The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

Mr. Lick are you going through the back catalogue or something?

[Bobcock]

Mr Lick....... Can you check if Elvis Presley is dead, haven't heard of him for a while.....

[Mr Lick]

Mr. Lick are you going through the back catalogue or something?

Gotta blame the Telegraph for not keeping their eye on the ball. Desperately disappointing that some don't get a mention in the nationals until a few months after they pass on but some stories still too good to miss.

[harrybarracuda]

John J. McGinty III, Vietnam veteran who received the Medal of Honor, dies at 73

By Emily Langer, Published: January 22



John J. McGinty III, a retired Marine Corps captain who received the Medal of Honor for his efforts to lead, protect and rally his outnumbered platoon during an assault in a jungle in Vietnam, died Jan. 17 at his home in Beaufort, S.C. He was 73.

The cause was bone cancer, said his son Michael McGinty.

Capt. McGinty was awarded the nation’s highest military decoration for valor during a battle in the summer of 1966. On July 15, then a staff sergeant, he helicoptered with his battalion into a location near the demilitarized zone where the men expected to find Vietcong guerrillas. Instead, they were met with a full regiment of the North Vietnamese army.

The Americans took control of an enemy hospital and endured two more days of battle before receiving an order to withdraw, according to the book “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.” Capt. McGinty’s platoon was tasked with protecting the men from the rear as they destroyed downed U.S. helicopters and made their way out.

In the ensuing four-hour battle, Capt. McGinty displayed “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” according to his medal citation.

His platoon came under attack from small arms, automatic weapons and mortar fire. Capt. McGinty rushed through the barrage to reach two squads that had been cut off. The medical corpsman was dead. Twenty of his comrades were wounded. Capt. McGinty reloaded their weapons and helped them go on fighting.

He, too, had been hurt but continued leading a relentless assault. At one point, according to the citation, he killed five enemy troops at point-blank range with his pistol.

When the enemy seemed to revive, Capt. McGinty called in artillery and airstrikes within 50 yards of his location — a move that was said to have “routed” the North Vietnamese, whose losses numbered 500.

His “personal heroism, indomitable leadership, selfless devotion to duty, and bold fighting spirit inspired his men to resist the repeated attacks by a fanatical enemy, reflected great credit upon himself, and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service,” reads the citation for the award, which he received from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.

John James McGinty III was born Jan. 21, 1940, in Boston, and spent parts of his youth in Connecticut and Kentucky. He joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1957 after graduating from high school. He had been enticed by the Navy slogan “Join the Navy and See the World” but preferred the Marine Corps uniform.

Capt. McGinty’s injuries in Vietnam led to the loss of his left eye, his son said. Besides the Medal of Honor, his decorations including the Purple Heart.

He served as a drill instructor at Parris Island, S.C., and worked after his two-decade military career in administrative positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs and its predecessor agency, the Veterans Administration.

Capt. McGinty’s wife of more than 30 years, Elaine Hathaway McGinty, died in 1991. Survivors include two sons, Michael McGinty of Beaufort and John J. McGinty IV of Tennessee.

After his service in Vietnam, Capt. McGinty developed what his son described as a deep conservative Christian faith. He distanced himself from wearing his medal — although he continued to take pride in its significance — because it bears the image of the Roman goddess Minerva.

“If the Marine Corps taught me anything, it was how to follow orders, and now that I’m a Christian I follow God’s orders — the Ten Commandments,” Capt. McGinty told the Associated Press in 1984. “The medal is a form of idolatry because it has a false god on it.”

Capt. McGinty recalled that, having not yet found his faith, he did not pray in Vietnam.

“But I thought, ‘If there is a God, please let him watch out for my children,’ ” he said. “I thought I was going to die for sure.”

[Mr Lick]

Lieutenant-Commander Don Ridgway

Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway was a Fleet Air Arm observer who helped cover the Arctic convoys and survived the sinking of the carrier Dasher




Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway, who has died aged 92, flew with 816 Naval Air Squadron and after the war led a revolution in the retail industry.

The Swordfish of 816 NAS operated from small escort craft known as “Woolworth” carriers in order to fill the gap in air cover between Europe and North America. But when the squadron was ready for action in September 1942 its designated carrier, Dasher, was taking part in Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa.


As a result Ridgway and his squadron undertook night operations in the English Channel, laying mines in the harbours of Cherbourg and Le Havre and attacking enemy shipping. The toll was heavy. Within a few weeks the squadron had lost half its aircrew; however, one early success came after Ridgway identified a German convoy which was then attacked and sunk by surface forces.


In February 1943 the squadron embarked in Dasher and escorted convoy JW53 from Iceland to Russia, but the ship and her aircraft were so badly damaged in stormy weather that she was forced to return to the Clyde. The squadron re-embarked a month later, but on March 27, while an aircraft was being refuelled, Dasher blew up and sank within a few minutes. Ridgway and six other 816 NAS aircrew were among the 149 (of 538 in the ship’s company) who survived.


Within six months Ridgway had joined the redoubtable Lt-Cdr Freddie Nottingham and a score of new aircrew in a re-formed 816 NAS at Machrihanish. The squadron started by searching for and attacking German E-boats in the English Channel in May, and in June moved to the Fearn peninsula

Equipped with six Swordfish and six Seafires, the squadron then embarked in the escort carrier Tracker to conduct anti-submarine operations in conjunction with Captain Johnnie Walker’s 2nd Support Group in the North-West Approaches. Walker’s tactics were to use the aircraft to keep the U-boats below the surface so that they could only move at slow, submerged speed, making them easier targets for escorts. The tactics worked better than expected, and no merchant ships were sunk in the gap between August and December 1943.

