Obituaries in the News
CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) _ Gary Adams, the golf club innovator widely known as ``the father of the metal wood,″ died Sunday of cancer. He was 56.
Adams founded the Taylor Made Golf Co., in 1979, and used his pioneering metal woods to lead the company to prominence. He also started the Founders Club Golf Co. and McHenry Metals, named for his hometown of McHenry, Ill.
The PGA of America honored Adams for his lifelong impact on the golf industry with the 1995 Ernie Sabayrac Award. In 1984, he was elected to the Illinois PGA Hall of Fame and honored as ``Man of the Year″ by the National Golf Foundation.
Malcolm Denise
GROSSE POINTE, Mich. (AP) _ Malcolm L. Denise, who helped pioneer labor relations at Ford Motor Co. in its contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers, died Thursday. He was 86.
Denise, who joined Ford’s legal staff in 1946, was named vice president of labor relations in 1959. In 1974, Denise became vice president of labor policy planning before retiring a year later and joining another Detroit law firm.
He served on various civic and government boards.
Ed Doherty
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) _ Ed Doherty, the only man to serve as head football coach at both the University of Arizona and Arizona State, died Sunday. He was 81.
Doherty also served as the head coach at Xavier from 1959 to 1961, posting a record of 15-15. Xavier discontinued football as an intercollegiate sport after the 1973 season.
As ASU’s head coach from 1947-50, Doherty led the Sun Devils to a 25-17 record. He took them to the Salad Bowl in 1949 and 1950. His two-year stint at Arizona wasn’t as successful. He was a 4-15-1 from 1957-58.
Jacob Ghermezian
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) _ Jacob Ghermezian, who built a family business that owns the world’s largest retail and entertainment mall, died Monday. He was 97.
The Triple Five Corp., started by Ghermezian at age 17, owns the West Edmonton Mall, the world’s largest at about 5.3 million square feet and includes an amusement park, a water park, a full-sized indoor skating rink and a deep sea adventure area that houses dolphins.
Triple Five also holds a 22.5 percent stake in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., the largest mall in the United States.
Edward Joseph Kirk
ORADELL, N.J. (AP) _ Edward Joseph Kirk, an Irish immigrant who became an innovator and activist in the U.S. tire industry, died Saturday of brain cancer. He was 68.
Kirk invented and patented a new process for white-walling tires in the 1960s. He eventually parlayed that success into ownership of the Northern Tire Company of New York.
Joseph John Maloney
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) _ Joseph John ``J.J.″ Maloney, a convicted murderer-turned-journalist who worked on a series of prison stories for The Kansas City Star and other assignments, died Friday. He was 59.
The cause of death was being investigated by the Medical Examiner’s office.
In 1959, after several run-ins with law enforcement, Maloney was charged with armed robbery and the murder of a 74-year-old man who was beaten with a pistol during a botched break-in. He was convicted in 1960, and at 19, sentenced to four life terms in prison.
In September 1961, when he was in solitary confinement, Maloney started to write poetry and sent some of his work to Thorpe Menn, then the book editor of The Star. The two began to correspond.
Maloney began writing book reviews and poetry for The Star in 1967. Largely through the intercession of Menn, The Star hired Maloney as a consultant on a prison series when he was paroled in 1972.
The series won an American Bar Association Silver Gavel and Kansas Bar/Media Award.
Maloney left The Star in 1978. In 1980, he joined The Orange County Register.
Most recently, Maloney he was the editor of crimemagazine.com, a Web site that featured crime story essays.
Dick Pabich
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Dick Pabich, the political consultant who helped elect San Francisco’s first openly homosexual supervisor, died Saturday of AIDS-related complications. He was 44.
Pabich worked and campaigned for Harvey Milk and served as one of his aides. He later ran successful campaigns for Harry Britt, who was named to succeed Milk when Milk was assassinated in 1978.
