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Obituaries

By TIMES WIRES
Published August 20, 2006

Maj. Gen. Kathryn George Frost, 57, who was the highest ranking woman in the Army when she retired last year after a 31-year career, died Friday of breast cancer. Frost was commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, which operates the commissaries and post and base exchanges on military installations nationally and overseas, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Lynton Keith Caldwell, 92, who helped shape the nation's policy requiring environmental impact studies for major projects, died Tuesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. Caldwell, a professor emeritus at Indiana University, helped write the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. His draft resolution, much of which was incorporated into the act, required environmental impact studies for all major federal projects that would significantly affect the environment.

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Milton Kaye, 97, a pianist and arranger who introduced Dmitri Shostakovich's first concerto to a U.S. audience, toured war zones with Jascha Heifetz and wrote theme music for Concentration, died Monday at a New York City hospital after battling pneumonia, said his wife, Shannon Bolin. He was musical director for shows on all three major networks.

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Shamsur Rahman, 77, a leading Bangladeshi poet who wrote about liberty and human dignity, died of heart and kidney failure at a state-run hospital in Dhaka on Thursday, his family and doctors said. Rahman had been in coma for 12 days. The Library of Congress has in its collection 50 titles by him, six translations of his poetry and three edited works by him, his family said.

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Walter Sullivan, 82, a Vanderbilt University professor emeritus who was an authority on Southern literature, died Tuesday of cancer at his home in Nashville. Among Sullivan's most popular courses at Vanderbilt were those on creative writing.

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Umberto Baldini, 84, an Italian art expert who led efforts to restore Florence's treasures after the Arno River flooded the city in 1966, died Wednesday in his home in Tuscany after a long illness, the Italian news agency ANSA said. Baldini was head of the restoration department in Florence when the Arno swamped the city's museums and churches on Nov. 4, 1966, damaging paintings, frescoes and rare books.

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John Haase, 82, a dentist-turned-author whose 1966 novel was turned into the offbeat movie Petulia, died of complications from emphysema Aug. 3 at his home in Montecito, Calif. Haase wrote 11 books, including Noon Balloon to Rangoon, Erasmus With Freckles (Dear Bridget), and Me and the Arch Kook Petulia, which was made into the 1968 movie. He practiced dentistry in Los Angeles for 40 years.

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O.Q. "Chris" Johnson, 71, a longtime advocate of states' rights and Independent American Party candidate for Nevada attorney general, died Aug. 12 at Tahoe Pacific Hospital in Sparks, Nev., after a sudden illness, said his son, Elko City Councilman Chris Johnson. Johnson said his candidacy for attorney general under the banner of the Independent American Party was based on federal land management policies he said were "punitive and unfair" and "harassment" by federal agencies. He said Nevada has a "rightful role" to assume ownership and management of federal lands.

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Nathan Sloane, 97, longtime maker of the Charleston Chew candy bar, died Sunday in Newton, Mass. Sloane purchased the Fox Cross Candy Co. in 1957. He had doubled the size of the production line at the already famous home of the Charleston Chew before he sold the company to Nabisco in 1980. Although he did not invent the Charleston Chew, he changed the candy's original 1922 blueprint, a chocolate-covered vanilla nougat, according to Stephen Brookner, his son-in-law and longtime business partner. In the 1970s, they introduced such flavors as chocolate and strawberry.

[Last modified August 20, 2006, 01:08:35]