By January 1944 Ridgway was senior observer of 816 NAS when it embarked in the escort carrier Chaser to cover the Arctic convoys. On the 42-ship JW57, he helped drive off shadowing aircraft and keep U-boats submerged, allowing the convoy to reach Murmansk without loss. On the return, 816 NAS’s rocket-armed Swordfish played havoc with the U-boat group Werewolf, sinking three (U-472, U-366, and U-973), and damaging several others. This success led to all future Arctic convoys being protected by escort carriers.

James Donald Ridgway was born on April 29 1921 at Stockport, where his father was sales manager for Cheshire Sterilised Milk Company. Educated locally, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm and was commissioned as an observer in 1941

He was immediately appointed to the heavy cruiser Berwick off Iceland to help hunt down German vessels from her catapult-launched Walrus amphibian biplane.

By August 1944, 816 NAS, which had lost more than four in five of its aircrew in two years, was disbanded. Ridgway had risen from sub-lieutenant to lieutenant-commander. He flew briefly from merchant aircraft carriers (oil tankers with minimal aircraft-handling facilities) and became an air navigation instructor.

In 1946 he read Microbiology and Dairy Science at Aberystwyth before joining a large private dairy which manufactured sterilised milk and Cheshire cheese. Subsequently he worked for Unigate, Model Diaries in Australia, and Associated Dairies. He worked on trials to produce UHT milk in 1953 and at the first milk tetra-pack plant in Britain.

When Associated Dairies founded Asda, Ridgway became the company’s technical director and planning expert, and by 1970 he had built the company’s first eight out-of-town shopping centres. Next he devised the concept of district centres, with individual shops clustered around an Asda “magnet store”. Between 1973 and 1983 Ridgway oversaw the building of 29 district centres, from Aberdeen to Plymouth. When he retired in 1984 to care for his wife, Ridgway had built 69 large Asda stores. He was particularly proud of the store on the Isle of Dogs, which anticipated the redevelopment of the Docklands.

Donald Ridgway married, first, in 1945, Margaret Adshead. After she died in 2000, he married his son’s mother-in-law, Muriel Breaks (née Naylor), who survives him with a son and daughter of his first marriage. Twin daughters predeceased him.


Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway, born April 29 1921, died October 22 2013

[Mr Lick]

Percy Blandford - obituary

Percy Blandford was a canoe designer who got Britain boating with his post-war do-it-yourself designs





Percy Blandford, who has died aged 101, was at the heart of the British do-it-yourself boom in the period of austerity that followed the Second World War.

Blandford was the author of 113 books on subjects as diverse as making Shaker furniture; blacksmithing at home; wood turning; knots and ropework; upholstery; country craft tools; and farm machinery.


His principal interest, however, was designing canoes and other small boats; and his blueprints for home-built craft allowed thousands of enthusiasts, who would otherwise have been unable to afford the experience, to get out on the water.


The most popular of his small craft were his canoes (some 30 different designs) and the Lysander, a 17ft trailer-sailer. His biggest boat was a 24ft yacht.


In his home-built craft, Blandford became a useful canoe racer in his own right, narrowly failing to qualify for the 1948 Olympics. Instead he was appointed a timekeeper and judge for the rowing and canoeing events, stationed at Henley. “There were five of us,” he later recalled, “different nationalities, in a tiny box in the middle of the river. We got a signal from the starters and pressed our stopwatches

He treasured his official’s medal and blazer. “They got me into all Olympic events, even those at Wembley. Clothing coupons were hard to get, and one perk was that I was given coupons for a blazer, flannels, shirt and tie.”

He also worked as a commentator for the BBC on canoeing and rowing events.

The son of a grocer, Percy William Blandford was born in Bristol on October 26 1912.

He was educated at Wells Road School in the city and became a trainee architect with PE Culverhouse, who rebuilt Bristol’s Temple Meads station in the 1930s.

Blandford later worked as a teacher, but soon decided that he could earn more money by writing.

In 1941, at the request of the wartime government, he wrote a book called Netmaking. Many of Britain’s fishermen had gone off to war, taking their traditional skills with them; also, thousands of women needed to know how to make anti-aircraft and camouflage netting. Blandford’s book — which he wrote in an Anderson bomb shelter — has had scores of reprints and is still available. During the war he also worked as a technical writer for the RAF, and wrote the workshop manual for the Avro Lancaster bomber.

Blandford embarked on his canoe-designing odyssey in the late 1940s, building his first craft from wood and shop blind canvas salvaged from bomb sites. This was the PBK 10 (Percy Blandford Kayak 10ft). He then wrote comprehensive instructions and produced drawings that he offered for sale to the do-it-yourself market

In the 1950s he qualified as a naval architect, and designed other boats, including small dinghies, trailer-sailers, yachts and cabin cruisers. More than three-quarters of a million of his designs were sold; his do-it-yourself plans are still available, and his boats are still being built.

By the mid-Sixties, surfing had arrived on the beaches of Britain, but surf boards from California were both expensive and hard to find. Blandford came up with a hollow, wooden surf board that people could build themselves. In May 1965 his design was published in Boy’s Own Paper under the headline: “Make your own super surf board for £4”.

Blandford had joined the Cub Scouts in 1920, the beginning of a lifetime’s commitment to Scouting. In 2000 the movement had to create a unique award to mark his 80 years’ continuous membership.

Percy Blandford was a co-founder of the International Guild of Knot Tyers and of the Canoe Camping Club, a forerunner of the British Canoe Union, the ruling body for canoeing in Britain.

His marriage, in 1938, to Ivy Harris was followed by a honeymoon on which they toured the Thames by canoe. His wife died in 2002, and their son predeceased him in 2006 .


Percy Blandford, born October 26 1912, died January 10 2014

[Mr Lick]

Tom Rosenthal - obituary

Tom Rosenthal was a flamboyant publisher who also made his mark as art historian, broadcaster and connoisseur




Tom Rosenthal, who has died aged 78, was one of the most eminent publishers of his generation, successively directing the fortunes of Secker & Warburg, William Heinemann and André Deutsch.

He was also an art historian, broadcaster, bibliophile, opera buff, literary critic, and all-round cultural connoisseur. Moreover, he looked the part, his cigars, red shirts, yellow polka dot bow-ties, imperious beard and high brow (in both senses of the term) giving him an unmistakable profile on the intellectual scene.


Although his final years were dogged by ill health, Rosenthal was active to the end. In 1997 he founded the Bridgewater Press with his friend Rick Gekoski, the rare book dealer; it published limited editions by authors such as William Boyd and Ian McEwan.

And in his seventieth year he gained a PhD on the strength of his books about Jack Yeats, Sidney Nolan, Paula Rego and Josef Albers. These works were based on personal knowledge as well as scholarship. When a Kokoschka expert on the Cambridge examination board asked him the source of a quotation, he replied: “The artist.”


Thomas Gabriel Rosenthal was born in London on July 16 1935. His parents, Erwin and Elisabeth Rosenthal (née Marx), were refugees from Nazi Germany. They first settled in Manchester, but Tom and his sister Miriam (who went on to an award-winning career as an editor of children’s books) spent their adolescence in Cambridge, where his father became a Fellow of Pembroke College and a Reader in Oriental Studies – he spent 30 years completing his edition of Averroes’ commentary on Plato’s Republic.


Tom attended the Perse School, where he excelled at English and drama. He was early bitten by the collecting bug, accumulating a hoard of matchbox labels and bicycling from Cambridge to London to attend meetings of the Phillumenists’ Society. During his National Service he gained a commission in the Royal Artillery. The Army helped to make him, as he sardonically put it, “a sort of crypto-Englishman who can pass for white, but at heart, deep down, I have always known myself to be nothing other than a German-Jewish intellectual

Rosenthal had won an Exhibition to Pembroke College, where he read History and English. But he devoted much of his time to the theatre, touring with the Pembroke Players and becoming secretary to the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club. After university, in 1959, he joined Thames & Hudson.

This firm had been founded by Walter Neurath, who created the template for finely designed, well-printed and colourful art books that is taken for granted today. Doing everything from selling to commissioning, Rosenthal quickly mastered the technical, commercial and editorial processes. His most signal achievement was to carry out complicated negotiations with Trinity College, Dublin, which resulted in the publication of a beautiful and affordable edition of The Book of Kells.

In 1961 Rosenthal became chairman of the Society of Young Publishers. He wrote readers’ guides to art history and modern American fiction. He did much occasional journalism, notably as art critic of The Listener from 1963 to 1966. He contributed to the BBC Third Programme, conducting a particularly revealing interview with LS Lowry, whose work he championed in the face of metropolitan condescension.

He also bought one of Lowry’s paintings, soon becoming, he confessed, “a pathological, wholly insane collector of books and pictures whose house is more like a museum than a family home”. In 1971, seeking further scope for his energies and ambitions, he moved to Secker & Warburg as managing director.

Booming in his Soho office, expansive over Garrick lunches, hospitable at home in Primrose Hill, Rosenthal acted as impresario to a glittering array of authors. Many were new recruits, most became friends: Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe, Melvyn Bragg, John Banville, David Cairns, Nicholas Mosley, Saul Bellow, Carlos Fuentes, Günter Grass, JM Coetzee, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino




There were major coups, such as the publication of a one-volume edition of The Lisle Letters, a unique tapestry of Tudor England. There were dramatic moments as Rosenthal personally auctioned the paperback rights of Piers Paul Read’s Alive, or fended off Sonia Orwell’s demand for the pulping of all 20,000 copies of Bernard Crick’s biography of her late husband. And there were stimulating initiatives: with advice from Anthony Thwaite, Rosenthal began a new poetry list, launching the career of, among others, James Fenton.

In 1980 Rosenthal’s success at Secker was rewarded by promotion to the chairmanship of the Heinemann publishing group, of which it was a part. This was an unhappy translation since he was saddled with onerous corporate responsibilities and, as he came to realise, the whole concept of big business was inimical to him. He resigned in 1984 and teamed up with another small publisher, André Deutsch. However, Deutsch evidently wanted to retain a degree of control after selling out to Rosenthal in 1987 and they parted on unfriendly terms.

Rosenthal faced overwhelming difficulties. The firm was undercapitalised, it lacked a paperback arm, and trading conditions were adverse. He did score some triumphs, weaning Gore Vidal away from Heinemann and publishing Penelope Lively’s Booker Prize-winning novel Moon Tiger. And Private Eye paid a backhanded tribute to his standing in the publishing world by making him a character in its strip cartoon “Snipcock and Tweed”. In 1998, however, he had to sell the business.

For more than a decade Rosenthal endured what his doctor called “multiple morbidities”. With his fondness for black humour, he liked the phrase, replying to inquiries about his health with (at first) “Mustn’t grumble” and (latterly) “Don’t ask”. He continued to indulge his passions to the last, enjoying meals, watching cricket, attending operas, reading books. A month before his death, in a moving ceremony, he donated his 2,000 art books to Pembroke College library.

