Notable deaths last week

• John C. Whitehead, a Wall Street banker who led Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s international expansion in the 1970s and '80s and later was founding chairman of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, died Saturday. He was 92.

Whitehead joined Goldman Sachs in 1947 and worked his way to senior partner and co-chairman before leaving 38 years later to become deputy secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.

In later years, he was chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which helped lead the area's rebuilding after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was acknowledged for overcoming obstacles to help ensure the 9/11 memorial and museum reached fundraising goals, finished with an acceptable design and got built.

• Prolific author, Andre Brink, who used his work to question the policies of South Africa's apartheid regime, has died, his publishers said Saturday. He was 79 years old.

Brink died aboard a KLM flight travelling from the Netherlands to the South African city of Cape Town on Friday evening, the South African Press Association reported. Brink was travelling from Belgium, where he was receiving an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain.

In his speech during the ceremony, Brink spoke about the importance of questioning, said Eloise Wessels, head of NB Publishers.

"That is how he lived and that same search underpinned all his writing," Wessels said in an email to The Associated Press.

Brink made his debut in 1962, and soon became part of a literary movement, along with poet Ingrid Jonker and fellow author Breyten Breytenbach, who used the Afrikaans language to oppose the apartheid regime.

His 1975 book, "Looking on Darkness," the first of Brink's books distributed to the United States, was banned by the South African government until 1982. Brink wrote his novels in English and Afrikaans, in an attempt to buck censorship.

• Norm Drucker, the only NBA referee to toss Wilt Chamberlain from a game, died Friday. He was 94.

Norm Drucker worked NBA games from 1953-69, then moved to the ABA from 1969-76, also serving as that league's supervisor of officials for five years. He returned to the NBA when the leagues merged to spend one more season on the court (1976-77) before becoming the NBA's supervisor of officials until 1981.

Perhaps his most famous call came in 1962 when he called a second technical foul on Chamberlain, then with the Philadelphia Warriors. The ejection was the only one of the Hall of Fame center's career.

• Screenwriter and two-time Academy Award nominee Stewart Stern, who's best known for writing the screenplay for Nicholas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause," has died. He was 92.

Stern was a World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient. He also penned the scripts for "The Last Movie," "The Ugly American," "Rachel, Rachel," and a handful of other films and television movies during a Hollywood career that spanned more than 50 years.

Stern is the subject of an upcoming documentary from director Christopher McQuarrie.

• Mary Healy, a versatile actress and singer who starred with Orson Welles on Broadway and opposite her husband Peter Lind Hayes for nearly 60 years on stage, screen and radio, has died. She was 96.

Healy, a native of New Orleans and former beauty queen, was discovered while singing at the Roosevelt New Orleans hotel and made her screen debut in 1938 in "Josetta," followed by about a dozen other movies through the early 1980s.

She appeared in four Broadway shows between 1942 and 1958, including the Walter Kerr-written musical revue "Count Me In" and opposite Welles in the Cole Porter musical "Around the World," in which she played an Indian princess, Aouda.

• Robert Dirks, a scientist at D.E. Shaw Research, was killed in the Metro-North Railroad commuter train crash in Valhalla, New York, on Feb. 3. He was 36 and lived in Chappaqua, New York, according to public records.

"Robert was a brilliant scientist who made tremendous contributions to our own research, and to the broader scientific community," New York-based D.E. Shaw Research said in the statement.

Dirks, who joined the company in 2006, was "involved in the development of novel computational chemistry methods," according to its website. It creates computer models of organic molecules for use in drug development.

• Joseph Nadol, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. managing director who ranked as one of the top analysts covering the aerospace and defense industries, was among the six people killed when a Metro-North Railroad train collided with a SUV in Westchester County, New York. He was 42.

• Charlie Sifford, who only wanted a chance to play and broke the color barrier in golf as the first black PGA Tour member, has died.

Sifford, who recently had suffered a stroke, was 92.

"His love of golf, despite many barriers in his path, strengthened him as he became a beacon for diversity in our game," said PGA of America President Derek Sprague. "By his courage, Dr. Sifford inspired others to follow their dreams. Golf was fortunate to have had this exceptional American in our midst."

A proud man who endured racial taunts and threats, Sifford set modest goals and achieved more than he imagined.

Sifford challenged the Caucasian-only clause and the PGA rescinded it in 1961. He won the Greater Hartford Open in 1967 and the Los Angeles Open in 1969. He also won the 1975 Senior PGA Championship, five years before the Champions Tour was created.

His career was fully recognized in 2004 when he became the first black inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Last November, President Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are the only other golfers who received that honor.

• Vic Howe, Gordie Howe's younger brother and a former NHL player with the New York Rangers, has died. He was 85.

The 86-year-old Gordie Howe had two disabling strokes late last year. His family has said his health has improved after stem-cell treatment as part of a clinical trial in Mexico.

Vic Howe had three goals and four assists in 33 games with the Rangers in parts of three seasons from 1950 to 1955.

• Sanford Socolow, a longtime CBS News executive who was a right-hand man to anchor Walter Cronkite, has died. The Manhattan resident died at 86 at Lenox Hill Hospital because of complications from a long illness.

Socolow was an executive producer at the "CBS Evening News" when Cronkite was anchor. He was also a Washington bureau chief for CBS News and rose to vice president there, supervising all hard news programming. He produced coverage of moon landings anchored by Cronkite and much of the network's Vietnam War coverage, including Morley Safer's 1965 report that showed U.S. Marines burning a Vietnamese village.

• Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer and a leading historian of the Holocaust, has died following a lengthy illness. He was 78.

Educated at Oxford University, Gilbert wrote more than 80 books, including many with themes related to World War II. He is best known for his works on Churchill, which began when he worked with the prime minister's son, Randolph Churchill, on an official biography.

He continued for 20 years after Randolph Churchill died in 1968, completing an eight-volume biography and writing several other books about the statesman, including "Churchill: A Life; "Churchill: The Power of Words," and "Continue to Pester, Nag, and Bite: Churchill's War Leadership."

He also wrote eight books on the Holocaust, including "The Holocaust: A Jewish Tragedy" and "Auschwitz and the Allies," as well as "Israel: A History," and the three-volume "History of the 20th Century."

• Frank Borghi, the goalkeeper in the United States' 1-0 upset victory over England in the 1950 World Cup, has died. He was 89.

Borghi grew up in The Hill neighborhood of St. Louis, about 7 miles from downtown, which produced five members of the 1950 American team and major league baseball players Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola.

He served in the U.S. military in Europe in World War II and earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, according the St. Louis Soccer Hall.

When he returned home, he joined the St. Louis Cardinals' organization. Borghi said he played catcher for two years, including a stint with the 1946 Carthage Cardinals of the Class D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League.

He switched his attention to soccer and was shifted from an outfield player to goalkeeper by Joe Numi, coach of the Simpkins-Ford club in St. Louis.

"I had no ball skills or passing ability," Borghi told the St. Louis Soccer Hall in 2009 "I knew I could catch a ball and throw it 50 yards. Joe says, 'Yeah, go ahead.' It worked out really good for me."

• Veteran newsman Al Webb has died in England after a long career in which he received a military medal for valor while covering the war in Vietnam. He was 79.

He spent most of his career covering the world for United Press International and received the Bronze Star for his role in helping to evacuate a gravely wounded U.S. Marine at the height of the Vietnam War.

Webb was seriously wounded by shrapnel from a rocket explosion during an attempted evacuation during the Tet Offensive on Feb. 19, 1968. The Marine, who suffered a gunshot wound to the throat, did not survive.

• Dave Bergman, a member of the Detroit Tigers' 1984 World Series championship team, has died. He was 61.

A first baseman and outfielder, Bergman spent nine seasons in Detroit, where he arrived via trade in 1984.

He had a career-high 44 RBIs in helping the Tigers win their first World Series since 1968.

The Evanston, Illinois, native was involved in Detroit-area youth baseball and founded the Grosse Pointe Redbirds.

• Ann Mara, the matriarch of the NFL's New York Giants for the past 60 years, has died. She was 85.