano spent most of her career in Washington, DC, where she was president of Wider Opportunities for Women (1976-97); was also a director of that organization's National Workforce Network. Marano operated Marano & Associates (1997-2001), specializing in designing and supporting programs to reduce poverty; most recently, she worked with the National Network of Sector Partners under the Oakland-based National Economic Development & Law Center. Marano helped to develop legislation, including the Nontraditional Employment for Women Act of 1992, and frequently testified before congressional committees concerning job training, vocational education, and welfare-to-work programs, she served on the national advisory commissions for three US secretaries of Labor; among her awards were the Gloria Steinem Women of Vision Award and the Ms. Foundation for Women national award for Women's Economic Justice; died of adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare type of cancer Apr. 28, 2005.
Horton M(arlais) Davies - (89) Putnam professor emeritus of religion at Princeton and an author of many books about church history; Davies specialized in the impact of Christianity on the arts; wrote or edited more than two dozen books, nearly half of which remain in print, including his most important work, Worship & Theology in England, published in multiple volumes since the '60s; a native of South Wales, Davies graduated from the U of Edinburgh, earning an MA in English literature in 1937 and a divinity degree in systematic theology in '40; also earned a Ph.D. from Oxford in 1943 and a divinity doctorate from the U of South Africa in '51. Princeton invited him to help organize a broad new program of graduate study in religion; a Guggenheim fellowship in the early '60s enabled Davies to pursue the voluminous Worship & Theology in England project; took emeritus status at Princeton in 1984. Davies died May 11, 2005.
Rt. Rev. Hugh Montefiore - (85) Jewish-born Anglican archbishop and passionate environmentalist; born to a prominent Jewish family, Montefiore converted to Christianity as a teenager after, he said, seeing a vision of Christ; liked to be known as a "Jewish Christian". He was Bishop of Kingston-upon-Thames and later Bishop of Birmingham, a post he held (1978-87); then, after his retirement, Montefiore pursued an interest in the occult, compiling his research in a book, "The Paranormal: A Bishop Investigates". His outspoken environmentalism saw him dubbed the "eco-bishop"; was a trustee of Friends of the Earth for 20 years. He fell ill May 12th and died May 13, 2005.
Prospero Penados del Barrio - (79) archbishop emeritus of the Guatemalan capital, Guatemala City; died of a heart attack May 13, 2005.