He is survived by his wife, Ann Warnford-Davis (née Shire), a distinguished literary agent, and his two sons, Adam, a surgeon specialising in gynaecological oncology, and Daniel, author of the 50th-anniversary history of the National Theatre.


Tom Rosenthal, born July 16 1935, died January 3 2014

[Mr Lick]

Halet Çambel - obituary

Halet Çambel was the first Muslim woman to compete at the Olympics — where she snubbed Hitler




Halet Çambel, who has died aged 97, was an Olympic fencer and the first Muslim woman to compete in the Games; while she failed to take home a medal from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 she won international acclaim by refusing to meet Hitler.

Post-war, she became a renowned archaeologist.

The 20-year-old Halet Çambel represented Turkey in the women’s individual foil event.

She already held reservations about attending the Nazi-run Games, and an introduction to the Führer was a compromise too far. “Our assigned German official asked us to meet Hitler. We actually would not have come to Germany at all if it were down to us, as we did not approve of Hitler’s regime,” she recalled late in life. “We firmly rejected her offer.”


Halet Çambel was born on August 27 1916 in Berlin, the granddaughter of Ibrahim Hakki Pasha, the Ottoman Ambassador to Germany. Her father, Hasan Cemil Çambel, was the embassy’s military attaché and a close associate of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic

As she grew up in Berlin with her three siblings, her parents became concerned by her frailty (she suffered with typhoid and hepatitis). “They always looked at me as if my days were numbered,” she remembered. “They would dress me up in layers of jumpers and woolly socks. As I was not happy with this, without my family knowing, I removed these heavy clothes at school and decided to increase my strength. And I also began to exercise. The German books I read contained stories about knights. I was very impressed by them, this is why I took up fencing.”

In the mid-1920s the family resettled in Istanbul, where, prior to the founding of the Republic, Halet Çambel was “shocked by the black shrouded women who came and visited us at home”. Part of Ataturk’s legacy was to expand the rights and possibilities of women. Participation in sport contributed to this emancipation

She acknowledged the amateurism of her country’s Olympic bid. “We did not prepare,” she said. “Everybody would train in their own spare time.” After an unhelpful spell with a Hungarian coach in Budapest, she arrived in Berlin. She was present when a furious Hitler stormed out of the Olympic Stadium after America’s black athlete Jesse Owens won the 100m sprint.

On her return from the Games she met Nail Çakırhan, a Communist poet and later a celebrated architect. As her family were unimpressed by Çakırhan’s Marxist beliefs, the couple wed in secret. She went on to read Archaeology (along with the Hittite, Assyrian, and Hebrew languages) at the Sorbonne in Paris before gaining a doctorate at the University of Istanbul in 1940. In the immediate wake of the Second World War she studied with the German professor Helmuth Bossert, and in 1947 assisted on his excavation of the 8th-century Hittite fortress city of Karatepe in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.

Karatepe was to be her life’s work: for more than five decades she spent six months each year at the site. It was there that she helped to develop a greater understanding of Hittite hieroglyphics, the indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, and build ties between Turkish academics and the German archaeological community (Çambel was to become a member of the German Archaeology Institute).

A good-looking woman, she maintained a no-nonsense approach on her pioneering digs in south-east Anatolia. “Halet was always respected by the farmers,” said the Danish-German ethnologist Ulla Johansen. “She wore practical trousers and simple, high-buttoned blouses, completely covering her upper arms and a man’s cap on her short cut hair.”

In 1960 Halet Çambel became professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Istanbul University, where she later founded a chair dedicated to the field. In 2004 she received the Prince Claus Award, the Dutch prize in recognition of a progressive approach to culture .

Her husband died in October 2008.


Halet Çambel, born August 27 1916, died January 12 2014

[Mr Lick]

Canon Gerry Murphy - obituary

Canon Gerry Murphy was a fullback for Ireland who became Queen’s Chaplain and a resilient rector to the Falkland Islands





Canon Gerry Murphy, who has died aged 87, was an Irish rugby international and later Domestic Chaplain to the Queen.

His uncomplicated character, warm personality and charm was employed with outstanding success for 22 years as an Army chaplain. He then held a series of important ministries: to holiday-makers on the Norfolk Broads; as vicar of Sandringham and Domestic Chaplain to the Queen; as Rector of Christ Church Cathedral at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands; and finally as chaplain of the Royal Chapel at the Tower of London. In each he won admiration and considerable affection, and it was often said that he displayed the Anglican ministry at its best.


John Gervase Maurice Walker Murphy (he was always known as Gerry) was born in Bangor, Co Down, on August 20 1926 and educated at the Methodist College in Belfast, which he left in 1944 to serve in the ranks of the Irish Guards. A year later he was commissioned in the Royal Ulster Rifles, in which he remained until 1947.

On demobilisation, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, to prepare for Holy Orders and resume an unusually promising rugby career that had started while at school



During his three years (1952-55) as a curate in the Shankill parish at Lurgan, Co Armagh, he played at fullback for Ireland. Against England at Twickenham, in 1952, he was not the only novice priest in the team — the hooker, Robin Roe, would later be ordained into the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department and would win an MC for bravery in Aden. However, Ireland lost 3-0 – with England’s winning try being scored by Brian Boobbyer, the grandson of the Bishop of Buckingham. Murphy went on to win caps for Ireland against Scotland, Wales and, in 1954, the All Blacks.

In 1955 he moved to England to join the Royal Army Chaplains Department and was almost immediately sent to post-war Korea, where Army units were still stationed. On his return in 1957 he was enthusiastically recruited into the British Army XV and, although required to serve for relatively short periods in Aden and Cyprus, managed to play also for London Irish against Wales and occasionally for the Barbarians

He was a Chaplain to the Queen from 1987 to 1996, continuing as one of her Extra Chaplains until his death.

