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Obituaries of note

By Times Staff Writer
Published July 17, 2005

ARTHUR A. FLETCHER, 80, widely regarded as the father of affirmative action, died Tuesday in Washington, D.C. As the assistant secretary of labor under President Nixon in 1969, he devised the first successful enforcement plan for affirmative action. It required employers doing business with the government to set timetables for hiring minorities and was later amended to include women.

CHARLES RENFREW THOMSON, 61, who led the federal investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives into the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, died July 3 in Alexandria, Va. The cause of death was cardiovascular collapse, according to his brother-in-law.

W. PAULINE NICHOLSON, 76, Elvis Presley's cook, who prepared the King's favorite peanut butter and fried banana sandwiches, died July 7 in Memphis. She also worked as his housekeeper and sometimes looked after a young Lisa Marie Presley.

LYNN SMITH, 84, a newspaper publisher who became a force behind the Great American Smokeout, died Thursday in Minneapolis. He was the publisher of the Monticello Times when he founded Don't Smoke Days in Minnesota in the 1970s. That led to the Great American Smokeout, the widely observed November day that has raised awareness of the health hazards of smoking.

LORD KING, 87, who remade British Airways , died Tuesday in Leicestershire, England. A tough-minded executive, he took over British Airways in 1981 when its initials were said to signify "bloody awful." He turned it into a sleek, profitable airline attractive enough to draw throngs of public investors when it was privatized six years later.

MARY WASHINGTON WYLIE, 99, the nation's first black female certified public accountant, died July 2 in Chicago. Born in Vicksburg, Miss., she moved to Chicago as a child and graduated in 1941 with a business degree from Northwestern University. In 1968, she co-founded Washington, Pittman and McKeever, which is still one of the nation's largest black CPA firms.

PAUL TALBOT, 86, a television executive who exported American culture to the world through shows like Romper Room and Baywatch, died July 6 at his home in Cape Cod, Mass. He turned Romper Room into an international franchise and distributed Baywatch in 144 countries.

MOHI SOBHANI, 70, who was among a group of hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Iran more than 25 years ago, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. An Iranian-American who worked for Hughes Aircraft and had lived in the United States since 1955, he had planned to leave Iran in 1979 when he was taken off a plane and held against his will.

IONA WATSON LOTT, 91, the mother of U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., died July 9 in Pascagoula, Miss., the Jackson County coroner said.

RENALDO "OBIE" BENSON, 69, a member of the Four Tops, the Motown singing group, died July 1 in Detroit. The Four Tops sold more than 50-million records and recorded hit songs such as Baby I Need Your Loving, Reach Out (I'll be There), I Can't Help Myself and Standing in the Shadows of Love.

DR. THEODORE WOODWARD, 91, a University of Maryland medical educator nominated for the Nobel Prize for his work on typhoid fever, died July 11 in Baltimore.

KEVIN HAGEN, 77, a veteran character actor who left behind a string of Western bad guy roles to become the kindly Doc Baker in Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1983, died July 9 in Grants Pass, Ore.

[Last modified July 17, 2005, 01:07:03]