AP Obits--3/1
ObitsMan
Obituaries in the News
Mon Mar 1, 9:49 PM ET
Leroy J. Alexanderson
HAMPTON, Va. (AP) — Leroy J. Alexanderson, the last captain of the SS United
States, the biggest and fastest ocean liner ever built in the nation, has died.
He was 93.
The ship known as the "Big U" set a trans-Atlantic speed record of three days,
10 hours and 42 minutes on its maiden voyage in 1952, a record that stood until
1990.
Alexanderson, who died Saturday in Hampton, was named the ship's captain in
1964 and served in that role until the vessel was retired in 1969.
The 990-foot long ship was stored at ports in Virginia, Turkey and Ukraine
before docking in Philadelphia in 1996. Last year, Norwegian Cruise Lines
bought it and said it intended to refurbish it and return it to service.
___
M. Lamont Bean
BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — M. Lamont Bean, who built a family drugstore into a
West Coast retail powerhouse and was a founding owner of the Seattle Seahawks,
died Wednesday, his family said. He was 79.
Bean served as president and chairman of Pay'n Save Corp. and headed several
civic and arts groups.
In the early 1980s Pay'n Save had more than 20,000 employees in 350 of its
namesake drugstores, Ernst Home Centers, Lamonts Apparel stores, Bi-Mart
discount stores and Schuck's Auto Supply outlets in 11 Western states.
A native of Ogden, Utah, Bean followed the retail career of his father, who
started the Tradewell grocery chain in Seattle in 1939 after stops in Nebraska,
California and Oregon.
Bean was a founding owner of the Seahawks in 1974, two years before the
franchise first fielded a team. Bean and other minority owners bid
unsuccesfully to buy out the 51 percent share of the Nordstrom family in 1984.
The Nordstroms sold the club later that year.
___
Fred Benninger
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Fred Benninger, a former gambling executive who also chaired
the MGM Grand and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studios, has died. He was 86.
Benninger — who helped build some of the city's best-known properties,
including the massive MGM Grand hotel-casino — died Sunday at his Las Vegas
home after a brief illness.
He was president of International Leisure Co. from 1967 to 1971, during which
he developed and built the International Hotel, later renamed the Las Vegas
Hilton. He also oversaw the renovation of the Flamingo Hotel, now the Flamingo
Las Vegas.
Benninger was chairman of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios from 1971 to 1980. He
oversaw the completion of the MGM Grand Hotel — better known today as Bally's
Las Vegas — and was the hotel's chairman and chief executive officer from
1971 to 1982.
He also built the former MGM Grand Hotel in Reno — now the Reno Hilton —
which was the largest casino in the world when it opened in 1978.
Benninger also served as chairman of Western Airlines from 1972 to 1978, and
was president of Tracinda Corp., an owner of casinos and hotels, from 1982 to
1986.
From 1986 to 1991, he was chairman and chief executive officer of MGM Grand
Inc. and developed the current MGM Grand hotel-casino, one of the biggest
hotels in the world.
___
Leslie Falkenberry
SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Roswell Leslie Falkenberry, former editor and publisher of
the Selma Times-Journal, died Friday. He was 89.
Falkenberry, a Selma High School graduate, attended Birmingham-Southern College
before serving in World War II. He was with the Ninth Air Force during the
Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge.
He began his career with the Times-Journal in the advertising department in
1936. He later became an owner of the newspaper and served as editor and
publisher from 1963 until he retired in 1974.
___
Maury Allen Falstein
CHICAGO (AP) — Maury Allen Falstein, a veteran Chicago journalist whose
career spanned six decades, died Saturday of heart failure. He was 88.
The Chicago native started in 1937 as a beat reporter with the Chicago Daily
Times. As a young reporter, Falstein interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt, Hull House
founder Jane Addams and Maria von Trapp, whose life inspired "The Sound of
Music," said Falstein's son, Richard.
Maury Allen Falstein went on to become a picture editor at the Chicago Daily
Times and then the Sun-Times.
He received several journalism awards, including his recognition in 1957 by the
Chicago Newspaper Guild for his campaign to allow newspaper cameras in the
courtroom. In 1962 he was named Picture Editor of the Year by the National
Press Photographers Association.
___
Jerome Lawrence
MALIBU, Calif. (AP) — Jerome Lawrence, who co-wrote hundreds of plays for
stage, radio and screen, including "Inherit the Wind" and the musical "Mame,"
has died. He was 88.
Lawrence died at his home Sunday from complications related to a stroke he
suffered a year and a half ago, according to his niece, Deborah Robison.
With the late playwright Robert E. Lee, Lawrence wrote "Inherit the Wind,"
based on the 1925 trial of John Scopes, a Tennessee school teacher convicted of
teaching evolution. The play was widely produced and sold almost 2.5 million
copies in printed form.
Lee died from cancer at age 75 in 1994.
