Obituaries of note

JOHN HENCH, 95, a longtime Disney artist and the official portrait painter of Mickey Mouse, died Thursday in Burbank, Calif. When Walt Disney started planning for Disneyland, one of the first artists he enlisted was Mr. Hench. After Disney's death in 1966, Mr. Hench oversaw the creation of Walt Disney World in Florida in 1971 and the addition of Epcot in 1982.

ADM. THOMAS MOORER, 91, a Pearl Harbor veteran who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War, died Thursday in Bethesda, Md., the Defense Department said. He supervised the U.S. troop withdrawal from South Vietnam while serving as the military's senior uniformed officer from July 1970 until his retirement in July 1974.

ADELLA WOTHERSPOON, 100, believed to be the last survivor of the deadly 1904 fire and sinking of the excursion ferry General Slocum, died Jan. 26 in Berkeley Heights, N.J., a friend, Julia Clevett, said in Wednesday's New York Times. It was New York City's deadliest tragedy until Sept. 11, 2001, and one of the worst maritime disasters in American history. She was 6 months old when the ferry named for Civil War Maj. Gen. Henry Warner Slocum caught fire as it took German-American church members on an outing. The disaster killed 1,021 of the 1,300 people aboard, according to most sources.

ALAN BULLOCK, 89, who wrote an important postwar biography of Adolf Hitler, died Monday in England, Oxford University said. His Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, published in 1952, and revised in 1964, made his reputation, and, according to an obituary in the Times of London, sold 3-million copies. He was a founder of St. Catherine's College at Oxford, and was its master from 1960 to 1980.

WARREN ZIMMERMANN, 69, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, died Tuesday in Great Falls, Va., of pancreatic cancer. A career Foreign Service officer, he was chosen ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1989 by the first President Bush as the former communist country was breaking up into warring factions. He resigned from the Foreign Service in 1994 over what he felt was President Clinton's refusal to intervene forcefully in the Bosnia war.

JAMES J. JORDAN JR., 73, considered a premier sloganeer of Madison Avenue, died Wednesday while snorkeling in the Virgin Islands. In an advertising career that spanned five decades, he produced such slogans as "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch," "Delta is ready when you are" and "Wisk beats ring around the collar."

ERNEST HENRY JAMES GIBSON, 102, honored in recent years as the last surviving member of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, died Jan. 20 in Comox, British Columbia. He joined the force at age 18 in 1919, a year before it merged with the Dominion Police to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He served in Port Arthur-Fort William area, now Thunder Bay, Ontario, and received a medical discharge more than three years later after being shot in the knee while making an arrest.

ROBERT HARTH, 47, who became the head of Carnegie Hall days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and led America's premier classical music venue into an adventurous new era, died Jan. 30 in New York City of a heart attack, Carnegie Hall said. He took over as the hall's executive and artistic director after serving as president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado.

CORNELIUS BUMPUS, 58, a saxophonist who was a former member of the Doobie Brothers and had performed with Steely Dan since 1993, died Tuesday en route to performances in California. He had a heart attack on a commercial flight from New York, said a friend, Rod Harris.

ELEANOR HOLM WHALEN, a two-time swimming gold medalist in the 1932 Olympics who was kicked off the 1936 U.S. team after she was caught drinking champagne and shooting dice on the ocean liner en route to Europe, died Jan. 31 in Miami. By her own account, she would have been 90 at her death, but her sister-in-law, Mary Ann Flotron, said she was 91. The winner of 21 U.S. swimming titles never returned to the Olympics as a competitor. Instead, she starred in Billy Rose's Aquacades, a traveling show, and in 1940 married Rose, who operated a New York club named the Diamond Horse Show. After divorcing Rose, a Broadway producer and lyricist, in 1954, she married oil executive Tom Whalen, who died in 1984. She had no children.

M.M. KAYE, 95, author of books set in Africa and India, including The Far Pavilions, a best seller, died Jan. 29. She wrote The Far Pavilions (1978), a 960-page opus set in 19th century India, during a 15-year span in which she struggled with cancer and made frequent moves around Africa and Asia for her husband's military career. The book, which some likened to an Indian Gone With the Wind, sold millions of copies and was adapted into a six-hour miniseries starring Ben Cross and Amy Irving in 1984.

H.B. HAGGERTY, 78, a professional wrestler turned snarling actor and stunt man, died Jan. 27 in Malibu, Calif. Portraying menacing, imposing characters, he appeared in 22 films, more than 100 television shows and dozens of TV commercials. He briefly played pro football for the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions, and later became a pro wrestler under the name "Hard-Boiled" Haggerty.

World and national headlines

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright