Notable deaths last week

ESPN radio announcer Jim Durham, who called NBA games for the network, has died. He was 65.

In 2011, Durham received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport. A Chicago native, Durham called Bulls games during Michael Jordan’s first seven seasons. He also served as a broadcaster for the Dallas Mavericks, Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros.

“Jim was the voice of the Bulls for 18 years and he was the best at calling a basketball game I ever heard,” Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf said in a release. “I loved the energy he brought to our broadcasts, the way he painted a word picture of what was happening on the court which made you feel like you were there, and his sense of humor.”

Carmen Basilio, a genial onion farmer’s son who wrested the world middleweight boxing crown from Sugar Ray Robinson in 1957 and lost an equally epic, razor-edge rematch six months later, has died at age 85.

The late trainer Angelo Dundee remembered a cold day in Chicago waiting for Basilio, the first of his 15 world champions, to finish a morning run when a cop drove up and threatened to book him for loitering. As he turned to go, Dundee realized Basilio was watching from the back of the patrol car and cracking up.

Basilio stepped up to the 160-pound middleweight class against Robinson on Sept. 23, 1957. Four years earlier, after wresting the state welterweight title from Graham, Basilio was walking down Broadway in New York when he spotted Robinson with his entourage and introduced himself.

“He gave me a brushoff, and I lost my respect for him right then and there,” he recalled. “People come up to speak to you, you have to be happy because it’s people that make you what you are. He was an arrogant guy.”

“You’re talking about the finest boxer of all time,” Dundee told the AP before his death earlier this year, “and Carmen outboxed the guy. He beat him soundly.”

Massachusetts congressman Joseph Early Sr., who served in the U.S. House from 1975 to 1993, died after a brief illness. He was 79.

Lee MacPhail, the longtime baseball executive who ruled in the celebrated Pine Tar case and later became part of the only father-son Hall of Fame pairing, has died. He was 95.

Retired Lt. Col. Herbert Eugene Carter, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen who broke color barriers in World War II, has died at 95.

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced that Colonel James L. Stone, Medal of Honor recipient, passed away in Arlington, Texas at the age of 89.

Major Harris, a former member of the “Philadelphia sound” soul group the Delfonics and singer of the 1975 hit “Love Won’t Let Me Wait,” has died in Richmond. He was 65.

Actor Bill Tarmey, who for 30 years played loveable rogue Jack Duckworth on the British soap opera “Coronation Street,” has died at the age of 71, the show’s producers said.

Ellen Douglas, a Mississippi native whose novel “Apostles of Light” was a 1973 National Book Award nominee, has died at age 91.

A son of Depression-era Oklahoma, Darrell Royal came to Texas to take over a sleeping giant of a football program. Over 20 years, his folksy approach to sports and life, his inventive wishbone offense and a victory in the “Game of the Century” — where a U.S. president declared his team national champion — made him an icon of college football.

Royal, who won two national championships and turned the Longhorns into a national power, died at age 88.

Royal didn’t have a single losing season in his 23 years as a head coach at Texas, Mississippi State and Washington.

Frances Hashimoto, a Little Tokyo business and civic leader whose Los Angeles company popularized the Japanese-style treat known as mochi ice cream, has died. She was 69.

Teri Shields raised eyebrows when she allowed her 11-year-old daughter, Brooke, to be cast as a prostitute in 1978’s “Pretty Baby.” A few years later, she permitted a teenage Brooke Shields to famously star in a series of commercials for Calvin Klein jeans, provocatively professing that nothing comes between “me and my Calvins.”

Teri Shields died last week in New York City, according to Jill Fritzo, a spokeswoman for Brooke Shields. She was 79.

Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria, who weathered a revolt over his communist-era ties to lead the Balkan country’s Orthodox Christians for more than 40 years, has died. He was 98.

He was hailed for meeting with Pope John Paul II during the pontiff’s visit to Sofia in 2002, a trip seen as warming the frosty relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

Jim Flick, a golf instructor for more than 50 years whose clients included Tom Lehman and Jack Nicklaus upon joining the Champions Tour, has died at 82.

Classical composer Elliott Carter, whose challenging, rhythmically complex works earned him widespread admiration and two Pulitzer Prizes, has died at age 103.

The complex way the instruments interact in his compositions created drama for listeners who made the effort to understand them, but it made them difficult for orchestras to learn. He said he tried to give each of the musicians individuality within the context of a comprehensible whole.

When the first National Medal of Arts awards were given in 1985, Carter was one of 10 people honored, along with such legends as Martha Graham, Ralph Ellison and Georgia O’Keeffe. The awards were established by Congress in 1984.

Among his early works were two ballets, “The Minotaur” and “Pocahontas,” and his First Symphony. His First String Quartet in 1951 started him on the road to greater critical attention.

Paul M. Wythes, one of Silicon Valley’s earliest venture capitalists as co-founder of Sutter Hill Ventures, has died. He was 79.

Movie director, actor and singer Leandro Favio, one of Argentina’s most important cultural figures, has died. He was 74.

Milt Campbell, who became the first African-American to win the Olympic decathlon in 1956 and went on to play pro football and become a motivational speaker, has died, his family said. He was 78.

The 6-foot-3, 217-pound Campbell, who attended Indiana University, was drafted in 1957 by the Cleveland Browns, where he played one season in the same backfield as Jim Brown. Campbell then played for various teams in the Canadian Football League until 1964.

Prominent Syrian-born Palestinian actor Mohammed Rafeh, who was believed to be a supporter of President Bashar Assad’s regime, was kidnapped and then killed by anti-government gunmen, activists and his family said. He was 30.