The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Mr Lick]

Lloyd Pack starred in Survivors in 2008. The series was a remake of a 1970s drama, depicting the lives of a group of people who survived a virulent unknown strain of influenza which has wiped out most of the human species. Despite some positive reviews, it failed to catch on with viewers and was cancelled in 2010.



Lloyd Pack leaves three sons and a daughter, actress Emily Lloyd. Her most famous role was in the 1950s seaside drama Wish You Were Here in 1987.



Lloyd Pack was married twice, first to Sheila Ball whom he divorced in 1972, and then to poet and dramatist Jehane Markham (pictured).

[cyrille]

Nice tribute from a friend in the independent ...

He will, of course, be remembered for his role as Trigger, but he didn’t really like that. He hated it when we were at Tottenham’s Bell and Hare pub before a Spurs game and people would say: “Oi, Trig, can we have a picture?” He would smile and say to me: “Haven’t any of them seen Richard III or even The Vicar of Dibley?” and then laugh.

Roger Lloyd-Pack: A wise, cultured, politically aware figure

[Norton]

Actor Russell Johnson, best known as Professor in the 1960s TV sitcom "Gilligan's Island," died Thursday, his agent said. Johnson was 89. Johnson played the iconic role of Professor Roy Hinkley, whose scientific schemes to get the castaways rescued were always foiled by Gilligan's bumbling.

He died at his home in Washington, where he lived with his wife, Connie. She and their daughter, Kimberly, were at his side, said agent Mike Eisenstadt. Johnson is also survived by a stepson, Court, and a grandson, he said.

Johnson worked up until his death, signing autographs over the holidays, said Eisenstadt. He called Johnson's death "unexpected."
The chief deputy coroner in Kitsap County, Washington, told CNN that Johnson died from natural causes.
Johnson was "just a positive and nice guy" who always treated people with respect, his agent said.

His acting career began in the early 1950s with many jobs as a character actor on television. He played Marshal Gib Scott in two seasons of "Black Saddle," a Western that ran in 1959 and 1960.

Johnson acted in dozens of television shows after the four seasons on "Gilligan's Island," but his career seemed stranded on its own island because of the popular sitcom role. A noteworthy big screen role was as a nuclear physicist in the 1955 science fiction film "This Island Earth."

Johnson was in Ray Bradbury's 1953 sci-fi classic "It Came From Outer Space." Before becoming an actor, Johnson served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He was on a B-24 Liberator when it was shot down during a bombing raid over the Philippines in 1945, according to his official biography, and used his G.I. Bill benefits to pay for acting school after the war.

Johnson, in a 2004 interview for the Archive of American Television said the success of "Gilligan's Island, which he never expected to last more than the initial order of 13 episodes, was the result of the "great chemistry" of the cast.
Tina Louise, who played the glamorous Hollywood starlet Ginger on "Gilligan's Island said she was " very saddened to hear of the passing of Russell Johnson."

"My prayers and condolences go out to his wife Constance and his family," Louise said. "He will always be in our hearts and remembered from Gilligan's island as part of American pop culture history. He will truly be missed."

Advice to young actors
Johnson's advice to young actors was to "prepare yourself." "Most of us have to really learn how to do what we do, and that takes some studying and being part of an acting group," he said. "Preparation is everything, and that means studying." Another important ingredient to acting success is perseverance, he said. "You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't persevere, if you don't stick to it, it doesn't mean anything."

[harrybarracuda]

NEW YORK -- Comic actor Dave Madden, who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family," died in Florida on Thursday at age 82.
Madden died at a hospice centre near his home in the Jacksonville area, his niece Mary Frances Miller said.
Towering and rumpled, Madden was best known for his role as Reuben Kinkaid, who managed the Partridge family band and regularly clashed with its impish pre-teen bassist, played by Danny Bonaduce.
While the series starred Shirley Jones, with her real-life son David Cassidy as the resident heart-throb, it was Madden and the freckle-faced Bonaduce who became the reigning comic duo.
Jones said Madden "made the show, I felt."
"His relationship with Danny Bonaduce is what made the show work: this strange, mad little boy and the grown man who was even worse as a father figure," she said Thursday. "It was hysterical!"
But though Madden played a guy bedeviled by the youngsters who surrounded him, Jones said that off-camera he "loved kids."
And Bonaduce later wrote how during his troubled youth Madden served as his surrogate father.
Before "The Partridge Family," Madden was part of the ensemble on the "Laugh-In" comedy series, sipping and sometimes spitting milk along with joining in the show's zany sketches and crazy jokes. He later had a recurring role as one of the customers at Mel's Diner on the long-running sitcom "Alice."
Madden was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in North Terre Haute, Ind. He began show business as a nightclub comic and then landed his first acting job on the short-lived sitcom "Camp Runamuck" in the mid-1960s.
During his career, he also appeared on such series as "Bewitched," "Barney Miller," "Happy Days," "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island."
In 2007 he published a memoir, "Reuben on Wry."
Survivors include his wife, a daughter and a son.

[Mr Lick]

Japan WW2 soldier who refused to surrender Hiroo Onoda dies




Mr Onoda said he received an order not to surrender - and he had to obey it


Related Stories

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• Japan slows hunt for 'soldiers'

A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender after World War Two ended and spent 29 years in the jungle has died aged 91 in Tokyo.

Hiroo Onoda remained in the jungle on Lubang Island near Luzon, in the Philippines, until 1974 because he did not believe that the war had ended.

He was finally persuaded to emerge after his ageing former commanding officer was flown in to see him.

Correspondents say he was greeted as a hero on his return to Japan.

As WW2 neared its end, Mr Onoda, then a lieutenant, became cut off on Lubang as US troops came north.

The young soldier had orders not to surrender - a command he obeyed for nearly three decades.

"Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death, but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die," he told ABC in an interview in 2010.

"I became an officer and I received an order. If I could not carry it out, I would feel shame. I am very competitive," he added



Mr Onoda refused to surrender until his former commanding officer rescinded his orders


While on Lubang Island, Mr Onoda surveyed military facilities and engaged in sporadic clashes with local residents.

Three other soldiers were with him at the end of the war. One emerged from the jungle in 1950 and the other two died, one in a 1972 clash with local troops.

Mr Onoda ignored several attempts to get him to surrender.

He later said that he dismissed search parties sent to him, and leaflets dropped by Japan, as ploys.

"The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans," he told ABC.


Survival training

Finally in March 1974 his former commanding officer travelled to the Philippines to rescind his original orders in person.

Mr Onoda saluted the Japanese flag and handed over his Samurai sword while still wearing a tattered army uniform.

The Philippine government granted him a pardon, although many in Lubang never forgave him for the 30 people he killed during his campaign on the island, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.




Mr Onoda surrendered to the Philippine president in March 1974


Following his surrender, Mr Onoda ran a ranch in Brazil, and opened a series of survival training schools in Japan.

Mr Onoda was one of the last Japanese soldiers to surrender at the end of World War II.

Private Teruo Nakamura, a soldier from Taiwan who served in the Japanese army, was found growing crops alone on the Indonesian island of Morotai in December 1974.

Mr Nakamura was repatriated to Taiwan where he died in 1979

[harrybarracuda]

^ That was such an amazing story.

[harrybarracuda]

Lord McAlpine is dead, but he didn't really do much but live off the family fortune and donate to the tories, so fuck him.

[Mr Lick]

BBC World TV's Komla Dumor dies at 41




BBC TV presenter Komla Dumor has died suddenly at his home in London at the age of 41, it has been announced.

Ghana-born Dumor was a presenter for BBC World News and its Focus on Africa programme.

One of Ghana's best-known journalists, he joined the BBC as a radio broadcaster in 2007 after a decade of journalism in Ghana.

BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks called Dumor a leading light of African journalism who would be deeply missed.

"Komla's many friends and colleagues across Africa and the world will be as devastated as we are by this shocking news," Mr Horrocks said in a statement.

"The sympathies of all his colleagues at the BBC are with his family and friends."
'Sadness and gratitude'

Komla Dumor was born on 3 October 1972 in Accra, Ghana.

He graduated with a BA in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Ghana, and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

He won the Ghana Journalist of the Year award in 2003 and joined the BBC four years later.

From then until 2009 he hosted Network Africa for BBC World Service radio, before joining The World Today programme.

In 2009 Komla Dumor became the first host of Africa Business Report on BBC World News.

He travelled across Africa, meeting the continent's top entrepreneurs and reporting on the latest business trends around the continent.

He interviewed a number of high-profile guests including Bill Gates and Kofi Annan.

Last month, he covered the funeral of former South African President, Nelson Mandela, whom he described as "one of the greatest figures of modern history".

He anchored live coverage of major events including the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the funeral of Kim Jong-il, the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the Norway shootings and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

In his review of 2013, published last month, Dumor said the passing of Mandela was "one of the moments that will stay with me".

"Covering the funeral for me will always be a special moment. I will look back on it with a sense of sadness. But also with gratitude. I feel lucky to have been a witness to that part of the Mandela story."

[harrybarracuda]

A former 5,000 metres world record-holder, who acted as a pacemaker to help Sir Roger Bannister become the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier in 1954, has died aged 82.

Sir Christopher Chataway died at around 7am on Sunday at St John's Hospice in north west London having suffered from cancer for two and a half years, his son Mark Chataway said.

The athlete's interest in keeping fit stayed with him as his life progressed, and his son said that up until a couple of weeks ago he was on his exercise bike every morning.

Mr Chataway, 53, described his father as a "very compassionate and wise man" who had the "ability to put other people's needs first".

"We were, especially in these last few years, struck by his amazing qualities of humility and strength," he said.

Mr Chataway said he and his siblings "grew up with him as a person, not as a runner", adding: "Of course we all thought it was remarkable. We all saw the old footage, but I think as a child that's not what you focus on in a parent."

Sir Christopher kept his passion for running alive even when he was approaching 80 years of age.

"He kept running almost until the end of his life. He ran with a couple of my brothers in the Great North Run about three years ago now," Mr Chataway said.

Adding: "And then doing it in a very respectable time."

Mr Chataway said he believed Sir Christopher would like to be remembered as "a wonderful father, a husband, a grandfather".

"Those probably mattered more than any of the sporting or political things," he said.

Sir Christopher was also a Conservative politician and broadcaster.

He is survived by his sons Mark, Matthew, Adam, Charles, Ben, his daughter Joanna, his wife Carola and his former wife Anna.

Speaking about taking part in the Great North Run at almost 80-years-old, Sir Christopher said at the time: ''I sometimes think that running, which was a sort of tormentor in my youth, has returned to be a friendly codger in my old age - that what was Joe Stalin has turned into Dixon of Dock Green.''

[Mr Lick]

A legend amongst legends




Former Wolves and England goalkeeper Bert Williams has died, aged 93.

Williams joined Wolves from Walsall after the Second World War and went on to make 420 appearances for the club.

He won the FA Cup in 1949 and the Division One title in 1954 during a 14-season spell at Molineux.

Williams won 24 caps for England and was in goal for the 1-0 defeat by the United States at the 1950 World Cup. He was the oldest living England international prior to his death.

He received an MBE for services to football and charity in the Queen's Birthday honours list in June 2010.

Play media



Interview: Gordon Banks and Bert Williams, March 2013


Williams was involved in several fundraising campaigns for the Alzheimer's Society after his wife Evelyn died from the illness in 2002.

Wolves chairman Steve Morgan described Williams as "a fantastic footballer" and "a true gentleman who loved Wolves".

"As a young football fan who used to read about the achievements of that all-conquering Wolves team of the 1950s, it was an honour and a privilege to have been able to meet Bert on so many occasions since I arrived at the club in 2007," Morgan told the club website.

"His footballing ability speaks for itself, but there was so much more to Bert than just his career alone.

"He remained heavily involved with Wolves and the community after his retirement, and the fundraising he has carried out since losing his wife was incredible when you consider his advancing years.

"Legend is a word which may be overused these days, but in the case of Bert Williams it simply doesn't do him justice. He will be sadly missed at Molineux, but will never, ever be forgotten."



Williams, catching the ball under pressure from Arsenal's Doug Lishman during a league fixture in 1953, made 420 appearances for Wolves and won 24 caps for England.</SPAN abp="368">




Williams made 381 league appearances for Wolves and also featured in many of the pioneering floodlit games at Molineux against top European club sides in the 1950s.

He was part of the England side which lost 1-0 to the United States in the 1950 World Cup, arguably the national side's biggest shock defeat.

In 2010, Williams said the hurt of the defeat "will never go away". His death means that Sir Tom Finney and Roy Bentley are the only survivors from the side that lost at Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

England goalkeeping great Gordon Banks described Williams as his hero in an interview with BBC Late Kick Off Midlands last year.

"I first saw Bert playing for Wolves in the cup final - and then when he was playing for England," Banks said.

"I used to admire this guy so much. He was so athletic, so agile; he used to get to the ball in the top corner - such fabulous agility.

"By watching goalkeepers at that time, especially the great ones like Bert, it taught me things. He was fantastic, a great, great guy."

Wolves are set to announce a tribute to Williams in due course.

[Thormaturge]

BBC TV presenter Komla Dumor has died suddenly at his home in London at the age of 41, it has been announced.

41 ??

Forty One??

People shouldn't be dying at that age.

[Mr Lick]

^ The BBC have much to hide

[pompeysbroke]

RIP Komla...sad news that. Always enjoyed his reporting....always had a smile on his face...so much so that it was almost like he was suppressing giggling fits.

[Latindancer]

They said "after a short illness".....probably galloping cancer. Poor bugger.

[harrybarracuda]

They said "after a short illness".....probably galloping cancer. Poor bugger.

Why on earth is it "probably galloping cancer"?

Popular Ghanaian Journalist Komla Afeke Dumor is reported dead after suffering from a cardiac arrest, according to a source from BBC.

[harrybarracuda]

Dr. Donald Morton, Melanoma Expert Who Pioneered a Cancer Technique, Dies at 79
By WILLIAM YARDLEYJAN. 20, 2014



Dr. Donald L. Morton, a son of an Appalachian coal miner who gained renown as a surgeon for helping to develop a widely used technique for detecting and treating certain kinds of cancer, died on Jan. 10 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 79.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

Even as Dr. Morton did groundbreaking work, he was also known as one of the last physicians to treat the actor John Wayne in 1979, when Wayne was in an advanced stage of stomach cancer. He later had a founding role in what is now the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica.

Dr. Morton, who grew up without electricity or running water in West Virginia, made his way to the forefront of global cancer research and treatment with a focus on melanoma, a type of skin cancer. He would have it himself in the late 1980s and detected it early enough to have it surgically removed. He helped save countless others from it, too.

“Dr. Morton’s discoveries have profoundly changed the treatment of human cancer,” the American College of Surgeons said in 2008 when it gave him an award for innovation in surgical technique.

In the late 1970s, while working as chief of surgical oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Morton helped develop a technique called a sentinel lymph node biopsy. In the past, doctors trying to determine whether cancer had spread to lymph nodes had to remove large numbers of nodes. It was a serious operation with lasting side effects, yet 80 percent of the time it proved unnecessary because no tumor was found. Dr. Morton believed many of the operations could be avoided.

“Dr. Morton’s idea was that a tumor would migrate first to one lymph node, the way water running down a mountain flows into one lake before flowing downstream to others,” Andrew Pollack wrote in a 2003 profile of Dr. Morton in The New York Times. “By injecting dye into a patient’s tumor, he hypothesized, doctors could trace the spread pattern and find that node, which could then be removed. Only if that node had cancer would others be excised.”

Dr. Alistair J. Cochran, a U.C.L.A. skin care specialist who worked with Dr. Morton, recalled their discussions about what to call the pertinent node.

