The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Cujo]

Damn, that's sad. I always liked Paxton. He has acted in so many great movies and television series.

Agreed and he always added dimension to whatever movie he played in.

[misskit]

Read somewhere that he died of a stroke after heart surgery.

[Digby Fantona]

Labour MP Gerald Kaufman dies at 86 - BBC News

[harrybarracuda]

Labour MP Gerald Kaufman dies at 86 - BBC News

It would be nice if you could follow the convention of title, picture and obit.

[harrybarracuda]

Sir Gerald Kaufman: Tributes paid after 'iconic and irascible' Labour grandee dies aged 86



Jeremy Corbyn has led tributes to the oldest serving MP, Sir Gerald Kaufman, who has died at 86.

The Labour leader described the Father of the House of Commons as an "iconic and irascible" figure with "dandy clothes" who "loved life and politics".

The Labour MP for Manchester Gorton's family said he died on Sunday evening after battling a long-term illness.

Sir Gerald was first elected as Manchester Ardwick MP in 1970 before becoming Manchester Gorton MP after constituency boundary changes in 1983 until his death.

His family announced his death "with great sadness", saying: "Sir Gerald had been suffering from a long-term illness for several months, but, in that time, remained firmly committed to, and focused on, the activities and wellbeing of his beloved constituency, which he had served since first elected in 1970.

"Sir Gerald dedicated his life to serving those who he believed would benefit most from a Labour government and Labour values in action.

"He believed that policy and principle without power were simply not enough to deliver the better life that he fought for on behalf of his constituents for almost 50 years.

"Though Sir Gerald had many friends and supporters in Manchester and across the world from his work on many campaigns and causes, he was in essence a private man.

"There will be a further opportunity for those who wish to pay tribute to the contribution of this great socialist and parliamentarian in due course.

"For now, his family request that his dignity and integrity be honoured through respectful reflection."

Mr Corbyn paid tribute to his "constant" friend, saying: "I'm very sad at the passing of Sir Gerald Kaufman MP.

"An iconic and irascible figure in the Labour Party, Gerald worked with Harold Wilson when he was Prime Minister in the 1960s and became a Labour MP in 1970.

"Gerald was always a prominent figure in the party and in Parliament, with his dandy clothes and wonderful demeanour in speaking.

"Gerald came from a proud Jewish background. He always wanted to bring peace to the Middle East and it was my pleasure to travel with him to many countries.

"I last saw him in his lovely flat in St John's Wood in London, surrounded by film posters and a library of the film world.

"He loved life and politics. I will deeply miss him, both for his political commitment and constant friendship."

Commons Speaker John Bercow said: "I was very saddened to learn of the death of Sir Gerald Kaufman, the Father of the House and Manchester Gorton's outstanding representative.

"Gerald was a passionate campaigner for social justice, here in Britain and around the world.

"His passing will be mourned by his relatives, friends, constituents and colleagues."

Sir Gerald won in Manchester Gorton in 2015 with a majority of 24,079, beating the Green Party into second place.

The constituency is seen as one of Labour's safest seats and so the by-election resulting from his death is unlikely to cause any headaches for Mr Corbyn, despite his troubles after losing Copeland to the Tories last week.

Conservative grandee and former chancellor Ken Clarke is now the new Father of the House, the title given to the MP with the longest continuous service who is not a minister.

Mr Clarke was also elected in June 1970 but Sir Gerald held the title as he was sworn in first.

Sir Gerald's last spoken contribution in the Commons chamber was in a debate paying tribute to the Queen on her 90th birthday on April 21 last year, according to Hansard, the official report of proceedings in Parliament.

He spoke of wanting to reach a similar milestone.

"Turning 90 is a marvellous signpost in life, as I hope to experience myself before long," Sir Gerald said.

"Not long ago, one of my sisters turned 90 and we had a huge family celebration.

"Today, the national family is celebrating, and that very much includes those in this House."

Additional reporting by the Press Association.

Sir Gerald Kaufman: Tributes paid after 'iconic and irascible' Labour grandee dies aged 86 | London Evening Standard

[harrybarracuda]

Who knew Bill Paxton was the punk in Terminator?

[Digby Fantona]

Who knew Bill Paxton was the punk in Terminator?

Bill Paxton knew.

[harrybarracuda]

Actor Bill Paxton has been memorialized by storm chasers in Oklahoma after the Twister star died at the age of 61. More than 200 people used GPS coordinates to spell out "BP" over Wakita, Oklahoma — the town where much of the tornado-centric movie was shot — in honor of the actor, who died after complications from surgery.

Some storm chasers manually registered their GPS coordinates on the map, but others actually drove out to the location, in the middle of the United States' "Tornado Alley." The memorial was arranged by Spotter Network, a nonprofit that uses updates from the National Weather Service to track storm chasers, guiding them to potential tornadoes and helping to keep them safe.

[harrybarracuda]

Neil Fingleton, 'Game of Thrones' giant and a former basketball player, dies at 36



Neil Fingleton, one of Britain’s tallest men and an actor who was best known for playing the giant Mag the Mighty on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has died.

The 7-foot-7-inch actor died Saturday, according to the Associated Press. He was 36. The cause of death was heart failure, according to British media reports.

The actor was born in Durham in northeast England in 1980 and was one of three towering siblings in a long line of tall family members.

His stature facilitated a basketball career and he played at both the University of North Carolina and at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., leading that team to the state finals in 1999. At North Carolina, Fingleton was the Tar Heels’ center until he was injured and had back surgery in 2000. He also played for Great Britain in the World University Games in China and professionally in Spain and Greece.

In 2007, Fingleton was named the United Kingdom’s tallest man by Guinness World Records.

