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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 30, 2002
ALINA PIENKOWSKA, 50, a founding member of Poland's Solidarity labor union and a crucial figure in the 1980 Gdansk shipyard strike that launched its struggle against communism, died Oct. 17 in Gdansk of cancer, a Solidarity spokesman said. When workers laid down their tools on Aug. 14, 1980, she is credited with getting word of the strike to the outside world. With all telephone lines cut off by authorities except those in the shipyard clinic where she worked as a nurse, she called fellow dissident Jacek Kuron, who spread the news across Poland -- launching a strike wave in hundreds of factories.
WINTON M. "RED" BLOUNT, 81, the last Cabinet-level postmaster general of the United States, died Thursday in Highlands, N.C. The billionaire contractor and philanthropist was named postmaster general by President Richard Nixon in early 1969 and served as chairman of the Postal Service from its inception in 1970 through 1971. He is credited with stripping the postal system of political patronage and making it more business-like.
CHRISTOPHER B. SHELDON, 76, a skipper in a noted sinking, died Oct. 5 in Stamford, Conn. His 92-foot twin-masted sailing ship Albatross sank in a freak storm in 1961, a disaster that inspired the 1996 movie White Squall. He was shepherding high school students on the ship, used as his floating classroom, when a horrific squall welled up and abruptly sank it. Jeff Bridges portrays Mr. Sheldon in the movie about the sinking, in which his wife, Alice, and five others were lost.
JOHN ROBERT RUSSELL, 85, the 13th Duke of Bedford, who opened his historic home to tourists, died Friday in Santa Fe, N.M. He turned his ancient Woburn Abbey north of London into an attraction complete with a fun fair and safari park to keep it in his family. The gambit allowed the family to restore the house, which receives more than 1.5-million visitors a year. He was one of the first members of the British aristocracy to capitalize on the historic value of his home. The abbey and its 16,000-acre estate, once the site of a Cistercian abbey, had belonged to the Russell family since King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 16th century.
THOMAS B. ROSS, 73, Pentagon spokesman in the Carter administration and an author of books on military intelligence, died Thursday in New York City.
MAURO BRUNO, 78, trumpet player, music arranger and composer of classical works and scores for films and television, died Oct. 3 in Burbank, Calif. He was nominated for Emmy Awards for his work on a television special, The Magic of David Copperfield VI, the series Barnaby Jones and for a segment of Hallmark Hall of Fame titled The Rivalry.