“We called it the sentinel lymph node because it was the one that guarded the rest of the lymph nodes,” he said in an interview. “It stood there as sort of a soldier guarding the gate.”

The technique proved successful, and it was adapted for breast cancer cases and other cancers.

Dr. Morton helped develop the technique while also pursuing his long-held dream of creating a vaccine for melanoma. Beginning in the 1960s, he began experimenting with a vaccine that was intended not to prevent cancer but to harness the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells once they have developed. In the following decades, he became one of the top grant recipients from the National Institutes of Health, and he helped set up a private company, CancerVax, which raised money to conduct trials of the proposed vaccine, called Canvaxin.

Although early studies suggested that Canvaxin could improve the survival rate of some melanoma patients, more complete clinical trials conducted in 2005 determined that it provided no clear benefit, and the testing was stopped.

At one point, Dr. Morton gave Wayne one of his early experimental vaccines. It did not work for him.

The two men respected and even resembled each other: Dr. Morton was a large man with a chiseled chin and clear eyes. He later displayed two of Wayne’s Winchester rifles in his office.

“You can tell a lot about a person in how they respond to adversity and terminal illness,” Dr. Morton said of Wayne, “and he was a true hero.”

Several years after Wayne’s death in 1979, Dr. Morton helped start the John Wayne Cancer Clinic at U.C.L.A., which was formed with money donated by the actor’s family. In 1991, when Dr. Morton moved to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, the center moved with him and was renamed the John Wayne Cancer Institute.

Donald Lee Morton was born on Sept. 12, 1934, in Richwood, W.Va. His father was a coal miner. He attended Berea College in Kentucky, which offered free tuition for students from Appalachia, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley. He received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1958. By 1960, he was working at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he began his work on melanoma.

Dr. Morton’s first wife, the former Wilma Miley, died in a car accident. In 1989 he married Lorraine Euvino (nee Russo). She survives him, as do their daughter, Danielle; his children from his first marriage, Christin Kazmierczak, Laura Morton Rowe, Diana Morton McAlpine and Donald Jr.; eight grandchildren; a brother, Patrick; and a sister, Carolyn Morton Karr.

Dr. Morton was in his 50s and deeply immersed in his work when he noticed a mole on his abdomen that proved to be melanoma. He chose to have surgery rather than take his experimental vaccine.

“If the chance of cure is 90 percent with surgery,” he said, “why would even I want to give myself an experimental vaccine?”

[harrybarracuda]

MILAN (Reuters) - Claudio Abbado, one of the world's top conductors who over the decades led the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna's State Opera and Milan's La Scala, has died aged 80, the Milan opera house said on Monday.

Abbado, who shunned the publicity and pomp often associated with grand maestros and staunchly supported young musicians, died in the northern city of Bologna in his native Italy after a long illness.

"The world of music and culture has lost an absolute champion," Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said in a statement.

Milan mayor Giuliano Pisapia said he would ask La Scala's current director to organise a memorial concert for Abbado, who was ceremonially named an Italian Senator for Life by President Giorgio Napolitano last August.

Abbado's surprise appointment as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989 led music critics to call him "the world's most powerful conductor". He also had a 46-year span recording some of the world's most cherished performances for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Born in Milan on June 26, 1933, to a violinist father and a pianist mother, Abbado announced his intention of becoming a conductor when he was eight years old.

He earned pocket money as a church organist before joining the Vienna Academy of Music in 1956. In Vienna, Abbado learned an economical style of conducting and Hans Swarovsky taught him to conduct with one hand tied behind his back.

Abbado's rhythmic energy, drive and love of big, colourful sound placed him squarely in the tradition of late fellow-Italian Arturo Toscanini.

During his time at la Scala, Abbado rejigged the usually staid repertory and encouraged young people and less wealthy music lovers to join the well-heeled crowd in the auditorium.

Conservative audience members left their seats in protest at Abbado's addition of avant-garde composers such as Italians Luigi Dallapiccola and the communist Luigi Nono to the repertory.

Abbado also worked to support young musicians, becoming founding music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra.

"What I like to remember about Abbado is his commitment to fostering young talent," Pisapia said in a statement on Monday.

Abbado was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, but recovered and three years later went on to form the Lucerne orchestra, selecting most of the members himself.

La Scala was forced to cancel concerts when Abbado succumbed to another bout of illness in May 2010.

Abbado also worked in the United States, often serving as guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s.

[Mr Lick]

Major Desmond Wilson - obituary

Major Desmond Wilson was an inspirational officer who won an MC in northern Italy and later excelled as a career diplomat





Major Desmond Wilson, who has died aged 92, was awarded an MC in Italy in 1944 in the forcing of the Gothic Line; he subsequently had a distinguished career in the Diplomatic Service.

On September 12, Wilson was serving with 2nd Battalion 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles (2/10 GR) in an attack on Passano Ridge, near Rimini. He was up with the forward elements of his company when he led his platoon in a charge on a tank and a fortified house from which the enemy was putting up fierce resistance.


He got the Germans out of their tank and killed or wounded the entire crew as they tried to get away. He then took the tank intact and the captured the house, dealing with eight of the enemy, and consolidated the position.


Wilson was awarded an MC. The citation stated that he had shown complete disregard for his own safety and had been an inspiration to his men.