“I have always been taller then everyone since I can remember. My height really took off when I reached 11 and was touching 7 foot,” he told Guinness. He said that by the time he was 16, he was 7-foot-5.

“I have never been self conscious about my height. I am more conscious of going bald so that should tell you I never let my height play a negative part in my life. I always do what I want; some tall people may be restricted as they are constantly stared at or people ask the same questions over and over,” he once said, according to the Sun. “This is the only bad thing about being tall — the stupid remarks and questions. Other than that, being tall is great.”

After retiring from basketball because of injuries, he turned to acting where he gained a fan base playing larger-than-life characters such as the fearsome giant Mag the Mighty on “Game of Thrones.”

Mag was felled by the men of the Night’s Watch in a Season 4 episode after breaking into a tunnel leading to the fortified Castle Black.

Fingleton also appeared in the action films “47 Ronin,” “X-Men: First Class” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” as well as British fantasy series “Doctor Who,” playing the Fisher King monster.

“There are tens of millions of people in this country, and I'm the tallest, which is a very special thing,” Fingleton told the BBC. “So why not use it to my advantage and be recognized, not just for being tall but for being a talented actor.”

The Tall Persons Club shared the news of Fingleton’s death on Facebook and paid tribute to the late actor.

“Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family,” the post said.

Fingleton’s mother, Christine Fingleton, told the Chronicle that her son’s death was “a dreadful shock, we are just devastated.”

Fingleton’s death comes two months after the death of another “Game of Thrones” alum: Peter Vaughan, who played Castle Black’s Maester Aemon. Vaughan died in December at age 93.

Neil Fingleton, 'Game of Thrones' giant and a former basketball player, dies at 36 - LA Times

[harrybarracuda]

William Liebenow, 97, Dies; PT Boat Skipper Rescued Kennedy
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKFEB. 28, 2017



Under the cover of darkness on Aug. 7, 1943, Lt. William Liebenow skippered his patrol torpedo boat into enemy waters in the South Pacific. His mission was to rescue the sailors of PT-109 who had survived for days on inhospitable islands after a Japanese destroyer had rammed their boat, splitting it in two and killing two crewmen.

Among the 11 crew members who survived the sinking of PT-109 was a bunkmate of the lieutenant’s, the boat’s 26-year-old skipper, John F. Kennedy. Tales of Kennedy’s heroism in the aftermath of the attack became a part of his legacy, chronicled in books like Robert J. Donovan’s “PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II” (1961) and a film adaptation, “PT 109” (1963), which starred Cliff Robertson as Kennedy.

“After the war, when Kennedy’s ambitions turned to politics, the event played a role in molding his public image from ‘child of privilege’ to ‘battle-tested combat veteran’ and helped propel him into the House of Representatives in 1947, into the U.S. Senate in 1953 and into the White House in 1961,” William Doyle wrote in “PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy” (2015).

Lieutenant Liebenow went on to pilot a PT boat to save more than 60 survivors of another sinking: that of the Corry, an American destroyer that was struck by German weaponry during the Allied invasion at Normandy.

Mr. Liebenow, who was awarded the Bronze and Silver Stars for his wartime exploits, died on Friday at his home in Mount Airy, N.C. He was 97. His daughter, Susan Liebenow, said the cause was complications of pneumonia.

In the Pacific, Lieutenant Liebenow and Lieutenant Kennedy had both piloted their maneuverable boats on daring nighttime attacks on more powerful Japanese ships.

After the war, Kennedy was criticized by some for allowing his boat to be struck by an enemy vessel, the destroyer Amagiri. But Lieutenant Liebenow did not second-guess him.

“I can understand how things like that happen,” he said in an interview for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in 2005. “I think that people that haven’t been there certainly can’t.”

The crew members who survived the collision and ensuing explosion clung to a section of the hull and eventually swam for Plum Pudding Island, about three and a half miles away. Kennedy towed Patrick McMahon, a severely burned machinist’s mate, by clenching the strap of Seaman McMahon’s life jacket in his teeth. The nine other survivors clung to a plank from PT-109 and reached the island, an uninhabited dot in the Solomon Islands chain, after around four hours.

The men lived mostly on coconuts for six days, at one point moving to another island in search of food. Two islanders, sent in a dugout canoe to search for survivors from PT-109, eventually found them. Kennedy carved a distress message into a coconut, and the message eventually reached the American base at Rendova, a much larger island about 40 miles away. Lieutenant Liebenow was dispatched to make the rescue in PT-157.

His path and Kennedy’s crossed again after the war. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Mr. Liebenow joined Kennedy, then a United States senator, on a whistle-stop tour of Michigan. After Kennedy won the election, he invited Mr. Liebenow and his wife to an inaugural ball.

William Frederick Liebenow was born on Jan. 18, 1920, in Fredericksburg, Va., to William Frederick Liebenow and the former Mary Eastman. He graduated from Fredericksburg High School and received a bachelor’s degree from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., in 1941.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, the former Lucy Tyler, whom he had met at Randolph-Macon; a son, William; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Lieutenant Liebenow enlisted in the Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. During the Normandy invasion, in 1944, he had escorted a dozen ships across the English Channel into position to fire rockets at German forces on the French coast before rescuing the crewmen from the Corry.

Later in the war, his boat ferried Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George S. Patton. He left the Navy in 1947 and worked for years in the railroad industry.

In his interview for the Kennedy library in 2005, Mr. Liebenow recalled that during the 1960 campaign tour Kennedy mentioned that many of the people he met claimed to have been crewmen on PT-157.

“That’s when he told me, ‘Lieb, if I get the votes of everybody that claims to have been on your boat that night of the pickup, I’ll win this election easy.’”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/u...-jfk.html?_r=0

[chitown]

Thanks to all that are keeping just another one of my extremely successful and informative threads moving and shaking!

[harrybarracuda]

Thomas Starzl, father of organ transplantation, dies at 90
LUIS FÁBREGAS | Sunday, March 5, 2017, 9:29 a.m.



Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, the organ transplant icon who revolutionized medicine by performing the first successful liver transplant and set the standard for the life-saving surgery, died Saturday. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh, where he was a Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery in the School of Medicine. A joint UPMC-Pitt statement issued Sunday did not indicate a cause of death.

“Thomas Starzl was many things to many people. He was a pioneer, a legend, a great human, and a great humanitarian. He was a force of nature that swept all those around him into his orbit, challenging those that surrounded him to strive to match his superhuman feats of focus, will and compassion,” the Starzl family said in a statement provided by UPMC and Pitt.

Known as the father of transplantation, Starzl's influence and renown extended worldwide, as his discoveries and achievements put an indelible stamp on clinical medicine and established him as one of the most celebrated figures in the scientific community.

In 1991, the Institute of Scientific Information identified Starzl as the most cited scientist in clinical medicine. The institute says Starzl at one point published a scientific paper once every 7.3 days.

With Starzl at the helm, UPMC's transplant center in the 1980s became known as the transplant capital of the world. Sick patients came from across the globe in search of an organ. The number of surgeries escalated, with a record-high 471 liver transplants in 1990.

In one of his last interviews with the Tribune-Review, Starzl in February 2008 said his legacy was more about what was accomplished in the field rather than his personal achievements.

“I never did have a big game plan,” he said. “If you don't have a big game plan, then you really don't have something that you strive for and accomplish and have as your cherished legacy. I just came to work every day and did the best I could.”

His clout and name notwithstanding, Starzl in the last several years insisted he exerted no influence over the daily operations of UPMC's organ transplant program.

But Starzl, who joined UPMC in 1981, was hardly in the dark.

While officially retired from clinical medicine since 1991, he until recently maintained an office on Fifth Avenue in Oakland, across from the former site of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Even in his 80s, he went to the office daily, usually accompanied by several of his dogs. He had found Ophelia, a half-collie, at the doorstep of his Oakland home several years earlier. At the spartan office, with aging furniture and rusting cabinets, the dogs ruled as Starzl conducted much of his business alongside his longtime assistant, Terry Mangan.

In February 2008, Starzl told the Tribune-Review that he had “battle fatigue” and planned to focus on organizing his vast collection of books and scientific papers.

Until then, Starzl had devoted most of his time to a slippery goal: finding a way for transplant recipients to avoid taking lifelong doses of often harmful antirejection medicine.

His impetus was a 1992 discovery of kidney transplant recipients who had a trait known as chimerism.

The patients, all of whom had transplants decades earlier, didn't reject their new organ because during the transplant they had received donor immune cells that coexisted with their own immune cells. The patients were weaned off immunosuppressive drugs that typically have serious side effects.

While those patients are counted as a huge success story, a debate rages about the possibility of weaning patients off drugs.

In the last years of his life, Starzl spent countless hours analyzing data about complications in live-donor liver transplants. The controversial surgery had become a staple at UPMC, as doctors found a way to stave off a clinical shortage of organs.

Starzl became interested in the surgeries' complications after the death of Katy Miller of Creekside, Indiana County. Miller was a college sophomore enrolled in a UPMC study that aimed to wean 10 live-donor liver transplant patients off immunosuppression.

A high-rate of complications among those recipients, including Miller, alarmed Starzl, and a rift ensued between him and then-transplant chief Dr. Amadeo Marcos, an advocate of live-donor surgeries. The complications were higher than reported elsewhere, Starzl said, and he wanted to encourage all transplant centers to report accurate data about live-donor transplants.

“The end results are OK, but the firestorm that you have to go through with that operation to get to where you want to go is much bigger, I think, than people have said,” Starzl told the Trib in 2008.

Randy P. Juhl, a former vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh who became Starzl's ally during the turmoil, said at the time that Starzl sought to shed light on the complications because he didn't want to focus only on successes.

“What's kept Dr. Starzl at the forefront all these years is to look at the failures ... if people didn't do well, that teaches us,” Juhl said during an interview with Starzl in November 2008.

EARLY DAYS

Born on March 11, 1926, Thomas Starzl grew up in LeMars, Iowa, the son of a newspaper publisher. He once worked as a proofreader for the Chicago Tribune and thought of becoming a priest. But his mother's breast cancer compelled him to attend Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.

Starzl graduated from medical school in 1952, but even then “the word transplantation was not yet in my daily vocabulary,” he wrote in his 1992 autobiography, “The Puzzle People.”

It was during a surgical internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and later at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami where Starzl began experiments that lay the groundwork for this virtually unheard of area of medicine.

The first experiments, done in an empty garage across from Jackson Memorial's emergency room, didn't come without worries. Starzl wrote in his book he didn't like to operate and harbored anxieties he never talked about until he retired.

“I had an intense fear of failing patients who had placed their health or life in my hands,” he wrote. “Even for simple operations, I would review books to be sure that no mistakes would be made or old lessons forgotten.”

In 1958, Starzl for the first time sewed in new livers in dogs whose own organs had been removed. Those first attempts were bloody operations whose failures he deemed a serious blow to his career. His spirit dampened, Starzl considered entering private practice, but mentors recognized his potential and encouraged him to apply for a government grant to study transplantation.

He began experiments to cool and preserve livers awaiting transplantation. He did so by trying to immerse the anesthetized dog in a bath and, when that didn't work, by running a cold salt-water solution into the organ through its portal vein.

Eventually, Starzl and his colleagues reported 18 dogs with survival greater than four days, with one animal living 20 1⁄2 days.

