AP Obits--11/18
ObitsMan
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Obituaries in the News
Tue Nov 18, 8:06 PM ET
By The Associated Press
Gerry Adams Sr.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Gerry Adams Sr., a former Irish Republican
Army prisoner and father of the Sinn Fein leader, died Monday after a long
illness. He was 77.
The senior Adams was credited with shaping his son's support for violent
insurrection in Northern Ireland, but was never a high-ranking figure in the
Sinn Fein-IRA movement.
He served an eight-year prison sentence after shooting a Belfast police officer
in the foot in a botched IRA operation in 1942. He was interned without trial
as an IRA suspect in the early 1970s — at times sharing prison space with his
much more famous son.
In recent years the short, silver-haired Adams — invariably called "Auld
Gerry" in Sinn Fein circles — had regularly attended public Sinn Fein-IRA
rallies in Catholic west Belfast, but he stayed in the background and never
spoke officially for the movement.
___
Bob Carmichael
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Bob Carmichael, a top-10 tennis player in 1970
who went on to coach Australian star Pat Rafter, died Tuesday. He was 63.
Carmichael was a founding member of the Association of Tennis Professionals. He
reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in singles, doubles and mixed doubles in
1970.
In 1979, his last year on the circuit, he was a doubles semifinalist at
Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.
Carmichael later coached Rafter and helped with the early careers of former No.
1 player Lleyton Hewitt and fellow Australian pro Darren Cahill.
More recently, he coached leading doubles specialist Leander Paes, including in
1999 when Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won three of the four Grand Slam doubles
titles.
___
Bruce Cook
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bruce Cook, a journalist and mystery novelist whose
characters included Chico Cervantes and Sir John Fielding, has died. He was 71.
Cook, whose most recent novel was published earlier this year, died of a stroke
Nov. 9.
Writing as Bruce Alexander, Cook penned 10 historical novels featuring the
blind 18th century detective Fielding, including "The Price of Murder" and "The
Color of Death."
Cook also wrote four novels set in Los Angeles focused on the Mexican-American
detective Cervantes, including "Rough Cut" and "The Sidewalk Hilton."
After serving in the U.S. Army overseas in the 1950s, Cook worked as an editor
and writer for publications including the National Observer, Newsweek, the
Detroit News, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Daily News.
Cook's first book, in 1971, was the nonfiction "The Beat Generation." His first
novel was published seven years later.
___
Dave Engels
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Dave Engels, a Kenosha News reporter for 25 years, died
Friday of natural causes. He was 47.
Elected officials at all levels of government frequently found themselves
subjects of and sources for Engels' stories — and targets of his column.
Engels first came to the Kenosha News as an intern in 1978 and was hired full
time in 1980. He left the paper in November 2002.
___
Don Gibson
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Don Gibson, an elementary school dropout who wrote
and recorded standards like "I Can't Stop Loving You," died Monday. He was 75.
Gibson was a poor boy from Shelby, N.C., who dropped out of school in second
grade. But he became a songwriting genius who sold millions of records.
On June 7, 1957, he wrote two of country music's greatest songs: "I Can't Stop
Loving You" and "Oh Lonesome Me."
Between 1958 and the mid-1960s, Gibson's records and his compositions,
including "Sweet Dreams" and "Oh Lonesome Me," were hits for himself and many
other performers.
"I Can't Stop Loving You" was recorded by more than 700 artists, but Ray
Charles had the big pop version in 1962.
Gibson sang in a rich baritone and usually wrote about solitude and sadness
involving love, earning him the nickname "the sad poet."
Gibson, a member of the Grand Ole Opry, was inducted into the Country Music
Hall of Fame in 2001.
___
H. David Hermansdorfer
ASHLAND, Ky. (AP) — Former U.S. District Judge H. David Hermansdorfer, whose
presiding over coal-industry cases was seen by some as conflicting with his
financial interests, died Monday. He was 72.
Hermansdorfer was appointed to the bench in the Eastern District of Kentucky by
President Nixon in 1972 and served through 1981.
Following a March 1976 explosion at a Letcher County coal mine that killed 26
men, Hermansdorfer dismissed a lawsuit by widows of the victims against the
operator, Blue Diamond Coal Co. The families eventually collected $5.9 million
on appeal.