He was appointed LVO in 1987.

Gerry Murphy is survived by his wife, Joy, and five daughters.


Canon Gerry Murphy, born August 20 1926, died January 7 2014

[Mr Lick]

Brian Dowling - obituary

Brian Dowling was a journalist and publicist who liked to sport a monocle and roistered with Bogarde and Peter Finch




Brian Dowling, who has died aged 87, was a monocled roisterer and journalist who worked alongside Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy.

While Hardy captured many evocative images of 1950s Britain, Dowling chose the subjects, arranged poses and researched locations. And it was Dowling who, with his eye for pretty girls, arranged Hardy’s celebrated “Blackpool Belles” photograph. Later Dowling became a publicist with the Rank Organisation and a pioneering public relations man in the City, known as much for his wry conviviality as for any strict devotion to commerce.


Frank Brian Dowling was born on June 14 1926 at Bromley, Kent. His father, also Frank, was an originator of newspaper cartoon strips who edited the monthly humour magazine Lilliput and later had a brief stint running Picture Post.


Dowling the younger, who had started teaching himself Greek at the age of nine, was educated at Tonbridge and won a scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge. He joined the RAF as a Cambridge cadet pilot in 1944, showing aptitude for flying his Tiger Moth upside down.


Being held in place only by a couple of shoulder straps lent “an added frisson to inverted formation flying”. Posted to a camp in Torquay, the cadets befriended Devonian girls, or as Dowling put it, “there was evidence that the groundsheet, a bulky item in the kit we had to carry, had its uses”.

At the end of war in Europe, Dowling remustered to personnel selection and found himself at Sallufa in Egypt’s Suez Canal Zone. It was there that, for the only time in his RAF career, he scented a whiff of cordite – on a crocodile shoot during which he and his unit expended hundreds of rounds. Not one crocodile was punctured.

Dowling returned to university, but was rusticated from Christ’s for declaiming Aeschylus from the clock tower at two in the morning. He had achieved a First in Classics in the initial part of his Tripos but left Cambridge with a Third in Moral Sciences. There were, he declared, “only two degrees worth having – an effortless First and an effortless Third, and I got ’em both”.

His first job, acquired through nepotism, was as a staff reporter on Picture Post, the mass circulation photojournalism magazine which employed writers such as MacDonald Hastings, Fyfe Robertson and JB Priestley. Office minnow Dowling was assigned to animal stories. When a baby elephant visited the library of the Royal Geographical Society, Dowling’s headline and caption ran: “Dumbo meets the Fellows – a day one elephant will never forget”. His superiors were rather impressed



The first duty of a Picture Post writer was to support his photographer, and Dowling became the “blunt nib” of Bert Hardy. The camera maestro warmed to his raffish young colleague, and the two covered the port harvest in the Douro, ship launches in Liverpool, the night scenes of Paris’s red-light area Pigalle, and the streets around Piccadilly in fogbound London. That essay caught an essence of post-war London and won Hardy the Encyclopaedia Britannica prize in 1953. Dowling’s substantial contribution to the project went unheralded.

Dowling left Fleet Street in 1957 to write a television documentary series, The Way We Live, for a subsidiary of the Rank Organisation. His arrival coincided with an assertion, from Rank’s domineering chairman John Davis, that television was the enemy and that documentaries were a waste of money. This did not stop Rank two years later buying a stake in Southern Television and starting a documentary series called Look at Life.

Dowling’s sardonic manner niggled Davis, as did his habit of always wearing a carnation buttonhole (a habit Davis liked to consider his own). Dowling’s sartorial flair – occasional tweeds, brass-buttoned waistcoats, a pipe and even a monocle – made the cigar-chewing Davis twitch with irritation. Dowling found an ally in Theo Cowan, Rank’s chief publicist and creator of the Rank charm school. Cowan gave Dowling a job in publicity, where among other things he organised Pinewood Studios’ 25th birthday party. He became a drinking buddy of Rank stars such as Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden, Peter Finch and Stanley Baker — but Cowan, perhaps advisedly, kept Dowling away from Rank’s starlets.

Within two years Dowling was head of Rank’s public and press relations. But there were no tall poppies in the Rank Group’s London headquarters – Davis would hack them down before they could become a threat. By 1963 the chairman was sending Dowling memos typed in capital letters to express his extreme disagreement on certain matters. At a monthly meeting of executives, Davis barked: “The trouble with you, Dowling, is you’re too much of a gentleman.” He followed this the next day by remarking: “Your time is short.”

When Davis complained about Dowling smoking his “infernal” pipe at a divisional board meeting, his target responded by attending the next such meeting with a lit Monte Cristo No 5 – the very type of Havana that Davis smoked. Aware that his Rank career was near its demise, Dowling resigned. Davis was enraged: he liked to sack people.

Dowling set up on his own, becoming one of the first City corporate relations consultants. His clients included Kleinwort Benson (which he advised for 30 years), Scandinavian Bank and the Banque Nationale de Paris. Friends were never convinced that he was a capitalist. Dowling was certainly appalled (yet fascinated) when, standing at the bar of the Garrick club one evening in 1969, he fell into conversation with Judge Melford Stevenson. Dowling inquired: “Had a good day?” Stevenson, who had just sentenced the Kray brothers, took a drag on his gin and mixed and replied: “I’ll say so. Those bastards only spoke two words of truth in the whole trial. One was that their defending counsel was a slob. The other was that I was totally biased against them.”

