Hearst investigator, civil rights leader

Joe Alston, an FBI agent who investigated Patty Hearst's kidnapping and who was the only badminton player ever to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, died April 16. He was 81.

Alston, who lived in Solana Beach, died at an Encinitas, Calif. hospital of complications after cardiac arrest, according to his son, Tony.

Alston learned badminton as a child and went on to win a dozen national titles between 1951 and 1967. He won several mixed-doubles titles with his wife, Lois, herself a top-ranked women's singles player. He had just won his second U.S. Open singles title when he appeared on the March 7, 1955, cover of the sports magazine. At the time, he had been with the FBI for four years.

W. Frank Crawford, a Court of Appeals judge who wrote the decision that Tennessee's sodomy law violated the state's constitutional right to privacy, died April 17 in Memphis, Tenn. He was 81.

The Administrative Office of the Courts announced Crawford died on Thursday, but did not give a cause of death.

Crawford served in the western section of the Court of Appeals for 25 years and was presiding judge from 1995 to 2007.

His opinion in the appellate court's 1996 sodomy law case found that the right to privacy encompassed the right to "engage in consensual, private, noncommercial, sexual conduct."

James "Jim" Sulton Sr., who pushed for black civil rights for 60 years, has died. He was 84. Sulton died Thursday in Orangeburg, S.C., according to the Bythewood Funeral Home.

He helped organized voter registration drives and marches in Orangeburg in the 1940s. He hosted Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in his home for strategy sessions in the 1960s.

Sulton said his life changed as he neared the end of his service in World War II when a German army prisoner under his unit's command called him a fool for fighting for a country where he had no rights. Sulton was arrested and risked losing the service station he ran with his brother when parts salesmen gave into pressure from whites and stopped selling to the station. A stretch of the street in front of Sulton's home was named in his honor.

Lynn Meredith, a retired Secret Service agent who guarded presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, died April 19. He was 84. Meredith's heart stopped beating properly Tuesday, and he died at a Great Falls hospital Thursday, said his oldest son, Tom Meredith.

Meredith joined the Secret Service in 1951 when Truman was president and guarded Dwight Eisenhower's children during that administration. He also guarded Vice President Hubert Humphrey during President Lyndon Johnson's administration in the 1960s. Meredith served the Kennedy family from the early days of the administration to the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. On that day, Meredith took John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy to a park in the Washington, D.C., area.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, a Colombian prelate who helped lead the Vatican's campaign against abortion and insisted condoms do not prevent HIV transmission, died April 19, an assistant said. He was 72.

Lopez Trujillo died at the Pius XI private clinic in Rome, where he had been admitted for tests, Monsignor Jorge Raigosa said. He died after suffering cardiac arrest following medical complications over several weeks, Raigosa said.

In March 2007, Lopez Trujillo traveled to Mexico to launch the Roman Catholic Church's aggressive campaign against plans to legalize abortion.

Ester Soriano, the jury foreperson in the civil damages trial of Rodney King, died April 3. She was 61.

Soriano died in a Los Angeles hospital of complications after surgery for liver cancer, said her sister, Emily Deitrich. She served on the jury in the civil case that King brought against the city. King, who was black, was beaten by several white officers in 1991, an incident caught on tape that would help spark a race riot the next year.

Cecilia Colledge, an innovative figure skater who was the youngest athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics, died April 12. She was 87.

Colledge died at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., said Ben Wright, vice president of The Skating Club of Boston where Colledge was a teacher for nearly four decades.

Colledge was 11 years and 3 months old when she competed for her native Britain in the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. She won a silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in Germany.

Germaine Tillion, a French World War II resistance fighter and celebrated anthropologist died April 19. She was 100.

Tillion, who wrote about her experiences in a Nazi camp, died Saturday at her home in Saint-Mande, said Tzvetan Todorov, head of the Germaine Tillion Association.

Tillion -- who was sent in 1943 to the Nazi camp for women and children in Ravensbruck, Germany, for her work with France's underground resistance network -- was the recipient of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, one of France's highest distinctions. She was one of only five women to have received such an honor, the government said.

Ed Chynoweth, a former president of the Western Hockey League and Canadian Hockey League, died April 22. He was 66. Chynoweth was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2006. A WHL spokesman confirmed the death. Chynoweth served as WHL president from 1972 to 1995. The league recently renamed its championship trophy the Ed Chynoweth Cup. He was CHL president from 1975 to 1995.

Joe Feeney, a tenor who crooned "Danny Boy" and other standards for 25 years on "The Lawrence Welk Show," died April 16. He was 76. Feeney died of emphysema at a hospice in Carlsbad, Calif., son Tim Feeney said. The elder Feeney lived in San Marcos in San Diego County. The family believes Feeney contracted the illness from decades of performing in smoky casinos and nightclubs, his son said.

Former major leaguer John Marzano died April 19 after falling down a flight of stairs at his home. He was 45. The exact cause of his death Saturday was not immediately clear, police said. Marzano was from Philadelphia and had been working for Major League Baseball's Web site, for which he co-hosted a show on weekday mornings.

Before joining MLB's Web site, Marzano was a baseball analyst on Comcast SportsNet for the station's Philadelphia Phillies' postgame shows.