AP News, May 14th, 2007
William Becker
KINGMAN, Ariz. (AP) _ William Becker, who co-founded the Motel 6 chain and was a former chairman of the board of the Stockmen's Bank, died April 2. He was 85.
Becker died of a heart attack in a Kingman hospital, said his son, Tod Becker.
Born in Pasadena, Calif., Becker worked in a painting contracting business in Santa Barbara with his father and brother after serving in the Navy in World War II.
In the early 1960s, Becker and fellow Santa Barbara contractor Paul Greene came up with a plan to build motels that offered rooms at bargain rates.
They settled on a $6 room rate per night that would cover building costs, land leases, mortgages, managers' salaries and maid service.
The first Motel 6 opened in 1962 and was a 54-unit complex in Santa Barbara.
Motel 6 now has more than 880 locations in the U.S. and Canada.
Becker and Greene sold the motel in 1968 but continued to work for the company until retiring in 1973.
Becker bought a large cattle ranch east of Kingman in 1970 and moved to the northwestern Arizona town in 1978.
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Stanley Holden
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Stanley Holden, an acclaimed character dancer in Britain's Royal Ballet who went on to teach generations of dancers in Southern California, died Friday. He was 79.
Holden died of complications from heart problems and colon cancer at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, according to his stepdaughter, Mimi Stabile.
The youngest of eight children, Holden was born in the slums of London in 1928. His mother encouraged him to try ballet lessons when he was 13. Three years later he was accepted into the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company, which later became the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden.
At the Royal Ballet, Holden created roles in John Cranko's "Harlequin in April" (1951) and Frederick Ashton's "La Fille Mal Gardee" (1960) and "Enigma Variations" (1968). He retired in 1969 after dancing the travesty role of Widow Simone in "Fille" at the Royal Opera House. He received a 25-minute standing ovation.
Holden moved to Los Angeles in 1970 to become director of the Academy of Dance at the Music Center. He left after a year to establish his own studio, the Stanley Holden Dance Center on Pico Boulevard.
For the last 12 years, Holden had taught at the California Dance Theatre in Agoura Hills, giving classes until seven weeks ago.
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John K. Lattimer
ENGLEWOOD, N.J. (AP) _ John K. Lattimer, a world-renowned urologist who treated celebrities, cultural icons and top-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, died Thursday. He was 92.
Lattimer, who died at a hospice near his home in Englewood, helped establish the discipline of pediatric urology and developed a cure for renal tuberculosis. His daughter announced his death.
For 25 years, he was a professor and chairman of the urology department at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York, where he also received his medical degree.
As an Army doctor in World War II, he treated hundreds of casualties during the Normandy Invasion at a makeshift hospital. He later was stationed in Munich and, during the war crimes trials, he treated top-ranking Nazis officials including Hermann Goering and Albert Speer.
In 1972, the family of President Kennedy chose him to be the first non-governmental medical specialist to review evidence in his assassination.
Lattimer examined 65 X-rays, color photos and black-and-white negatives taken during Kennedy's autopsy, and he later told The New York Times that the images "eliminate any doubt completely" about the validity of the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all the shots that struck the president.