Lawrence and Lee collaborated for more than 50 years on such projects as "The
Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" and "Auntie Mame," a comedy about a freethinking
woman that was adapted from a novel for the big screen, and for the stage as
the musical "Mame."
Lawrence was named to the national Theatre Hall of Fame in 1990.
___
Toni Onley
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Toni Onley, a famed West Coast painter who
combined his art with a love of flying, died when his floatplane crashed into
the Fraser River, police said Monday. He was 75.
Witnesses said the LA4 Buccaneer was practicing landings and takeoffs before it
crashed on Sunday.
Onley was a renowned watercolorist known for his moody, expressionist
landscapes of Canada's West Coast.
Born in England, Onley first studied under local landscape water colorist John
Nicholson and at the Douglas School of Fine Arts.
He came to Canada in 1948, and worked a variety of jobs to support his wife and
two daughters.
Onley took up flying in the 1960s, which enabled him to travel to remote
locations. He often sketched from the air before landing to work on a painting.
He received the Order of Canada in 1999.
___
Walter Perkins
NEW YORK (AP) — Walter Perkins, a jazz drummer who played with such musical
figures as Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Ahmad Jamal, died Feb. 14 of lung
cancer, his family said. He was 72.
Born in Chicago, he was a leader of the jazz group MJT + 3, which recorded a
self-titled album in 1959. After the group disbanded in 1962, Perkins moved to
New York and began playing with musicians such as Mingus, Jamal, Gene Ammons
and Carmen McRae.
He appeared on dozens of albums; one of his most recent appearances was with
William Parker, with whom he recorded "Bob's Pink Cadillac" (2002).
___
Labe Scheinberg
NEW YORK (AP) — Labe Scheinberg, a neurologist who encouraged a
cross-disciplinary approach to treating multiple sclerosis, died Feb. 22. He
was 78.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Dr. David Scheinberg.
In the 1970s, Labe Scheinberg helped found a multiple sclerosis center at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. He encouraged
collaboration between neurologists, psychologists, physical therapists and
other experts in developing treatments for the disease, which causes
progressive nerve damage.
Scheinberg, a native of Memphis, served in the Navy and graduated from the
University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He served as a chief of
neuropsychiatry at Barkdale Air Force Base's hospital in Louisiana.
He began working at Einstein in 1956, eventually rising to dean of the college
before retiring in 1995.
___
Harold C. Shaver
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Harold C. Shaver, dean of Marshall University's
journalism school, died Monday after collapsing in the university's fitness
center. He was 65.
The cause of death had not been determined Monday afternoon, Marshall spokesman
Dave Wellman said.
Shaver became director of the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass
Communications in June 1990. He was named dean in March 1999 when the school
became an independent academic unit. He was also a journalism professor.
Before coming to Marshall, Shaver was chairman of the Department of
Communications at Bethany College. He also taught at Kansas State University,
Drake University, and State University of New York at Oswego.
___
Bill Sieverling
SEATTLE (AP) — Bill Sieverling, a former Seattle Post-Intelligencer city
editor and assistant managing editor with a passion for politics, the outdoors
and civic activism, died Saturday. He was 69.
Sieverling, who also spent six months teaching at Stanford University as a
professional journalism fellow, died of lung cancer, friends and colleagues
said.
He began his journalism career in 1961 at the Vancouver Columbian, now The
Columbian, in Vancouver, Wash., and joined the P-I two years later, initially
focusing on investigative reporting.
Sieverling worked for the YMCA for more than a decade, including a position as
director of the group's International Office for Asia.
___
Sir Harold St. John
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) — Sir Harold St. John, a former prime minister of
Barbados who was deeply committed to Caribbean integration, died Sunday after a
long battle with cancer. He was 72.
Flags were lowered to half-staff on Monday and the government announced an
official period of mourning.
St. John is credited with advancing Barbados' political and economic
development.
In 1964, he was appointed to the Senate, serving two years before being elected
to Parliament. He held several Cabinet positions, including deputy prime
minister, minister of trade and industry, and minister of tourism.
St. John became prime minister in 1985 after the death of his predecessor, Tom
Adams, only to lose the government a year later in the general elections.
In 1991, his party was re-elected and St. John served as deputy prime minister
until 1999. He retired from politics three years later.
He was knighted in 1994.
___
Paul Webster
PARIS (AP) — Paul Webster, a British journalist who wrote biographies about
leading French figures and covered France for the Guardian for nearly three
decades, died after suffering a heart attack Friday, the paper said. The paper
did not provide his exact age, though it said he was born in 1937.
Webster reported from Africa, Asia and Australia before coming to France in
1974. He remained the Guardian's Paris bureau chief until 1999 and was a
contributor until his death.
Webster's most influential book was "Petain's Crime," about wartime France
under Marshall Philippe Petain, who collaborated with the Nazi regime.