Notable deaths last week

• Diana Douglas, the first wife of Kirk Douglas and mother of Michael Douglas, died Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 92.

Douglas died of cancer at a motion picture industry retirement home in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, according to an obituary from Michael Douglas's production company, Furthur Films.

Born Diana Love Dill in Bermuda, where her family had lived for centuries and her father was the attorney general, Douglas later moved to New York and met Kirk Douglas while they were both studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

She later went to California on a $200-a-week contract with Warner Bros. against Douglas's advice that she try for Broadway instead.

She went on to have a six-decade career as an actress and model, appearing in dozens of movies and television episodes, including the 1987 Steve Martin film "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and the TV shows "ER" and "The West Wing."

She also did stage roles, including some on Broadway.

In May 1943, Douglas appeared on the cover of Life magazine, modeling spring fashions.

"Kirk Douglas, by then serving in the Navy during World War II, saw her on the cover and told his shipmates he would marry her," according to the obituary.

They wed that November and went on the have two sons, Michael and Joel, before divorcing in 1951.

"We had brought to marriage such different concepts of what it constituted, what was expected due," she wrote in her memoir, "In the Wings and Beyond."

The two remained on amicable terms. She even appeared with him in several movies, including her last film, 2003's "It Runs in the Family," which also starred Michael Douglas and one of her grandsons, Cameron.

Douglas was also married to actor Bill Darrid from 1956 until his death in 1992.

• Mormon leader Boyd K. Packer, president of the faith's highest governing body, has died. He was 90.

Packer died Friday afternoon at his home in Salt Lake City from natural causes, church spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement. He was next in line to become president of the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Packer was known for being a staunch advocate for a conservative form of Mormonism, making him an idol for like-minded, devout Latter-day Saints but also a target of frequent criticism from gay rights groups and more liberal Mormons.

He had been a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles since 1970. The group is modeled after Jesus Christ's apostles and serves under the church president and his two counselors.

He is the second member of quorum to die in recent months. L. Tom Perry died on May 30 from cancer.

• Hall of Fame tight end Charlie Sanders epitomized Detroit's blue-collar roots.

Fans adored his gritty work ethic. Teammates embraced his leadership. Coaches found him to be a prized pupil and a talented teacher. And when Detroit's booming economy became the American standard, Sanders was rewriting football history with a trend-setting career.

On Thursday, the man who spent 43 years in the Lions' organization as a player, broadcaster and scout died in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak after battling cancer. He was 68.

"Today we lost one of the greatest Detroit Lions of all time," team president Tom Lewand said in a statement. "He was a perfect ambassador for our organization and, more important, was a true friend, colleague and mentor to so many of us."

Sanders landed in Detroit as a third-round draft pick in 1968 and basically never left.

He spent the next 10 seasons catching passes from guys like Greg Landry and Bill Munson, clearing holes for Steve Owens and Dexter Bussey and working in tandem with players like Mel Farr and Ray Jessie. Sanders went to seven Pro Bowls and finished his playing career in 1977 with a franchise-record 336 receptions, 4,137 yards and 31 touchdowns - good enough numbers to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.

He worked in the team's community relations department and was a spokesman for The March of Dimes and the United Way. He launched The Charlie Sanders Foundation in 2007, which funded at least two scholarships each year for students in Oakland County. He started the Have A Heart Save A Life program after learning about the death of prep player Wes Leonard, a Michigan native who collapsed and died just minutes after making the game-winning shot to give his team a 20-0 record.

Last year, Sanders was honored by the St. Jude ALSAC Children's Research Hospital for his community work.

• Chris Squire, the bassist and co-founder of the progressive rock band Yes who recently announced he had leukemia, has died at 67.

Squire announced last month that he had acute erythroid leukemia, a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia. He was receiving treatment before he died.

"It's with the heaviest of hearts and unbearable sadness that we must inform you of the passing of our dear friend and Yes co-founder, Chris Squire," said the statement from Alan White, Steve Howe, Jon Davison and Geoff Downes.

