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Entertainment

Rita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59

Rita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59

Ms. Houston studied urban research at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY but was expelled for setting fire alarms and tipping vending machines. “I made it big,” she said to Mr. Arthur on his podcast. “I was in the wrong place.”

She worked as a waitress before finding a job as a DJ on Westchester Community College radio and then another station in Mount Kisco, NY for $ 7 an hour. She joined ABC Radio as an engineer and worked with sports journalist Howard Cosell and talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael. The pay was far better than her low-wage radio jobs, but she missed being in the air. In 1989 she was again behind a microphone at the WZFM in White Plains.

“Someone said to me,” I want to introduce you to the voice of God, “said Paul Cavalconte, who hired Ms. Houston as WZFM program director.” She was so dedicated and charismatic, which worked on the radio and in personal appearances. “(WZFM is now WXPK.)

When the format of WZFM switched from an adult album alternative to modern rock in 1993, Ms. Houston was told that she would have to adopt an on-air name with an X on it. She became Harley Foxx. In order to achieve more diversity in the format, a year later she sought refuge with the WFUV, of which she had been a fan for some time.

“I just called the station and thought, ‘Hey, can I work here, please?'” She said to Mr. Arthur.

She began hosting the lunchtime show in 1994 and resigned after a few years to become a full-time music director. She returned to the air in 2001 to host “The Whole Wide World”.

In addition to her wife, her sister Debra Baglio and her brothers Richard and Robert survive her. Another brother, William Jr., died in October.

Ms. Houston recorded her last show from home on December 5th with Mr. Cavalconte, also a DJ at WFUV, co-host. It aired three days after her death.

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Business

Pierre Cardin, ground-breaking designer, dies

Pierre Cardin, ground-breaking fashion designer, dies

Designer Pierre Cardin poses during the launch of the new Haute Couture collection by Pierre Cardin Paris at Maxim on November 26, 2013 in Paris.

Richard Bord | Getty Images

Pierre Cardin, who in his more than seven decades in fashion brought geometric shapes to haute couture and named everything from clothing to furniture and perfume to pens, died Tuesday. He was 98 years old.

“It is with great sadness that the members of the Academy of Fine Arts announce the death of their colleague Pierre Cardin,” tweeted the French Academy of Fine Arts.

Cardin died in a hospital in Neuilly, west of Paris, his family told Agence France-Presse.

Cardin switched from the world of bespoke high fashion for private customers to ready-to-wear designs for the masses.

“You said Pret-a-Porter would kill your name and it saved me,” Cardin once said.

Cardin was born on July 2, 1922, the son of a wealthy wine merchant near Venice. When he was two years old, he and his family moved from fascist Italy to France.

Cardin was only 14 years old when he started as an apprentice tailor. At the age of 23 he moved to Paris, studied architecture and worked at the Paquin fashion house and later at Elsa Schiaparelli. In the French capital he met the film director Jean Cocteau and helped design masks and costumes for the 1946 film “La Belle et La Bete”.

He switched to Christian Dior in 1946 and worked as a pattern tailor on the female “New Look” fashion of the post-war period. Four years later he opened his own fashion house and designed costumes for the theater.

In 1953 he presented his first women’s collection and the following year he opened his first women’s boutique, Eve, and unveiled the Bubble dress. The garment, a loose fitting dress that gathers at the waist and hem and balloons on the thighs, has been recognized internationally. Soon his fashion was worn by such bold names as Eva Peron, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Mia Farrow and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Pierre Cardin at the opening of the Musee Pierre Cardin on November 13, 2014 in Paris.

Pascal Le Segretain | Getty Images

In 1957 he traveled to Japan and was one of the first European designers to explore Asian influences. He later pioneered China to break out of its drab, militaristic Mao Zedong look.

Also in 1957, he opened another Parisian boutique, this time for men by the name of Adam, with colorful ties and printed shirts. He later made the iconic collarless suits for the Beatles and helped attract clients like Gregory Peck. Rex Harrison and Mick Jagger.