William Desmond Wilson was born in Belfast on January 2 1922 and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Aged 19, he left his home and family and embarked on a troop ship to Bombay. After completing his officer training in Bangalore, he joined 2/10 GR

In Italy, near Santarcángelo, on September 22, he went forward to deal with two snipers who were concealed in a tree and had been giving considerable trouble. After a cunning but hazardous stalk, he killed them both.

The following month he led two platoons in an attack on a hill near Montecodruzzo.

There were 150 Germans, well dug in, but he captured the position before beating off six counter-attacks. Artillery support could not be provided because, given the nature of the terrain, the risk of casualties to his own men was too great.

By the end of the war, Wilson had also been awarded the United States Distinguished Service Cross, the highest gallantry award that can be given to a non-citizen. He then joined the Colonial Service where he served for 17 years in Northern Nigeria, initially as an assistant district officer


He often spent more than 20 days a month on horseback touring the remote districts in his charge – an area the size of Northern Ireland.

On one occasion he was confronted by an armed mob of some 3,000 people, some of whom had already taken part in the murder of government tax collectors. Wilson’s force of local police was quickly overwhelmed and his groom made off on his horse.

Completely alone, he charged into the crowd, physically attacking the ring leaders. By sheer force of personality he made the mob give up their spears and swords. For this, he was awarded an immediate MBE for gallantry.

After Nigerian independence, he remained in the country for two more years in order to establish the infrastructure for a ministry of information which included a fledgling television broadcasting agency.

Wilson subsequently joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, in which he served for five years in Turkey. He was advanced to OBE in 1964 at the end of his tour.

Thereafter, he served with the United Nations in New York for a spell before moving to Nepal for five years. There he was reunited with wartime comrades whom he had feared he would never see again.

He returned to Northern Nigeria as the Deputy High Commissioner in Kaduna, from where, due to his excellent contacts, he was able to give London several months’ warning about an impending coup.

Desmond Wilson retired in 1981 and settled in Kent. He married, in 1949, Lucy Bride, a member of the Royal Colonial Nursing Corps, and the eldest daughter of Harold Bride, the only wireless operator to survive the sinking of Titanic. She survives him with their two sons.


Desmond Wilson, born January 2 1922, died January 3 2014

[Mr Lick]

Chuck Smith

Chuck Smith was a fundamentalist pastor whose mission to Californian hippies fuelled the rise of the 1970s Jesus Movement and brought pop culture into worship





Chuck Smith, who has died aged 86, was a Christian fundamentalist pastor whose appeal to disillusioned hippies of the Haight Ashbury era fuelled the rise of the “Jesus movement” of the 1970s and inspired the introduction of religious worship into pop culture.

When Smith became pastor of the tiny non-denominational Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California, in 1965, his congregation numbered about 25. Two years later, 400 miles up the coast in San Francisco, tens of thousands of young people descended on the Haight Ashbury district to “turn on, tune in and drop out”.


But, as the 1967 “Summer of Love” gave way to winter, many of the Haight Ashbury hippies hitchhiked south to warmer climes with several groups setting up makeshift communes on the beaches of Orange County. When Smith and his wife Kay toured the area they were shocked by the sight of miserable-looking youths, dishevelled and unwashed, huddling together on the sand or spaced out on drugs.


Not long afterwards, a boyfriend of their daughter’s who had been picking up some of the hitchhikers and preaching a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as the means to salvation, began bringing some of his more promising candidates for conversion to the Smiths’ home, where he performed baptisms in a pool in their backyard

Feeling that they were in danger of becoming a hippie commune, Smith rented a house for the stragglers that became so overcrowded that he soon expanded it into a network of “Jesus houses”, including a hotel where he baptised 65 youths in a fishpond the first two weeks it was open

Smith recalled the first time some of his new converts turned up at his chapel during a service: “First I heard bells tinkling. Then here came 15 kids, most of them with these tiny strings of bells tied around their ankles... and flowers in their hair. They swayed barefoot up the aisles and sat right down there on the floor in front of the pulpit, even though there were still pew seats to be had. You could almost hear an audible gasp from the rest of the congregation. But they had such love that they captivated everybody’s heart.”

A couple of weeks later, a small group approached Smith and asked if they could play some rock music at one of the services. “Love Song”, as the group became known, played their first concert on a Monday night, missing the Sunday service because one of the guitar players had spent the weekend in jail on charges of marijuana possession. Before long Smith was carrying out mass baptisms — sometimes 500 at a time — in the Pacific Ocean at Pirates Cove in Corona del Mar.

Eventually Calvary Chapel grew into an empire of some 2,000 independent congregations, while Smith’s own chapel, where the flock grew to more than 10,000, became one of the best-attended churches in America




But Smith’s influence went far wider. In 1971, to promote the bands who played in his church, he founded a company, Maranatha! Music, which went on to play a powerful role in spreading the popularity of “Jesus rock” — also known as “praise and worship” — in mainstream churches more widely. Meanwhile, out of the ranks of hippies, beach bums and druggies whom he converted emerged a cadre of idealistic youths, known disparagingly as “Jesus freaks”, who went on to fill the ranks of the “Jesus movement” of the 1970s and establish what has been called a “new paradigm” of independent mega-churches.

