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Obituaries of note

SIDNEY E. FRANK, 86, who was forced to leave Brown University as a freshman when his money ran out, then became so rich he gave Brown $20-million for a building, its biggest gift ever, died Tuesday in San Diego. He made his money in concocting spectacularly successful marketing campaigns for Jaegermeister liqueur and Grey Goose vodka.

VAGN FLYGER, 83, who became a leading authority on squirrels, died Monday in Silver Spring, Md. The retired wildlife biologist at the University of Maryland made his name in documenting the "Great Squirrel Migration of 1968," when thousands of gray squirrels were found crushed on highways and washed up dead along riverbanks. He found that the squirrel frenzy probably resulted "from the successful reproductive season following the 1967 excellent crop of acorns."

ALBERT L. WEIMORTS JR., 67, a civilian engineer for the Air Force who designed powerful bombs for targets in Iraq, died Dec. 28 in Fort Walton Beach, his son said. The Air Force Research Laboratory honored him for his role in developing the 5,000-pound GBU-28 "Bunker Buster," created and deployed in a record-setting 28 days to target fortified bunkers during the Persian Gulf War and the 21,500-pound Massive Ordnance Air Blast, the largest satellite-guided, air-delivered nonnuclear weapon in history. Nicknamed the "mother of all bombs," it was developed for the second Iraq war, but never used.

PABLITA VELARDE, 87, Santa Clara Pueblo woman known for her detailed images of American Indians and pueblo life, died Tuesday in Albuquerque, N.M. One of the first female Indian painters, she made a name for herself creating scenes from her childhood in the northern New Mexico pueblo. Her work can be found in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Acee Blue Eagle Collection.

WILLIAM F. HAXBY, 56, who created the first maps of the ocean floor to be based on satellite measurements of the water's surface and became a master at translating complicated marine data into comprehensible visual displays, died Jan. 4 in Westwood, N.J. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said a brother, James. He had been a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University since 1978.

PATRICIA REILLY HITT, 87, the highest-ranking woman in President Nixon's first administration as an assistant secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, died Monday in Newport Beach, Calif. A longtime supporter of Nixon's, she served as national co-chair of his 1968 presidential campaign with vice presidential nominee Spiro T. Agnew. She was the first woman to hold that senior post in either party.

[Last modified January 15, 2006, 01:48:18]