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Obituaries of note

By Times Staff Writer
Published February 20, 2005

SAMUEL W. ALDERSON, 90, the inventor of crash test dummies used to make cars, parachutes and other devices safer, died Feb. 11 in Marina Del Rey, Calif. There was little interest in his first automobile test dummy, he once said, until publication of Ralph Nader's consumer protection book Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was passed a year later.

EDWARD C. SYLVESTER, 81, who held high-level positions in the Johnson administration, helped guide the 1972 presidential campaign of Sen. George McGovern and later was staff director of the House Committee on the District of Columbia, died Feb. 12 in Washington, D.C. He was in the first wave of African-American professionals to step into national leadership positions during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He joined the Department of Labor under President John F. Kennedy in 1962 as deputy administrator of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, helping formulate policies on international trade.

LAZAR BERMAN, 74, a Russian classical pianist acclaimed for his technical prowess and the energy of his performances, died Feb. 6 in Florence, Italy, according to his agent, Ornella Cogliolo. He performed with some of the greatest conductors in recent history, from Herbert von Karajan to Leonard Bernstein. His recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 under von Karajan was considered one of his greatest performances.

JEWEL "SAMMI" SMITH, 61, a country singer known for her trademark ballad Help Me Make It Through the Night, died Feb. 12 in Oklahoma City. The song, written by Kris Kristofferson, brought her a Grammy for best country vocal performance-female in 1967.

ELEANOR GOULD PACKARD, 87, credited by many at New Yorker magazine for the style of the publication's prose, died Feb. 13 in New York City. Though she was not known by a particular title at the magazine, she was noted for her intricate attention to vocabulary, syntax, grammar, flow and even punctuation of such contributors as E.B. White, Roger Angell and Wolcott Gibbs.

REAR ADM. JOHN HARLLEE, 91, a decorated veteran of World War II in the Pacific and chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission from 1961 to 1969, died Feb. 5 in Bethesda, Md.

GEORGE HERMAN, 85, a longtime political reporter for CBS News and the longest serving moderator of the network's Sunday talk show Face the Nation, died Feb. 8 in Washington, D.C. He joined CBS as a radio news writer in 1944 and was affiliated with the network for 43 years. He was quick to embrace television and made his first appearance analyzing caucus declarations at the 1948 Democratic convention in Philadelphia, the first to be televised.

[Last modified February 20, 2005, 00:54:14]