But if Papa Chuck, as he was known to his followers, replaced pipe organs with electric guitars, preached in Hawaiian shirts and jettisoned traditional church symbols and rituals, theologically he was about as far removed from the hippie counterculture ethos as it was possible to be. He preached damnation for the unsaved; the wickedness of homosexuality as “the final affront against God”; and had a habit of finding signs of divine wrath and impending Armageddon in everything from earthquakes to terrorist outrages (the September 11 attacks were, in his view, an indication of God’s displeasure with America’s acceptance of homosexuality and abortion).

In particular he was a powerful exponent of the “Rapture”, the notion that God’s chosen few will be whisked off to His side when He destroys the world to punish it for its sinful ways. When Smith predicted that “the Lord is coming for His church before the end of 1981”, many of his followers congregated on New Year’s Eve expecting to be beamed up out of their pews at any moment. Though New Year’s Day 1982 dawned without incident, Smith remained unperturbed and continued to announce the imminence of the Rapture with cast-iron confidence: “Every year I believe this could be the year. We’re one year closer than we were.”

He had never, he said, known a moment of doubt.

Charles Ward Smith was born in Ventura, California, on June 25 1927, to “Bible quoting Christian” parents. Originally he had wanted to become a doctor, but at the age of 17, at a Christian summer camp, he came to the conclusion that “being a doctor would help people in the here and now, but becoming a pastor could help people in this life and afterward.”

After training at the Bible college of the Foursquare Church, a Pentecostal denomination, Smith served as a Pentecostal pastor in various communities before leaving to set up his own church in the early 1960s and moving to Calvary Chapel in 1965



In the late 1980s, by which time many of his ex-hippie followers were approaching middle age, Smith decided to reach out to a new generation of young people and in 1990, he co-founded the “Harvest Crusade”, a non-profit ministry which has become an international movement.

If Smith appeared a warm, avuncular figure to his followers, there was not much room in his theology for human frailty. In one of his books he championed “the ideal of a biblical man who is strong and not vacillating or weak” and denounced “the new touchy-feely man”. This approach led to differences with his son Chuck Jr, who was, at one time, seen as his likely successor, but who had developed a more open-minded, questioning approach to faith. In 2006 Smith was instrumental in removing Chuck Jr from ministry in the Calvary Chapel movement, subsequently issuing a memo denouncing tolerance for homosexuality and “the soft peddling of hell as the destiny of those who reject the salvation offered through Jesus Christ”.

Chuck Smith is survived by his wife and by his two sons and two daughters.


Chuck Smith, born June 25 1927, died October 3 2013

[harrybarracuda]

British Actress Sarah Marshall dies at age 80
By Marcina Zaccaria , 1/20/2014



Sarah Marshall, the British actress who appeared on TV’s Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, has died at age 80. She died in Los Angeles on Saturday after her long battle with cancer.

The actress, born in London, was best known to science fiction and theater fans. Marshall was the daughter of British actors Herbert Marshall and Edna Best.

Marshall began an esteemed career that began in the 1950s. Marshall toured nationally with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and received a best supporting actress Tony Award nomination for playing Rusty Mayerling in Goodbye, Charlie which opened in 1959.

She appeared in The Long, Hot Summer in 1958. In the 1960s, she took science fiction television roles, which fans still remember today. She also had a role in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, according to Broadway World.

Later, she appeared on many television shows including Miss Winslow and Son, Three’s Company, Hart to Hart, The Fugitive, Get Smart, , and Ironside, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Marshall is survived by her son, Timothy, grandchildren Seasmus, Sarah, Timothy, and Eliza and her half-sister Ann.

[Cujo]

Major Desmond Wilson - obituary

Major Desmond Wilson was an inspirational officer who won an MC in northern Italy and later excelled as a career diplomat





Major Desmond Wilson, who has died aged 92, was awarded an MC in Italy in 1944 in the forcing of the Gothic Line; he subsequently had a distinguished career in the Diplomatic Service.

On September 12, Wilson was serving with 2nd Battalion 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles (2/10 GR) in an attack on Passano Ridge, near Rimini. He was up with the forward elements of his company when he led his platoon in a charge on a tank and a fortified house from which the enemy was putting up fierce resistance.


He got the Germans out of their tank and killed or wounded the entire crew as they tried to get away.

Psycho.

He then took the tank intact and the captured the house, dealing with eight of the enemy, and consolidated the position.


Wilson was awarded an MC. The citation stated that he had shown complete disregard for his own safety and had been an inspiration to his men.


William Desmond Wilson was born in Belfast on January 2 1922 and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Aged 19, he left his home and family and embarked on a troop ship to Bombay. After completing his officer training in Bangalore, he joined 2/10 GR

In Italy, near Santarcángelo, on September 22, he went forward to deal with two snipers who were concealed in a tree and had been giving considerable trouble. After a cunning but hazardous stalk, he killed them both.

Legend

The following month he led two platoons in an attack on a hill near Montecodruzzo.

There were 150 Germans, well dug in, but he captured the position before beating off six counter-attacks. Artillery support could not be provided because, given the nature of the terrain, the risk of casualties to his own men was too great.

By the end of the war, Wilson had also been awarded the United States Distinguished Service Cross, the highest gallantry award that can be given to a non-citizen. He then joined the Colonial Service where he served for 17 years in Northern Nigeria, initially as an assistant district officer


He often spent more than 20 days a month on horseback touring the remote districts in his charge – an area the size of Northern Ireland.

