Edward Kennedy, US Politician, Dead at 77...

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
(February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)



Edward Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy served nine terms in the Senate. He was one of the most influential and longest-serving senators in US history - a liberal standard-bearer who was also known as a consummate congressional dealmaker - the Irish-American senator had been battling brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy was born in Boston and raised in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and England. He graduated from Harvard in 1956 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1959. His 1958 marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett produced three children and ended in divorce in 1982.

He was a manager in his brother John's successful 1960 campaign for president, then worked as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy entered the Senate in a 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by John. Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.

Kennedy once ran for the Presidential office, in the 1980 election, but it ended in a primary campaign loss to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Due to his long history and influence in the legislature, he became known as "The Lion of the Senate". More than 300 bills that Kennedy wrote have been enacted into law, and he was known for his ability to work with Republicans and to find compromises among Senate members with disparate views.

Kennedy's personal life was often subject to criticism, but his 1992 marriage to Victoria Anne Reggie stabilized his life.

Kennedy died of brain cancer on Tuesday, August 25, 2009, at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife Victoria, his sister Jean Kennedy Smith, and his three children.

RIP

___

Don Hewitt, Television news pioneer, Dead at 86...

Donald Shepard Hewitt
(December 14, 1922 – August 19, 2009)




Don Hewitt was an American television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine in 1968, currently the longest-running prime time broadcast on American television.

Born in 1922 in New York, Hewitt started his career in newspapers. "His picture experience prompted a friend in 1948 to tell him about television, where CBS News had a job opening," according to a CBS statement. He told reporters years later his response was: "Whatavision?"

He directed the first television network newscast on May 3, 1948, featuring Douglas Edwards, the network said. In 1960, he was named executive producer of "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite," a position he held for five years. In 1963, the Cronkite broadcast became the first to go to a half-hour format.

Hewitt's innovations included the use of cue cards for news readers -- an early version of the electronic teleprompter that is used today, CBS said. In addition, he was the first to use "supers" -- captions and other written information superimposed on the lower third of the television screen. And he was the first to use the film "double" -- cutting back and forth between projectors.

Hewitt also produced and directed coverage for the three main television networks for the first-ever televised presidential debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

Hewitt stepped aside as executive producer of 60 Minutes in 2004 at 81. He is an eight-time Emmy Award winner. Hewitt is the author of Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television, in which he chronicles his life as a newsman. He is also the author of the book Minute by Minute, a look at the history of 60 Minutes. On April 3, 2008, Hewitt was honored with Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism.

Hewitt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2009. He died at his home in Bridgehampton, New York, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Marilyn Berger, and four children.

RIP

___

Les Paul, Electric Guitar Pioneer, Dead at 94...

Lester William Polsfuss
(June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009)


Les Paul was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.

His innovative talents extended into his unique playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many of the guitarists of the present day.

He was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin to George and Evelyn Polsfuss. The family name was first simplified by his mother to Polfuss before he took his stage name of Les Paul.

Paul first became interested in music at the age of eight, when he began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning to play the banjo, he began to play the guitar. By 13, Paul was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist. At the age of 17, Paul played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and soon after he dropped out of high school to join Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri. In the 1930s, Paul worked in Chicago in radio, where he performed jazz music.

Paul was dissatisfied with the acoustic guitars that were sold in the mid 1930s and began experimenting with a few designs for an electric model on his own. Famously, he created "The Log," which was one of the first solid-body electric guitars (1939).

In 1948, Paul was injured in a near-fatal automobile accident, which shattered his right arm and elbow. Doctors set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar.

In 1949, Les Paul married the singer Iris Colleen Summers, who later changed her name to Mary Ford at his suggestion. Capitalising on his innovative sound-on-sound technique, he multi-tracked his wife's vocals and his instrumental backing. The couple had a string of hits in the first half of the 1950s. In their radio and television appearances, Les Paul used what he called the Les Paulveriser, a backstage electronics system controlled from a black box attached to his guitar.

It was at this time that the Gibson Les Paul guitar – a manufactured guitar based on Paul's solid-body concept of the late 1930s – burst on to the market. The Gibson Les Paul was deliberately conceived as a high-end instrument. The contract between Les Paul and Gibson, endured until the early 1960s, when he fell out with the company over design changes. He continued to play, with his wife, and by 1962, when they divorced, they had cut 36 gold discs together.

