Notable deaths last week

Charlie Trotter had built a reputation so stellar that the culinary world still had high expectations for the famed chef after he closed his award-winning namesake Chicago restaurant last summer.

Trotter changed the way Americans viewed fine dining, and his restaurant put Chicago at the vanguard of the food world.

Trotter, 54, died Tuesday at a Chicago hospital.

Fellow celebrity chef Rick Bayless said it’s sad the world will never get to see what Trotter would do next.

“I knew that we would hear something more from him and I had hoped that we would have the chance to see the next chapter in his life,” said Bayless, among a slew of well-known chefs who paid tribute to Trotter after learning of his death.

For decades, Trotter’s name was synonymous with cutting-edge cuisine. He earned 10 James Beard Awards, wrote 10 cookbooks and in 1999 hosted his own public television series, “The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter.”

His restaurant was credited with training dozens of the nation’s top chefs, including Grant Achatz and Graham Elliot.

“Charlie was a visionary, an unbelievable chef that brought American cuisine to new heights,” Emeril Lagasse, a close friend of Trotter’s, said in an email. “We have lost a tremendous human being and an incredible chef and restaurateur.”

Hall of Famer Walt Bellamy, an Olympic gold medalist and four-time National Basketball Association All-Star, has died. He was 74.

Bellamy averaged 20.1 points and 13.7 rebounds over the 13 seasons and one game he played in the NBA. He was one of seven players to score more than 20,000 points and tally more than 14,000 rebounds, joining Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elvin Hayes, Robert Parish and Karl Malone.

Bellamy, born in New Bern, North Carolina, was drafted first overall by the Chicago Packers in 1961 after winning Olympic gold in 1960 and being named a second-team All-American at Indiana University. He won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in 1962, All-Star status in his first four seasons, and was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.

Traded to New York in 1965 for Johnny Green, John Egan, Jim Barnes and cash, he later played for Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans, which waived him at the age of 35 after he recorded six points and five rebounds in 14 minutes of the first game of the season.

Manfred Rommel, the longtime mayor of Stuttgart and only son of Germany’s most famous World War II military commander, has died. He was 84.

Rommel was born in 1928 to Lucie-Maria Rommel and Erwin Rommel, who eventually rose to Field Marshall rank and was widely known as the “Desert Fox” for his deft command of Nazi Germany’s troops in North Africa.

Field Marshall Rommel, who was respected by both his own troops and his enemies, committed suicide when Manfred was 15 after being implicated in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

DALLAS — The son of former Grambling State football coach Eddie Robinson has died.

Family members say Eddie Robinson Jr. died Wednesday night at a Dallas hospital after complications from a heart transplant. He was 70.

The younger Robinson played for his father at Grambling, and later worked for him as an assistant coach. He was often referred to as “Coach Jr.”

Dr. George Magovern, a Pittsburgh cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered artificial heart valves, has died. He was 89.

The surgeon’s son, Dr. George Magovern Jr., says his father is recognized for heart surgery techniques in the same way that Jonas Salk is recognized for his work with the polio vaccine and Thomas Starzl with organ transplants. George Magovern Jr. is chief of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at Allegheny Health Network, which includes the hospital where his father did his work.

Clarence “Ace” Parker, the oldest member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has died. He was 101.

Parker was a Portsmouth native who played football, basketball and baseball at Duke University, then starred with the NFL’s Brooklyn Dodgers from 1937-41. He won the league’s most valuable player award in 1940 for his exploits as a quarterback, defensive back and punter.

Parker left football in 1942 to serve in World War II, then returned to football with the Boston Yanks in 1945.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972.

Photographer Editta Sherman, dubbed the “Duchess of Carnegie Hall” while living in a studio over the famed auditorium for six decades, has died. She was 101.

A muse of Andy Warhol, Sherman was known for her portraits of musicians, actors, sports stars, dancers and writers taken in the cavernous, light-flooded space where she partly raised her five children — in one of two towers 19th century industrialist Andrew Carnegie had built above the hall as an affordable artist enclave.

Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Robert Redford studied acting there, Lucille Ball had voice coaching, and Leonard Bernstein wrote music.

Chana Mlotek, a noted archivist of Yiddish folk music and an impassioned collector of Yiddish songs from the shtetls of Europe, has died at age 91.

Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer once called Mlotek and her husband, Joseph, “the Sherlock Holmeses of Yiddish folk songs.”

Gilbert Stuenkel, a veteran journalist with a long career at newspapers in Illinois, Kansas and Missouri, has died. He was 69.

Stuenkel was born in Spring Valley, Ill. He began his journalism career at the Commercial-News in Danville, in 1964, while still in junior college. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington.