Notable deaths last week

George E. “Bud” Day, an Air Force fighter pilot who received the Medal of Honor for his valor during 51/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he befriended his cellmate, the future Sen. John McCain, has died at 88.

Col. Day was described in news accounts as one of the most highly honored military officers in U.S. history. In addition to the Medal of Honor, he received some 70 military decorations, including the Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple awards of the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart and the Air Medal.

Julius Chambers, a Charlotte attorney whose practice was in the forefront of the civil rights movement in North Carolina, has died. He was 76.

In 1964, Chambers opened a law practice that became the state’s first integrated law firm. He and his partners won cases that shaped civil rights law, including Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education regarding school busing.

Michael Ansara, a television and movie actor whose roles included a Klingon on “Star Trek,” has died. He was 91.

Besides the “Star Trek” role, Ansara appeared on dozens of TV shows, including “Broken Arrow,” “Law of the Plainsman,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Hawaii 5-0” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

USA Today reports that its longtime music critic, Steve Jones, who impressed people with his mental warehouse of music history and his unflappable cool, has died. He was 57.

Richard Dauch, longtime automotive executive and co-founder of Detroit-based American Axle & Manufacturing has died. He was 71.

Dick Kazmaier, the last Ivy League football player to win the Heisman Trophy, has died. He was 82.

Kazmaier played halfback for Princeton and as a senior in 1951 won the Heisman Trophy in a landslide, receiving 506 first-place votes and 1,777 points, which was a record at the time. He also won the Maxwell Award as the nation’s best player, and was The Associated Press male athlete of the year.

Gene Wettstone, the former Penn State men’s gymnastics coach who holds the NCAA record for most team championships in that sport, has died. He was 100.

Wilford “Whizzer” White, the father of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White and a member of the Arizona State hall of fame, has died at the age of 84.

White was an ASU running back from 1947 to 1950 and finished his career as the school’s all-time leading rusher with 3,173 yards, one of only four players in school history to rush for more than 3,000 yards. He now ranks fourth among the school’s all-time leading rushers.

John Edward Allen, a New Mexico veteran who served as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II and later earned honors for his Air Force service during the Vietnam War, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 84.

A long-time resident of New Mexico after retiring, Allen was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces right out of high school in Live Oak, Fla., in 1945. At 17, he was assigned to the 332nd Fighter Wing of the Tuskegee Airmen — a group that broke racial barriers in World War II by becoming the first black aviators in the U.S. military.

He did not see combat in World War II but he later received the Air Force Commendation Medal for assisting in de-arming two dozen 500-pound bombs that were dropped from the wing of a B-52 being prepared for a Vietnam War mission.

Former New York Giants tight end Bobby Crespino has died. He was 75.

After playing at Ole Miss, Crespino was selected in the first round of the 1961 NFL Draft (10th overall) by the Cleveland Browns and in the sixth round of the AFL Draft by the Oakland Raiders. He played three seasons (1961-63) for the Browns before joining the Giants for five seasons, starting in 1964.

Berthold Beitz, the German industrialist who rescued Jews from the Nazis during World War II and helped rebuild Fried Krupp GmbH, a predecessor of the country’s biggest steelmaker, has died. He was 99.

In 1942, as the manager of Karpaten-Oel in Boryslaw, Poland, a town now part of Ukraine, Beitz hid Jews in his home and saved 250 men and women from a train destined for the Belzec death camp by claiming them as workers, according to the website of Israel’s Yad Vashem, a Jerusalem-based Holocaust research and education center.

Beitz was a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1972 to 1988, according to the Olympic Movement’s website, which lists sailing, shooting and rowing as sports he practiced.

Author John Graves, whose 1960 book “Goodbye to a River” and authentic depictions of rural Texas made him one of the state’s most celebrated and beloved writers, has died. He was 92.

Graves was best known for “Goodbye to a River,” a memoir of a canoe trip down the Brazos River that chronicled nature in masterful language and used history and philosophy to capture a sense of place. It has endured as one of the most acclaimed books about Texas and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Lillian Bonner Sutson, a little-known civil rights activist whose attempts to register as a voter in South Carolina set a precedent in the fight against segregation and voting discrimination in the South, has died in Massachusetts. She was believed to be 99.

