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Passage: Iris Murdoch, 79 - Her prolific, distinctive prose eventually made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and she was one of Britain's most revered novelists in the second half of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote 26 novels in a career that began with the publication of Under the Net in 1954. She won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award, for The Sea, The Sea in 1978. Not all of her books met with critical success, and she was not exactly an editor's best friend: Murdoch was notorious for resisting any changes to her manuscripts, including punctuation. Her last novel, Jackson's Dilemma, was published in 1995. [Wired News]
Passage: Jerry Quarry, 53 - He twice fought Muhammad Ali and lost two title shots, but Jerry Quarry's legacy may be a chilling reminder of his sport's brutality. The former heavyweight fighter died Sunday at a Templeton, California, hospital after a long descent into dementia brought on by repeated blows to the head. The progressive malady, similar to Alzheimer's disease, left Quarry virtually helpless and in the care of his family in his final years. [Wired News]
Passage: Jim 'Catfish' Hunter, 53 - The anchor of a pitching staff that led the Oakland A's to three consecutive World Series championships in the '70s, Hunter was one of the most respected and well-liked players of his generation. In a 15-year career that eventually landed him in the Hall of Fame, Hunter amassed a pretty impressive resume: 224 wins, five straight seasons of 20 or more victories, a perfect game (vs. Minnesota in 1968), the ace of five championship teams (he won two more World Series with the Yankees), and an eight-time All-Star. Hunter was given his colorful nickname by the A's flamboyant owner, Charlie Finley, after telling Finley that he enjoyed hunting and fishing. Hunter died of amyothropic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. [Wired News]
Passage: Joe DiMaggio, 84 - The baseball legend who transcended his sport to become a genuine American icon, died early Monday after a long battle with lung cancer and other complications. DiMaggio, who brought a singular elegance to the rough-and-tumble era of the game, was beloved as the Yankee Clipper by a generation of baseball fans. He had a .325 lifetime batting average and won three Most Valuable Player awards, but it was his 56-game consecutive hitting streak in 1941 that placed him at the forefront of baseball's immortals. His marriage to Marilyn Monroe kept him in the public eye after his playing days were over, but it was his personal style -- classy, unpretentious, remote -- that fixed him firmly in the American consciousness and inspired Ernest Hemingway and Paul Simon to write about him. In this unheroic age, DiMaggio might fairly be considered one of the last real American heroes. [Wired News]
Passage: Joe Williams, 80 - The renowned jazz and blues vocalist, a close collaborator of Count Basie's during the '50s and '60s, was a security guard at Chicago's Regal Theater, a favorite jazz spot, when his professional break came. He hooked up with Lionel Hampton, then began a relationship with Basie that carried him to the top of the jazz world. The two remained close friends until Basie's death in 1984. Although Williams' heyday came during his Basie era, he continued performing until the end. He influenced a number of talented male vocalists, including Tony Bennett and Buddy Greco. [Wired News]
Passage: John Ehrlichman, 73 - Richard Nixon's domestic affairs adviser was one of the key figures in the Watergate scandal that drove the president from office. Ehrlichman, along with White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and attorney general John Mitchell, were convicted for their roles in the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington. Ehrlichman was also convicted of conspiracy following a break-in at the office of anti-war protester Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. He served 18 months in prison, then embarked on a new career as an author. The enormous shadow cast by Watergate obscured some of Ehrlichman's genuine accomplishments in the Nixon administration, notably his key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. [Wired News]
Passage: King Hussein, 63 - World leaders are enroute to Jordan for Monday's funeral of King Hussein, who succumbed to cancer on Sunday. Among the early arrivals were British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French Jacques Chirac, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's eldest son Seif el-Islam. President Clinton is leading a US delegation that includes former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. In a White House eulogy, Clinton remembered Hussein as a "humble man and a king, a leader whose nobility came not from his title, but his character." [Wired News]
Passage: Lionel Bart, 68 - The composer/lyricist won and lost a fortune producing Oliver! in 1960, and was credited with reviving the musical in Britain at a time when Americans dominated the form. Oliver!, based on Dickens' Oliver Twist, made Bart famous, but he lost millions by signing away the rights trying to raise money for another musical. He had some other successes during the '60s and '70s, notably Blitz! and Maggie May, but never again approached the lofty heights of Oliver! [Wired News]
Passage: Lord Killanin, 84 - Lord Killanin took the reins of the International Olympic Committee in the wake of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Games and presided over the Olympics as restrictions against non-amateur participants were loosened. Lord Killanin was president of the IOC between 1972 and 1980, some of the Games' most turbulent years. The 1976 Olympics were boycotted by African nations, and America boycotted the 1980 Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Killanin left the IOC in financial shambles and although his successor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, has turned things around financially, the Olympic Committee is currently mired in the worst corruption crisis in its history. [Wired News]
