Notable deaths last week

Hector “Macho” Camacho was a brash fighter with a mean jab and an aggressive style, launching himself furiously against some of the biggest names in boxing. And his bad-boy persona was not entirely an act, with a history of legal scrapes that began in his teens and continued throughout his life.

The man who once starred at the pinnacle of boxing, winning several world titles, died Saturday after being ambushed in a parking lot back in the Puerto Rican town of Bayamon where he was born. Camacho, 50, left behind a reputation for flamboyance — leading fans in cheers of “It’s Macho time!” before fights — and for fearsome skills as one of the top fighters of his generation.

J.R. Ewing was a business cheat, faithless husband and bottomless well of corruption. Yet with his sparkling grin, Larry Hagman masterfully created the charmingly loathsome oil baron — and coaxed forth a Texas-size gusher of ratings — on television’s long-running and hugely successful nighttime soap, “Dallas.”

Although he first gained fame as nice guy Major Tony Nelson on the fluffy 1965-70 NBC comedy “I Dream of Jeannie,” Hagman earned his greatest stardom with J.R. The CBS serial drama about the Ewing family and those in their orbit aired from April 1978 to May 1991, and broke viewing records with its “Who shot J.R.?” 1980 cliffhanger that left unclear if Hagman’s character was dead.

The actor, who returned as J.R. in a new edition of “Dallas” this year, had a long history of health problems and died Friday at 81 due to complications from his battle with cancer, his family said.

Bryce Bayer, a retired Kodak scientist and the inventor of a widely used color filter array that bears his name, has died. He was 83.

A longtime “Sesame Street” director who also worked on soap operas including “The Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns” has died. Emily Squires was 71.

She directed several “Sesame Street” TV specials as well as other children’s programs such as the PBS show “Between the Lions,” which promoted reading.

She also was a scriptwriter for soap operas including “The Guiding Light,” “Search for Tomorrow,” “The Secret Storm” and “As the World Turns.”

The last player to hit a home run for the New York Giants before they moved has died.

A funeral home says former Major League Baseball player Gail Harris died at his Gainesville, Va., home on Nov. 14. He was 81.

Best-selling Australian author Bryce Courtenay, whose first and final books drew on his tough early-life experiences in Africa, has died at 79.

“The Power of One” was published in 1989, translated into 12 languages and became a hit movie.

Deborah Raffin, an actress who ran a successful audiobook company with the help of her celebrity friends, has died. She was 59.

Raffin, the daughter of 20th Century Fox contract player Trudy Marshall, had roles in movies such as “Forty Carats” and “Once Is Not Enough.” She also starred in television miniseries, most notably playing actress Brooke Hayward in “Haywire” and a businesswoman in “Noble House,” based on the James Clavell saga set in Hong Kong.

Art Ginsburg, the delightfully dorky television chef known as Mr. Food, has died at his home in Weston, Fla.

Ginsburg, who was 81, enticed viewers for decades with a can-do focus on easy weeknight cooking and the tagline “Ooh! It’s so good!”

David Copley, the last in a line of San Diego Union-Tribune publishers and owners from a family who dominated the city’s media for more than eight decades, died after crashing his car Tuesday night near his La Jolla home.

Copley, 60, was declared dead at Scripps Memorial Hospital at about 9 p.m., some three hours after he crashed his Aston Martin sports car into a parked vehicle, the newspaper now known as UT San Diego reported.

Copley took over as owner and publisher of the Union-Tribune, the main newspaper in the nation’s eighth-largest city, from his mother in 2001.

Former Mouseketeer Bonita Lynn Fields Elder, an agile dancer who showcased those skills on the 1950s children’s show “The Mickey Mouse Club” and later performed on Broadway, has died in Indiana at age 68.

Colleagues knew former Sen. Warren B. Rudman for his abrupt manner, but they trusted his expertise. On one matter in particular, though, he wished people would have listened to him: that the U.S. was vulnerable to a major terrorist attack.

Rudman left the Senate in the early 1990s but later led a commission that predicted the danger of terrorism on American soil just months before the attacks of Sept. 11 and called for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security.

Rudman died last Monday.

Rhythm and blues singer Billy Scott has died in North Carolina at age 70.