On one occasion he was confronted by an armed mob of some 3,000 people, some of whom had already taken part in the murder of government tax collectors. Wilson’s force of local police was quickly overwhelmed and his groom made off on his horse.

Completely alone, he charged into the crowd, physically attacking the ring leaders.

BraveBy sheer force of personality he made the mob give up their spears and swords. For this, he was awarded an immediate MBE for gallantry.

After Nigerian independence, he remained in the country for two more years in order to establish the infrastructure for a ministry of information which included a fledgling television broadcasting agency.

Wilson subsequently joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, in which he served for five years in Turkey. He was advanced to OBE in 1964 at the end of his tour.

Thereafter, he served with the United Nations in New York for a spell before moving to Nepal for five years.

Who'd he upset?

There he was reunited with wartime comrades whom he had feared he would never see again.

He returned to Northern Nigeria as the Deputy High Commissioner in Kaduna, from where, due to his excellent contacts, he was able to give London several months’ warning about an impending coup.

Desmond Wilson retired in 1981 and settled in Kent. He married, in 1949, Lucy Bride, a member of the Royal Colonial Nursing Corps, and the eldest daughter of Harold Bride, the only wireless operator to survive the sinking of Titanic. She survives him with their two sons.


Desmond Wilson, born January 2 1922, died January 3 2014

Wow, just wow.
Not famous but should be.
He truly exemplified 'A life not put to the test is a life not worth living'.

[harrybarracuda]

On one occasion he was confronted by an armed mob of some 3,000 people, some of whom had already taken part in the murder of government tax collectors. Wilson’s force of local police was quickly overwhelmed and his groom made off on his horse.

Completely alone, he charged into the crowd, physically attacking the ring leaders.

And that's why people say there is a fine line between bravery and lunacy.

[Latindancer]

And he rest !
Did he and his platoons use the tank to take over the house, I wonder ? Or just take over as a result of the tank not being there ?

[Mr Lick]

Charles Grigg - obituary

Charles Grigg drew Korky the Cat at The Dandy for 20 years and had a saucy sideline in seaside postcards





Charles Grigg, who has died at the age of 97, was one of the most talented artists in British comics, and drew Korky the Cat for the cover of The Dandy for 20 years.

Grigg chronicled the colourful and amusing adventures of Korky from issue 1052 in January 1962, taking over the strip from the character’s retiring creator, James Crighton. Korky, who loved nothing better than an oversized fish for dinner, had a handful of panels each week in which to outwit his foes, whether they were a park-keeper, doorman or policeman. His eternal battle with the mice that lived in his skirting boards provided hundreds of laughs over the years.


As Maurice Heggie recalled in The Art and History of the Dandy: “The in-house colourists found his open style a joy to colour — during the 1960s these Dandy covers were amongst the best in the field.”





Korky the Cat strip cartoon by Charles Grigg

Grigg continued to draw Korky’s adventures until issue 2116 in June 1982, although he occasionally filled in for David Gudgeon, his replacement, thereafter. Grigg also produced covers for 21 consecutive editions (1966-87) of The Dandy Book.

The son of a railway fitter, Charles Grigg was born on November 23 1916 in West Bromwich. He grew up in a large family and was apprenticed at the age of 14 as a woodworker at the Birmingham Railways Carriage and Wagon Company.

His artistic talents began to show at an early age. Later he used them to supplement his wages as a toolmaker at a factory by selling cartoons to the local newspaper.

Through Herbert Cater, editor of the Oldbury Weekly News, he contacted a London agent who introduced him to two major figures at the DC Thomson “fun factory”, RD Low, editor-in-chief of the Dundee firm’s juvenile publications, and Albert Barnes, editor of The Dandy comic.

Grigg’s first strip, Sooty and His Shooter, about a little African boy whose magic blow-pipe can make things grow in size, appeared in Dandy’s celebratory 500th issue in June 1951. He became a full-time artist, creating dozens of pages for The Dandy and The Beano, many with a magical or fantastic twist. These included Wee Peem’s Magic Pills (1951-52); Great Big Bonzo (1953-54), about a giant dog; Gobble Gobble Gertie (1954), about an Eskimo girl who eats everything; and a mechanical dog, Clanky the Cast-Iron Pup (1955)



Perhaps surprisingly, his longest-running strip was not Korky but another anthropomorphised animal, Foxy, who made his debut in a half-page of the first issue of Topper in February 1953. After a year or two it proved popular enough to command a full page and Foxy remained a star of the paper until issue 1229 in August 1976.

Cunning in his attempts to outwit the farmer on whose land he lived, Foxy inevitably ended his adventures picking buckshot out of his behind.

Many other light-hearted adventure strips flowed from Grigg’s pen, amongst them Millionaire Mike (1955), about a tinker’s son who inherits a fortune; Kipper the Copper (1956-57), about a policeman who teams up with an invisible Martian to solve crime; and The Red Wrecker (1964), about a dangerous, unstoppable weed. A number of his serials featured mysterious villains, including The Purple Cloud (1961), The Umbrella Men (1965-66) and Captain Whoosh (1967). In 1969 Grigg was chosen to replace the late Dudley Watkins as the artist for Desperate Dan and produced occasional original strips for some years.

Drawing saucy postcards for Bamforth & Co was a profitable sideline for Grigg (or “Chas” as he signed himself), who produced more than 200 designs during 50 years working for the company. Many of the jokes were supplied by his wife, Margery, a cheery extrovert with a great sense of humour, who served as a model for the glamorous ladies he drew.

