Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2002
JOHN LUKACS, 77, a real estate lawyer with oral and bladder cancer, died in Coral Gables on Monday, less than three months after winning a $37.5-million jury award against three major cigarettemakers. He testified in June knowing that he wouldn't live long enough to see any tobacco money. He got special permission to be the only one to have his compensatory damages claim heard after Big Tobacco appealed a $145-billion punitive verdict covering sick Florida smokers. The former Navy fighter pilot had a three-packs-a-day habit when he quit in
MARY MAXINE REED, who in 1971 won a landmark Supreme Court case that struck down dozens of state laws discriminating against women, died Sept. 26 near Boise, Idaho. She was believed to be about 93. On Nov. 22, 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an Idaho law that automatically gave her former husband preference over her as administrator of their dead son's estate violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. It was the first time the Supreme Court had declared a state law unconstitutional because it discriminated against one sex
CHARLES GUGGENHEIM, 78, one of the nation's leading documentary filmmakers and a chronicler of the Kennedy family legacy, died Wednesday in Washington, D.C., of pancreatic cancer. A dozen of the films he produced and directed were nominated for Academy Awards. He took home Oscars for four of the movies: Nine from Little Rock (1964), about the integration of Arkansas schools; RFK Remembered (1969); The Johnstown Flood (1989), which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Pennsylvania disaster; and A Time for Justice (1995), a history of the civil rights movement.
PRINCE CLAUS von AMSBERG, 76, husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, died Sunday in Amsterdam. After a stormy start, Prince Claus became a beloved figure in the Netherlands. Many Dutch objected to the royal marriage in 1966 because as a teenager he had briefly been a member of the Hitler Youth and was later in the Wehrmacht during World War II, when Germany occupied the Netherlands for five years. The prince worked to turn the tide. He denounced the Nazi regime, learned perfect Dutch, fathered three sons -- including the first male heir to the throne in nearly a century. He gradually became the most popular member of the royal family.
THE REV. PAUL WASHINGTON, 81, an Episcopal pastor and social crusader who fought for the acceptance of women into the ministry, died Monday in Philadelphia. Longtime rector of the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, he allowed the ordination of 11 women at his church in 1974 even though it was against church rules at the time. The rule was changed in 1977.
MORAG HOOD, 61, a Scottish actor best-known internationally as star of the British Broadcasting Corp.'s War and Peace in the 1970s, died Oct. 5 in London. She was in her late 20s when she won the coveted role of the girlish Natasha opposite Anthony Hopkins and Alan Dobie in BBC-TV's lengthy adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.
ANTHONY MAZZOCCHI, 76, a longtime union official who was a pioneer in the occupational safety movement and a founder of the 6-year-old Labor Party, died Oct. 5 in Washington, D.C. In his years with the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, he was widely viewed as one of the greatest innovators and mavericks in the labor movement. In 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Mr. Mazzocchi was credited with being a principal force behind it.
MIA SLAVENSKA, 86, a ballerina celebrated for her authoritative technique and her red-haired beauty, died Oct. 5 in Los Angeles. She was especially known to American audiences as a ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She appeared with it at its New York debut in 1938 and danced coast to coast with it in the 1940s and 1950s.
JO-ANNE LEE COE, 69, a key fundraiser for former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., and the first woman to serve as secretary of the Senate, died Sept. 27 in Washington, D.C., of an aortic aneurysm. She worked for Dole for nearly 35 years and later helped make him the Republican Party's top money gatherer.
THE REV. ANTHONY CAMPBELL, 63, a Baptist minister who gained international acclaim for his powerful oratory and his pluralistic message, died Sept. 27 in Boston after a stroke. He gained wide acceptance outside the Baptist church and often preached at Methodist, Episcopal and Congregational churches around the world. He was active in the National Baptist Convention, the nation's largest black Baptist organization, but always insisted there was not a black Gospel or a white Gospel.
BUDDY LESTER, 86, a comedian who appeared in the movies Ocean's 11 and Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor, died Oct. 4 in Los Angeles.
ZVI KOLITZ, 89, a film and theatrical producer and a writer whose short story Yosl Rakover Talks to God became a classic of Holocaust literature, died Sept. 29 in New York City. He wrote the story, set in the final days of the Warsaw Ghetto, for a Jewish newspaper in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1946. The story was later translated into English and Hebrew but without Mr. Kolitz's name as the author. It ended up in several Holocaust anthologies and as a meditation in Jewish prayer books. It was many years before Mr. Kolitz was able to reclaim it.
MARGARET CROM, 106, known as one of the oldest living 4-H volunteers in the United States, died Sunday in Campbell, Neb. She was recognized by the National 4-H Council in March for service that began in 1955.