On March 27, 1962, at the University of Colorado, he performed the first human kidney transplant. Less than a year later, on March 1, 1963, he made his first attempt to replace a human liver.

It was a 3-year-old boy named Bennie Solis, who had a condition known as biliary atresia. The boy bled to death. His death, and that of three other patients, pushed Starzl to back away from doing any more liver transplants.

When that happened, Starzl hunted for better antirejection therapy, looked for better ways to procure organs and examined the role of tissue type in transplants.

On July 23, 1967, he performed the first successful liver transplant, on a 19-month-old girl named Julie Rodriguez. She survived more than a year.

The case was so remarkable that Starzl wrote in his book that his most important possession is a portrait in memory of Julie done by a Swedish artist. It shows a child bathed in sunlight, picking long-stemmed flowers. Upon his death, Starzl wanted the portrait to go to the person who was closest to him, he wrote in his book.

PITTSBURGH ARRIVAL

Starzl arrived in Pittsburgh in 1981 after a shake-up at the University of Colorado that prompted him to resign.

He brought with him the breakthrough of having treated dozens of patients with cyclosporine, a medicine to prevent organ rejection. Pitt's fledgling kidney transplant program quickly grew to perform 106 surgeries in 1981, three times more than in prior years.

In 1989, Pitt scientists announced that a better antirejection drug, called FK-506, resulted in fewer deaths and side effects in patients who received the drug in a clinical trial. The drug was later approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a feat that cemented the university's standing as a transplant giant.

By the time Starzl retired in 1991, the UPMC transplant center was performing more than 200 kidney transplants a year and 600 overall transplants. The center was named after him in 1985. A biomedical tower at Pitt also bears Starzl's name.

Surgeons there have performed more than 12,000 organ transplants in the last 20 years.

In May 2004, Starzl offered the graduating class of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine what he called “two bits of simple advice.”

He told graduates to make a genuine attempt to contribute something worthwhile “that will be here long after you're gone.”

And he encouraged them to not make decisions based on the money they would make.

“Just do what you believe in your heart to be right,” he told them. “You will respect yourself for this, others will respect you, and the money will take care of itself.”

Thomas Starzl, father of organ transplantation, dies at 90 | TribLIVE

[harrybarracuda]

Joni Sledge Dead: Sister Sledge Singer Dies, Aged 60
RIP.
12/03/2017 07:46 | Updated 44 minutes ago



Joni Sledge of legendary disco group Sister Sledge has died, aged 60.

The singer, who formed the group with her sisters Debbie, Kim and Kathy in 1971, was found unresponsive by a friend at her home in Phoenix, Arizona, her publicist said. A cause of death has not been determined.

Her sudden death was announced in a post on Facebook by her family.

“Yesterday, numbness fell upon our family,” the statement read.

“We are saddened to inform you that our dear sister, mother, aunt, niece and cousin, Joni passed away yesterday.”

It added: “We miss her and hurt for her presence, her radiance, and the sincerity with which she loved and embraced life.”

The group were best known for the disco classics ‘Lost In Music’ and the Grammy-nominated ‘We Are Family’, which sold more than a million copies after it was released in 1978.

”Recording the track ‘We Are Family’ was like a one-take party ― we were just dancing and playing around and hanging out in the studio when we did it,” Joni once recalled to the Guardian.

They also scored huge worldwide hits with ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’, ‘Thinking Of You’ and ‘Frankie’.

Chic star Nile Rodgers, who was behind the group’s biggeest hits including ‘We Are Family’, was one of the first to share his condolences.

He tweeted: “#RIPJoniSledge #WeAreFamily My heartfelt condolences to your family because they are my family too. We did something pretty amazing together.”

Joni Sledge Dead: Sister Sledge Singer Dies, Aged 60 | The Huffington Post

[harrybarracuda]

Lloyd Conover, inventor of tetracycline
By Denise Gellene NEW YORK TIMES MARCH 15, 2017



NEW YORK — Lloyd H. Conover, a chemist whose breakthrough invention of one of the most effective and widely prescribed antibiotics, tetracycline, led to a whole new approach to developing such drugs, died on Saturday in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his son Craig.

Dr.Conover started his research at Pfizer in Brooklyn in 1950, when pharmaceutical companies, spurred by the success of penicillin against battlefield infections during World War II, were racing to find new antibiotics. Most early antibiotics were naturally occurring chemicals produced by microorganisms that lived in soil or on decaying fruit; the strain of penicillin used to protect wounded soldiers came from a moldy melon.

Few scientists at the time thought it was possible to improve on antibiotics, which they viewed as a result of an evolutionary process that equipped microorganisms with the ultimate chemical weapons to survive.

Dr.Conover, however, became intrigued with two naturally occurring antibiotics that, except for two atoms, were chemically identical. To Dr.Conover, the atoms seemed out of place. Each antibiotic had a chlorine or oxygen atom where he expected to find a hydrogen atom. Would swapping in hydrogen improve the potency of the drugs?

Using a routine chemical procedure, he stripped chlorine from one antibiotic and inserted hydrogen, creating a more stable molecule. He worked with a single assistant. “I didn’t want an audience if we failed,” he told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1992.

The result was tetracycline, a powerful antibiotic with fewer side effects than the drug from which it was derived — proof, Dr.Conover wrote, that “a superior drug could be made by chemical modification.”

Virtually all antibiotics today are semisynthetic, meaning they are chemically altered to increase the number of infections that can be treated or to reduce side effects.

Hailed as a wonder drug, tetracycline proved effective against numerous potentially deadly infections, including salmonella, which causes food poisoning, and bacteria responsible for bloodstream, skin, and urinary infections; gonorrhea; pneumonia; and strep throat.

