Hero of 1st Super Bowl, philosopher
Max McGee, the unexpected hero of the first Super Bowl, died Saturday after falling from the roof of his home while blowing leaves, police said. He was 75.
Police were called to the former Green Bay receiver's home in Deephaven, Minn., about 5:20 p.m., Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
Inserted into Packers' lineup when Boyd Dowler was sidelined by a shoulder injury, McGee went on to catch the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in Green Bay's 35-10 victory over Kansas City in January 1967. Still hungover from a night on the town, McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns.
He was a running back at Tulane and the nation's top kick returner in 1953.
After retiring from football, he became a major partner in developing the popular Chi-Chi's chain of Mexican restaurants.
Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, a Jewish religious philosopher who escaped the Nazis and later helped bridge the gap between Christians and Jews, has died. He was 86.
Ehrlich died Sunday at his home in Riehen, Switzerland, according to the family notice in Swiss newspapers.
Ehrlich obtained his doctorate at Basel and later taught at universities in Switzerland and Germany. From 1961 to 1994, he was European director of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, founded in New York in 1843.
At the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he was adviser to German Cardinal Augustin Bea in preparing "Nostra Aetate," a key document on Roman Catholic-Jewish relations.
Peter Hume, a Canadian national wrestling champion in the 1970s who had a bit part in the movie "Meatballs," has died after he was stricken at his home. He was 54.
The 6-foot-6-inch Hume weighed more than 400 pounds when he died Tuesday, the Saratoga County, New York coroner said. The corner did not elaborate on the cause of death.
Hume appeared in the 1979 Bill Murray comedy "Meatballs," which was filmed in Canada. He played a character called "The Stomach."
R.B. Kitaj, a key figure in the British Pop Art movement, has died. He was 74.
Kitaj died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, said a director of New York's Marlborough Gallery, which was the official representative for Kitaj's works.
His death was reported as a possible suicide, but a cause of death was not given, pending results of toxicology tests, said Capt. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner's office.
Vincent DeDomenico, co-inventor of Rice-A-Roni, whose catchy TV jingle paid homage to San Francisco and made the pasta dish known to every baby boomer, died Tuesday. He was 92.
Along with his brothers, DeDomenico, the son of Italian immigrants, created the packaged side dish of rice and pasta for their San Francisco-based family business.
"The San Francisco treat" became known in the 1960s through TV commercials that featured the city's cable cars.
Vivian Aplin-Brownlee, a former Washington Post editor who raised an early alarm concerning a Pulitzer Prize-winning story about an 8-year-old heroin addict who didn't actually exist, died Oct. 20 of complications from leukemia. She was 61.
Aplin-Brownlee sent Janet Cooke, an ambitious reporter, to check out a report about a new type of heroin on Washington's streets. Cooke returned with notes that eventually became "Jimmy's World," a gripping tale of a boy addicted to heroin.
The story won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1981 but the paper returned the award and fired Cooke upon learning it was all made up.
Dr. Arthur Kornberg, whose test-tube synthesis of DNA earned him the Nobel Prize in 1959, died Friday of respiratory failure. He was 89.
Kornberg, an active professor emeritus of biochemistry at the Stanford University's School of Medicine, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University. Kornberg discovered the chemical mechanism that demonstrated how DNA -- the blueprint of heredity -- gets constructed in the cell.
Peg Bracken, author of the "I Hate to Cook Book," which sold more than 3 million copies after it appeared in 1960, died Saturday. She was 89.
She died in Portland, Ore., family members said. No cause of death was immediately available.
The book appeared was intended for working women who decried the notion that their destiny was to stand by the stove and be the ideal wife. Bracken adored convenience foods that were new at the time -- mixes and canned foods -- and discovered that a can of mushroom soup could cover many sins.
The book was followed by "The I Hate to Housekeep Book" and "I Try to Behave Myself," on etiquette. There were others.