Subsequently Les Paul increasingly exchanged his life as a professional musician for one as a professional inventor. During the 1970s he recorded two albums with the influential country guitarist Chet Atkins. One of the results, Chester and Lester (1976), won them a Grammy for best country instrumental performance.

In recent years, Les Paul (in his nineties) continued to play a regular Monday night session at a jazz club in New York, where rock stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page sometimes came to listen to him.

Paul, whose ex-wife died in 1977, had three sons and an adopted daughter. Paul was the godfather of rock guitarist Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band, to whom Paul gave his first guitar lesson. In 1978, Paul and ex-wife Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1988, Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck. Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005 for his development of the solid-body electric guitar. In 2006, Paul was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Les Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, NY. His family and friends were by his side. His attorney Michael Braunstein said that Paul had been "in and out of the hospital" because of illness.

RIP

___

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olymics Founder, Dead at 88....

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver
(July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009)




Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a member of the Kennedy family (one of the most prominent American political families of the 20th century).

Mrs Shriver founded the Special Olympics in the 1960s as a national organization. She helped demonstrate that the mentally disabled can triumph on the field of competition and lead rich and productive lives outside the walls of institutions.

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald). Her eight siblings include President Kennedy, former New York Senator Bobby Kennedy and serving Senator Edward Kennedy, who is currently battling brain cancer.

She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, graduating in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology; after which she went to work for the United States Department of State in the Special War Problems division.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the then-named Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and the following year she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to work with the House of the Good Shepherd and the Chicago Juvenile Court.

On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in 1972 (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President).

Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election. In 1968, she helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement.

Her daughter, Maria Shriver, is married to actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Shriver was a Democrat, she was a vocal supporter of the pro-life movement.

Shriver, who was believed to have suffered from Addison's disease, had several health setbacks in recent years, and on November 18, 2007, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; she spent several weeks there.

Shriver died at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Aug. 11th). The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed.

Her husband, her five children and her 19 grandchildren were all with her when she died.

RIP

___

John Hughes, Film Director, Dead at 59...

John Hughes, Jr.
(February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009)




John Hughes was an American film director, producer and writer. He made some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon's Vacation; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Hughes, born in Lansing, Michigan, began his career as an ad copywriter in Chicago. During this time, he created what became the famous Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign.

His first attempt at comedy writing was selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers.

His first directorial effort, Sixteen Candles, won almost unanimous praise when it was released in 1984, due in no small part to its more realistic depiction of middle-class high school life. Hughes was responsible for a slew of films in the 1980s that defined what it meant to be an American teenager, from the music to the fashion to the social faux pas. Though he graduated to more adult fare with films like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and had his biggest hits with explicitly family-oriented material like “Home Alone".

In recent years, Hughes had stepped back from the movie business to spend more time with his family, as well as maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts.

Hughes died suddenly of a heart attack, while walking in Manhattan, New York City, where he was visiting his family.

Hughes is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy; two sons and four grandchildren.

RIP

___

Naomi Sims, Supermodel, Dead at 61...

Naomi Ruth Sims
(March 30, 1948 - August 1, 2009)



Naomi Ruth Sims was an African American model, businesswoman and author.

Sims, the first black supermodel, broke barriers when she made the cover of Ladies Home Journal in 1968 — becoming the first black model to do so on a mainstream women’s magazine.

It was a defining achievement for the “Black is Beautiful” movement at the time – and Sims went on to appear on the covers of Life, Cosmopolitan and Essence.

Sims was born in Oxford, Miss., in 1948. Her parents divorced soon after she was born and her mother moved Sims and her two sisters to Pittsburgh. She left Pittsburgh for New York at age 18 to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and hit the pavement to jump-start her own modeling career. When she began approaching modeling agencies, she was turned down — with some telling her that her skin was too dark. Instead of giving up, she pushed forward and approached photographers directly.

The approach landed her the cover of the Times' August 1967 fashion supplement. She used that photo to market herself directly to advertising agencies. Before long, she was modeling for top designers.

Sims gave up modeling after five years and launched her own wig-making business geared toward black women. She eventually expanded the multimillion-dollar business to include beauty salons and cosmetics, and she wrote "All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman" and other books.

Today, two photographs of Sims hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Model as Muse” exhibition.

She died of breast cancer on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey. She is survived by her son, Bob Findlay, a granddaughter, and her elder sister, Betty Sims.

RIP

___