Dowling never wore a wristwatch and never drove a car, though for some years after leaving the RAF he continued to fly Tiger Moths as a reservist. He wore a black or brown Coke hat to town and a Panama in benign weather. In middle age he turned from croquet to real tennis, playing at Lord’s with his Savile club friend Sir Ralph Richardson. His preferred breakfast tipple, after a night on the toot, was a half bottle of champagne.

On a trip to Australia he once spent the morning flying over Sydney harbour in a Tiger Moth, took an afternoon sail in a Hobart racer and spent the evening watching The Marriage of Figaro at the Opera House – all, he was happy to say, at clients’ expense.

Though his career had been closely linked with advertising, he grew to hate its consumerist ethos, to the point that he refused to watch commercial television. Well into his 80s, while riding on his tricycle, he was run over by a bus. His words of fury at the bus driver were said to have left some of the female passengers in a state of advanced shock.

Dowling served on the council of Counsel and Care for the Elderly for more than 30 years, also acting as the charity’s deputy chairman and chairman.

He married his wife Eileen, a former searchlight operator in the London Blitz, in 1951.

She predeceased him, and he is survived by their three children.


Brian Dowling, born June 14 1926, died December 31 2013

[harrybarracuda]

Tuskegee Airman Rudisill dies at age 97
Jan. 26, 2014 @ 12:00 AM
The Herald-Dispatch / 2014



Earl Rudisill, a Huntington native and a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, died Thursday in Columbus, Ohio, at Zusman Hospice. He was 97. Funeral arrangements for Rudisill are incomplete at Ferrell-Chambers Funeral Home in Huntington.

It may have been Chuck Yeager that broke the sound barrier, “but it was the Tuskegee Airmen who broke the color barrier,” Rudisill told a columnist for The Herald-Dispatch in 2009.

Rudisill was born in 1916 in the old Guthrie Hospital on 6th Avenue in Huntington, and he graduated from Douglass High School. After he enlisted in the Army’s Signal Corps in 1942, he trained in communications at West Virginia State College in Institute, advanced to military schools in Philadelphia and Chicago, then returned to Philadelphia to train on a new type of transmitter/receiver for air-to-ground and ground-to-air communications.

He ultimately joined the Tuskegee Airman in Alabama, where he was busy keeping the electronic equipment operational.

Before 1940, African Americans were not allowed to fly in the military. Civil rights organizations pressed the issue, and the all African-American group was formed based in Tuskegee, Ala., in 1941. The Airmen included pilots, navigators, bombardiers, maintenance and support staff, instructors, and all the personnel who kept the planes in the air.

Rudisill had deployments in North Africa, and several locations in Europe.

“They depended on me quite heavily,” Rudisill told columnist Clyde Beal in 2009. “Back then the electronics being used were very new and not many were qualified to keep the equipment in operating order,” he said. “I eventually received some personnel to train, which greatly helped in keeping the aircraft ready to fly. I felt my job was quite important, and I tried to do my best whenever I was needed.”

Rudisill received several awards for his exemplary service, including the Congressional Gold Medal presented to him in 2009 by U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall.

In an interview after the Sept. 11 tragedy, Rudisill talked about patriotism.

“It’s hard to explain. Patriotism is just something you know and naturally abide by, by being a good citizen. A lot of people think they are being patriotic by waiving the flag, but it’s more than that,” he said. “Waving a flag is a display that’s soon forgotten. Patriotism is always remembered.

[Mr Lick]

Tata Motors chief Karl Slym dies




Related Stories

• Secret of Jaguar Land Rover success Watch

Tata Motors' managing director Karl Slym has died in Thailand where he was attending a board meeting.

India-based Tata said in a statement it "deeply regrets to announce the untimely and tragic" death of Mr Slym.

The circumstances of his death were not immediately apparent, although several media reports said he may have had a fall at a hotel in the Thai capital.

Aged 51, the British-born executive ran all Tata Motors' operations except Jaguar Land Rover in the UK.

Mr Slym had worked for Toyota in the UK, and then General Motors in India and China.

He had been managing director of Tata Motors, part of the giant Tata Group, since October 2012.

Although Jaguar Land Rover has been hugely successful, the rest of Tata Motors has struggled.

Mr Slym was brought in to help overhaul the manufacturing, sales and distribution operation, including Tata's new-look Nano ultra-cheap car and building a new generation of engines.

In his tribute, Tata chairman Cyrus P Mistry described Mr Slym as "a valued colleague who was providing strong leadership at a challenging time for the Indian auto industry

[harrybarracuda]

^ What's he famous for apart from taking a dive off a balcony?

Mind you, if you're going to top yourself, you could do worse than the Shangri La.

[harrybarracuda]

January 27, 2014
Raymond Weil Dies at 87
By JOELLE DIDERICH

PARIS — Raymond Weil, founder and honorary president of the eponymous Swiss luxury watch brand, has died at the age of 87, the company announced on Monday.