Hog and chicken farmers embraced the drug, which was used to encourage growth and ward off infections among animals raised in close quarters. Fruit growers sprayed tetracycline in orchards to prevent fire blight and other diseases.

With tetracycline’s commercial success, however, came a slew of patent challenges. Three pharmaceutical companies claimed that their scientists had invented tetracycline before Dr.Conover, though their patent applications were filed later. After Pfizer licensed tetracycline to its competitors to end the dispute, the federal government challenged the licensing deals as anticompetitive, along with the validity of the patent.

“I had essentially a second career: preparing for and giving depositions and testifying,” Dr.Conover wrote in a 1984 journal article.

At scientific meetings, he wrote, he felt a coolness from peers who believed that his patent claim was false. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia finally affirmed the patent — and, by extension, the licensing agreements — in 1982, three decades after Dr.Conover invented tetracycline.

By the time the litigation ended, widespread use of tetracycline had caused many kinds of bacteria to become resistant to the antibiotic, reducing its potency against many infections.

Tetracycline is still commonly used against acne and certain tick-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Q fever.

At Pfizer, Dr.Conover was assigned to a team working to determine the chemical structures of two antibiotics that turned out to be very similar. When the task was completed, the senior scientists went off to write papers about their findings, leaving Dr.Conover with time on his hands.

“Everyone thought that was the end of the project,” Dr.Conover said in the interview. “But I wanted to keep working with these wonderfully interesting molecules.”

Dr.Conover completed his tetracycline experiment in a matter of months. “It worked the first time, unlike most of the experiments I ever ran,” he said. Within a year, Pfizer was testing tetracycline on people.

Dr.Conover spent his entire career at Pfizer. He went on to help invent Pyrantel and Morantel, which are used to treat parasitic worm infections, and rose through the company’s executive ranks to become senior vice president of agricultural products research and development. He retired in 1984.

Although Pfizer vigorously defended Dr.Conover’s patent, the company was less aggressive than competitors in marketing his invention.

“Pfizer sold tetracycline, but never pushed it,” Dr.Conover said. “That was a disappointment.”

Lloyd Conover, inventor of groundbreaking antibiotic, dies at 93 - The Boston Globe

[harrybarracuda]

Jack Harris, who produced '50s horror movie 'The Blob', dies at 98



Jack Harris, who cemented his place in Hollywood history by producing the 1958 horror film “The Blob,” has died. He was 98.

Harris died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills surrounded by family, according to his daughter, Lynda Resnick.

Born in Philadelphia and a vaudeville performer from a young age, Harris was a decorated WWII veteran before getting into the movie business. He worked in marketing, publicity, distribution and production across his long career.

His first film, the B-movie “The Blob,” which starred Steve McQueen in his first leading role, became an enormous hit, grossing more than $3 million on a $110,000 budget and spawning a sequel and a remake.

“The Blob,” a drive-in movie theater favorite in its day, told the story of a small town under assault from a corrosive amoeba that slithers off a meteorite and envelops residents in its jelly-like goo.

While the critical reception was lukewarm upon the film’s release, “The Blob’ remains a cult favorite today. There's even a Blobfest held in Phoenixville, Pa., at the town's Colonial Theater — a prominent location in the film. The festival kicks off its 18th event in July.

Harris followed with other ’50s-era horror flicks like 4-D Man and Dinosaurus.

Harris' other producing credits include John Carpenter’s “Dark Star,” John Landis’ “Schlock” and the Irvin Kershner thriller “Eyes of Laura Mars,” starring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones.

Harris also wrote and directed one film, “Unkissed Bride,” from 1966, about newlyweds who go to a psychiatrist to deal with the groom’s obsession with Mother Goose.

In 2014, Harris, at 95, became the oldest person to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Hollywood Historic Trust said Tuesday that the organization laid a memorial wreath on his star.

“He was movie-star handsome, a brilliant and creative filmmaker, and a loving father and grandfather,” Resnick said.

He is survived by his wife, Judith Parker Harris; his daughter; his son, Anthony Harris; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Jack Harris, who produced '50s horror movie 'The Blob', dies at 98 - LA Times

[misskit]

Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry dies



Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry has died aged 90, police in US state of Missouri report.

The singer was found unresponsive at lunchtime on Saturday, St Charles County police said.

Berry's seven-decade career boasted a string of hits, including classics Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny B. Goode.

He received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 1984 and was among the first inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

In a statement on Facebook, the St Charles County Police Department said they were called to reports of an unresponsive man at 12:40 local time (17:40 GMT).

"Unfortunately, the 90-year-old man could not be revived and was pronounced deceased at 1:26pm," the statement continued.

"The St. Charles County Police Department sadly confirms the death of Charles Edward Anderson Berry Sr., better known as legendary musician Chuck Berry."
Motown legends The Jacksons paid tribute.

"Chuck Berry merged blues & swing into the phenomenon of early rock'n'roll. In music, he cast one of the longest shadows. Thank You Chuck," they tweeted.
Berry was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1926, and had his first hit Maybellene in 1955.

Last year, he announced he would be releasing his first album in nearly four decades. He dedicated it to his wife of 68 years, Themetta "Toddy".

Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry dies - BBC News





Goodbye, Chuck Berry.

[harrybarracuda]

There won't be another one like him.

RIP.

[harrybarracuda]

David Rockefeller, Philanthropist and Head of Chase Manhattan, Dies at 101
By JONATHAN KANDELLMARCH 20, 2017



David Rockefeller, the banker and philanthropist with the fabled family name who controlled Chase Manhattan bank for more than a decade and wielded vast influence around the world even longer as he spread the gospel of American capitalism, died on Monday morning at his home in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. He was 101.

A family spokesman, Fraser P. Seitel, confirmed the death.

Chase Manhattan had long been known as the Rockefeller bank, though the family never owned more than 5 percent of its shares. But Mr. Rockefeller was more than a steward. As chairman and chief executive throughout the 1970s, he made it “David’s bank,” as many called it, expanding its operations internationally.

His stature was greater than any corporate title might convey, however. His influence was felt in Washington and foreign capitals, in the corridors of New York City government, art museums, great universities and public schools.

Mr. Rockefeller could well be the last of an increasingly less visible family to have cut so imposing a figure on the world stage. As a peripatetic advocate of the economic interests of the United States and of his own bank, he was a force in global financial affairs and in his country’s foreign policy. He was received in foreign capitals with the honors accorded a chief of state.

He was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the tycoon who founded the Standard Oil Company in the 19th century and built a fortune that made him America’s first billionaire and his family one of the richest and most powerful in the nation’s history.

As an heir to that legacy, Mr. Rockefeller lived all his life in baronial splendor and privilege, whether in Manhattan (as a boy he and his brothers would roller-skate along Fifth Avenue trailed by a limousine in case they grew tired) or at his magnificent country estates.

Imbued with the understated manners of the East Coast elite, he loomed large in the upper reaches of a New York social world of glittering black-tie galas. His philanthropy was monumental, and so was his art collection, a museumlike repository of some 15,000 pieces, many of them masterpieces, some lining the walls of his offices 56 floors above the streets at Rockefeller Center, to which he repaired, robust and active, well into his 90s.

In silent testimony to his power and reach was his Rolodex, a catalog of some 150,000 names of people he had met as a banker-statesman. It required a room of its own beside his office.

Spread out below that corporate aerie was a city he loved and influenced mightily. He was instrumental in rallying the private sector to help resolve New York City’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. As chairman of the Museum of Modern Art for many years — his mother had helped found it in 1929 — he led an effort to encourage corporations to buy and display art in their office buildings and to subsidize local museums. And as chairman of the New York City Partnership, a coalition of business executives, he fostered innovation in public schools and the development of thousands of apartments for lower-income and middle-class families.

He was always aware of the mystique surrounding the Rockefeller name.

“I have never found it a hindrance,” he once said with typical reserve. “Obviously, there are times when I’m aware that I’m treated differently. There’s no question that having financial resources, which, thanks to my parents, I learned to use with some restraint and discretion, is a big advantage.”

Ambassador for Business

With his powerful name and his zeal for foreign travel — he was still traveling to Europe into his late 90s — Mr. Rockefeller was a formidable marketing force. In the 1970s his meetings with Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Zhou Enlai of China helped Chase Manhattan become the first American bank with operations in those countries.

“Few people in this country have met as many leaders as I have,” he said.

Some faulted him for spending so much time abroad. He was accused of neglecting his responsibilities at Chase and failing to promote aggressive, visionary managers. Under his leadership Chase fell far behind its rival Citibank, then the nation’s largest bank, in assets and earnings. There were years when Chase had the most troubled loan portfolio among major American banks.

“In my judgment, he will not go down in history as a great banker,” John J. McCloy, a Rockefeller friend and himself a former Chase chairman, told The Associated Press in 1981. “He will go down as a real personality, as a distinguished and loyal member of the community.”

His forays into international politics also drew criticism, notably in 1979, when he and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger persuaded President Jimmy Carter to admit the recently deposed shah of Iran into the United States for cancer treatment. The shah’s arrival in New York enraged revolutionary followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, provoking them to seize the United States Embassy in Iran and hold American diplomats hostage for more than a year. Mr. Rockefeller was assailed as well for befriending autocratic foreign leaders in an effort to establish and extend his bank’s presence in their countries.

“He spent his life in the club of the ruling class and was loyal to members of the club, no matter what they did,” The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in 2002, citing the profitable deals Mr. Rockefeller had cut with “oil-rich dictators,” “Soviet party bosses” and “Chinese perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution.”

Still, presidents as ideologically different as Mr. Carter and Richard M. Nixon offered him the post of Treasury secretary. He turned them both down.

After the death in 1979 of his older brother Nelson A. Rockefeller, the former vice president and four-time governor of New York, David Rockefeller stood almost alone as the remaining family member with an outsize national profile. Only Jay Rockefeller, a great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, had earned prominence as a governor and United States senator from West Virginia. No one from the family’s younger generations has attained or perhaps aspired to David Rockefeller’s stature.

“No one can step into his shoes,” Warren T. Lindquist, a longtime friend, told The Times in 1995, “not because they aren’t good, smart, talented people, but because it’s just a different world.”

A Privileged Life

The youngest of six siblings, David Rockefeller was born in Manhattan on June 12, 1915. His father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., the only son of the oil titan, devoted his life to philanthropy. His mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was the daughter of Nelson Aldrich, a wealthy senator from Rhode Island.

Besides Nelson, born in 1908, the other children were Abby, who was born in 1903 and died in 1976 after leading a private life; John D. Rockefeller III, who was born in 1906 and immersed himself in philanthropy until his death in an automobile accident in 1978; Laurance, born in 1910, who was an environmentalist and died in 2004; and Winthrop, born in 1912, who was governor of Arkansas and died in 1973.

David, the youngest, grew up in a mansion at 10 West 54th Street, the largest private residence in the city at the time. It bustled with valets, parlor maids, nurses and chambermaids. For dinner every night his father dressed in black tie and his mother in a formal gown.

Summers were spent at the 107-room Rockefeller “cottage” in Seal Harbor, Me., weekends at Kykuit, the family’s country compound north of the city in Tarrytown, N.Y. The estate was likened to a feudal fief. As Mr. Rockefeller wrote in his autobiography, “Memoirs” (2002), “Eventually the family accumulated about 3,400 acres that surrounded and included almost all of the little village of Pocantico Hills, where most of the residents worked for the family and lived in houses owned by Grandfather.”

In that bucolic setting he developed a fascination for insects that would lead to his building one of the largest beetle collections in the world.

David was 21 when John D. Rockefeller died. “He told amusing stories and sang little ditties,” Mr. Rockefeller recalled in 2002. “He gave us dimes.”

His sense of noblesse oblige was heightened by his early education at the experimental Lincoln School in Manhattan, founded by the American philosopher John Dewey and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation to bring together children from varied social backgrounds. He went on to study at Harvard, receiving his B.S. in 1936, and then spent a year at the London School of Economics, a hotbed of socialist intellectuals. Mr. Rockefeller was awarded a Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940.

Moved by the Great Depression at home and abroad, he stated in his doctoral thesis that he was “inclined to agree with the New Deal that deficit financing during depressions, other things being equal, is a help to recovery.” The notion that a Rockefeller would take such a liberal economic view was major news; the family, rock-ribbed Republican, was known for its fierce opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal’s author.

After receiving his doctorate, Mr. Rockefeller became a secretary to Fiorello H. La Guardia, New York’s pugnacious, liberal Republican mayor. In 1940, he married Margaret McGrath, known as Peggy, whom he had met at a dance seven years earlier, when he was a Harvard freshman and she was a student at the Chapin School in New York. His wife, a dedicated conservationist, died at 80 in 1996. They had six children: David Jr., Abby, Neva, Margaret, Richard and Eileen. A complete list of his survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Rockefeller enlisted in the Army in 1942, attended officer training school and served in North Africa and France in World War II. He was discharged a captain in 1945.

He began his banking career in 1946 as an assistant manager with the Chase National Bank, which merged in 1955 with the Bank of Manhattan Company to become Chase Manhattan. Banking in the early postwar era was a gentleman’s profession. Top executives could attend to outside interests, using social contacts to cultivate clients, while leaving day-to-day management to junior officers. Mr. Rockefeller found plenty of time for such activities. In the late 1940s he replaced his mother on the Museum of Modern Art’s board and eventually became its chairman. He courted art collectors. In 1968, he put together a syndicate, including his brother Nelson and the CBS chairman, William S. Paley, to buy Gertrude Stein’s collection of modern art. David and Peggy Rockefeller’s own prized paintings — by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso — were lent to the museum permanently.

Expanding a Bank Globally

Mr. Rockefeller’s rise in banking was swift. By 1961 he was president of Chase Manhattan and its co-chief executive with George Champion, the chairman. Promoting expansion overseas, Mr. Rockefeller clashed with Mr. Champion, who thought that the bank’s domestic business was more important. After Mr. Rockefeller replaced Mr. Champion as chairman and sole chief executive in 1969, he was able to enlarge the bank’s presence on almost every continent. He said his brand of personal diplomacy, meeting with heads of state, was crucial in furthering Chase’s interests.

“There were many who claimed these activities were inappropriate and interfered with my bank responsibilities,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote in his autobiography. “I couldn’t disagree more.” His “so-called outside activities,” he insisted, “were of considerable benefit to the bank both financially and in terms of its prestige around the world.”

By 1976, Chase Manhattan’s international arm was contributing 80 percent of the bank’s $105 million in operating profit. But instead of vindicating Mr. Rockefeller’s avidity for banking abroad, those figures underlined Chase’s lagging performance at home. From 1974 to 1976 its earnings fell 36 percent, while those of its biggest rivals — Bank of America, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover and J..P. Morgan — rose 12 to 31 percent.

The 1974 recession hammered Chase, which had an unusually large portfolio of loans in the depressed real estate industry. It also owned more New York-related securities than any other bank in the mid-1970s, when the city was edging toward bankruptcy. And among major banks, Chase had the largest portfolio of nonperforming loans.

Chase also got caught up in a scandal in 1974. An internal audit discovered that its bond trading account was overvalued by $34 million and that losses had been understated. A resulting $15 million drain in net income tarnished the bank’s image. In 1975, the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency branded Chase a “problem” bank.

Even as he struggled to reverse Chase Manhattan’s decline, Mr. Rockefeller found time to address New York City’s financial problems. His involvement in municipal affairs dated to the early 1960s, when, as founder and chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, he recommended that a World Trade Center be built.

In 1961, largely at his instigation, Chase opened its 64-story headquarters in the Wall Street area, a huge investment that helped revitalize the financial district and encouraged the World Trade Center project to proceed.

In the mid-1970s, with New York City facing a default on its debts because of sluggish economic growth and uncontrolled municipal spending, Mr. Rockefeller helped bring together federal, state and city officials with New York business leaders to work out an economic plan that eventually pulled New York out of its crisis.

At the same time, he put his bank’s affairs in order. By 1981, he and his protégé Willard C. Butcher had restored Chase Manhattan to full health. He yielded his chairmanship to Mr. Butcher that year.

From 1976 to 1980, the bank’s earnings more than doubled, and it outperformed its archrival, Citibank, in returns on assets, a critical indicator of a bank’s profitability. Even after retiring from active management in 1981, Mr. Rockefeller continued to serve Chase as chairman of its international advisory council and to act as the bank’s foreign diplomat. He did not hesitate to criticize United States officials for policies he considered mistaken.

He was notably harsh about President Carter. In 1980 he told The Washington Post that Mr. Carter had not done “what most other countries do themselves, and expect us to do — namely, to make U.S. national interests our prime international objective.”