“Before me, no designer made clothes for men, only tailors,” Cardin said in an interview with Agence France-Presse in 2009. “Today, the image of designers is more focused on men than women, right or wrong. So I was right 40 or 50 years ago. “

In 1959, he shocked the fashion world by presenting a ready-to-wear show at a department store, Printemps in Paris. After the show, he was expelled from the Elite Chambre Syndicale, the French association of haute couture designers. (He was later reinstated.)

The French fashion designer Pierre Cardin opened his own fashion house in 1950.

Reg Lancaster | Getty Images

Over-the-top fashion from out of this world

With the advent of the US-Russia space race in the late 1950s and 1960s, he launched the “Cosmocorps” collection – exaggerated unisex fashions from around the world. His space age look included helmets, google, tunics and over-the-knee boots.

“My favorite piece of clothing is what I invent for a life that doesn’t yet exist, the world of tomorrow,” he said.

Or as he put it in an interview with AFP 2009: “Fashion and design are not the same. Fashion can be worn. Design can be uncomfortable and unpopular, but it’s creative. So design is the real value.”

He pioneered branding in the 1970s, giving his name to virtually everything, including automobiles – Cardin AMX Javelin from American Motors Corp. from 1971 – perfume, pens, cigarettes and even sardines. He has been called a “Branding Visionary” by the New York Times. A 2002 article found that around 800 products bearing his name were sold in more than 140 countries for $ 1 billion in annual sales.

In 1981, he bought one of Paris’ most iconic names, Maxim’s Restaurant, for more than $ 20 million.

“I’ve done everything! I even have my own water! I make perfumes, sardines. Why not? During the war, I would have rather smelled the scent of sardines than perfume. If someone had asked me to make toilet paper, I would do it. Why not? ”he said in a 2002 interview with The Times.

He loved using geometric and strange designs. He developed a fabric, cardine, to emboss abstract shapes on garments. One of his residences was the Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace), a bizarre collection of circular structures – a la “The Flintstones” meets “The Jetsons” – overlooking the Mediterranean Sea near Cannes.

In May 2003, Pierre Cardin celebrated his 80th birthday and 50 years of fashion design in his Palais Bulles.

Alain Benainous | Getty Images

He also owned and restored the castle of the Marquis de Sade in Provence, where he held concerts and opera performances. “Cardin has a perfect angle,” said Architectural Digest in a 2007 story of the restoration of the castle, which was originally built in the 15th century.

Although Cardin was gay, he had a five-year affair with Moreau, “the queen of French new wave cinema”. During the affair, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he had a relationship with longtime artistic director and life partner Andre Oliver. Oliver died in 1993.

Cardin’s fascination with space led him to NASA, where he tried on an Apollo 11 spacesuit in 1971, two years after the first moon landing. In 2019, 50 years after the first moon landing, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a Cardin retrospective. In the catalog he was asked about his vision of fashion half a century in the future:

“In 2069 we will all be walking on the moon or Mars with my ‘Cosmocorps’ ensembles. Women will wear plexiglass bell hats and tube clothing. Men will wear elliptical pants and kinetic tunics.”

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Business

Joseph Bachelder III, Engineer of the Golden Parachute, Dies at 88

Joseph Bachelder III, Engineer of the Golden Parachute, Dies at 88

In 2003, Mr. Bachelder testified before a Senate committee on the subject of overpaid CEOs what Senator John McCain said at the time “angered many Americans.” Mr. Bachelder said he did not believe executive pay has “grown outrageously” and argued that generous pay was justified by the overriding importance of a CEO to a company’s success.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Dec. Dec. 23, 2020 at 8:59 p.m. ET

Mr. Bachelder closed his firm in 2012 and joined the national law firm McCarter & English at their Manhattan office as a special advisor at the age of 79. He continued to represent clients, lectured at Harvard, and write a monthly column for the New York Law Journal. Most recently, he wrote about the impact of Covid-19 on executive compensation.

