Obituaries

WWII Fighter Pilot Shared Haunting Story With the World and Ken Burns

As a fighter pilot in World War II, Quentin C. Aanenson fought a very dangerous war. He first saw combat on D-Day, and in the ensuing year, he dive-bombed and strafed tanks, bridges and German infantry at low altitude. He took direct hits from antiaircraft shells and flak on more than 20 missions and survived two crash landings. He watched so many of his fellow pilots in the 366th Fighter Group die that he stopped making friends with the replacements.... A trim, modest man wh

Claiborne Pell, Ex-Senator, Dies at 90

Claiborne Pell, the quirky, patrician former senator from Rhode Island who created the college grant program that bears his name and wrote the legislation that established the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, died just after midnight Thursday at his Newport, R.I., home. He was 90. Mr. Pell was stricken with Parkinson’s disease at the end of his Senate career, and his illness forced him to retire in January 1997 after six terms in the Sen

Anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman dies

Helen Suzman, one of South Africa's most celebrated anti-apartheid campaigners, has died at the age of 91. The former politician was publicly critical of apartheid at a time when this was rare among whites. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice and won praise from human rights organisations from around the world. Her daughter Frances Jowell said she died peacefully in her Johannesburg home.

Paul Hofmann, Author and Foe of Nazis, Dies at 96

Paul Hofmann, a Viennese who resisted the rise of Nazism in his homeland, acted as an informer for the Allies while serving on the staff of the German commandants of occupied Rome during World War II and later became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a prolific author of travel books, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 96. His death was announced by his son Alexander Hofmann-Lord. A diminutive, dapper man who spoke German, Italian, French and English fluently

James L. Bevel, 72, an Adviser to Dr. King, Is Dead

The Rev. James L. Bevel, an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose influence spurred a pivotal event of the civil rights movement, the “children’s crusade” in Birmingham, Ala., but whose reputation was later marred by fringe political associations and a criminal conviction this year on incest charges involving a teenage daughter, died Friday in Springfield, Va. He was 72. Another daughter, Sherilynn Bevel, confirmed the death, The Washington Post reported. Mr. Bevel ha

Paul Weyrich, 66, a Conservative Strategist, Dies

Paul M. Weyrich, the conservative thinker and strategist whose iron principles, articulate fervor and organization-building skills were instrumental in propelling the right wing of the Republican Party to power and prominence in the 1980s and ’90s, died Thursday. He was 66 and lived in Fairfax, Va. Lee Edwards, a friend of Mr. Weyrich’s for four decades and a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative research group that Mr. Weyrich helped found, confirmed the

Former Teamsters president Carey dies

Former Teamsters president Ron Carey, who pledged to rid the union of mob corruption but was later forced from leadership in a financial scandal, has died at age 72, his son said Friday. Carey died at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens Thursday evening of complications from lung cancer, Daniel Carey said in a telephone interview. After a stint in the Marines, Carey first joined the Teamsters in 1956 while working as a driver for United Parcel Service. He became

Sunny von Bulow dies after 28 years in coma

After spending nearly 28 years in an irreversible coma, heiress and socialite Martha"Sunny" von Bulow died Saturday in a New York nursing home, according to a family statement. She was 76. Von Bulow was subject of one of the nation's most sensational criminal cases during the 1980s. Her husband, Claus, was accused of trying to kill her with an overdose of insulin, which prosecutors alleged sent her into the coma.

Abraham Woods, Civil Rights Pioneer, Dies at 80

The Rev. Abraham L. Woods Jr., a civil rights campaigner who in the days of crowd-throttling fire-hosings and snarling police dogs led the first lunch-counter sit-ins in Birmingham, Ala., and three decades later played a pivotal role confronting racial discrimination by country clubs, died last Friday in Birmingham, his hometown. He was 80. The cause was cancer, his son Abraham Woods 3rd said. Mr. Woods, a Baptist minister who had been friends with the Rev. Dr. Martin L

Cecil Stoughton Dies at 88; Documented White House

Cecil Stoughton, the chief photographer for the Kennedy White House, who documented its glittering public moments and its intimate private ones, and who captured its sudden end in one of the signal images of the 20th century — Lyndon B. Johnson’s swearing-in as president aboard Air Force One on Nov. 22, 1963 — died on Monday. Mr. Stoughton, who died at his home on Merritt Island, Fla., was 88. His son Jamie confirmed the death. Mr. Stoughton’s picture is the only photog

John Ripley, Vietnam War hero, dies at age 69

Retired Marine Col. John Ripley, who was credited with stopping a column of North Vietnamese tanks by blowing up a pair of bridges during the 1972 Easter Offensive of the Vietnam War, died at home at age 69, friends and relatives said Sunday. Ripley's son, Stephen Ripley, said his father was found at his Annapolis home Saturday after missing a speaking engagement on Friday. The son said the cause of death had not been determined but it appeared his father died in his sleep.

Robert Furman dies at 93; oversaw WWII nuclear espionage efforts

After supervising construction of the Pentagon, Furman -- not yet 30 -- was tapped as chief of intelligence on the Manhattan Project, conducting spy missions, recovering uranium, questioning scientists. For more than 60 years, Robert Furman lived a quiet suburban life [outside Washington DC] as a businessman with a successful building and contracting company. The engineer had worked on a large construction project as a young man -- few people knew exactly how large -- a

Infamous casino operator Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal dies

By most accounts he was a cheat, an egomaniac, a friend of the mob, and he most brilliant man ever to have ruled the Las Vegas casinos—before he was finally blacklisted by the Nevada gaming authorities in the 1980s. The influence of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal over Sin City was such that his life became the subject of a 1995 Martin Scorsese movie, Casino, in which he was played by Robert De Niro (a casting choice that left Rosenthal "almost impressed", according to t

Soviet political cartoonist Yefimov dies at 108

Celebrated political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who drew brutally satirical images of the Soviet Union's foes in the service of Josef Stalin, died Wednesday. He was 108. Yefimov's death was given wide coverage on Russian state television. No cause was given. His cartoons spanned virtually the entire history of the communist state, from shortly after the 1917 revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Among his most memorable drawings was one showing a

North Pole pioneer Ralph Plaisted dies at 80

In September 1909, Dr. Frederick A. Cook reappeared in Europe after a two-year absence from society and claimed to have crossed the polar ice cap by dogsled and stood at the North Pole on April 21, 1908. Just a few days after Cook’s announcement, Rear Adm. Robert E. Peary sent a wire to The New York Times from the far north of Canada proclaiming that he had planted an American flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. When he learned that Cook had beaten him there, Peary declared Coo

CBS' Ike Pappas, saw Oswald shooting, dies at 75

Ike Pappas, a longtime CBS newsman who was a few feet from presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald when he was fatally shot and reported the chaotic scene live on the air, has died at 75. Pappas, who also covered major events like the Vietnam War and anti-war demonstrations at home, died Sunday in an Arlington, Virginia, hospital of complications from heart disease, his family said. A New York City native, Pappas was in Dallas after John F. Kennedy's November 22, 1963,

Yuri Nosenko, KGB defector, said to be dead in U.S.

Yuri Nosenko, a former Soviet agent who was at the center of some of the most dramatic espionage episodes of the Cold War, died Saturday under an assumed name, somewhere in the southern United States, a senior American intelligence official said on Wednesday. He was 81. In a statement with fittingly sparse information, given Nosenko's earlier life as a KGB spy and his later life in the shadows, the senior official said he could provide no details about the cause of death or Nosenko'

Thomas Weller, 93, paved the way for polio vaccine

Thomas Weller, a tropical-medicine specialist whose tissue-culture research in 1949 made development of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines possible and won him a share in a Nobel Prize, died on Aug. 23 at his home in Needham, Massachusetts. He was 93. Weller's death was announced by his son Dr. Peter Weller. The 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Weller and two colleagues at Harvard, John Enders and Frederick Robbins, for their application of tissu

Former Israeli spy chief Binyamin Gibli dies

Binyamin Gibli served as a police officer in British mandate Palestine before becoming head of military intelligence in the first years of the fledgling Jewish state. By the early 1950s, with Egyptian nationalism fired up by the revolutionary leader Jamal Abdel Nasser, the Israeli military feared that British troops would withdraw - making their southern flank more vulnerable. To avoid that scneario, they attempted to delay the British troops' departure in 1954 by desta

Former Chinese leader Hua Guofeng dies

Hua Guofeng, who briefly ruled China as communist founder Mao Zedong's successor but was pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping as a prelude to reforms that launched an economic boom, died Wednesday, state-run media reported State broadcaster CCTV said Hua died of an unspecified illness. He took power after Mao's death in September 1976 but saw his powers erode until Deng took control two years later. Hua was forced out as Communist Party chairman in 1981 and slipped into obscurity. I