AP Obits--9/7
ObitsMan
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Obituaries in the News
Sat Sep 7, 6:25 PM ET
By The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - M. Ross Bigelow, a retired Superior Court judge who presided
over the 1974 trial of two Symbionese Liberation Army members, died Tuesday. He
was 77 and had congestive heart failure.
Appointed to municipal court in 1969 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, Bigelow began
his 15-year career as a Superior Court judge in 1973.
His most highly publicized case was the trial of SLA members Russell Little and
Joseph Remiro on charges of the attempted murder of a policeman, assault and
possession of explosives after a 1974 shootout. The jury acquitted Little, and
Bigelow declared a mistrial in Remiro's case after the jury could not reach a
verdict.
Albert Costello
PARAMUS, N.J. (AP) — Albert Costello, a former chairman of W. R. Grace &
Company, a specialty chemicals and health care company, died Tuesday. He was
66.
Costello apparently died of heart-related causes while playing golf, his son
said.
Between 1995 to 1998, Costello held the posts of chairman, president and chief
executive at the company, which was then based in Boca Raton, Fla., and is now
headquartered in Columbia, Md.
Costello was chairman and chief executive of the American Cyanamid Company,
based in Wayne, N.J., before he joined Grace. He presided over the roughly $9.6
billion takeover of American Cyanamid by American Home Products in 1994.
Andrew Forge
NEW MILFORD, Conn. (AP) — Andrew Forge, a British-born painter and teacher at
the Yale School of Art, died Wednesday. He was 76.
Forge, who studied with William Coldstream at the Chamberwell School of Art in
London, painted abstract pieces that emphasized the sensory effects of color.
In his paintings, which recalled the work of Claude Monet and expressionist
Mark Rothko, he used tiny dots and short dashes of paint in patterns that
occasionally hinted at landscapes and figures.
Forge taught at the Slade School and Goldsmith's in London in the 1950s and
'60s before moving to the United States in 1972. He taught for 30 years at the
New York Studio School, and was most prominently associated with Yale, where he
was a dean of painting.
Also a critic, Forge wrote on Paul Klee and other artists, and published books
on Monet and Edgar Degas with Robert Gordon.
Shurei Hirozawa
HONOLULU (AP) — Shurei Hirozawa, a former business editor at the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, died Thursday at his Manoa home. He was 83.
Hirozawa was born on Kauai and received a bachelor's degree in journalism at
the University of Iowa in 1950. He became a general assignment reporter for the
Star-Bulletin after graduation.
He was the newspaper's labor and business editor from 1962 to 1970.
In September 1970, he left the Star-Bulletin to work for First Hawaiian Bank as
an assistant vice president for economic research. He later became vice
president for public relations before retiring in June 1991.
Franklyn D. Holzman
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Franklyn D. Holzman, an economist who uncovered
regressive taxation in the Soviet Union and criticized intelligence estimates
of Soviet military spending, died Sunday. He was 83.
In a book published in 1955, Holzman outlined the system known as the turnover
tax, a form of sales tax, in the Soviet Union. He said it redistributed money
from low-income people to more highly paid ones — a phenomenon that ran
counter to the basic dictates of the Communist system.
In the early 1960's, Holzman used theory and statistics to assert that prices
in East European Communist countries would have been lower if the Soviet Union
had permitted trade with the rest of the world.
Holzman in the late 1970's and 1980's accused American politicians, especially
President Reagan, of drastically overstating Soviet military spending to sway
budget decisions at home.
Edmund Taylor Pratt
NEW YORK (AP) — Edmund Taylor Pratt, a former Pfizer Inc. executive who
boosted the company's role in pharmaceutical research, died Thursday. He was
75.
Pratt worked for Pfizer for more than 30 years, rising from controller to
chairman and chief executive. As the company's chairman, he was credited with
shifting Pfizer's interests from manufacturing to research and helping to keep
its headquarters in New York City.
He was also cited for leading Pfizer in minority opportunity programs, and for
allocating resources to help build affordable housing in the Williamsburg
section of Brooklyn, where the Pfizer was founded.
Born in Georgia, Pratt graduated from Duke University in 1947 and earned a
business degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in
1949. He served as a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War.
Before joining Pfizer, Pratt worked for IBM and was assistant secretary of the
Army for financial management.
David T. Wilkinson
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) — David T. Wilkinson, a key figure in the gathering of
information that gave a solid basis for the Big Bang theory in the 1960s, died
Thursday. He was 67.
Wilkinson died after a long bout with cancer, according to Princeton
University, where he served as the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics
Emeritus.
Wilkinson also guided major satellite-based investigations of the universe,
including the launch of the COBE satellite, which charted a sky-wide map of
slight variations in radiation.
He started as a physics instructor at Princeton in 1963 and received the
Princeton President's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1996.