For his part, perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr Bachelder was able to obtain impressive compensation for himself. Joseph Boccassini, managing partner at McCarter & English, said in an interview that Mr. Bachelder was billed at $ 1,115 an hour.

Joseph Elmer Bachelder III was born on November 13, 1932 in Fulton, Missouri, about 100 miles west of St. Louis. The family moved frequently.

His mother, Frances Gray Bachelder, was a housewife and painter. His father, Joseph E. Bachelder Jr., was a professor and pollster who was the only one in his field to predict Harry S. Truman’s presidential victory in 1948.

His father’s statistical mind was believed to have influenced the mindset of Mr Bachelder, his sister Jane Johnson said in a telephone interview. He had “a computer chip for a brain,” she said.

Joseph graduated from Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1950 and magna cum laude from Yale University in 1955, the same year he married Louise Mason. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1958 and practiced tax law before choosing executive compensation as his niche. He settled in Princeton early in his career and lived there for most of his life.

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Health

H. Jack Geiger, Physician Who Fought Social Ills, Dies at 95

H. Jack Geiger, Doctor Who Fought Social Ills, Dies at 95

Pulling doctors out of the clinic into the political battle “was a really signaling event,” said Dr. Robert Gould, a San Francisco pathologist and president of the Socially Responsible Doctors chapter in the Bay Area.

In a 2012 email related to this obituary, Dr. Geiger said he was partly driven by outrage over injustice.

“I was angry,” he wrote, “when I saw terribly burned children in Iraq after the first Gulf War, interviewed victims of torture in the West Bank, or heard Newt Gingrich tell ghetto children how to be part-time caretakers.” clean toilets (in another country they called it Bantu Education). So anger does not go away, but is replaced by a determination to do something. “

Herman J. Geiger was born in Manhattan on November 11, 1925. (It was unclear what J. stood for, but he was mostly called Jack all his life.) His father Jacob, born in Vienna, was a doctor; His mother Virginia (Loewenstein) Geiger, who came from a central German village, was a microbiologist. Both Jewish parents emigrated to the United States as children. Mr. Geiger grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and her home was often a stopover for relatives who fled the Nazis.

“The last ones to show up were some cousins ​​from my mother’s birthplace, Kirtorf,” said Dr. Geiger in the email. “When they got their visas for the US, the Nazi authorities were furious. The night before she left, the authorities ordered all neighbors to go out at dusk and stone their home with stones. The neighbors all dutifully gathered – and tossed bread instead. “

That story, said Dr. Geiger, taught him not to create stereotypes.

He skipped so many grades in the city’s public schools that he graduated from Townsend Harris High School (then in Manhattan, now in Queens) at age 14. Too young to start college, learned typing and shorthand and went on to work as a copy boy for The New York Times. He also started hanging out in jazz clubs and listening to Billie Holiday, Art Tatum and Fats Waller. His parents were often beside themselves, waiting for him and sometimes even calling the bars to ask if “Jackie” was there.

Jack soon ran away from home and showed up in Harlem’s Sugar Hill area on the doorstep of Canada Lee, a black actor he had seen and met on Broadway after talking backstage, suitcase in hand . Mr. Lee, himself a teenage runaway, let young Jack sleep on the couch after consulting his parents, and although Jack sometimes returned home, he spent most of the next year in Harlem.

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Business

Betty Campbell-Adams, Bronx Evangelist of Carrot Cake, Dies at 65

Betty Campbell-Adams, Bronx Evangelist of Carrot Cake, Dies at 65

Today, Lloyd’s Carrot Cake produces 1,500 cakes a day (including red velvet, German chocolate, and pineapple coconut) and uses 2,500 pounds of carrots and 2,000 pounds of cream cheese for icing every week.

In addition to her son, Mrs. Campbell-Adams has a daughter, Lilka Adams; a sister, Glenda Campbell Roberts; a brother, Erwin; a half-brother, Carl Campbell; and a half-sister, Brenda Campbell Gibbs.

When the pandemic hit New York in the spring and her restaurant customers began to close, Ms. Campbell-Adams became concerned about the fate of the bakery. However, to her astonishment, she became busier than ever.

When Van Cortlandt Park was crowded with New Yorkers out for the open air during the summer, she was always selling cakes. The brand’s Thanksgiving sales were its strongest in years. And as Christmas drew near, Mrs. Campbell-Adams baked nights and weekends in preparation for the holiday frenzy.

On a cold evening that month, she was finishing the bakery when she learned that a bulk cake pickup was delayed. Instead of risking a late delivery, she drove the cakes herself to a pick-up stop in Mount Vernon. Shortly after arriving and entering a parking lot, she felt uncomfortable. Her jeep turned, then stopped abruptly. She was found in the car the next morning.

During a vigil outside the Riverdale Bakery, the mourners lit candles and offered memories the following night. People soon began asking their family about the future of Lloyd’s Carrot Cake.

“My dad always said, ‘You just have to get her to try it,” said Brandon Lloyd Adams. “But my mom got her to try it. Her legacy is the fact that this cake has gotten all over the place World is spreading. Now the torch will be given to my sister and me and it is our time. “

When she passed, my sister and I said to each other, ‘What are we doing tomorrow? Close the door? ‘”, He added. “But then I heard my mother say in the back of my mind, ‘You can’t turn her away. ‘She would say,’ Well we’re closed, but what do you need? ‘

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Entertainment

John Fletcher, a.ok.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56

John Fletcher, a.k.a. Ecstasy of the Group Whodini, Dies at 56

John Fletcher, who, as the ecstasy of the foundational hip-hop group Whodini, drove some of the genre’s early pop hits, wear an extravagant zorroesque hat all the time, died in Atlanta on Wednesday. He was 56 years old.

His daughter Jonnelle Fletcher confirmed the death in a statement. She said the cause was not yet clear.

In the mid-1980s Whodini – originally composed of Mr. Fletcher (whose hip-hop name was sometimes called Ecstacy) and Jalil Hutchins, to whom DJ Grandmaster Dee (née Drew Carter) later joined – released a series of Essentials hits, including “Friends”, “Freaks Come Out at Night” and “One Love”. Whodini presented himself as a street-savvy cultured man with a pop ear, and Mr. Fletcher was the group’s oversized character and the liveliest rapper.

“I can’t sing,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “But one day I heard someone rap and said to myself,” I can do that. “I rap on the pitch. I try to be unique. I have my own style.”

John Beamon Fletcher Jr. was born June 7, 1964 in Brooklyn to John and Mary Fletcher and grew up on the Wyckoff Gardens projects in Boerum Hill. He first worked with Mr. Hutchins, who was from nearby Gowanus, when Mr. Hutchins was trying to record a theme song for the newly influential radio DJ Mr. Magic.

This collaboration received a lot of local attention and Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Hutchins were soon signed by Jive Records, which they named Whodini. They quickly recorded “Magic’s Wand” by Thomas Dolby and “The Haunted House of Rock,” a Halloween song.

“Ecstasy really was one of the first rap stars,” wrote Barry Weiss, the executive director who signed it, on Instagram. “Not just a brilliant voice and word smith, but also a woman and sex symbol for ladies when they were very rare in the early days of rap. Whodini has helped lead a female audience to a traditional male art form. “

Most of the group’s earliest material was recorded in London when Mr. Fletcher was just graduating from high school. The self-titled debut album in 1983 was produced by Conny Plank, who also played the bands Kraftwerk and Neu! Whodini toured Europe as well before achieving real success in the US.

“We didn’t go to university or college, but that was our education just to see the world,” Fletcher said in a 2018 interview with YouTube channel HipHop40.

For his follow-up album “Escape” (1984) Whodini began working with producer Larry Smith, who amplified his sound and gave it a little appealing scratch. (Mr. Smith was also responsible for Run-DMC’s breakout albums.) “Escape” contained the songs that would become Whodini’s landmark hits, particularly “Friends” and “Five Minutes of Funk” (released as the downside on the same 12 inch album) single) and “Freaks Come Out Night”.

