Notable deaths last week

• Lowell Steward, a former member of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew well over 100 missions over Europe during World War II, has died in California. He was 95.

After graduating with a business degree from Santa Barbara College in 1941, Steward joined the Army Air Corps and trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama.

He was shipped to Italy in 1944 with the 100th Fighter Squadron of the famed all-black unit. From Capodechino Air Base in Naples, Steward completed dozens of missions in P-39 Airacobras and P-40 Warhawks. Later based in Ramitelli, Italy, he flew dozens more escort and strafing missions in P-51 Mustangs. He would fly 143 missions in all.

America's first black military pilots faced an unprecedented level of scrutiny under racial segregation. As a result they held themselves to a higher standard, Steward often said.

"He would say, 'we had to be better because we were looked at harder. The odds were stacked against us. Some people wanted us to fail,"' Lowell Jr. said.

Steward was ultimately awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

• Bob Simpson, a meteorologist who co-developed the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale that estimates potential property damage, has died. He was 102.

Simpson began his career with the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1940. He served as director of the National Hurricane Center and established a tropical weather observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Simpson and engineer Hebert Saffir developed the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates hurricanes on a scale of 1 to 5 for their potential to cause property damage.

• Mandy Rice-Davies, a key figure in the "Profumo Affair," a sex-and-politics scandal that rocked Cold War Britain, has died at age 70.

Rice-Davies was an 18-year-old model and nightclub dancer in 1963 when her friend Christine Keeler had an affair with War Secretary John Profumo. Keeler had also slept with a Soviet naval attache, and the resulting collision of sex, wealth and national security issues rattled Britain's establishment, almost toppled the Conservative government and fascinated the nation.

The scandal led to pimping charges against Stephen Ward, a well-connected osteopath who had introduced Keeler to Profumo at a country-house party thrown by aristocrat Lord Astor.

During Ward's trial, Rice-Davies was told that Astor had denied her allegation that he had slept with her. "He would, wouldn't he?" she replied from the witness box. The phrase became famous and Rice-Davies' sparky spirit endeared her to the public.

Rice-Davies later performed on stage and in cabarets in several countries, ran a chain of restaurants in Israel and married three times to wealthy men.

She never escaped the shadow of the 1963 events, which were thrust into the spotlight again in 1989 with the movie "Scandal," which starred Joanne Whalley as Keeler, Ian McKellen as Profumo and Bridget Fonda as Rice-Davies.

• Rabbi Harold Schulweis, an influential Conservative synagogue leader and scholar who fostered bold change, has died in Los Angeles at age 89.

Innovations credited to Schulweis include gathering small groups of families to share religious and family life, a new model for lay-professional synagogue leadership. In 1992, Schulweis welcomed gay and lesbian Jews into the synagogue.

• Billy Milligan, an Ohio man believed to be the first person to use multiple personality disorder in an insanity defense, has died. He was 59.

Milligan had cancer and died Friday at a hospital in Columbus, said his sister, Kathy.

In 1978, Milligan was accused of kidnapping, raping and robbing three women near Ohio State University. He was found innocent by reason of insanity after psychiatrists concluded he had as many as two dozen personalities.

Doctors said the many personalities fused into one harmless one after therapy. Milligan was released from a hospital in 1988 and underwent outpatient mental treatment before getting his final release in August 1991.

He received mental treatment on and off throughout his life, his sister said.

• A member of the German rocket team that helped build America's space program in north Alabama has died.

An announcement from a funeral home in Huntsville says Dieter E. Grau died Wednesday at age 101.

Grau came to the United States after World War II with other German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun.

• Richard C. Hottelet, the last of the original "Murrow's Boys," the pioneering group of wartime journalists hired by CBS radio newsman Edward R. Murrow, has died. He was 97.

Hottelet was a foreign correspondent for the United Press in Berlin at the start of World War II - and even spent several months in a Nazi prison - before joining CBS in London in 1944.

He reported from many battlefronts, and went on to become CBS' correspondent for the United Nations, an assignment he began in 1960. He resigned in 1985 to join the U.S. Mission to the U.N. as its public affairs counselor, leaving that post in 1987 over differences with Ambassador Vernon A. Walters.

The legendary "Murrow's Boys" were recruited by Murrow, then London-based director of CBS' European bureau, starting in 1937 and continuing through the war years. They included such eminent figures as Eric Sevareid, William Shirer, Charles Collingwood, Larry LeSueur, Winston Burdette and Howard K. Smith.

• Norman Bridwell, a soft-spoken illustrator whose impromptu story about a girl and her puppy marked the unlikely birth of the supersized franchise Clifford the Big Red Dog, has died at 86.

Starting in 1963 with "Clifford, the Big Red Dog," Bridwell wrote and illustrated more than 40 Clifford books, from "Clifford and the Grouchy Neighbors" to "Clifford Goes to Hollywood." More than 120 million copies have sold worldwide, along with cartoons, a feature film, a musical, stuffed animals, key chains, posters and stickers. Images of Clifford have appeared everywhere from museums to the White House.

"A lot of people were Clifford fans and that makes them Norman fans, too," said his wife of 56 years.

• Larry J. Cano once said it was not his love of food so much as it was the way he was treated in a Mexican restaurant during a visit to his father's homeland that led him to help popularize Mexican food in the United States.

Cano, who been a fighter pilot during World War II, paid a visit to Mexico City with a military buddy soon after the war. There, the pair were "treated like kings" wherever they went in uniform, including to a crowded restaurant that had been too busy to serve them when they were dressed as civilians.

"That was great, but it got me thinking that all customers should get that treatment," the founder of the El Torito restaurant chain told the OCWeekly newspaper in 2011. "And it got me thinking about running a restaurant."

It took a few years of college, followed by service during the Korean War, before he got the chance. But when he did, Cano, who died Wednesday at age 90 at his home in Corona Del Mar, made the most of it.

He had been managing a Polynesian restaurant in Los Angeles in 1954 when the owner died and his widow asked Cano if he wanted to take the place over. He did, but only after switching the menu to the kind of food he'd grown up in Los Angeles with - or at least a milder, gringo-oriented version of it.

"You have to do what you have to do," he said in that 2011 interview, explaining why he went easy on the chilies, jalapenos and other red-hot ingredients that characterize much of authentic Mexican food. "It would be ridiculous to have spicy food for the first time someone tries Mexican food and kill them."

By the time he sold the chain in 1978 to New York-based W.R. Grace & Co. he had opened 22 restaurants. He stayed on as president until his retirement in 1988, by which time nearly 200 El Toritos had opened.

• Powerful political adviser David Garth, who spearheaded the creation of the modern political TV commercial and helped elect governors, senators and mayors, has died at age 84.

He died Monday at his home in Manhattan.

Garth never held office but was instrumental in shaping New York's government and political process. The mayors he helped elect - John Lindsay, Koch, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg - served 38 of the last 45 years, and he helped Gov. Hugh Carey capture office in 1974.

Artz said no one in his lifetime ever talked about Garth "without putting genius in front of his name."

"He's probably had more of an impact on the history of the city since the 1960s than any one person," Artz said. "There probably will never be anyone like him again."

• Phil Stern, an award-winning photographer who lugged his camera into combat during World War II and later became known for candid shots of Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando, has died. He was 95.

Stern, who shot for Life, Look and other magazines, honed his skills as a war photographer during the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily.

• The father of the modern baseball trading card who designed the famed Topps versions in the 1950s has died. Sy Berger was 91.

Using scissors and cardboard at his kitchen table, Berger played around with ideas for trading cards until he struck upon a design that endured for decades: a card with team logos and simulated player autographs on the front and bios and stats on the back.

Berger told The Associated Press in 2002: "We wanted to make something attractive that would catch the eye." He added: "And we gave you six cards and a slice of gum for a nickel."