Notable deaths last week

Nelson Mandela was a master of forgiveness.

South Africa’s first black president spent nearly a third of his life as a prisoner of apartheid, yet he sought to win over its defeated guardians in a relatively peaceful transition of power that inspired the world.

As head of state, the former boxer, lawyer and inmate lunched with the prosecutor who argued successfully for his incarceration. He sang the apartheid-era Afrikaans anthem at his inauguration and traveled hundreds of miles to have tea with the widow of the prime minister in power at the time he was sent to prison.

It was this generosity of spirit that made Mandela, who died Thursday at the age of 95, a global symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation in a world often jarred by conflict and division.

“Fast & Furious” star Paul Walker was killed by impact and fire in a crash that occurred while he was a passenger in a Porsche driven by his friend, according to an autopsy released Wednesday.

Walker died Saturday when the high-performance car smashed into a light pole and tree, then exploded in flames.

The 2005 Porsche Carrera GT was driven by Roger Rodas, who was killed by the impact alone, according to the autopsy released by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Walker starred in all but one of the six “Fast & Furious” blockbuster films that glorified fast cars and dangerous driving.

Jacob “Baby Jake” Matlala, a four-time world champion in the flyweight and junior flyweight divisions and one of Nelson Mandela’s favorite fighters, has died. He was 51.

Matlala died two days after Mandela, who attended Matlala’s last bout in 2002. At the time, the boxer gave the former president one of his belts.

Matlala’s former promoter, Rodney Berman, wrote on Twitter: “Another great fighter has died ... Go well little man, you’ll be missed.”

Standing just 4-foot-10 ½, Matlala’s disregard for his size and ferocious punching speed made him one of South Africa’s favorite athletes. During a 22-year career, he won flyweight and junior flyweight belts for the WBO as well as the IBA light flyweight title and WBU junior flyweight crown.

Bill Porter, the door-to-door salesman in Portland, Ore., who was portrayed by William H. Macy in an Emmy-winning TV movie, has died at 81.

Porter spent decades trudging through Portland neighborhoods selling J.R. Watkins products, determined to make his way through life independently despite physical challenges. The Oregonian newspaper originally wrote about him at age 63, bringing him celebrity.

British jazz pianist and composer Stan Tracey, who played with everyone from Sonny Rollins to Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones in the course of a 70 year-career, has died at the age of 86.

After service in the Royal Air Force and time as a musician aboard cruise ships, Tracey performed with ensembles including the popular Ted Heath Orchestra and spent several years in the 1960s as resident pianist at Ronnie Scott’s storied London jazz club. That job allowed him to play with the era’s jazz greats, including Stan Getz, Ben Webster and Rollins, with whom he performed on the soundtrack to the 1966 Michael Caine film “Alfie.”

Fred Waters, a longtime Associated Press photographer who covered everything from the Korean and Vietnam wars to construction of the Gateway Arch, has died at 86.

He was 17 when he joined the Navy in World War II, earning a Purple Heart on Guam. He joined the Army after his hitch in the Navy ended in 1946 and was trained as a photographer, serving a tour in Japan and earning the name “Mizu-San,” Japanese for “Mr. Waters.”

Waters was hired by AP in 1952. He remained in Southeast Asia and covered conflicts that included the Korean War, the French-Indochina War and Vietnam. He was wounded in Korea, hurt in a helicopter crash in Laos and suffered an eye injury from a bamboo trap in South Vietnam.

During the French-Indochina War, Waters covered the fall of the French to the Vietminh. He was one of the last three newsmen to leave Hanoi before it was overrun by the Vietminh in 1954. Under constant surveillance and forbidden to take pictures, Waters hung his camera around his neck and as he walked around, aimed his body and snapped his shutter. Once his film was smuggled out of the country, it provided the first photos from Hanoi under Vietminh rule.

Edward J. “Babe” Heffron, whose World War II service as a member of the Army’s famed Easy Company was recounted in the book and TV miniseries “Band of Brothers,” has died at age 90.

Heffron and the rest of his Band of Brothers fought through some of World War II’s fiercest European battles. A paratrooper in Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Heffron took part in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and helped liberate the Kaufering concentration camp in Landsberg, Germany. He received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

After the war, the Philadelphia native returned home and found work at a whiskey distillery. He later checked cargo on the Delaware River waterfront.

He was featured prominently in historian Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 book, “Band of Brothers,” upon which the HBO miniseries was based. The miniseries, which began airing in 2001, followed Easy Company from its training in Georgia in 1942 all the way to the war’s end in 1945, when Japan surrendered. Its producers included actor Tom Hanks and Steve Spielberg. Heffron was portrayed by Scottish actor Robin Laing.

Painter Fred F. Scherer, who created vivid dioramas of animals and birds in natural scenes for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, has died at age 98.

Judy Rodgers, the award-winning chef-owner of San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe, has died. She was 57.

Ahmed Fouad Negm, who died Tuesday at the age of 84, was Egypt’s poet of revolution, inspiring protesters from the 1970s through the current wave of uprisings with sharply political verses excoriating the country’s leaders in the rich slang of colloquial Arabic.

Known as the “poet of the people,” Negm shot to fame in the 1970s and the 1980s when his poetry was sung by blind musician Sheik Imam Issa who played the oud, a lute-like Arabic instrument. Their songs blasted presidents Gamal Abdel-Nasser and his successor Anwar Sadat over the humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 war, then what they saw as a surrender with the 1979 peace treaty.

Reggae singer Junior Murvin, best known for the hit song “Police and Thieves,” has died in Jamaica at age 67.

Heinrich Boere, who murdered Dutch civilians as part of a Nazi Waffen SS hit squad during World War II but avoided justice for six decades, died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence, German justice officials said. He was 92.

Boere was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals until his arrest in Germany and conviction in 2010 on three counts of murder.

Peter W. Kaplan, the former New York Observer editor who cast a sardonic lens on Manhattan’s ruling class while still evincing a romantic’s view of the city, has died. He was 59.