British lawmaker; convicted serial killer
Lord Gilmour, a Conservative lawmaker who was a thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher when she served as Britain's prime minister, died Friday. He was 81. He died in West Middlesex Hospital, west of London after a short illness, according to Gilmour's son David Gilmour. No other details were provided. While holding the Cabinet-level post of deputy foreign secretary, Gilmour was fired by Thatcher in 1981 after he warned her hard-line tactics would lose voters' support. He then declared Thatcher was steering "full speed ahead for the rocks" and for his next 11 years in the House of Commons he relentlessly attacked Thatcher's dismantling of the welfare state.
Coral Eugene Watts, a confessed serial killer who once told police that he had murdered more than 80 people, died Friday. He was 53. His death came a little more than a week after receiving his second life prison sentence in Michigan, authorities said. Watts, who said he targeted women with evil eyes, died in a secure area of Foote Hospital in Jackson, said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. Watts, who had been an inmate at the Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was in the hospital all but one day since Aug. 28, Marlan said. The Jackson County medical examiner's office said it considered Watts' death to be of natural causes and no autopsy would be performed.
Martha Gerry, who bred and owned three-time Horse of the Year Forego, died Monday. She was 88. Gerry was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame confirmed her death. A member of The Jockey Club, Gerry was honored in August as an Exemplar of Racing by the Hall of Fame -- the first woman to be selected for the award and first to receive the honor since C.V. Whitney in 1991. Forego, one of racing's most successful and popular horses, won 34 races for Gerry's Lazy F Ranch and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979.
Edna Hipps Hamrick, who founded the Hamrick's Inc. clothing store chain with her husband, died Monday. She was 89. Mary Martin with the Blakely Funeral Home confirmed Hamrick's death. Until the past year when failing health kept her home, the Haywood County, N.C., native continued working six days a week at the original store in Gaffney. The family business, which started out in 1945 as a grocery store in a mill community, grew to include 20 clothing stores in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, according to the company. Hamrick's makes its own lines of ladies' clothes under several brand names, including Links, N Touch, Southern Lady, Company Collection and Nikki.
Jazz drummer Gordon "Specs" Powell, who recorded with Billie Holiday and played for "The Ed Sullivan Show" as part of the CBS network orchestra, died Saturday. He was 85. Powell, who died of complications from kidney disease, also had heart trouble. He died at a care center near his home in the northern San Diego County suburb of San Marcos, according to his son. Powell began his career doubling as a pianist, but rose to fame as a drummer during the swing era and became a fixture on the 52nd Street jazz scene in New York. In 1943, he was hired by CBS, becoming one of the first black musicians to play for a national network. Powell was a versatile percussionist who carried a kit filled with castanets, clickers and other noisemakers he referred to as his "bag of tricks."
Garrard "Buster" Ramsey, the first coach of the Buffalo Bills, died Sunday. He was 87.
Nephew Knox Wagner Ramsey Jr. said Ramsey died of pneumonia at a Chattanooga-area retirement center where he had been living. Ramsey played guard at William and Mary, where he was the school's first All-American. In the NFL, as a two-way player as a lineman, he was part of the Chicago Cardinals' team that won the 1947 championship. In 1959, he became coach of the newly formed Bills team of the old AFL, where he was 11-16-1 in two seasons before being fired in 1962. He also held coaching positions with the Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers. As a defensive coach with the Lions in the 1950s, Ramsey was credited with helping develop the 4-3 defense and helped popularize blitzing linebackers. He ended his coaching career with the Steelers in 1965.
Ed Smith, who spent his life in a wheelchair while registering voters and working for civil rights, died Sunday. He was 56. Smith died at his Raleigh home after a bout with pneumonia. He never let his childhood bout with polio keep him from being a force in state Democratic politics and work for presidential candidates, friends said. Smith worked on at least 60 campaigns and political campaigns, helping put in office former House Speaker Dan Blue and current U.S. House members such as Brad Miller, Bob Etheridge and G.K. Butterfield.
Lloyd Davis, who worked with Martin Luther King's widow to build Atlanta's King Center and establish the holiday honoring the civil rights leader died Monday. He was 79. Davis died of cancer in Chevy Chase, Md., his family said. A longtime federal housing official, he came to the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change around 1980 as executive vice president and chief operating officer, working alongside Coretta Scott King to maintain her husband's legacy. Later, he was executive director of the federal King Holiday Commission. Davis helped Coretta Scott King plan the building of the center, and helped her to get Congress to establish the King National Historic Site. In 1983, after President Ronald Reagan established the King federal holiday, Davis became executive director of the King Holiday Commission to promote, oversee and raise money for the observance. It was officially celebrated for the first time at the federal level on Jan. 20, 1986. As the commission's executive director, Davis worked to get the holiday legally observed in all 50 states.
Samuel A. Greene Jr., the founder of a monastery that closed amid scandal over the alleged sexual abuse of novice monks and a fraudulent weeping Virgin Mary painting, has died. He was 63. Greene's death was being investigated as a suicide, but officials were waiting for autopsy results before ruling on the cause of death. Greene's body was found Monday morning in his home on the grounds of Christ of the Hills Monastery. The monastery was allied with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia from 1991 to 1999, but the church broke ties with the monastery when allegations surfaced of indecency by Greene with a juvenile novice monk.
Nate Hill, a former four-year letterman at Auburn who was drafted by the NFL's Green Bay Packers in 1988, died Tuesday, his family said. The cause of Hill's death was not immediately known, according to his aunt, who answered the phone at his mother's home in LaGrange, Ga., on Tuesday. Hill, 41, was a football star at LaGrange High who was a defensive tackle at Auburn from 1984-87. Hill was drafted in the sixth round by the Packers as a defensive end in 1988. He played in three games with Green Bay and one game with Miami in 1988. Hill's aunt said he worked in Jackson but made regular visits to his LaGrange home and assisted with LaGrange High football camps.
Louis J. Willie Jr., a black businessman who helped defuse a racial dispute surrounding the 1990 PGA Championship by becoming an honorary member at the all-white Shoal Creek club, has died. He was 84. His death Sunday night was confirmed by Booker T. Washington Insurance, the company for whom Willie worked as an executive. He had Alzheimer's disease. Protests mounted when the president of the Shoal Creek Country Club in suburban Birmingham, said it would not be pressured into accepting blacks members when the club hosted the PGA tournament in 1990. Willie helped quiet the situation by accepting an offer of honorary membership.
Ayatollah Murtada al-Askari, a founding member of Iraq's Shiite Dawa party, which was banned under Saddam Hussein but now is the ruling Iraqi party, died in Iran, the party said. Ayatollah Murtada al-Askari died Sunday after suffering a heart ailment and kidney problems, Iran's news agency, IRNA, reported. The agency did not say where he died or how old he was. The Dawa party said he was about 100 years old, according to a statement, which described al-Askari as "one of the founders of the Dawa Islamic Party." Al-Askari was born in the Iraqi city of Samarra and studied at the Hawza, the Shiite religious seminary, Dawa said.
Author Robert Jordan, whose "Wheel of Time" series of fantasy novels sold millions of copies, died of a rare blood disease. He was 58. Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigney Jr., was born and lived in this southern city most of his life. He died Sunday at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston of complications from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, his personal assistant, Maria Simons, said Monday. The blood disease caused the walls of Rigney's heart to thicken. He wrote a trilogy of historical novels set in Charleston under the pen name Reagan O'Neal in the early 1980s. Then he turned his attention to fantasy and the first volume in his Wheel of Time epic, "The Eye of the World," was published in 1990 under the name Robert Jordan.
Actress and comedian Brett Somers, who amused game show fans with her quips on the "Match Game" in the 1970s, has died, her son said. She was 83. Somers died Saturday at her home in Westport of stomach and colon cancer, Adam Klugman said Monday. Hosted by Gene Rayburn, "Match Game" was the top game show during much of the 1970s. Contestants would try to match answers to nonsense questions with a panel of celebrities; much of the humor came from the racy quips and putdowns. Shows from the 1973-79 run, featuring regulars like Somers, Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly, are still seen on cable TV's GSN (formerly Game Show Network.)
Colin McRae, whose fascination with cars grew into an obsession that led him to 25 wins in a World Rally Championship career, was killed Saturday in a helicopter crash along with his 5-year-old son and two others, police said. He was 39. McRae was piloting the helicopter, which he owned and was licensed to fly, when it crashed Saturday in a wooded area near his home. McRae raced in the World Rally Championship from 1987 until 2004, becoming champion in 1995. He also took part in the Paris to Dakar rally, the Le Mans 24 hour race, the Race of Champions and the X Games. McRae also lent his name to a best-selling computer game, but it was his flamboyant racing style that earned fans in all types of motorsport and lifted the profile of rallying in Britain. Two other people also died in the crash -- 6-year-old Ben Porcelli and 37-year-old Graeme Duncan. The aircraft was badly burned, making it impossible for police to immediately identify the occupants.
Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy, a famed American explorer who discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing adventures to learn more about ancient cultures, died Tuesday. He was 80. He died of natural causes at his Reno home, his family said. Dubbed the "real Indiana Jones" by People magazine, Savoy was credited with finding four of Peru's most important archaeological sites, including Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Incas from the Spanish Conquistadors. Hiram Bingham considered Machu Picchu the Inca's last stronghold after he discovered it in 1911 in the Peruvian Andes. But scientists agree the lost city's actual discovery was made by Savoy in the mid-1960s in the Peruvian rainforest. Savoy wrote dozens of books, including 1970's "Antisuyo: The Search for the Lost Cities of the Amazon" about his early discoveries in Peru.
Chicago banker and oil executive John E. Swearingen, who led Standard Oil Co. of Indiana to become the sixth-largest U.S. company, died Friday. He was 89. Swearingen died of pneumonia at Brookwood Medical Center, according to his wife, Bonnie Bolding Swearingen. She said he also suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He was in Birmingham to visit relatives. During his long business career, Swearingen met with leaders of countries around the world and socialized with U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter. He was at the helm of the American Petroleum Institute in the 1970s in the role of industry spokesman during the energy crisis. A native of Columbia, S.C., Swearingen was awarded honorary degrees by 15 colleges and universities and served on the board of major banks and corporations, including Sara Lee Corp.