In 1980, the legal journal American Lawyer accused Hermansdorfer of having a
"biased view in favor of coal operators."
But some former colleagues said otherwise.
"That was a terrible rap, not true at all," said 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals Judge Eugene Siler Jr.
___
Gordon Onslow Ford
INVERNESS, Calif. (AP) — Gordon Onslow Ford, the last surviving painter of a
1930s group of Surrealist painters led by Andre Breton, died Sunday. He was 90.
Onslow Ford's color-drenched circle, line and dot compositions sought to
uncover what he called the "inner worlds" — levels of consciousness beyond
the personal, visible realm.
Onslow Ford served briefly in the British Navy before deciding to study
painting in Paris in 1937.
He studied briefly with French painter Fernand Leger before meeting Chilean
Surrealist painter Roberto Matta, who became his lifelong friend.
Matta later introduced him to a Surrealist group that included Max Ernst and
Yves Tanguy. Onslow Ford officially joined the group, led by Breton, in 1938.
During that time, Onslow Ford developed a technique of spontaneously pouring
paint onto canvas, predating by a decade Jackson Pollock's drip technique.
___
Peter Lindroos
HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — Finnish opera singer Peter Lindroos died Monday when
his car collided with a truck in Sweden, the Finnish news agency STT reported
Tuesday. He was 59.
The accident happened Monday on a road near Tjoernarp, Sweden, about 340 miles
south of Stockholm.
Police said the car Lindroos was in collided with a truck, killing him and his
18-month-old son.
Late Tuesday, Lindroos' wife remained in a coma and their 2-year-old daughter
was in critical condition.
Lindroos was a lecturer of singing at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and held
a professorship at the Malmoe Academy of Music in southwestern Sweden.
A tenor, he had performed at the Vienna State Opera in Austria, London's Covent
Garden and La Scala in Milan, as well as the Finnish National Opera.
___
Raymond Pettine
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Pettine, who
presided over landmark cases about free speech, prisoners' rights and other
sensitive issues, died Monday. He was 91.
Among his noteworthy opinions were recognizing the civil rights of prisoners
who complained of unconstitutional conditions at the state prison, and ordering
schools to provide breakfast to low-income children, which became national law.
He also ruled that state laws requiring insurance companies to exclude abortion
coverage from health insurance policies and requiring a husband to approve his
wife's abortion were unconstitutional.
Another of Pettine's controversial rulings was that municipalities could not
erect Christmas manger scenes on public land. The order was overruled by the
U.S. Supreme Court.
President Johnson appointed Pettine to the bench in 1966. He was the U.S.
District Court's chief justice in Providence from 1971 to 1982. He retired from
the federal bench in 1997.
___
Leon Pordy
NEW YORK (AP) — Leon Pordy, former chairman and chief executive officer of
the Chock full o' Nuts coffee company, died Friday. He was 84.
Before joining the company, Pordy worked as a cardiologist and as a professor
of medicine.
One of his patients, William Black, was the founder of Chock full o' Nuts and
convinced Pordy to join the company's board in 1976.
Pordy continued to practice medicine as he rose through the company's
hierarchy, serving as its medical director, executive vice president and
president.
The board elected him chairman in 1982, when he finally gave up his medical
practice to work full time for Chock full o' Nuts. He resigned in 1992 because
of poor health.
___
Anthony Ripley
Boulder, Colo. (AP) — Anthony Ripley, founding editor of Discovery YMCA and a
former reporter for The New York Times, died Friday. He was 75.
He worked as a reporter for The Detroit News from 1956 to 1965 before joining
the Times in 1967. He worked for the paper until 1975.
From 1976 to 1978, he served as associate editor for The Rocky Mountain News
and then joined United Way of America as a communications executive.
Discovery YMCA was the quarterly magazine of the national YMCA, based in
Chicago.
___
R. Marvin Stuart
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Bishop R. Marvin Stuart, a former leader of the
United Methodist Church, died Nov. 11. He was 93.
Stuart became the highest-ranking official in the United Methodist Church when
he was elected president of the Council of Bishops in 1978. Before that, he had
served almost 30 years as a minister in the San Francisco Bay area and 16 years
as a bishop in Denver and San Francisco.
In 1942, he became pastor of the Palo Alto church, which under his leadership
grew to more than 2,000 members. During that period, Stuart tended to Japanese
Americans interned at the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno.