Notable deaths last week
• Mario Cuomo had a loud and liberal voice that inspired a generation of politicians to turn to public service, and a story of humble beginnings that he wove into calls for social justice during his three terms as New York governor and years as a national figure when he deflected overtures to become a presidential candidate.
Cuomo died at his home in Manhattan from heart failure, just hours after his son Andrew began his second term as New York's chief executive. He was 82.
The son of Italian immigrants, Mario Cuomo played minor league baseball before embarking on a legal and political career. His oratory and his dedication to progressive policies made him a political star, but despite calls to seek the White House, he never made a run for president.
Hours before his father's death, the younger Cuomo delivered an inaugural address in which he honored the Democratic stalwart.
"He is in the heart and mind of every person who is here," Andrew Cuomo said. "He is here and he is here, and his inspiration and his legacy and his experience is what has brought this state to this point. So let's give him a round of applause."
• Former U.S. Sen. Edward W. Brooke, a liberal Republican who became the first black in U.S. history to win popular election to the Senate, died Saturday. He was 95.
Brooke was elected to the Senate in 1966, becoming the first black to sit in that branch from any state since Reconstruction and one of nine blacks who have ever served there - including Barack Obama.
Brooke told The Associated Press he was "thankful to God" that he lived to see Obama's election. And the president was on hand in October 2009 when Brooke was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award Congress has to honor civilians. Obama hailed Brooke as "a man who's spent his life breaking barriers and bridging divides across this country."
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recalled his first impression of the newly elected senator when McConnell was a Senate staffer and described Brooke as "a model of courage and honesty in office."
"... even from across the Senate chamber, you could sense that this was a Senator of historic importance," the Kentucky Republican said in a statement Saturday. "Indeed, he was."
In 2008, pioneering newswoman Barbara Walters said she had an affair with the then-married Brooke in the 1970s, but it ended before he lost the 1978 election. She called him "exciting" and "brilliant."
Somewhat aloof from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, especially the militant wing, he said blacks had to win allies, not fight adversaries. But he also said of civil rights leaders: "Thank God we have them. But everyone has to do it in the best way he can."
He had refused to endorse Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, commenting later, "You can't say the Negro left the Republican Party; the Negro feels he was evicted from the Republican Party."
• Donna Douglas, who played the buxom tomboy Elly May Clampett on the hit 1960s sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies," has died.
She was best known for her role in "The Beverly Hillbillies," the CBS comedy about a backwoods Ozark family who moved to Beverly Hills after striking it rich from oil discovered on their land.
The series, which ran from 1962 to 1971, also starred the late Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan as well as Max Baer Jr., who turns 77 on Sunday.
As Elly May, she seemed blissfully unaware of her status as a bumpkin blond bombshell. Typically she was clad in a snug flannel shirt and tight jeans cinched with a rope belt, and she seemed to prefer her critters to any beau.
Chosen from more than 500 other actresses, Douglas said she felt at ease playing the role because, like her character, she grew up a poor Southern tomboy. Her childhood in Pride, Louisiana, came in handy when she was asked during her audition to milk a goat.
"I had milked cows before," she recalled in a 2009 interview with The Associated Press. "I figured they were equipped the same, so I just went on over and did it."
After "The Beverly Hillbillies," Douglas worked in real estate, recorded country and gospel music albums and wrote a book for children that drew on biblical themes.
In 2010 she sued CBS and toymaker Mattel over a Barbie doll that used Elly May's name and likeness. The suit was settled in 2011.
• Arkansas poet Miller Williams, a prolific writer and teacher who read a poem at President Bill Clinton's 1997 inauguration, has died. He was 84.
Williams was a longtime professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
He helped found the university's publishing arm, the University of Arkansas Press, in 1980, and directed it for almost 20 years. He has written, translated or edited more than 30 books, including a dozen poetry collections, according to the Poetry Foundation.
Lucinda Williams last year put her father's poem "Compassion" to music as the lead cut on her latest album. Williams said her father had told her recently that Alzheimer's disease had robbed him of his ability to write poetry.
"I started crying when he told me that," she said last year. "I just bawled like a baby. I couldn't believe it. This was my dad, the poet. It was like someone saying that he couldn't see anymore. It was part of him that was just gone. It's like a part of him died. That's why this is so important to me."
• Little Jimmy Dickens, a diminutive singer-songwriter known for his sense of humor and as the oldest cast member of the Grand Ole Opry, has died. He was 94.
Dickens, who stood 4-foot-11, had performed on the Opry almost continuously since 1948. His last performance was Dec. 20 as part of his birthday celebration. He sang "Out Behind The Barn" and delivered his trademark comedy. He had turned 94 a day earlier.
"The Grand Ole Opry did not have a better friend than Little Jimmy Dickens," said Pete Fisher, Opry vice president and general manager. "He loved the audience and his Opry family, and all of us loved him back. He was a one-of-kind entertainer and a great soul whose spirit will live on for years to come."
Country legend Hank Williams Sr. nicknamed him "Tater" based on Dickens' song "Take an Old Cold Tater (And Wait)."
His novelty songs, including his biggest hit "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose" about good and bad luck, earned him a spot in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1983.
Before becoming a nationally known country singer, he worked at radio stations in Indianapolis; Cincinnati; Topeka, Kansas; and Saginaw, Michigan.
• A longtime federal judge in Ohio known for his support of civil rights and for sending baseball star Pete Rose to prison has died. S. Arthur Spiegel was 94.
Spiegel was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and took senior status in 1995. He earned degrees from the University of Cincinnati and Harvard and served as a Marine in the Pacific campaign during World War II.
Spiegel sentenced Rose to prison for five months in 1990 for tax evasion stemming from unreported income from gambling, baseball memorabilia sales and autograph appearances.
• Matthew Franjola, a reporter and photographer for The Associated Press who was among the last Americans in Saigon as it fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, has died. He was 72.
Franjola spoke Vietnamese and other southeast Asian languages, was a pilot, tennis player, writer and photographer.
• William Lewis Rudolph, a former Krispy Kreme vice president who helped to build the company, has died.
Rudolph's brother, Vernon Rudolph, opened the first Krispy Kreme in North Carolina in the 1930s. In the late 1950s, Rudolph returned to Nashville from Winston-Salem to buy two Krispy Kreme shops. He opened two more in the 1960s.
• Former Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami died Thursday at the age of 80 after suffering from an undisclosed illness, the government said.
• Rosemary Mulligan, a longtime former Illinois Republican lawmaker, has died. She was 73.
Mulligan represented Des Plaines and other Northwestern Chicago suburbs in the Illinois House from 1993 to 2013. She was considered a social moderate with expertise in the state's human services budget, particulary on issues concerning the disabled.
• Blues musician Melvin Jackson, who performed for years with legends B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland, has died. He was 79.
Jackson died Tuesday evening at a hospice facility in Las Vegas after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, said his niece, Valerie Jordan. The trumpeter and saxophone player started performing as a child with his father, who was also a musician.
• Edward Herrmann, the towering, melodious-voiced actor who brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to life in films and documentaries, won a Tony Award and charmed audiences as the stuffy dad on TV's "Gilmore Girls," has died at 71.
The 6-foot-5 actor's favorite role was playing President Roosevelt, his son said, which he did in projects including the TV movies "Eleanor and Franklin" (1976) and its sequel "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years" (1977) and in the 1982 movie musical "Annie."
Herrmann also provided the voice for FDR in Ken Burns' documentary series "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History," which aired on PBS earlier this year.
He appeared frequently on the big screen, in major films including "Reds" and "The Wolf of Wall Street," and was an acclaimed stage actor whose Tony-winning performance came in 1976 for a revival of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" opposite Lynn Redgrave.
• Howard Schultz, a veteran producer of unscripted TV whose credits include the long-running reality program "Extreme Makeover," has died. He was 61.
Schultz died unexpectedly Monday while vacationing with his family in Hawaii, according to his publicist, Zach Rosenfield. The cause of death was not reported.
As the CEO of Lighthearted Entertainment, Schultz developed and produced such series as "Are You the One?" for MTV and "Dating Naked" for VH1.
Past series include "Jones & Jury," "The George & Alana Show" and, in 1991, "Studs," which gave birth to a new TV genre known as "relationship shows."
• Donald Newman, a longtime thoroughbred owner and breeder with a number of stakes winners, has died. He was 85.
Newman's winners included Mucchina, winner of the 1978 Ashland at Keeneland Race Course; First and Only, who took the 1993 Longfellow at Monmouth Park; and So N So, winner of the 2009 Lucy Scribner at Saratoga Race Course.
• Earl Ervin Clark, who served in the famed 10th Mountain Division in World War II and helped found the unit's veterans association, has died. He was 95.
A lifelong skier, Clark was a member of the National Ski Patrol and was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame in 2001.
He joined the Army in 1942 and volunteered for an experimental skiing unit that became part of the 10th Mountain Division.
• Christine Cavanaugh, a prolific voice actress whose characters included the titular character of "Babe," has died. She was 51.
Cavanaugh's sister Deionn Masock confirmed Tuesday that Cavanaugh died Dec. 22 at her home in Utah. Masock says the cause of death isn't known.
Cavanaugh lent her voice to many of the 1990s indelible cartoon characters, including Chuckie Finster in Nickelodeon's "Rugrats," Dexter on the Cartoon Network's "Dexter's Laboratory" and the live-action piglet of 1995's "Babe."
• Luise Rainer, a star of cinema's golden era who won back-to-back Oscars but then walked away from a glittering Hollywood career, has died. She was 104.
Rainer, whose roles ranged from the 1930s German stage to television's "The Love Boat," died Tuesday at her home in London from pneumonia, said her only daughter, Francesca Knittel-Bowyer.
"She was bigger than life and can charm the birds out of the trees," Knittel-Bowyer said. "If you saw her, you'd never forget her."
The big-eyed, apple-cheeked Rainer gained Hollywood immortality by becoming the first person to win an acting Academy Award in consecutive years, taking best actress prizes for the 1936 film "The Great Ziegfeld" and "The Good Earth" in 1937.
Only four other actors have won back-to-back Oscars: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Jason Robards and Tom Hanks.
• Gleb Yakunin, a dissident Russian Orthodox priest who was defrocked and later excommunicated, has died at age 80.
Yakunin, who denounced persecution of religious believers, served several years in prison in the 1980s and angered the church by accusing its top officials of having collaborated with the KGB during Soviet times, when the church was closely watched by the officially atheist state.
• Rodeo cowboy legend Alvin Nelson is being remembered as one of the best of his generation, an influence on younger riders and an innovator in the sport.
Nelson, of Grassy Butte, a member of half a dozen halls of fame and North Dakota's only world champion saddle bronc rider for 24 years, died Dec. 23 at a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, according to Fulkerson Funeral Home. He was 80.
Nelson was a member of the "six pack," a group of North Dakota bronc and bull riders who dominated the rodeo circuit in the 1950s. He is a member of two national rodeo halls of fame, as well as halls of fame in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Montana. He was a native of Mobridge, South Dakota.
Nelson was the only world champion saddle bronc rider from North Dakota until the 1980s, when Brad Gjermundson won four world titles.