Passage: Marion Motley, 79 - Motley was one of the first black players of the modern pro football era, a punishing fullback for the Cleveland Browns who powered his way into the Hall of Fame both as a runner and a blocker. Motley, who rushed for 4,720 yards over a nine-year career, joined the Browns in 1946 when the team played in the All-America Football Conference. Cleveland entered the NFL in 1950. Brown was one of four black players to begin playing in 1946; prior to that, blacks had not played at the professional level. [Wired News]
Passage: Mary Jane Rathbun, 77 - "Brownie Mary," as she became known to hundreds of AIDS patients at San Francisco General Hospital, was truly the Florence Nightingale of her time. Rathbun regularly turned up at the hospital's AIDS ward -- the largest in the United States -- during the height of the epidemic in the late 1980s, carrying baked goods laced with marijuana. There, she dispensed them to grateful patients, who ingested the pot to relieve their nausea and pain. Later, Rathbun, along with Dennis Peron, founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club, which provided the evil weed for medicinal purposes and resulted in Rathbun being arrested several times. However, it also led to medicinal pot being legalized in California in 1996, following the passage of a state initiative. [Wired News]
Passage: Pete Conrad, 69 - He was the third man to walk on the moon, shouting a joyous "Whoopie!" as he stepped off the Apollo 12 in 1969. Charles "Pete" Conrad set an endurance record on his first flight for NASA in 1965, piloting the Gemini 5. Later, while flying the first manned Skylab mission in 1973, he established another personal endurance record for time in space -- 1,179 hours and 38 minutes. In 1995 Conrad formed his own company, Universal Space Lines, created to eventually commercialize space travel. Conrad's motorcycle ran off the road in Ojai, California, on Tuesday, while riding with friends. [Wired News]
Passage: Raisa Gorbachev, 67 - The wife of Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union, lost her battle with leukemia early Monday. The former philosophy teacher, who was 180 degrees removed from the usual Soviet first lady in both style and outlook, charmed the West after Gorbachev took the reins of power in 1985. Unlike her predecessors, Raisa Gorbachev was not content to remain in the background, nor was she asked to by her husband. She accompanied him on most of his travels as Soviet premier and was a close policy adviser as well. Raisa Gorbachev died in M nster, Germany, where she had been hospitalized since late July. [Wired News]
Passage: Red Norvo, 91 - The man who introduced the xylophone and vibraphone to jazz in the 1920s died this week at a Santa Monica retirement home. Red Norvo played with jazz legends like Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Billie Holliday. Norvo was 14 when he started playing the marimba. He graduated to the xylophone and later the vibraphone. He died on Tuesday, and no cause of death was given. [Wired News]
Passage: Robert Shaw, 82 - Shaw, longtime conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, was regarded as one of the world's leading choral directors. He founded his own choral group in the 1940s and helped extend the art form, which has deep roots in Europe and in the United States. He also helped transform the Atlanta Symphony, virtually an amateur group when he took the reins, into a leading American orchestra. Shaw won 14 Grammy awards and was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 1998. [Wired News]
Passage: Shel Silverstein, 66 - The children's author and illustrator of The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic was found dead Monday of a heart attack. His work was as irreverent as it was humorous and delighted adults and children alike. Silverstein also was a celebrated lyricist, publishing songs such as "A Boy named Sue," made famous by Johnny Cash. [Wired News]
Passage: Stanley Kubrick, 70 - The death of Stanley Kubrick robbed the film world Sunday of one of its towering masters and came just as he completed his latest opus, "Eyes Wide Shut," a star-studded project shrouded in secrecy. The Bronx-born Kubrick, who created such film classics as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Lolita," "A Clockwork Orange," and "Dr. Strangelove," died Sunday at his home outside of London of natural causes. [Wired News]
Passage: Steve Holtzman, 43 - In exploring how digital technology and creativity mingle and enhance each other, he left behind a body of work unique in the genius-filled annals of Silicon Valley: He played founding roles in a number of tech start-ups, including Perspecta, a firm developing new information retrieval tools; wrote two books of techno-philosophical inquiry, Digital Mantras and Digital Mosaics; and recorded an album of his guitar compositions, Guitar Travels. Holtzman died last week at his home in Woodside, California. A memorial service will be held Thursday at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California. [Wired News]
Passage: Tish, 43 - He entered the Guinness Book of Records last year as the world's oldest captive goldfish, but time finally caught up with Tish. He was acquired by 7-year-old Peter Hand at a British fairground in 1956 and remained in the Hand family until the end. Tish grew to 4-1/2 inches in length and outlived all the other household pets. Peter's mother, Hilda, found Tish dead at the bottom of his tank a few days ago. "I am very sad," said Hilda Hand. "Over the years we have become very close and I could sense if he was happy or not." [Wired News]
Passage: Victor Mature, 86 - One of the original beefcake actors, Mature parlayed his broad shoulders and tapered waistline into a number of roles during the 1940s and '50s that saw him clad in loincloths and togas and made him a star. Among the movies in which Mature revealed most of himself were The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, One Million B.C., and Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah. But he wasn't always underdressed -- he also played Doc Holliday opposite Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine and won praise for his portrayal of small-time hood Nick Bianco in Kiss of Death. For the record, Mature stood 6-foot-2, with a 33-inch waist, 45-inch chest, and 25-inch biceps. [Wired News]
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