Obituaries of note

RABBI JAY LITVIN, 60, a leader of the rescue organization Children of Chernobyl, died Thursday, said a spokesman for Chabad, the Orthodox Jewish movement that founded the organization. Mr. Litvin worked as medical liaison of the aid group that lifted children out of the area of the 1986 nuclear disaster in the Ukraine, said the spokesman, Zalman Shmotkin.

PAT PARSON, 65, the retired WCBS news anchor whose rich baritone informed and entertained radio audiences in the New York metropolitan area for 20 years, died Thursday of cancer. The Newark native, whose real name was Pasquale D. Tominaro, joined the all-news station in 1970 and co-hosted the afternoon news until he retired in 1990.

ED GREGORY JR., 66, a carnival operator who was pardoned by President Clinton, died April 11 in Brentwood, Tenn. He and his wife, Vonna Jo Gregory, received pardons in 2000 for 1986 bank fraud convictions in Alabama. Their pardons sparked a congressional investigation into $240,000 in undocumented consulting fees Mr. Gregory paid to Tony Rodham, the brother of former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

PHILIP JUTRAS, 87, a World War II veteran who devoted three decades to keeping alive the memory of the Normandy invasion, died April 11 at his home in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first town liberated by the Americans. The Maine native, who landed on Utah Beach after the D-Day landing, became the unpaid curator of a small Airborne Museum built in the town during the early 1960s.

LEONARD REED, 97, a tap dance pioneer, died April 5 in Covina, Calif. He was an influential performer, producer and teacher. He is best known as the co-originator with partner Willie Bryant of the Shim Sham Shimmy, a now-classic tap format that began as a flashy finale to their dance act in the late 1920s.

NIKI SULLIVAN, 66, who played guitar as a member of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, died April 6 in Sugar Creek, Mo., family members said. He played on 27 of 32 songs that Holly recorded before his death in a 1959 plane crash.

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