"For the entirety of Yes' existence, Chris was the band's linchpin and, in so many ways, the glue that held it together over all these years," the band's statement continued. "Because of his phenomenal bass-playing prowess, Chris influenced countless bassists around the world, including many of today's well-known artists."

Squire was born on March 4, 1948, in London. He was the only member to play on all of Yes' albums, and he co-founded the band with its former lead singer, Jon Anderson. The group released its self-titled debut album in 1969.

In a statement posted Sunday on his website, Anderson said he and Squire were "musical brothers."

"I feel blessed to have created some wonderful, adventurous, music with him. Chris had such a great sense of humor ... he always said he was Darth Vader to my Obiwan. I always thought of him as Christopher Robin to my Winnie the Pooh," he wrote.

Yes released the album "Heaven & Earth" last year. The Grammy-winning band's hits include "Roundabout" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart," which became a No. 1 hit on the Billboard pop charts in the 1980s. The group will launch a U.S. tour with Toto in August, when Billy Sherwood will fill in for Squire.

• John Whitman, the husband of former Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and the state's first-ever first gentleman, died Thursday. He was 71.

John Whitman was an investment banker who served as a managing partner at Princeton-based Sycamore Ventures. He served as New Jersey's first gentleman from 1994 to 2001.

• Val Doonican, an easygoing Irish singer whose warm style and fondness for knitwear made him an icon of light entertainment, has died. He was 88.

Sometimes known as "Ireland's Bing Crosby," Doonican was born in Waterford, Ireland, in 1927 and performed for years in clubs and on radio in Ireland and Britain before making his breakthrough.

He had a string of British chart hits through the 1960s and '70s, including "Walk Tall," "The Special Years" and "Elusive Butterfly."

On "The Val Doonican Show," which ran on BBC television from 1965 to 1986, the singer performed easy-listening pop songs, often while wearing woolen pullovers. For his many, fans he was a reassuring presence. One album was called "Val Doonican Rocks, But Gently."

• "Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?" asked the presenter of the popular BBC magazine program "That's Life".

Around the elderly man, sitting with his wife in the front row of the audience, more than 30 people got to their feet. The man stood to acknowledge them, wiping tears from his eyes.

It was 1988, some 50 years since young stockbroker Nicholas Winton found himself in Prague as the Nazis marched on Czechoslovakia and all around him Jewish parents desperately looked for a means of escape, if not for themselves then at least for their children.

Virtually single-handedly, Winton saved more than 650 of those children from almost certain death in the Holocaust. But he didn't talk about it for decades, until his wife discovered documents in their attic that revealed the story and for the first time allowed the rescued children to know and thank their savior.

"There are all kinds of things you don't talk about, even with your family," Winton said later. "Everything that happened before the war actually didn't feel important in the light of the war itself."

Winton's death Wednesday at the age of 106 brought tributes from leaders and Jewish groups in Britain, the Czech Republic and Israel.

"In a world plagued by evil and indifference, Winton dedicated himself to saving the innocent and the defenseless. His exceptional moral leadership serves as an example to all humanity," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

"Winton knew how to correctly read the harsh reality and chose to leave his comfortable life and follow the voice of his conscience," added Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The story of Winton's exploits led former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to dub him "Britain's Schindler", in reference to the German businessman Oskar Schindler, who famously saved Jewish lives during the war.

After the story came to light, Winton's wife Grete persuaded him to talk about what had happened, and many of the children - now parents and grandparents themselves - contacted him to thank him for saving their lives. Among the well-known people saved by Winton were American scientist Ben Abeles, British film director Karel Reisz and Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger.

A film about his heroism by Slovak director Matej Minac, "Nicholas Winton - The Power of Good," won an International Emmy Award in 2002. Minac made a second documentary, "Nicky's Family", in 2011.

Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 and also honored in the Czech Republic. A statue of Winton stands at Prague's central station - candles and flowers surrounded it on Thursday - while a statue commemorating the children of the Kindertransport is a popular sight at London's Liverpool Street Station. He continued to attend Kindertransport events in Britain and the Czech Republic well beyond his 100th birthday.

