AP News, March 21st, 2007
John Backus
John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, died Saturday. He was 82.
Backus died in Ashland, Ore., according to IBM Corp., where he spent his career.
Prior to Fortran, computers had to be meticulously "hand-coded" _ programmed in the raw strings of digits that triggered actions inside the machine. Fortran was a "high-level" language because it abstracted that work _ it let programmers enter commands in a more intuitive system, which the computer would translate into machine code on its own.
The Association for Computing Machinery gave Backus its 1977 Turing Award, one of the industry's highest accolades. Backus also won a National Medal of Science in 1975 and got the 1993 Charles Stark Draper Prize, the top honor from the National Academy of Engineering.
Backus' early work at IBM included computing lunar positions on the balky, bulky computers that were state of the art in the 1950s. But he tired of hand-coding the hardware, and in 1954 he got his bosses to let him assemble a team that could design an easier system.
The result, Fortran, short for Formula Translation, reduced the number of programming statements necessary to operate a machine by a factor of 20.
Known as a maverick who preferred jeans to IBM's buttoned-up, conservative style, Backus stayed with the company until his retirement in 1991.
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Michael Coers
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) _ Michael Coers, who helped his newspapers win a Pulitzer Prize with his photograph of a black student and a white student as Louisville schools desegregated in 1975, died Sunday of natural causes. He was 62.
Coers was found dead in his Louisville home, said his former wife, June Clausen Coers, who had been there to visit.
Coers' photograph was taken at what had been an all-white elementary school until the first day of court-ordered busing. The photograph showed the two students shaking hands in a classroom that was empty except for the boys.
It was among the photographs that earned The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times photo department the Pulitzer the following year.
Coers covered four mine disasters, tornadoes in 1974, and a sewer explosion in 1981 for the newspapers. He left in 1989 after 23 years because of complications from Lyme disease.
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Vilma Ebsen
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) _ Vilma Ebsen, who danced in the film "Broadway Melody of 1936" with her brother Buddy before he became famous on "The Beverly Hillbillies," died March 12. She was 96.
Vilma Ebsen, a dance instructor and co-owner of the old Ebsen School of Dancing in Pacific Palisades, died at the Thousand Oaks Health Care Center, her son Robert Dolan said.
As she grew up, she taught at her father's Orlando, Fla., dance school, then joined her brother in New York for the Broadway run of the musical "Whoopee."
They teamed up and Vilma and Buddy Ebsen were featured in the vaudeville revue "Broadway Stars of the Future." The song and dance team also appeared in the Broadway musical revue "Flying Colors" and were featured in the 1934 edition of "Ziegfeld Follies."
They came to Hollywood the following year to appear in the 1935 MGM movie musical "Broadway Melody of 1936," in which the Ebsens introduced "Sing Before Breakfast" on a brownstone rooftop with Eleanor Powell. It was her only movie appearance.
In 1948, she married tennis player Stanley Briggs and the couple had a a son, Michael.
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Thomas W. Hall
DENVER (AP) _ Thomas W. Hall, a former Qwest Communications executive and the first person sentenced in the telecommunications company's accounting scandal, died Monday of brain cancer, his family and attorney said. He was 55.
Hall died in Chicago, where he and his wife had moved after leaving a Denver suburb, attorney Jeffrey Springer said.
Hall's death came on the day prosecutors in Denver began their insider trading case against former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio. The allegations against Hall and Nacchio were not directly related, but regulators accuse Qwest of massive accounting fraud. Prosecutors brought criminal charges against seven former managers, including Hall.
Hall pleaded guilty in 2004 to a misdemeanor charge of falsifying documents stemming from allegations that he and three other former Qwest managers improperly booked nearly $34 million from a deal to connect Arizona schools to the Internet.
Springer said Hall pleaded guilty to end a long criminal case that had left him broke.
Hall had been a senior vice president in Qwest's global business unit. He and three other former executives were were originally charged with 12 felony counts. In an April 2004 trial, the jury deadlocked on the charges against Hall and one other defendant and acquitted the other two.
Hall was re-indicted on four counts; he agreed to plead guilty to the single misdemeanor count before his retrial.
Hall testified that he had trusted Qwest's finance, accounting and legal staff to execute the Arizona transaction properly. He said he broke no laws but took responsibility for failing to keep himself and a subordinate from becoming involved.
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Luther Ingram
ST. LOUIS (AP) _ Luther Ingram, the R&B singer and songwriter best known for the hit "If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want to Be Right)," died Monday. He was 69.
Ingram died at a Belleville, Ill., hospital of heart failure, friend and journalist Bernie Hayes said. He had suffered for years from diabetes, kidney disease and partial blindness, his wife, Jacqui Ingram, said.
Ingram performed with Ike Turner at clubs in East St. Louis, roomed with Jimi Hendrix in New York and was the opening act for Isaac Hayes. He recorded through the 1980s and performed in concert until the mid-1990s, when his health began declining.