But Mr. Rockefeller also played the gadfly to Mr. Carter’s far more conservative successor, President Ronald Reagan. When the Reagan administration was supporting anti-Marxist guerrillas in Africa, Mr. Rockefeller took a 10-nation tour of the continent in 1982 and declared that African Marxism was not a threat to the United States or to American business interests.

Late in life Mr. Rockefeller was involved in controversies over Rockefeller Center, the Art Deco office building complex his father built in the 1930s. In 1985, the Rockefeller family mortgaged the property for $1.3 billion, pocketing an estimated $300 million. In 1989, the family sold 51 percent of the Rockefeller Group, which owned Rockefeller Center and other buildings, to the Mitsubishi Estate Company of Japan. Mitsubishi later increased its share to 80 percent.

The purchase marked the high tide of a buying spree of American properties by Japanese corporations, and it opened the family to criticism that it had surrendered an important national symbol to them. When Japan’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, and Mitsubishi was forced to declare Rockefeller Center in bankruptcy in 1995, Mr. Rockefeller was criticized again, this time for allowing the site to slip into financial ruin.

Before the year ended, Mr. Rockefeller had put together a syndicate that bought control of Rockefeller Center. Then, in 2000, it was sold in a $1.85 billion deal that severed the center’s last ties with the Rockefeller family.

As an octogenarian, Mr. Rockefeller, whose fortune was estimated in 2012 at $2.7 billion, increasingly devoted himself to philanthropy, donating tens of millions of dollars in particular to Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rockefeller University, which John D. Rockefeller Sr. founded in 1901.

Even in his 90s, Mr. Rockefeller continued to work at a pace that would tire a much younger person. He traveled more than half the year on behalf of Chase or groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. By 2005, when he was interviewed in his offices at Rockefeller Center, he had remained physically active, working with a trainer at the center’s sports club.

He continued to collect art, including hundreds of paintings as well as works in colored glass, porcelain, petrified wood and furniture.

That same year he pledged a $100 million bequest to the Museum of Modern Art. Such giving became grist for the society pages. One celebrity-filled fund-raising gala at the museum in 2005 drew 850 people paying as much as $90,000 for a table. The occasion was Mr. Rockefeller’s 90th birthday, and at the end of the evening he was presented with a birthday cake modeled after his house in Maine. Then it was off to a week in southern France to continue the celebration with 21 members of his family.

With the book “Memoirs” in 2002, he became, at age 87, the first in three generations of Rockefellers to publish an autobiography. Asked why he wrote it, he replied in his characteristic reserved tone, “Well, it just occurred to me that I had led a rather interesting life.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/b...an-banker.html

[harrybarracuda]

The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness dies aged 66
14 minutes ago



Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's former deputy first minister, has died aged 66.

Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness dies aged 66 - BBC News

[Thai Pom]

^ Good Riddance

[harrybarracuda]

Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse, dies aged 86
9 minutes ago



Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse books, has died aged 86.
His publisher said in a statement on Tuesday: "With immense sadness, MacMillan announces the death of Colin Dexter who died peacefully at his home in Oxford this morning."

His series of Morse novels, written between 1975 and 1999, were adapted for the long-running ITV series, starring John Thaw.

Dexter's characters also featured in spin-off shows Lewis and Endeavour.

Dexter wrote his first Morse novel, Last Bus to Woodstock, in 1975 while on holiday in Wales.

He killed off the detective in the final book The Remorseful Day.

Before becoming a full-time writer he spent 13 years teaching Latin and Greek.
Maria Rejt, Dexter's most recent editor at Macmillan, said the author had "inspired all those who worked with him".

"His loyalty, modesty and self-deprecating humour gave joy to many. His was the sharpest mind and the biggest heart, and his wonderful novels and stories will remain a testament to both," she said.

Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse, dies aged 86 - BBC News

[bobo746]

The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Martin McGuinness: Vigils held for Sinn Féin leader

Vigils have been held across the island of Ireland for Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, who has died aged 66.
His body was returned to his Derry home on Tuesday afternoon.


Martin McGuinness: Vigils held for Sinn Féin leader - BBC News

[harrybarracuda]

The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Martin McGuinness: Vigils held for Sinn Féin leader

Vigils have been held across the island of Ireland for Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, who has died aged 66.
His body was returned to his Derry home on Tuesday afternoon.


Martin McGuinness: Vigils held for Sinn Féin leader - BBC News

I hope they say where he's being buried. There will be a queue of people waiting to piss on it.

[harrybarracuda]

Chuck Barris, creator and host of 'The Gong Show,' dies at 87



Charles Hirsch "Chuck" Barris, creator of “The Gong Show” and “The Dating Game,” died Monday night at home in Palisades, New York, according to a representative of his wife. He was 87.

The popular game show creator, producer and host died of natural causes.

It was in 1965 that Barris launched "The Dating Game," which was an instant hit with numerous imitations. Continuing to dominate the TV game show landscape, Barris next introduced "The Newlywed Game," "The Game Game" and a Mama Cass special, among others.

"Those were the happiest days of my life," Barris said in a 2002 interview with The Times. "It was Camelot."

He debuted one of his most successful programs, "The Gong Show," in 1976. Barris also hosted the show while celebrities like David Letterman and Jaye P. Morgan served as judges. It was popular, but many of his shows, like "The $1.98 Beauty Show," were ravaged by critics as demeaning to contestants.

"I took the criticism so hard," said Barris. He just wanted them to be fun programs for all to enjoy.

In 2016, ABC was considering reviving "The Gong Show" with actor Will Arnett.

He is survived by his wife of 16 years, the former Mary Clagett.

Chuck Barris, creator and host of 'The Gong Show,' dies at 87 - LA Times

[misskit]

I grew up watching his TV shows after school.

Don't miss the movie about the life of Chuck Barris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Funny stuff.