Obituaries of note

GEORGE E. ELLIOTT JR., 85, whose unheeded warning about aircraft approaching Pearl Harbor was depicted in history books and movies like Tora, Tora, Tora, died Saturday. The former Army radar operator detected the incoming Japanese aircraft on Dec.7, 1941; he issued a warning, which was brushed aside. Nearly an hour later, enemy planes attacked.

LES TREMAYNE, 90, one of the best-known actors on radio in the 1930s and '40s for his starring roles The Thin Man, The Falcon and, most notably, The First Nighter, has died. Mr. Tremayne, whose film credits included the science-fiction classic The War of the Worlds, died of heart failure Dec.19 at a Santa Monica hospital.

SCOTT SCHMIDT, 66, a publisher who transformed the Daily News of Los Angeles from a suburban shopper into a major metropolitan daily, died Dec.17. Mr. Schmidt worked in Chicago for the Tribune Co., which bought the old Valley News and Green Sheet in suburban Los Angeles in the mid 1970s, and sent Mr. Schmidt to turn it from a giveaway shopper into the Daily News. He was publisher of the newspaper, which now has a daily circulation of 210,000, from 1975 to 1983.

JENIFER ESTESS, 40, a theater producer who founded Project ALS to research a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease after she was diagnosed with the malady in 1997, died Dec.16 at home in New York.

HENRY SAGLIO, 92, who helped make poultry the most popular meat in America when he slashed production costs by breeding a meatier bird that matured quickly and laid more eggs, died on Dec.13 at a nursing home in Connecticut.

DR. GISELA KONOPKA, 93, a pioneer in the study of troubled adolescents who provided groundbreaking insights on disruptive behavior among girls, died on Dec.9 in Minneapolis. A retired professor of social work, she was the author of several works, including The Adolescent Girl in Conflict. Published in 1966, it was one of the first in-depth examinations of the lives of troubled teenage girls.

RUDOLPH ARVID PETERSON, 98, a former chief executive who took Bank of America worldwide and led the United Nations Development Program, died Dec.2 in Piedmont, Calif.

CARLOS ARANA OSORIO, 85, the hard-line ruler of Guatemala from 1970 to 1974, died Dec.6 in Guatemala City. The general was one of several military leaders to rule during decades of unrest in Guatemala after a 1954 coup.

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