Ingram was born Nov. 30, 1937, in Jackson, Tenn. He started writing music and singing as a boy in a group with his siblings after his family moved to Alton, Ill., in 1947.
He had a five-year association with Memphis, Tenn.-based Stax Records during the height of its success. In 1971, Ingram and songwriter-performer Sir Mack Rice co-wrote "Respect Yourself" for the Staple Singers, which turned into Stax's biggest hit.
Ingram recorded "If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want to Be Right)," in 1972 on Koko Records, which Stax distributed. The song was No. 1 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart and was later a hit for Barbara Mandrell.
His other popular songs include "Ain't That Loving You (For More Reasons Than One)," "I'll Be Your Shelter" and "You Never Miss Your Water."
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Ovidiu Maitec
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ Ovidiu Maitec, one of Romania's top contemporary sculptors, who was considered the successor to legendary sculptor Constantin Brancusi, died Sunday. He was 81.
Maitec died in a hospital in Paris, where he was being treated for an unspecified illness, the Romanian Academy said.
The sculptor was one of a few Romanian artists to be able to travel abroad during the communist era, and he exhibited in the Venice Biennale contemporary art shows several times, the International Festival of Edinburgh and in Bilbao, Spain.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Maitec _ considered one of the most original contemporary sculptors _ exhibited in the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. His works in metal and wood are displayed in such places as the Tate gallery in London, in Paris, and the German cities of Cologne and Mannheim, said Beatrice Weber, a family friend.
His sculptures included series of gates, wings, birds and columns. The late Romanian-born writer and religious historian Mircea Eliade described him as "the real successor to Brancusi," Romania's best-known artist, Weber said in a statement.
He was one of a group of Romanian intellectuals who took part in a movement centered around transcendental meditation which led to him being expelled from the Communist Party.
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G.E. Patterson
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) _ G.E. Patterson, the presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ and a minister for almost 50 years, died of heart failure Tuesday, the church announced. He was 67.
The predominantly black Protestant denomination, headquartered in Memphis, claims 6 million members worldwide and traces its origins to the 1870s.
Patterson died at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, the church said. He was hospitalized in January for an undisclosed illness and told his followers in 2005 that he had prostate cancer.
At the church's annual Holy Convocation in November, he said he had considered stepping down as leader of the denomination but changed his mind after an outpouring of support.
In January, he won the traditional male vocalist of the year honor for his "Singing the Old Time Way Volume 2" at the 22nd annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards.
He was born in Humboldt, Tenn., and was ordained as a church elder in 1957 in Detroit.
Patterson attended Lemoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Detroit Bible Institute and held an honorary doctorate from Oral Roberts University. He was the editor and publisher of the Bountiful Blessings Magazine, with a distribution list of more than 100,000 individuals.
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Jack Samson
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) _ Jack Samson, a longtime editor of Field & Stream magazine, died Sunday at his home in Santa Fe. He was 84.
Samson would have turned 85 on Monday, said a friend and fishing buddy, Jeff Bowen.
Samson, born in Providence, R.I., first went to Santa Fe at age 8 to recover from asthma and grew up there in the 1930s, Bowen said.
He served in World War II as an Army Air Corps navigator aboard a B-24 bomber over China.
After the war, he attended the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill and graduated in 1949 with a degree in journalism.
He covered the Korean War for United Press International, and later joined The Associated Press in Albuquerque. He was awarded a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University in 1960.
After a stint as a freelance writer, Samson joined Field & Stream in New York City in 1970 as managing editor. He became editor in chief in 1972 and traveled throughout the world for the magazine.
He retired in 1985 and returned to Santa Fe.
Samson received UNM's James F. Zimmerman award in 1999 in recognition of his outstanding career as a journalist, author and editor. In 2001, he received The Excellence in Craft award from the Outdoor Writers Association of America.
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Saul Swimmer
MIAMI (AP) _ Saul Swimmer, who directed the documentary "The Concert for Bangladesh," immortalizing the 1971 show organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar to raise money for refugees, died March 3. He was 70.
Swimmer died in Miami of heart failure and had also had kidney trouble, his sister Esther Itzkovitz said.
"The Concert for Bangladesh," the 1972 film of the gathering at New York's Madison Square Garden, was one of his proudest achievements, his business partner and friend Mario Custodio said.
It featured Harrison and Ringo Starr a year after the Beatles broke up. Shankar, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan also played in one of the first major rock concert benefits. The movie raised money for UNICEF relief efforts for refugees of the floods, famine and civil war in Bangladesh.
He also was a co-producer on the 1970 Beatles movie "Let It Be."
Swimmer was born in Uniontown, Pa. He began directing movies in his 20s, earning some fame for the 30-minute film "The Boy Who Owned a Melephant."
Among his other projects were "Around the World of Mike Todd" (1968) with Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles; "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" (1968) featuring the 1960s pop group Herman's Hermits; and the rock documentary "Queen: We Will Rock You" (1982). His last project was "Bob Marley & Friends" (2005).