In later life Grigg suffered from vascular disease which caused him to lose his short-term memory, though his longer-term memory was better. For his ninetieth birthday celebrations, he visited The Dandy offices, where he enjoyed looking back at original boards he had drawn 40 years before. He still remembered the trickiest parts of each page.

He continued to enjoy himself and wrote down his life story, which he would read through regularly to help with his memory. For the same purpose he browsed his artwork from the 400 copies of The Dandy which he had kept - each image serving as an aide-memoire.

Charles Grigg married, in 1940, Margery Wilden, who predeceased him in 2008. Their two sons, Roger and Stephen, survive him.


Charles Grigg, born November 23 1916, died December 4 2013

[Mr Lick]

Group Captain Ronnie Churcher - obituary

Group Captain Ronnie Churcher was deputy to Guy Gibson, hero of the Dam Buster raid, on the fateful mission in which Gibson was killed




Group Captain Ronnie Churcher, who has died aged 91, flew as deputy controller to Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, on the raid in which the hero of the Dam Busters’ attack was killed.

Churcher was the flight commander of No 627 Squadron operating Mosquito aircraft in the target-marking role. Under an umbrella of flares dropped by Lancasters, the Mosquitoes dived to low level to drop coloured markers with pinpoint accuracy, which the main bomber force then used as their aiming points.


On the night of September 19/20 1944, the targets were Monchengladbach and nearby Rheydt. To the great surprise of No 627’s crews, Gibson — who was not in regular flying practice — was appointed the controller. Churcher was to be his deputy and the marker leader. The two men had served together earlier in the war

Churcher identified the target but, as he started his dive, part of his aircraft’s port engine broke free and the sudden glare caused him to lose his night vision and he had to break off his dive. The confusion that ensued was not helped by Gibson’s lack of experience in this type of attack, particularly when he switched the attack to another target just as Churcher was regaining contact with the original objective and placing his markers accurately. Gibson still appeared to be indecisive, and by now the raid was petering out; only a few of the Lancasters bombed Churcher’s markers.

Gibson was heard to tell the crews to “beat it for home”; but he and his navigator, Squadron Leader JB Warwick, failed to return — they crashed in Holland.


Ronald George Churcher was born on May 9 1922 at Worthing and attended the local High School. He joined the RAF aged 18 and trained as a bomber pilot. In late 1941 he joined No 106 Squadron, which still flew the pre-war Hampden bomber. He went on minelaying sorties in the Baltic and bombed targets in the Ruhr before the squadron was re-equipped with the Manchester , an aircraft plagued with technical difficulties but which served as a precursor to the Lancaster.

In spring 1942, Guy Gibson arrived to command the squadron, and over the next few weeks Churcher attacked targets in Germany. On May 30 he flew a Manchester on the first 1,000-bomber raid, when the target was Cologne, and two nights later went on the second, to Essen.

After the squadron was re-equipped with the Lancaster, Churcher was on one of nine crews — led by Gibson — which flew on a daring daylight attempt to bomb Danzig.

After 30 operations Churcher was rested, and Gibson recommended him for a DFC .

Churcher’s appointment as flight commander of a new Lancaster squadron, No 619, came as the Battle of the Ruhr was at its height. He twice attacked Hamburg as part of the devastating “firestorm” raids, and on August 23 was on the raid that opened the long and bitter Battle of Berlin. It was the first of six visits to the “Big City”. After completing 21 operations, he was again rested and awarded a Bar to his DFC.

After completing two tours of operations, crews in Bomber Command were not required to fly a third, but in July 1944 Churcher volunteered for another. He trained on the Mosquito and joined No 627. Initially he attacked targets in northern France in support of the Normandy landings, but he was soon singled out as a marker leader, diving from 5,000ft to 1,000ft to place his markers on the target. He often acted as deputy controller, and attacked key targets in Germany, including Berlin, Munich and the Dortmund-Ems Canal. On December 13 he led a force that attacked German cruisers in Oslo Fjord. It was his 75th and final operation, and he was awarded a DSO.

Churcher was then loaned to BOAC and flew long-range routes before training as a flying instructor. In December 1950 he was appointed to the King’s Flight, flying the Viking. Over the next three years he flew every member of the Royal family, as well as many foreign dignitaries and government officials. He was appointed MVO 4th Class (later advanced to LVO).

After serving in Singapore, Churcher commanded No 216 Squadron, flying the Comet on the RAF’s long-range transport routes to the Far East, Middle East and the United States. In 1966 he was in charge of administration at RAF Abingdon, one of the Service’s largest transport bases. On promotion to group captain he was appointed station commander of RAF Henlow. Among the various units for which he was responsible was the RAF Officer Cadet Training Unit . From 1975 to 1977, when he retired from the RAF, he served as Air Attaché in Rome.

Churcher then spent a decade working with a fundraising organisation, taking a particular interests in helping schools.

In retirement he completed a Humanities degree with the Open University, and was a superb woodworker .

Ronnie Churcher married first, in 1946, Shelagh Constance, who died in 1981. He is survived by his second wife, Lyn, and by two sons and a daughter of his first marriage and a stepdaughter of his second.


Group Capt Ronnie Churcher, born May 9 1922, died October 25 2013