A skeptical song about deception, “Friends,” was a blast on its own and had robust afterlife as sample material, particularly in Nas and Lauryn Hill’s “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).”

“Five Minutes of Funk” – which became even more popular as the theme music for the long-running hip-hop video show “Video Music Box” – used a clever countdown motif that was woven through the lyrics. “When creating this song,” Fletcher told HipHop40, “we imagined the projects booming out of the windows as we walked through the song on a summer day.”

As hip-hop gained worldwide attention, Whodini was always at the center of the action. The group was led by aspiring impresario Russell Simmons and appeared on the first Fresh Fest tour, hip-hop’s premier arena package.

But when Run-DMC took hip-hop to more edgy terrain, Whodini stayed committed to smoothness. “We were the rap group that bridged the gap between the bands and the rappers,” Fletcher told HipHop40, adding that he and Mr. Hutchins were aware that hip-hop was still struggling to gain acceptance Obtaining radio programmers wrote songs accordingly: “We wanted to curse, but we couldn’t curse.”

Mr. Fletcher was also a major innovator in introducing melody to rapping. “Ecstasy was the lead vocalist on most of the Whodini songs because anything we could play could rap right in key,” Hutchins said in an interview with hip-hop website The Foundation.

“Escape” went platinum, and Whodini’s next two albums “Back in Black” (1986) and “Open Sesame” (1987) both went gold. On “One Love” (from “Back in Black”), which had streaks of sound that would soon merge as the new Jack Swing, Mr. Fletcher was pensive, almost somber:

The words “love” and “like” both have four letters
But they are two different things overall
Because in my day I liked a lot of women
But just like the wind, they all blew away

Havelock Nelson and Michael A. Gonzales described Whodini in their book “Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture” (1991) as “a beautifully preserved building in the middle of the Brooklyn ghetto sky, where the sympathetic Characters float gently through a turbulent sea of ​​hardcore attitude and crush-groove madness. “

This was not least due to the style of the group. Whodini dressed with flair: leather jackets, sometimes without a shirt; flowing pants or short shorts; Slipper. Most importantly, Mr. Fletcher’s flat leather hats, which became his trademark, inspired by a wool gaucho he saw in a store on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn that he had remade in leather. Soon he had several.

“He had it in red; she had in white; two in black, one with an African headdress, ”Hutchins said in a 2013 interview with Alabama website AL.com. “He had several, but the original was his favorite.”

Whodini was also one of the first hip hop groups to use dancers in their stage shows. A young Jermaine Dupri got one of his earliest breaks as a dancer for the group. He later repaid the favor and signed Whodini to his label So So Def, on which 1996 the last album “Six” was released. Whodini was also a frequent occurrence in the 2000s.

Mr. Fletcher’s survivors include his daughter Jonnelle and his partner Deltonia Cannon; five other children, Johnmon, Monet, Bianca, Sahara and Tiana; three brothers, Joseph, David and Douglas; a sister, Harriet Fletcher; and five grandchildren. Another sister, Mary Eyvette Fletcher, died before him.

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Business

Minoru Makihara, Who Ran Mitsubishi After It Stumbled, Dies at 90

Minoru Makihara, Who Ran Mitsubishi After It Stumbled, Dies at 90

TOKYO – Minoru Makihara, who led Mitsubishi – then the world’s largest company – through the doldrums of Japan’s post-bubble era in the 1990s and helped meet the demands of a globalizing economy, died in Tokyo on December 13th. He was 90 years old.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

Educated in England and the United States, Mr. Makihara brought a new international spirit to what was once Japan’s most powerful corporation and helped it turn it from its set, traditional business practices. And despite his father’s death by the United States Navy, he became a lifelong advocate of US-Japan relations, leading organizations devoted to building relationships between former enemies.

Mr. Makihara was born in London on January 12, 1930, where his father, Satoru Makihara, was a branch manager for Mitsubishi, which was already a major company. His mother, Haruko, was a writer, librarian and kindergarten teacher. He was raised bilingual and developed the ability to switch between cultures that he would use throughout his life.

