AP Obits--02/28/08
Obitsman
773
Obituaries in the news
By The Associated Press
David Edwards
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- David Edwards, who was paralyzed during a 2003 high
school football playoff game and whose injury was fictionalized in the
TV show "Friday Night Lights," died Wednesday. He was 20.
Edwards, stricken with pneumonia since late last year, stopped breathing
Monday night and slipped into a coma, his grandfather said. He died at
Northeast Methodist Hospital.
Edwards would have turned 21 on Saturday.
A junior defensive back at San Antonio Madison, Edwards broke his neck
when he collided with an Austin Westlake wide receiver when both were
reaching for a pass during a November 2003 playoff game.
Director and producer Peter Berg attended that game. The 2006 pilot
episode featured a high school football player who breaks his neck and
is paralyzed while trying to make a tackle.
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Herschel Haworth Jr.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) -- Herschel "Speedy" Haworth Jr., who played lead
guitar on the 1950s country music show "Ozark Jubilee" and had hits with
the original Porter Wagoner Trio, died Tuesday. He was 85.
Haworth died in his Springfield home with his wife and daughter at his
side, the family said. The singer and guitarist had been diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease and last year broke his hip.
"Ozark Jubilee" was a nationally televised country music show produced
in Springfield between 1955 and 1960.
After "Ozark Jubilee," Haworth toured with show host Red Foley's band.
Haworth was also part of the original Porter Wagoner Trio which had the
top-10 hit "Company's Comin"' and No. 1 hit "A Satisfied Mind."
Haworth was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease around 2001. Although he
was retired, he continued to perform regularly at smaller gigs until he
broke his hip a year ago. In the past few years, he sang more gospel
music. In 1990, he joined Jan and Charles Lee to form the Goodwill Trio.
They played in churches and for senior citizens.
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Barbara Seaman
NEW YORK (AP) -- Barbara Seaman, an advocate for women's health who
raised questions about the safety of birth control pills in the 1960s,
died Wednesday. She was 72.
Seaman died at her home from lung cancer, said Cindy Pearson, executive
director of the National Women's Health Network, which Seaman helped
found.
As a journalist in the 1960s, Seaman focused on the health risks
associated with the oral contraceptive pill, which had recently come on
the market.
In 1969, she wrote "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill," which looked at
such risks as blood clots and strokes and led to Senate hearings in
1970. After the hearings, information about the risks began to be
included with the pill.
Seaman continued her advocacy over the rest of her life. Among her other
books are "Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones," "The Greatest
Experiment ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth," and
"Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann," which was turned into a
television movie.
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Mike Smith
LONDON (AP) -- Mike Smith, lead singer of Dave Clark Five died Thursday
of pneumonia. He was 64.
He died less than two weeks before the band was to be inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Smith died at a hospital outside of London, his agent Margo Lewis said.
He was admitted to the intensive care unit Wednesday morning with a
chest infection, a complication from a spinal cord injury that left him
paralyzed below the ribcage with limited use of his upper body. Lewis
said he was injured when he fell from a fence at his home in Spain in
September 2003.
Smith had been in the hospital since the accident, and was just released
last December when he moved into a specially prepared home near the
hospital with his wife.
Smith wrote songs as well as singing and playing keyboards for the Dave
Clark Five, one of many British rock acts whose music swept across the
United States in the 1960s during the so-called British Invasion.
The Beatles are the best remembered, of course, but at the time the Dave
Clark Five posed the strongest threat, commercially and critically, to
their pre-eminence.
The Dave Clark Five claimed a string of U.S. hits, including "Because,"
"Glad All Over," and "I Like it Like That." By 1966, the band had made
12 appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show," then a record for any British
group.