:.
Roger Williams was a pianist whose 1955 hit “Autumn Leaves” was the only piano instrumental to reach number one on the Billboard pop charts. Williams died Saturday of complications from pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles. He was 87. Williams performed for every president from Harry Truman to George H.W. Bush.
Ramiz Alia was Albania’s last Communist leader who presided over his country’s often chaotic moves toward democracy before his downfall in 1992. Alia died Friday of lung complications. He was 85. Alia introduced economic reforms, eased restrictions on religion and civil liberties and sought ties with Western Europe and the Balkan states. But his government crumbled in 1989 and 1990 during the wider collapse of Soviet and Eastern European communism. He was convicted of corruption in 1994 and served a year in prison, but was arrested again in 1996 on genocide charges. But when Albania descended into anarchy in 1997, Alia and other inmates simply walked away from their prison.
Julio Mario Santo Domingo was one of Colombia’s richest and most influential men. Santo Domingo died Friday in New York. He was 87. He had holdings in nearly every major Colombian industry, including beer, soft drinks, aviation, automobiles, banks, cinema and telecommunications.
Diane Cilento was an actress who was nominated in 1963 for an Oscar for best supporting actress for her work in the movie “Tom Jones.” Cilento died Thursday in Queensland, Australia. She was 78.
Bert Jansch was a guitarist whose blend of classical, jazz, blues and traditional British folk music inspired a long list of folk and rock guitarists in the 1960s and ’70s. Jansch died Wednesday of lung cancer in London. He was 67. Jansch caused an immediate sensation with his first album, “Bert Jansch,” in 1965. He was a founder of the progressive British folk group Pentangle.
Sarkis G. Soghanalian was an arms dealer who provided weapons to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and many other dictators and rebels and worked closely with U.S. intelligence. Soghanalian died Wednesday of heart failure in Hialeah, Fla. He was 82. In 1981 he pleaded guilty to fraud in the sale of .50-caliber machine guns to Mauritania. But a judge granted him probation, saying the case “involved international affairs conducted by the State Department.” In 1993 he was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for smuggling 103 helicopters to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. But his sentence was reduced after he told U.S. officials where counterfeit $100 bills were being printed in Lebanon.
Steven Jobs was the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age. Jobs died Wednesday after suffering pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
Charles Napier was an actor who portrayed ruffians, military officers and other strong men in films and on television. Napier died Wednesday in Bakersfield, Calif. He was 75. Napier appeared on the screen in “The Blues Brothers,” “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia.” On TV he had roles in “The Rockford Files” “and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Kenneth Dahlberg was a World War II ace, businessman and an inadvertent figure in the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency. Dahlberg died Tuesday of natural causes in Deephaven, Minn. He was 94. Dahlberg became linked to the scandal after a check he delivered to the Nixon campaign turned up in a Watergate burglar’s bank account. The contribution was legal, and a grand jury cleared Dahlberg.
Arthur C. Nielsen Jr. transformed the company his father founded in 1923 into an international leader in market research, helping to make its name synonymous with television ratings. Nielsen died Monday of Parkinson’s disease in Winnetka, Ill. He was 92. Nielsen moved A.C. Nielsen Co. into new areas, such as creating a clearinghouse for coupons and tracking magazine subscription data. Nielsen also presided over the development of scanning technology in its early days, allowing the company to collect information on consumer purchases of all kinds.
Hanan Porat was a former Israeli lawmaker who became a driving force behind Israel’s settlement of the West Bank. Porat died Monday of cancer. He was 67. Porat was a founder of Gush Emunim — Hebrew for “the bloc of the faithful” — a now-defunct messianic movement committed to settling land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Ralph Steinman was a cell biologist who was named one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year for his work on the human immune response. Steinman, who had pancreatic cancer, died Sept. 30 in New York, which the prize committee didn’t know when it made its announcement three days later. Steinman was 68. In 1973, Steinman and Zanvil Cohn discovered dendritic cells, which play a critical role in activating the body’s adaptive immune system. Steinman’s subsequent research led to a new understanding of how they function.
Lee Davenport was a physicist who developed a radar device that helped Allied troops win key battles in World War II. Davenport died Sept. 30 of cancer in Greenwich, Conn. He was 95. Davenport was credited with developing a microwave radar built into a semitrailer with a parabola on top that tracked enemy planes and helped to direct anti-aircraft batteries. It aided troops who shot down Nazi planes on Italy’s Anzio beachhead in 1944.
Marv Tarplin was a guitarist and songwriter who helped shape the sound of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and other Motown acts. Tarplin died Sept. 30 in Las Vegas. He was 70. Tarplin wrote much of the music for such Miracles hits as “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Going to a Go-Go,” and collaborated on several songs that Marvin Gaye recorded, including “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar.”
Roger Kennedy was the director of the National Park Service during the Clinton administration and an ardent preservationist of the nation’s cultural, historic and artistic heritage for much of his life. Kennedy died Sept. 30 in Rockville, Md., after suffering malignant melanoma. He was 85. Kennedy also ran for the U.S. House in Minnesota, worked as a Washington correspondent for NBC News, wrote and produced television documentaries, helped reorganize the Ford Foundation, and led the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Michael Drake was a planetary scientist who proposed several times in the last decade that NASA send a spacecraft to an asteroid, take rock samples from the surface and bring them home for study. Drake died Sept. 21 in Tucson, Ariz., after suffering liver cancer. He was 65. NASA approved Drake’s idea in May. Drake also worked on several other NASA space missions, including the Cassini mission to explore Saturn; the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which first detected Mars’ ice; and the Phoenix Mars lander, which landed in 2008 in search of Martian water and microbial life.
sources by.
