AP Obits--9/16
ObitsMan
Obituaries in the News
Mon Sep 16, 6:30 PM ET
By The Associated Press
George Daniell, a photographer best known for his black-and-white portraits of
actors, artists and writers, died Saturday from complications following a
stroke. He was 91.
He was most famous for photos depicting celebrities he encountered during
several car trips across the United States and on journeys to Europe.
Daniell found a young Sophia Loren at a movie studio in Rome and W.H. Auden on
the Italian island of Ischia. Audrey Hepburn was photographed on the set of
"War and Peace," Tennessee Williams in Key West and Georgia O'Keeffe on her New
Mexico ranch.
Born in Yonkers, N.Y., Daniell began taking photographs as a young teen, then
attended Yale and became a free-lance photographer in New York and Europe.
Daniell's style was loose in the manner of John Marin, whom he photographed. He
often painted scenes of coastal life in Maine and carefree youth on Fire Island
in New York.
His works are represented in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York and The National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
A collection of Daniell's photographs from Monhegan Island was shown last fall
in an exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, where several of his works are
part of the permanent collection.
Jim Heil
HOLLAND, Mich. (AP) — Jim Heil, news editor of The Holland Sentinel, drowned
Saturday after suffering hypothermia when his kayak capsized in Lake Michigan.
He was 40.
Heil was thrown into the water while kayaking near the Straits of Mackinac,
authorities said.
Heil became news editor at the Sentinel in January 2000.
After earning a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University,
Heil began work at the Petoskey News-Review in 1983 and was a reporter and
editor until 1996. He went on to be a copy editor in The Grand Rapids Press
sports department before joining the Sentinel.
Among Heil's survivors are his father, his mother and sister.
Robert H. Kirschner
CHICAGO (AP) — Robert H. Kirschner, an internationally recognized forensic
pathologist and human rights activist, died Sunday from complications of kidney
cancer. He was 61.
Kirschner participated in human rights missions for the United Nation,
Physicians for Human Rights and other groups. His travels took him to
Argentina, Kenya, South Korea and many other countries. He helped exhume mass
graves in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and was a forensic consultant to
international criminal tribunals involving those nations.
After completing his pathology residency at the University of Chicago in 1971,
Kirschner worked for the U.S. Public Health Service before returning to the
University of Chicago as a professor in 1973. The Philadelphia also worked for
the Cook County medical examiner's office from 1978 to 1995.
Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, whose
agonizing account of imprisonment by the communists in Vietnam made him an
inspirational figure for many Catholics in his homeland, died Monday. He was
74.
Nguyen Van Thuan, who went into exile in Rome more than a decade ago, died of
cancer at a clinic, the Vatican said.
Although he was made a cardinal only last year, Nguyen Van Thuan had already
appeared on lists of possible successors to Pope John Paul II, particularly by
those believing the next pontiff could come from a poor, non-European country.
Vietnam has the largest Roman Catholic community in Asia after the Philippines.
Nguyen Van Thuan was ordained a priest in Vietnam in 1953. He was appointed
deputy archbishop of Saigon just days before the South Vietnamese capital fell
to the communist North in April 1975.
Targeted for his faith as well as his family connections — his uncle was Ngo
Dinh Diem, the assassinated South Vietnamese president — Nguyen Van Thuan
spent 13 years in a communist "re-education" camp — nine of them in solitary
confinement.
In his book "The Way of Hope — Thoughts of Light from a Prison Cell," he
wrote: "In our country there is a saying: `A day in prison is worth a thousand
autumns of freedom.' I myself experienced this. While in prison, everyone waits
for freedom, every day, every minute. We must live each day, each minute of our
life as though it is the last."
In 1991, he was forced into exile. At the Vatican, he ran the Pontifical
Council of Justice and Peace, handling issues such as Third World debt.
Guy J. Pauker
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Guy J. Pauker, an expert on Southeast Asia who served as a
consultant to the National Security Council and other federal agencies for more
than two decades, has died. He was 85.
Pauker died Sept. 4 after a long illness.
After joining the RAND institute in 1960, Pauker worked as a consultant to the
National Security Council, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the House Committee on
International Affairs and the National War College.
Pauker advised the agencies on topics including Indonesian stability, the value
of discovering oil in the Philippines and the wisdom of making the United
States a world police force.
In 1977, before uprisings in Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, Africa and Afghanistan, Pauker
outlined "a breakdown of global order as a result of sharpening confrontation
between the Third World and the industrial democracies."
Born in Bucharest, Pauker left Romania for the United States in 1948 because of
political turmoil. He taught briefly at Harvard University before joining the
faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became head of the
Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Anthony Sacco Sr.
CHICAGO (AP) — Anthony Sacco Sr., a star college quarterback who became a
National Football League referee, died of heart failure Wednesday. He was 84.
Sacco worked the 1971 Super Bowl and the 1961 and 1965 championship games
during his 18-year NFL career. When four Chicago Bears knocked him down — a
film clip replayed on late night TV — he told a reporter that he could only
"get up with as much dignity as possible and start looking for my hat."
Sacco considered NFL officiating a hobby. He had a graduate degree in chemistry
and worked as a salesman for several chemical companies. When he was 65, he
started a multimillion-dollar chemical distribution service.
As quarterback of Iowa's St. Ambrose College football team, he was drafted by
the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1940, but he broke his shoulder in the preseason and
left the NFL for graduate work at St. Louis University.
Sacco officiated high school football games, and in 1947 began refereeing Big
Ten football. Ten years later he began officiating for the NFL.
Lolita Torres
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Lolita Torres, a singer and one of the top
actresses of Argentina's golden era of cinema, died Saturday of complications
from a lung infection. She was 72.
She had been hospitalized since August, after the rheumatoid fever she had
suffered for a decade grew worse.
Torres, born Beatriz Mariana Torres, began singing at age 11, performing
Spanish folk songs in a leading Buenos Aires theater.
She went on to record hits that include "Te lo juro yo" (I swear it to you) and
"Gitano Jesus" (Gypsy Jesus).
But Torres was best known for her film career. From 1944 on she acted in 17
films alongside some of Latin America's best known actors in what was Argentine
cinema's "golden years."
Her acting career took her to Mexico, the former Soviet Union, Spain and
Colombia before she retired in 1972. In August she was named a "special
citizen" by the city of Buenos Aires.
Former Argentine President Carlos Menem was one of many who paid tribute to
Torres after she died, calling her "one of the greatest of all time."