• Jack Disney, a longtime sports writer with the old Los Angeles Herald Examiner who later worked in publicity at two Southern California horse racing tracks, has died. He was 80.

Disney started at the Herald Examiner at age 19 in 1954 and for the next 35 years he covered Southern California football and basketball, the Angels, Dodgers, Lakers, Raiders and boxing.

Known as "Diz" to close friends and press box colleagues, Disney was the product of a bygone era when sports writers were often close to the athletes they covered.

• Jack Carter, whose brash, caustic comedy made him a star in early television and helped him sustain a career of more than a half-century in TV, nightclubs, movies and on stage, died of respiratory failure at his Beverly Hills, California, home, a family spokesman said.

Carter turned 93 just four days before he died Sunday, Jeff Sanderson said.

In 1948, when network television was beginning, Carter starred in a series of variety shows on ABC. In 1950, Pat Weaver, the visionary NBC programmer who fostered the "Today" and "Tonight" shows and other innovations, scheduled two hours of programming called "Saturday Night Revue."

"The Jack Carter Show," broadcast from Chicago, filled the first hour, and the comedian opened it with a standup routine that poked fun at the day's news, a device late-night comics still use. From there, the show moved on to music and comedy skits.

The second hour was taken up by "Your Show of Shows," starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Their sophisticated comedy became a sensation, and after "Saturday Night Revue's" first season, "The Jack Carter Show" was canceled. Although he would remain a popular guest star in television, Carter would never again headline his own network series.

"Maybe I come on too strong," he mused in 1963. "Directors and producers fear you when you come on strong. They're afraid they may not be able to control you."

The comedian, who had begun his career as a dramatic stage actor, also returned to the theater from time to time. He also performed regularly in nightclubs and appeared in films.

He made nearly three dozen movies, including Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," in which Carter played himself; "The Horizontal Lieutenant"; "The Extraordinary Seaman"; and "The Funny Farm."

Throughout his career, Carter remained the attacker, poking fun at members of the audience, disparaging politicians and celebrities.

"I'm one of the last entertainers who really works when he's on," he claimed in that 1963 interview. "I work to win the audience. I see these other guys, and they just recite. The less you do, the less you offend, of course, and that's what they want on TV."

Carter made numerous appearances on the shows of Ed Sullivan, Alan King and George Burns. He traded gags with Bob Hope on five Hope specials.

"The censors flagged you on everything," Carter recalled in the book "The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961." "When you did Sullivan, you couldn't say bellybutton."

He turned from comedy to drama in dozens of episodic series including "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Hawaii Five-O," "Murder, She Wrote," "Baywatch," "Diagnosis Murder" and "Touched by an Angel."

His work as a director included Lucille Ball's CBS series "Here's Lucy" and plays, including "A Thousand Clowns," "Silver Anniversary" and "Mouth-Trap."

Between TV work, Carter was active in theater. In 1956, he starred on Broadway with Sammy Davis Jr. in the musical "Mr. Wonderful." He toured in "Guys and Dolls," "Born Yesterday," "A Thousand Clowns," "The Odd Couple" and "Oliver" (as Fagin).

• Czech football great Josef Masopust, who led the national side to the final of the 1962 World Cup, has died aged 84.

Born Feb 9, 1931 in the village of Strimice in a family of a miner, Masopust spent the best years of his career at Dukla Prague, winning seven league titles. A statue of him was unveiled in front of the Dukla stadium in 2012.

Masopust, who made 63 international appearances, was named the best Czech footballer of the century in 2000.

• Walter Browne, who dropped out of high school to embark on a legendary career in competitive chess that made him an American champion several times over, has died at 66.

A charismatic, passionate figure at the chessboard and away from it, Browne won six U.S. Chess Championships between 1974 and 1983. He won more U.S. championships than any players other than Bobby Fischer and Sammy Reshevsky.