Pabich is also credited with helping the political careers of Assemblywoman Carole Migden and Sen. Barbara Boxer.
He also served as Mayor Willie Brown’s adviser on AIDS issues.
Thomas H. Perkins III
BROOKHAVEN, Miss. (AP) _ Thomas H. Perkins III, the first American to serve as president of the prestigious International Camellia Society, died Saturday. He was 77.
Perkins was a world traveler, searching not only for special deals in furniture for his customers but also for rare and exotic camellia plants, which he brought back to his greenhouses and gardens at his home.
Perkins served as president of the international organization for eight years. He was a past president of the American Camellia Society.
Carl Rachlin
NEW YORK (AP) _ Carl Rachlin, a labor and civil rights lawyer who defended Freedom Riders and sit-in demonstrators in the 1960s, died Saturday. He was 82.
Rachlin was general counsel to the Congress of Racial Equality during the fight against segregation. He worked closely with civil rights leaders, among them James Farmer and Bayard Rustin. He also sat on the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In 1964, Rachlin helped form and lead the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, which enlisted attorneys to defend civil rights campaigners in the South.
Rachlin fought civil rights cases to the U.S. Supreme Court. He filed a review that prompted the June 1961 overturn of the convictions of six Freedom Riders who had entered a whites-only waiting room in a Louisiana bus terminal.
He was the leading lawyer in a 1964 action that led the court to throw out the convictions of thousands of young people who struggled to desegregate public accommodations in the South.
In 1969, Rachlin, also a voice for welfare recipients, challenged a state’s right to reduce benefits without a clear constitutional mandate.
Renny Saltzman
NEW YORK (AP) _ Renny Saltzman, an interior designer and modern architecture patron, died Sunday of complications associated with leukemia. He was 69.
Saltzman established a design firm in 1956 and quickly became known for a refined eclecticism. Among his clients were Revlon founder Charles Revson, for whom he designed an apartment and a yacht, and publisher Richard Snyder of Simon & Schuster.
In 1960, Saltzman married Ellin Jane Sadowsky, then a Glamour magazine editor.
In 1968, he gave architect Richard Meier one of his first house commissions.
Robert Waldron
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (AP) _ Robert Waldron, former editor of The Columbus Dispatch Sunday Magazine, died Sunday. He was 87.
Waldron began writing for the magazine a year after he joined the newspaper as a state reporter and photographer in 1957. He retired as its editor in 1977.
He also worked 10 years as a reporter and photographer of The Lima News. During World War II, he was a public information officer and co-editor of The Yankee Boomer, an Army publication.
He is survived by one daughter, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Otto Wallingford
AUBURN, Maine (AP) _ Otto Wallingford, the businessman and inventor who co-founded the Lost Valley Ski Area and developed a machine that revolutionized snow grooming for skiers, died Sunday. He was 76.
Wallingford invented a powder maker that transformed the slopes by converting rock-hard snow crusts into groomed powder. The machine improved conditions at ski areas worldwide and brought him honors from the industry.
Wallingford invented the machine in 1971, a decade after he and a friend founded Lost Valley in Auburn.
Wallingford patented his grooming machine in the United States and five European countries. He founded Valley Engineering to make and sell the equipment, then sold the company in 1975.
Jeshajahu Weinberg
JERUSALEM (AP) _ Jeshajahu Weinberg, a founding director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington who used his dramatic talents to tell the story of European Jewry, died Saturday. He was 81.
Weinberg’s creative vision is credited with giving visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum a glimpse of the reality in Nazi camps and Jewish ghettos in Europe during World War II. On display are more than 30,000 artifacts, including a railroad car used to transport Jews to camps.
Weinberg was a founding director of the Tel Aviv museum and came out of retirement in the early 1990s to help establish the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which opened six years ago and has had 12 million visitors.
His innovative work in the Tel Aviv and Washington museums helped earn him the 1999 Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, the most prestigious award the Jewish State bestows on its citizens.