Increasing tension between Japan and the West drove his family back to their homeland before the war. In 1942, the father of Mr. Makihara, who was a member of a business delegation in the Japanese-occupied Philippines, was killed when the ship he was on was sunk by an American submarine, said Mr. Makihara’s son, Jun.

In 1949, Mr. Makihara went to the United States to study at St. Pauls, a private boarding school in New Hampshire. The scars of war were fresh. Some of the students’ parents were killed by Japanese soldiers. Nevertheless, they greeted him with a warmth that “left a deep impression” and aroused a lifelong love for the country, said his son. In 1950 he began his undergraduate studies at Harvard University; In 1954 he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government.

Two years later, following in his father’s footsteps, he returned to Japan and joined Mitsubishi where he would work for the rest of his life. He reaffirmed his solidarity with the company the next year when he married his childhood friend, Kikuko Iwasaki, the great-granddaughter of Mitsubishi Group founder Yataro Iwasaki.

In 1971, Mr. Makihara opened a Mitsubishi Washington office that expanded his social circle to include elite figures like Katharine Graham, then owner of the Washington Post.

By the end of the decade, he had returned to Japan to head the marine products division that had once been headed by his father.

The company took note of its work. He was promoted to head of Mitsubishi’s international operations in 1987 and was named President and CEO of the company in 1992.

With his overseas education and decades abroad, Mr. Makihara did not fit the profile of a Mitsubishi president. His selection was widely seen as a message to the world that the company was trading its stubborn traditionalism for a more international mindset.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Dec. Dec. 23, 2020 at 8:59 p.m. ET

When Mr. Makihara took over Mitsubishi, it was at the top of the Fortune 500, the largest company among the sprawling Japanese conglomerates known as Keiretsu, doing everything from art to jet engines. However, the size of the company hid major weaknesses. Its culture was sclerotic and its profits were meager.

It was a difficult time for the titans of Japanese industry. The country’s foamy stock market collapsed in 1990, ushering in the so-called “lost decade,” a period of economic paralysis.

Mr. Makihara quickly embarked on a program to realign the company’s businesses westward with an increased focus on returning value to shareholders. “One of our main tasks is to transform ourselves from a Japanese trading company into a global trading company,” he said in a 1996 interview.

But changing a giant wasn’t easy. His son said his colleagues referred to him as “the alien”. Efforts to encourage the company’s employees to speak English at work never began.

Nonetheless, Mr. Makihara was able to introduce major reforms to the company, promote corporate governance updates, and take the then unusual step of writing off portfolio losses on investments negatively impacted by Japan’s reversal of economic wealth. In 1998 he was named chairman of Mitsubishi, a position he held until 2004.

In addition to his work at Mitsubishi, he devoted much time to cultivating Japan-United States’ relations at a time when many Americans viewed Japan’s economic power as a threat to their own dominance of world trade.

From 1997 to 2002 he was Chairman of the US-Japan Business Council. In 2008 he became chairman of the US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange, where he demonstrated the passion for expanding international educational opportunities that he had created while studying abroad. He held this position until 2014.

In addition to his son, Mr. Makihara is survived by his wife, Kikuko Makihara. his daughter Kumiko; and three grandchildren.

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Politics

George Blake, British Spy Who Betrayed the West, Dies at 98

George Blake, British Spy Who Betrayed the West, Dies at 98

He was born as George Behar on November 11, 1922 in Rotterdam. His mother was a Dutch Protestant; His father Albert was a Turkish born Spanish Jew who fought against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. He was wounded, charged with gallantry, and received British citizenship. He settled in the Netherlands as a businessman.

When his father died in 1934, George went to Cairo to live with relatives, including a cousin, Henri Curiel, who became an Egyptian communist leader. He was visiting the Netherlands when World War II broke out in 1939. His mother and two sisters fled to England, but he joined the Dutch resistance, spreading news and collecting information for two years.