Sutson’s feisty spirit was highlighted in 2011 when she fought off an assailant who attacked and robbed her at her home in Lynn. Sutson managed to stab the intruder in the thigh during the struggle and screamed for help as he fled.

She suffered head lacerations that required 14 stitches to close. A suspect was eventually arrested in the case.

Eileen Brennan, who went from musical comedy on Broadway to wringing laughs out of memorable characters in such films as “Private Benjamin” and “Clue,” has died. She was 80.

Brennan got her first big role on the New York stage in “Little Mary Sunshine,” a musical comedy that won her the 1960 Obie award for best actress. Along with her “excellent singing voice,” her performance was “radiant and comic,” said a New York Times review.

But it was a series of sharp-tongued roles that won her fans on television and in movies, including gruff Army Capt. Doreen Lewis in 1980’s “Private Benjamin,” aloof Mrs. Peacock in 1985’s “Clue” and mean orphanage superintendent Miss Bannister in 1988’s “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.”

Oscar “Ossie” Schectman, the former New York Knicks guard who scored the first basket in NBA history nearly seven decades ago, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Harry F. Byrd Jr., a 20th century champion of racial segregation and fiscal restraint who followed his father into the U.S. Senate but left his father’s Democratic Party, died Tuesday. He was 98.

Byrd, whose genteel demeanor masked thundering political clout, was the archetypal Southern senator during his 17 years in Washington. His 1983 retirement amounted to an epilogue for the “Byrd Machine” which once dominated Virginia politics from courthouses to the statehouse.

From the 1920s through the 1960s, almost all Virginia public policy carried the Byrd imprimatur, from its debt-averse “pay-as-you-go” approach to government finance to defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racially segregated public schools. In 1956, Byrd denounced the ruling as an “unwarranted usurpation of power” by the high court.

He said he “personally hated” to see schools close, but defended Virginia’s “massive resistance” to federal desegregation orders, claiming it helped the state avert racial violence.

Former Arkansas Tech All-American and longtime football coach Don Dempsey has died at 83.

Dempsey was an All-American in 1954 when he played center and linebacker.

He joined the Arkansas Tech staff in 1959 as an assistant football and head baseball coach. He became head football coach in 1967 and continued to coach baseball until 1970. He stepped down as football coach in 1975.

William Warren Scranton, a former Pennsylvania governor, presidential candidate and ambassador to the United Nations, has died. He was 96.

A crime novelist whose books were inspired by Brazilian law enforcement has died. Leighton Gage was 71.

Gage spent years living in Brazil and set his novels there. The books featured Chief Inspector Mario Silva.

There were six books in the series, and a seventh, “The Ways of Evil Men” is scheduled to be published early next year.

Longtime newspaper sports editor and columnist Pat Harmon has died at age 97.

Harmon’s role as a sports editor spanned nearly five decades for three newspapers: the Champaign News-Gazette, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and then the Cincinnati Post from 1951-85. Harmon went on to serve as historian for the National Football Foundation from 1986-2005.

A man who renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1948 and for the next six decades led a movement for global citizenship has died in Vermont, his organization said.

The World Service Authority, the administrative wing of the World Government of World Citizens, confirmed that founder Garry Davis has died. He was 91.

Davis’ work stretched from his dramatic declaration of world citizenship in Paris in 1948 to his organization’s recent granting of a “world passport” to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Ilya Segalovich, the co-founder of Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, has died, the company said. He was 48.

Segalovich was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year.

Segalovich founded Yandex in 1997 with Volozh, his school friend.

David “Kidd” Kraddick, the high-octane radio and TV host of the “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” show heard on dozens of U.S. radio stations, has died at a charity golf event near New Orleans, a publicist said. Kraddick was 53.

Former Rep. Lindy Boggs, a plantation-born Louisianan who used her soft-spoken grace to fight for civil rights during nearly 18 years in Congress after succeeding her late husband in the House, has died. She was 97.