Obituaries of note

JOSE LOPEZ PORTILLO, 83, who as president of Mexico from 1976 to 1982 brought his nation to the brink of economic collapse, died Tuesday in Mexico City. He came to office amid hopes that he would steer Mexico back to prosperity and tranquility after the grave economic and political miscues by his predecessor and mentor, Luis Echeverria Alvarez. But soon his government overspent its oil revenues and overborrowed to cover deficits. Defaulting on its debt, Mexico set off a worldwide debt crisis.

IRVINE H. SPRAGUE, 82, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., died Tuesday at Arlington Hospice Center in Virginia, his brother Tom said. He first was nominated in 1969 by President Lyndon Johnson to the board of the federal agency that supervises banks and insures deposits. He left the post in 1972 and worked for then-House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, D-Mass. President Jimmy Carter nominated him to return to the FDIC in 1979. He served as chairman from 1979 to 1981 and remained on the board through 1985. He was the author of Bailout, a book about his work handling 374 bank failures.

JAN MINER, 86, who had a long career on the New York stage but was best known as Madge the Manicurist in Palmolive commercials, died Sunday in Bethel, Conn. For 27 years, Palmolive's commercials featured her as Madge, who praised the gentleness of its dish detergent to a customer surprised to find that her hands were soaking in it. As well as a stage performer, she was also on radio programs, including the popular Boston Blackie series as Richard Kollmar's leading lady in the late 1940s, and appeared in films and in television plays and series.

DR. ROBERT A. BRUCE, 87, who devised the treadmill stress test to assess heart disease, died Feb. 12 in Seattle of leukemia and spinal stenosis. He utilized the electrocardiograph and the motorized treadmill developed in the 1940s to begin the tests, wiring a patient to electrodes and an oxygen analyzer while the patient walked on a treadmill. Dr. Bruce, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Washington, has been called the father of exercise cardiology. His test is taught in medical schools as the "Bruce Protocol."

ELENI KAZANTZAKI, 100, a journalist and author and widow of influential Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, died Feb. 18 in Athens. Her husband, who died in 1957, was known to a wide international audience through the film adaptations of his books, Zorba the Greek in 1964 and The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988.

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