He retired to Britain, changed his last name to Blake, joined the Royal Navy, trained in submarines and was hired as a freshman by British intelligence during the war. He spoke fluent Dutch, German, Arabic and Hebrew as well as English, translated German documents and interrogated German prisoners.

After the war, he studied Russian at Cambridge – by then Philby, Burgess and Maclean had completed their espionage trade – and his teacher, who came from pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, inspired him to love the Russian language and culture, a step in his conversion . He was then sent to Germany to build a network of British spies in Berlin and Hamburg. With the envelope of a naval attaché he recruited numerous agents.

Shortly before the start of the Korean War in 1950, Mr Blake was sent to Seoul, South Korea’s capital, under diplomatic cover to organize another espionage network. But he was captured by invading North Korean forces. He was detained in North Korea for three years and subjected to communist indoctrination.

He later denied that this affected his conversion, insisting that the American bombing of North Korea was the main factor. “The relentless bombing of small Korean villages by giant American flying forts,” killing “women, children and the elderly” appalled him, he said. “I was ashamed,” he added. “I felt obliged to the wrong side.”

Mr Blake said he met with a KGB officer in North Korea, agreed to become a Soviet agent, and immediately started disclosing secrets. He did not want payment and, to avoid suspicion, insisted on not being granted privileges and being released with other captured diplomats. When the Korean War ended in 1953, he was returned to Great Britain and received as a national hero.

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Business

Jeannie Morris, Trailblazing Chicago Sportscaster, Dies at 85

Jeannie Morris, Trailblazing Chicago Sportscaster, Dies at 85

The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1960 she married Johnny Morris, a broad recipient for the Chicago Bears whom she had also met on the Santa Barbara campus.

Ms. Morris’ first sports break came after her husband retired from the bears in 1967 and became a local sports caster. When the American newspaper Chicago asked him if he would write a column, he declined, but said his wife was a writer and should be hired.

She got the job, but her byline didn’t reflect her name. Rather, one follows the social norms of the time: “Mrs. Johnny Morris ”wrote a weekly column entitled“ Soccer is a game for women ”that appeared on the women’s pages of the paper before joining the sports division of The American and later of The Chicago Daily News. Eventually her line changed to Jeannie Morris.

As the wife of a bear, she had a lot of material to write about.

“It was because I lived 10 years of a football life that most people haven’t seen,” she told The Athletic in her last interview, just before she died. “There was a subculture. There were good stories in the subculture. “

In 1969 Ms. Morris moved to Mr. Morris at Chicago TV station WMAQ, where she started out as a popular local media couple for a long time. The station marketed her early on as a soft news reporter. An advertisement in The Chicago Tribune in 1970 promoted the “Woman’s View of the Sports World,” through which viewers could meet “The Sports Leaders, Their Families and Friends.”

She would soon prove herself as a field reporter covering and producing news and features related to Chicago sports.

“She was my # 1 reporter,” Morris said in a telephone interview. “I often had to give her tough tasks, but I knew she’d made it.” He added, “She was competitive – as competitive as I am – and we made a good team.”

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Health

Karen Killilea, 80, Dies; Turned Incapacity Into Triumph

Karen Killilea, 80, Dies; Turned Disability Into Triumph

When Karen Killilea was born in 1940, she was three months early and weighed less than two pounds. She spent her first nine months in a newborn intensive care unit.

When she finally returned to the family home in Rye, NY, her parents noticed that her limbs were particularly stiff, she never rolled over in her crib, and she did not reach for toys that dangled in front of her. Babies born this early rarely survived back then. Doctors told Karen’s parents to institutionalize her and get on with their lives.

That was the last thing James and Marie Killilea (pronounced KILL-ill-ee) would do. Far from forgetting Karen, they went to the United States and Canada to seek medical specialists who could help her. They saw more than 20 who all said Karen’s case was hopeless. One told them that in China, a child like Karen would be left behind on a mountain top to die.