[harrybarracuda]

Monday, January 27, 2014, 11:41 by Press Association
Smoking kills Marlboro man



Eric Lawson, who portrayed the rugged Marlboro man in cigarette ads during the late 1970s, has died in California. He was 72.
Lawson died on January 10 at his home in San Luis Obispo of respiratory failure due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, his wife, Susan Lawson said yesterday.
Lawson was an actor with bit parts on such TV shows as The Streets Of San Francisco when he was hired to appear in print Marlboro ads from 1978 to 1981.
His other credits include Charlie's Angels, 'Dynasty and Baywatch. His wife said injuries suffered on the set of a Western film ended his career in 1997.
A smoker since the age of 14, Lawson later appeared in an anti-smoking commercial that parodied the Marlboro man and an Entertainment Tonight segment to discuss the negative effects of smoking.
Mrs Lawson said her husband was proud of the interview, even though he was smoking at the time and continued the habit until he was diagnosed with COPD.
"He knew the cigarettes had a hold on him," she said. "He knew, yet he still couldn't stop."
A few actors and models who advertised Marlboro brand cigarettes have died of smoking-related diseases. They include David Millar, who died of emphysema in 1987, and David McLean, who died of lung cancer in 1995.
Lawson was survived by six children, 18 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

[Mr Lick]

John Steele - obituary

John Steele was an oceanographer who developed the mathematical tools needed to sum up the oceans’ role in climate change





John Steele, who has died aged 86, was a Scottish-born oceanographer and served as director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, making major contributions to scientific understanding of the dynamics of marine ecosystems.

Steele led the way in transforming the discipline of biological oceanography from a descriptive science to a quantitative, mathematically-based discipline. His The Structure of Marine Ecosystems (1974) spelled out this approach and has come to be regarded as the oceanographer’s bible.


One of Steele’s major insights was that physical and biological processes are much more closely linked in marine ecosystems than they are on land. Whereas terrestrial organisms have to be capable of adapting to temperatures that can easily vary by 20˚C or more in a single day, or between light and shade, the residents of marine ecosystems typically exist in an environment in which the temperature varies very little. A lizard which becomes too hot can run under a stone. A marine fish might have to swim hundreds of miles or go much deeper to achieve a drop in temperature.


Understanding such processes is essential for predicting the likely consequences of so-called “regime shifts” – large changes in oceanic conditions that result from overfishing, say, or climate change (which affects plankton production). These shifts have an impact on the marine food chain, affecting population dynamics, migration patterns, growth rates and mortality of fish species.

The mathematical tools that Steele developed are central to the science of fisheries management and to predicting the role of the oceans in mitigating climate change.

John Hyslop Steele was born in Edinburgh on November 15 1926 and educated at George Watson’s Boys’ College and at University College, London, where he went up aged 16 and took a degree in Mathematics (and later a DSc). After graduating in 1946 he served in the RAF research establishment, specialising in aeronautical mechanics.

In 1951 he found a job in the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen .


The laboratory was responsible for fisheries management, but Steele soon became convinced that in order to perform this role effectively it was essential to understand the broader ocean environment. His initial research, with Valentine Worthington, concerned the measurement of ocean currents, but his interests soon broadened towards understanding the processes that regulate the lives of the microscopic plants and animals that form the basis of marine food chains.

In research carried out at Fladen Ground, in the North Sea, he carried out a series of measurements that enabled him to make a quantitative analysis of nutrient supplies, plant growth and animal production at a single location. He used these measurements to develop and test the mathematical models set out in his 1974 book and in over 100 scientific papers.

He also became involved in studying the dynamics of smaller marine systems that might serve as a template for the understanding of broader ocean processes, taking measurements in Loch Ewe on the west coast of Scotland and using devices known as “mesocosms” — large open plastic bags floating in the sea — to study the natural environment under controlled conditions.

During the 1950s Steele began a long-term association with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, working with Charles Yentsch on an analysis of vertical distributions of microscopic plants in the ocean. In 1977 he was appointed the Institution’s director, a position in which he served until 1989. Under Steele’s leadership Woods Hole played a central part in the development of international oceanographic projects investigating the role of the oceans in climate change.

In retirement he returned to active research, serving on the boards of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (now the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences), the Exxon Corporation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Steel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1963, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1978 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980. In 1973 he was awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal of the American National Academy of Sciences.

He is survived by his wife, Evelyn, whom he married in 1956, and by their son.


John Steele, born November 15 1926, died November 4 2013

[Mr Lick]

Gordon Tack - obituary

Gordon Tack was an SOE radio operator who survived a dragnet in Occupied France to wreak havoc after D-Day





Gordon Tack, who has died aged 90, was a radio operator with SOE and was parachuted into enemy-occupied territory in France in 1944, and Burma and Malaya the following year.

On the night of July 8 1944, Tack was dropped into Brittany. Accompanying him in Jedburgh Team Giles were Captain Bernard Knox, an American of British origin, and Captain Paul Grall, a Frenchman.


Wearing uniforms and operating alongside SAS and other Jedburgh teams, their mission was to coordinate resistance. They landed near Briec where they were welcomed by a group of excited young Frenchmen, each of whom they had to embrace in turn.


They loaded their containers on to a truck; the vehicle gave them an anxious time for it made as much noise as a Sherman tank. With captured German rifles sticking out of the windows, they drove along back roads to a rendezvous with the Maquis, who were camped in a wood. The last part of the journey was made in daylight and they discovered later that 300 German paratroops had arrived in a nearby village soon after they had passed through and were searching all the farms in the area.


They distributed the weapons, trained the Maquis in their use, identified new drop-zones for further supplies and organised reception committees. Shortly after their arrival, they were visited by a senior officer in the FFI (French Forces of the Interior).

A man to whom he had given a lift in his car was unmasked as a Gestapo agent and summarily shot.




Early in August, they received orders to begin harassing attacks on the German 2nd Parachute Division which was moving eastwards from Douarnenez. A large-scale ambush forced the Division to abandon the roads and strike out across the fields.

Many German prisoners were taken. Under interrogation, they admitted to atrocities and refused to explain why they had French money and identity cards on them. Many were shot. Team Giles had no facilities for holding prisoners and was unable to intervene.

Tack had a vital role in encoding, deciphering and transmitting messages. This had to be done at high speed to avoid detection and capture by the Germans. A less expert operator would have put at risk the whole enterprise, and the hunt for Tack and his comrades was relentless. Sleeping in barns and haystacks, they were up at first light and moved almost every day to elude the dragnet, undertaking long, forced marches



Tack’s stepfather, George, a Leading Seaman on the armed merchant ship Rajputana, had been killed when the vessel was sunk by U-108 in April 1941, west of Reykjavik.

Gordon was convinced that there was substance in reports at the time that the German submarine had surfaced after the sinking and machine-gunned the survivors in the lifeboats.

A French chateau near Châteauneuf was being used for “rest and recreation” by submarine crews from Brest and their French girlfriends. One night Tack, moving stealthily through the woods, got to within 200 yards of the chateau and was able to guide three RAF bombers on to the target with devastating accuracy. The attack went some way to assuaging his anger at his stepfather’s death.

In September, when they were overrun by the advancing Allied forces, they moved to Quimper and returned to Dartmouth by minesweeper. Tack was awarded a Military Medal.

Gordon Hugh Tack was born on November 21 1923 at Valletta, Malta, where his father was serving in the Royal Navy. The family returned to England shortly after he was born but his parents split up and when his mother married George Tack, young Gordon took his stepfather’s name.

He went to school in Plymouth but left aged 15 to become a boilermaker’s apprentice at Devonport dockyard. In 1941 he joined the RAF to train as a pilot but transferred to the Army the following year.

After returning from France, Tack volunteered for service with Force 136, the cover name for SOE’s operations in south-east Asia. Jungle training in Ceylon included instructions on cooking and serving curried lizard.

In March 1945 he and two comrades in Team Pig were dropped into the Pyu area of Burma to organise resistance groups. One night, as they moved across the country, they were betrayed by the driver of their bullock cart and surrounded by soldiers of the Indian National Army, which was under Japanese command.

After failing to negotiate their release, they shot their way out, killing or wounding five of their captors. Tack became separated from the others. He hid by day and moved only by night, using a compass, subsisting on water from the paddy fields, watching out for snakes and listening for the warning rustle of long columns of ants.

After six days he was found by a village headman and reunited with his comrades. When his group was overrun by the advancing 5th Indian Infantry Division, he hitched a ride with an American pilot to Chittagong and then went by ferry to Calcutta.

In July he was dropped into Selangor, Malaya. After the Japanese surrender, his team arranged for air drops of food and medical supplies for civilian internees at Bahau, Negeri Sembilan.

When SOE was disbanded, Tack was posted to the 25th Dragoons and was in India during the violence that followed Partition. In 1947 he returned to England and signed up for a 22-year engagement as a regular soldier. He was posted to the 3rd Caribiniers (Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards) in Germany and later served as regimental sergeant major with the Cheshire Yeomanry.

After retiring from the Army in 1969 as a WO1, he was a magistrate’s court official until 1974 and then worked on the security branch of British Rail until 1982.

Settled in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire, his hobbies included DIY, reading and music.

For many years, he was a boxing judge.

Gordon Tack married, in 1947, Monica Bridgid Schlesinger. She predeceased him and he is survived by their three sons and a daughter.


Gordon Tack, born November 21 1923, died December 24 2013

[steve down under]

I think this thread should be renamed as most of the people featured arent in the traditional sense of the word "Famous" I would suggest maybe The R I P Notable person thread !

[Mr Lick]

US folk singer Pete Seeger dies



Pete Seeger continued to perform well into his nineties

US folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, whose songs included Turn, Turn, Turn! and If I Had A Hammer, has died at the age of 94.

He died at a New York hospital after a short illness, his grandson said.

Seeger gained fame in The Weavers, formed in 1948, and continued to perform in his own right in a career spanning six decades.

Renowned for his protest songs, Seeger was blacklisted in the 1950s for his leftist stance

[Mid]

Vale pete seeger



Pete Seeger
Singer


Peter "Pete" Seeger was an American folk singer. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their ... Wikipedia

Born: May 3, 1919, Patterson, New York, United States

Died: January 27, 2014, New York City, New York, United States

Spouse: Toshi Seeger (m. 1943–2013)

Siblings: Peggy Seeger, Mike Seeger, John Seeger, Charles Seeger III, Barbara Seeger, Penelope Seeger

Albums: Precious Friend, Dangerous Songs!?, Rainbow Race,

[snakeeyes]

[Boon Mee]

US folk singer Pete Seeger dies
Renowned for his protest songs, Seeger was blacklisted in the 1950s for his leftist stance

Because he supposedly supported Uncle Joe Stalin.

[harrybarracuda]

US folk singer Pete Seeger dies
Renowned for his protest songs, Seeger was blacklisted in the 1950s for his leftist stance

Because he supposedly supported Uncle Joe Stalin.

No because Joe McCarthy was a nasty piece of shit.

[Boon Mee]

^
Negative

They’re glossing over the dark side.

Pete Seeger defended communism during the cold war and aided our enemies at a time when Americans were fighting.

During that same time Communism slaughtered 100 million people living under it and enslaved hundreds of millions more.

On the show they mentioned Seeger as a “Communist with a small ‘c’ ” Perhaps Democrat National Committee member Bill Connor should have described himself as a “KKK member with a small ‘k’ ” or Riefenstahl as a “Nazi with a small ‘n’ “?

If only Leni Riefenstahl had been a communist like Pete Seeger.

[harrybarracuda]

Face it Booners you like McCarthy because he was a Republican, but in truth he was a petty, vindictive little jobsworth, whose main objective was to destroy careers with a succession of mostly baseless accusations.

Mind you he was a raving queen as well.