Notable deaths last week
Pat Summerall soothed American television audiences over four decades — his deep, resonant voice and simple, understated style served as the perfect complement to the boisterous enthusiasm of John Madden, his partner in a celebrated pairing that lasted half of the NFL player-turned-announcer’s career.
Summerall died Tuesday at age 82 of cardiac arrest.
Summerall called 16 Super Bowls and became such a large part of the NFL that it was easy to forget he was the leading voice of the Masters and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as well.
A recovering alcoholic, Summerall had a liver transplant in April 2004. The lifesaving surgery was necessary even after 12 years of sobriety.
Al Neuharth changed the look of American newspapers when he founded USA Today, filling the newspaper with breezy, easy-to-comprehend articles, attention-grabbing graphics and stories that often didn’t require readers to jump to a different page. Critics dubbed USA Today “McPaper” when it debuted in 1982, and they accused Neuharth, of dumbing down American journalism with its easy-to-read articles and bright graphics. USA Today became the nation’s most-circulated newspaper in the late 1990s.
The hard-charging founder of USA Today died Friday in Cocoa Beach, Fla. He was 89.
English graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, whose eye-popping album art for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin encapsulated the spirit of 1970s psychedelia, died Thursday. He was 69.
He was best known for his surreal Pink Floyd covers, which guitarist David Gilmour said had long been “an inseparable part of our work.”
Some of Thorgerson’s covers — the disturbing image of burning man in a business suit featured on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or the stark prism on the band’s “Dark Side of the Moon” — have become icons in their own right.
Thorgerson also made covers for Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Phish, Styx, and Muse. His art tended toward the unsettling or the bizarre. One particularly weird CD front for The Cranberries’ “Bury The Hatchet” featured a monstrous, disembodied eye staring at a crouching, naked figure in a desert.
Patrick Garland, the award-winning British theater producer and director, died at Worthing Hospital in West Sussex, England, following a long illness. He was 78.
Garland was the only director ever to have had four plays running in London’s West End at the same time. He won a Golden Globe for his 1971 film “The Snow Goose,” which was also nominated for a Bafta and an Emmy.
The wife of Hall of Famer Willie Mays, Mae Louise Allen Mays, has died. She was 74.
Hall of Fame trainer T.J. “Tommy” Kelly has died after a 54-year career in which he won 65 stakes races. He was 93.
Among Kelly’s standouts was Plugged Nickel, the 1980 champion sprinter. Plugged Nickle was a top 3-year-old in 1980, winning the Florida Derby and the Wood Memorial before finishing seventh in the Kentucky Derby.
Cuban state media are reporting that prominent filmmaker, intellectual and cultural leader Alfredo Guevara has died. He was 87.
Julius Menendez, who coached Muhammad Ali to the gold medal at the 1960 Olympics, has died. He was 90.
Bob Yates Jr., the former Syracuse offensive lineman who played for the Patriots in their first six seasons, had died. He was 74.
Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez has died at the age of 94.
Ramirez Vazquez designed some of Mexico’s biggest landmark modernist structures, including the new Basilica of Guadalupe, the Anthropology Museum and the Azteca Stadium, all in Mexico City.
George Beverly Shea, a Grammy Award-winning singer who performed hymns before millions of people as the vocal soloist for globe-trotting evangelist Billy Graham, died April 16 in Asheville, N.C. He was 104.
He recorded more than 70 albums, all of them of religious music, except for one country album in 1997. For 26 years, he had the same record label as Elvis Presley, RCA.
Pentti Lund, the first Finnish-born player to score a goal in the NHL and the 1948-49 rookie of the year with the New York Rangers, has died. He was 87.
Tire company heir and philanthropist Anne Firestone Ball has died from injuries she suffered during a fire in her Connecticut home. She was 79.
The voice of football. The NFL’s narrator for generations. A master of restraint.
Character actor Richard LeParmentier, who as a young Death Star commander learned the hard way that Darth Vader brooks no disrespect, died Tuesday. He was 66.
LeParmentier died unexpectedly Tuesday morning in Austin while visiting his children, said his publicist, Derek Maki.
As Admiral Motti in 1977’s “Star Wars,” LeParmentier’s character mocks Vader’s “sad devotion to that ancient Jedi religion.” Vader responds with a demonstration, using the force to choke the young commander, but allowing him to live.
Sal Castro, a social studies teacher who played a leading role in 1960s Chicano student walkouts, has died at age 79.
Frank Bank, who played oafish troublemaker Lumpy on the sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” has died. He was 71.
Colin Davis, the British conductor who guided some of the world’s leading orchestras in often-revelatory performances of Mozart, Berlioz, Sibelius, Britten and Tippett, has died at 85.
Once in a rare interview, the Texas tycoon who gave at least $75 million in political contributions over his lifetime argued that writing big checks didn’t buy big influence.
“It is my view that government is not owned by anyone, least of all wealthy contributors,” Bob Perry told the Houston Chronicle, his hometown newspaper, in 2002.
Perry has died at age 80.
Efraim “Efi” Arazi, a pioneer of Israel’s powerful high-tech industry who helped develop technology that allowed for a video recording of the first moon landing, has died. He was 76.
John Galardi, who opened a Wienerschnitzel hot dog stand in Los Angeles in 1961 and expanded it into a chain with more than 300 outlets in 10 U.S. states, has died at 75, his company said.
The Ohio Democratic Party says former Congressman Charlie Wilson, who represented southeastern Ohio in Washington for two terms after winning a write-in campaign, has died. He was 70.
Songwriter George Jackson, co-author of “Old Time Rock and Roll” and hundreds of other soul, rock and rhythm and blues tunes, has died. He was 68.
Jackson recorded dozens of singles in the 1960s and worked in Memphis, Tenn., but made his mark as a writer, beginning with FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. He later was a songwriter for crosstown rival Muscle Shoals Sound Studios before returning to Memphis. When Malaco bought Muscle Shoals Sound, it hired Jackson to write songs, said Wolf Stephenson, Malaco’s vice president and chief engineer.
The Osmonds recorded Jackson’s “One Bad Apple” in 1970, taking it to No. 1. Jackson and Thomas Jones III wrote “Old Time Rock and Roll,” which Bob Seger recorded in 1978.
Stephenson said “Old Time Rock and Roll” is truly Jackson’s song, and he has the tapes to prove it, despite Seger’s claims that he altered it.
Chi Cheng, 42, bassist for Grammy-winning rock band the Deftones, has died after struggling to recover from serious injuries suffered in a car crash more than four years ago.
Dr. Hilary Koprowski, a pioneering virologist who developed the first successful oral vaccination for polio, died this week at his suburban Philadelphia home. He was 96.