They eventually found a doctor in Baltimore who recognized Karen’s intelligence, saw that she was aware of her surroundings, and discovered that she was suffering from cerebral palsy. With relentless dedication, her family spent at least two hours each day for the next 10 years helping Karen move her limbs, and eventually she triumphed over her prognosis.

In her early teen years, she walked on crutches, swam, typed, and went to school.

And she was 80 years old.

She died on October 30th in Port Chester, NY, in Westchester County, north of New York City. Her sister Kristin Viltz said the cause is a respiratory disease that leads to heart failure.

Marie Killilea told the world in two bestselling books about her daughter who was one of the first to detail the challenges of life with severe physical disabilities and who inspired many families in similar circumstances.

The first, “Karen” (1952), showed how she and her family had worked to overcome the odds against them.

Among the glowing reviews for “Karen” that has been translated into several languages ​​was Saturday’s review: “Extraordinary is the word that is used first, last, and repeatedly throughout this book. Anyone who meets Karen on paper will postpone the resignation of humanity. “

The sequel “With Love From Karen” (1963) followed Karen into young adulthood. Marie Killilea also wrote “Wren” (1981), a version of “Karen” for children.

Karen Killilea worked as a receptionist at Trinity Retreat House in Larchmont, New York for four decades. She traveled to Italy twice and both times met semi-privately with Pope Paul VI.

She was determined to show that her disability hadn’t limited her. Her activities included conducting obedience training for dogs. She had a particular preference for Newfoundland dogs, who were much taller than Karen, who was barely three feet tall and weighed only 65 pounds.

“She was the most independent person you can imagine,” said Ms. Viltz, her sister, in a telephone interview.

She never considered herself “disabled,” her sister said, calling herself “persistently harassed” instead.

Karen Ann Killilea was born in Rye on August 18, 1940. Her father was an executive with the New York Telephone Company; Her mother was a housewife.

Karen attended the Notary Lady of Good Council Elementary School in the nearby White Plains. With the support of her older sister Marie, who was a few grades ahead of her at the same school, Karen received good grades and graduated from eighth grade in 1959. She attended the academy’s high school in the middle of the tenth grade, but stopped after Marie went to college.

“Karen was a legend,” said Sister Laura Donovan, a former high school headmistress who studied there for several years after Karen.

“From what I heard, this young woman had great courage and determination,” said Sister Laura in a telephone interview. “She came to a non-disabled school and I never heard anyone say that she ever wanted special treatment.”

When Karen’s parents in Albany began advocating for the rights of the disabled, they met many other parents of children with disabilities who were desperate for information and wanted to share their own experiences. This led to the formation of what is now cerebral palsy in Westchester. Marie Killilea, along with other parents and volunteers, later founded what became known as the United Cerebral Palsy Association.

When her parents died (her mother in 1991, her father in 1994), Ms. Killilea was living independently, first in a rented apartment in New Rochelle and then in an apartment she bought in Larchmont.

Her survivors include her sisters Kristin Viltz and Marie Killilea Irish, as well as a brother, Rory Killilea.

After the books appeared, Karen and Marie Killilea were inundated with mail from around the world and answered at least 15,000 letters. Some were simply addressed to Karen, USA and still arrived.

Many wrote to thank the family for telling their story and to say that it had inspired them to become nurses or physical therapists or occupational therapists. Some readers even appeared on the family porch, eager to meet this “child prodigy,” as their mother called them, and to share their own situations.

In later years readers took part in online discussions about them. Many who noticed that the book Karen was about Karen and not about her longed to hear their own account in their own voice.

But she really valued her privacy and never gave interviews or wrote her own book. She declined almost all invitations to speak, including one from her old school to address the students, Sister Laura said.

Still, her voice appeared to some extent in her mother’s second book. After Karen experienced the freedom that came with using a wheelchair and decided that she would prefer to hobble around on crutches, which she found painful, her mother quoted her as saying:

“I won’t be a dull, slow little sparrow jumping around with my head bowed. I’ll be free, really free I will be an eagle with its face turned towards the sun. “