Notable deaths last week

• Jane Byrne became part of Chicago history when she was elected its first female mayor. She became part of city lore because of how she won: beating an incumbent who voters thought had bungled the reaction to a blizzard that paralyzed the streets.

Byrne was a political novice when she overcame Richard J. Daley's powerful political machine in 1979 for her improbable win over Mayor Michael Bilandic. Byrne, who brought festivals and filmmakers to Chicago during a single term filled with upheaval at City Hall, never held elected office again.

She died at age 81 at a hospice in Chicago, said her daughter, Kathy.

Byrne, who remains Chicago's only female mayor, was branded with nicknames such as "Calamity Jane" as she speedily fired and hired people in such top jobs as police superintendent and press secretary.

"It was chaos," Byrne herself acknowledged in a 2004 Chicago Tribune story, attributing many of the problems to her wresting power from the old-boy Democratic machine that had ruled the city for decades. "Like the spaghetti in a pressure cooker, it was all over the ceiling."

But Byrne was also credited with changing the feel of the city. She started the popular Taste of Chicago festival and initiated open-air farmers' markets.

"The formula was basic: The more attractions, the more people, the more life for the city," she wrote in her 1994 book "My Chicago." "I vowed to bring back the crowds, to make Chicago so lively that the people would return to the heart of the city and its abandoned parks."

• Glen A. Larson, the writer and producer behind well-loved TV series such as the original "Battlestar Galactica," "Knight Rider," "Magnum, P.I." and "Quincy, M.E.," has died. He was 77.

In 1956, Glen Larson joined a vocal group called The Four Preps and, with them, appeared in a Gidget film and won three gold records. He helped write and compose some of their hits, including "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)," "Big Man" and "Down by the Station."

Where he would make a lasting mark, however, was in television.

His first writing credit came in 1966 on an episode of "The Fugitive."

• Peter Dalis, who served as athletic director at UCLA during a 19-year stretch in which the school won 39 NCAA championships, has died at 76.

• An author of the popular children's book series "Choose Your Own Adventure" has died in Vermont. Raymond Almiran Montgomery was 78.

The "Choose Your Own Adventure" series features interactive game books set in places around the world, in outer space and under the sea. It was published by Bantam Books and later by a company Montgomery and his wife co-founded. His last title was "Gus vs. The Robot King," released in September.

The series sold more than 250 million copies around the world between 1979 and 1999.

• Longtime Illinois U.S. Rep. Phil Crane - an anti-tax crusader and ardent advocate of limited government even before those views became a hallmark of the GOP under President Ronald Reagan - has died of lung cancer at age 84.

The one-time history professor-turned politician represented Chicago's far northwest suburbs for 35 years and was the longest-serving House Republican when he was defeated in 2004 by Democrat and then-political newcomer Melissa Bean.

Crane also made an unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, losing out to the eventual winner, Ronald Reagan, who would go on to become the politician most closely associated with the modern conservative movement.

But Crane had touted what he saw as the virtue of smaller government going back to the 1960s, spelling out his vision of a stripped down, low-tax federal government in his 1976 book, "The Sum of Good Government."

• Diem Brown has lost a long battle with cancer.

The reality star and advocate for cancer survivors died Friday in a New York hospital, according to E! Network correspondent Alicia Quarles. She was 32.

Brown first won fame nearly a decade ago as a competitor on MTV's "Real World/Road Rules Challenge." She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 23, and announced her real-life challenge on the show.

Undaunted, she continued to appear on "The Challenge" until recently, because, she said, it obliged her to keep pushing herself.

"But there were times I felt alone, and overwhelmed by side effects and medical expenses," she told The Associated Press in 2012.

That led her to establish Medgift.com, an online gift registry enabling those with medical troubles to seek financial help as well as physical and emotional support. Her TV celebrity, she explained, gave her "the opportunity to make lives of other patients better."

• Alexander Grothendieck, an opinionated and reclusive giant of 20th-century mathematics who shunned accolades and supported pacifist and environmental causes, has died, the French presidency said. He was 86.

Grothendieck was a leading mind behind algebraic geometry - a field with practical applications including in satellite communications. In 1966, he was awarded the Fields Medal, but refused to travel to Moscow to accept it for political reasons, according to Le Monde.

• Kakha Bendukidze, the author of liberal reforms that overhauled Georgia's post-Soviet economy, has died in London where he was recovering from heart surgery, the parliament speaker announced Friday. He was 58.

• Bill Stimers, a fan befriended by former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner who became a press box fixture for more than 30 years known as "Bill the Baker," has died. He was 67.

Stimers worked for Entenmann's Bakery and first met Steinbrenner in the mid-1970s outside Yankee Stadium. Stimers often gave him chocolate chip cookies and impressed the bombastic boss with his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball.

• Alvin Dark, a player and manager on World Series champions who sparked perhaps the most famous rally in baseball history, has died at age 92.

Dark was the 1948 Rookie of the Year and a three-time All-Star shortstop. He played alongside Willie Mays when the New York Giants won the 1954 title, and he guided Reggie Jackson and the Oakland Athletics to the 1974 crown.

In 1951, Dark was team captain when the Giants trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers 4-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning in the deciding Game 3 of their NL pennant playoff.

Dark hit a leadoff single against Don Newcombe, and Bobby Thomson capped the comeback at the Polo Grounds with a home run that became known as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" for a 5-4 win.

Dark worked with minor leaguers in the Cubs and Chicago White Sox organizations and moved to South Carolina in the early 1980s.

• Former Oakland Athletics first baseman Kelvin Moore, who played parts of three major league seasons, has died. He was 57.

• Marge Roukema, a New Jersey Republican who spent more than two decades in Congress sparring regularly with ideologues within her party, has died. She was 85.

• Shep Goldberg was more like a camp counselor than an agent.

"There was nothing phony or manipulative about him," Jo-Ann Barnas, Olympics reporter for the Detroit Free Press from 1996-2012 said of Goldberg, who died at age 65. "As one of the leading sports agents in the Olympic world, he was a powerful man but a gentle soul. He was golden."

The man who guided the careers of Mary Lou Retton and Michelle Kwan, died of pancreatic cancer, his family confirmed.

• British actor Warren Clarke, known for his role in the TV drama "Dalziel and Pascoe" and many other parts, has died at 67.

Clarke had a long, varied career, performing on the popular British soap "Coronation Street" in the late 1960s and as an ultraviolent "droog" in Stanley Kubrick's provocative "A Clockwork Orange."

He was prominent on television for many years as gruff Det. Supt. Andy Dalziel in the "Dalziel and Pascoe" series that ran for 12 years.

• Carol Ann Susi, the actress best known for voicing the unseen Mrs. Wolowitz on "The Big Bang Theory," has died at 62.

• Tomas Young, a wounded Iraq War veteran who was an outspoken critic of the conflict and the subject of the 2007 documentary "Body of War," has died. He was 34.

Young joined the Army when he was 22, two days after the 9/11 attacks. He had been in Iraq less than a week when he and fellow soldiers came under sniper fire on April 4, 2004, while riding in an unarmored truck in a rescue convoy in Sadr City outside Baghdad, the Kansas City Star reported.

Young was paralyzed from the chest down because of a bullet to his spine, and he used a wheelchair to get around.

• John Doar, who as a top Justice Department civil rights lawyer in the 1960s fought to protect the rights of black voters and worked against segregation in the South, died Tuesday at age 92.

Doar was a Justice Department civil rights lawyer from 1960 to 1967, serving in the final months of the Eisenhower administration and then staying on during the presidencies of President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

• Big Bank Hank, a member of the pioneering hip-hop group the Sugarhill Gang, has died at 57.

Big Bank Hank, whose real name was Henry Jackson, was a part of the Sugarhill Gang in 1979 when the band had hip-hop's first hit with "Rapper's Delight." It is one of the most recognized and popular rap songs of all time.

"Rapper's Delight" was released as hip-hop music started to emerge as a genre, and it landed in the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It also peaked at No. 4 on the Hot Soul Singles chart (now called the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart).

• As ALS began to destroy his body, Orlando Thomas lost his ability to move.

"She'd have to go through the entire alphabet, and he'd blink his eye. The only muscle that worked was his eyelids, so he would blink at the letter," said Mark Bartelstein, the former agent for the free safety who led the NFL in interceptions as a rookie for the Minnesota Vikings in 1995. "Sentences would take forever."

He died at 42 in his hometown of Crowley, Louisiana, after fighting the fatal amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, for more than 10 years.

• The longest-serving woman in Wisconsin's Legislature has died at age 77.

Former Rep. Annette Polly Williams, a Democrat from Milwaukee, is credited with helping create Wisconsin's school choice program and establishing the African American Education Council.

• Ernie Vandeweghe, a New York Knicks player in the post-World War II era and father of former NBA star Kiki Vandeweghe and three other top athletes, has died. He was 86.