AP News, May 16th, 2007
Jerry Falwell
LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) _ The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the evangelist who used the power of television to transform the religious right into a mighty force in American politics, has died. He was 73.
The founder of the Moral Majority was discovered without a pulse Tuesday morning at Liberty University and pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later. Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said he had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart rhythm abnormality.
Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. The rise of Christian conservatism _ and the Moral Majority's full-throated condemnation of homosexuality, abortion and pornography _ made Falwell perhaps the most recognizable figure on the evangelical right.
The preacher started a fundamentalist church in an abandoned bottling plant in Lynchburg in 1956 with just 35 members. He built it into a religious empire that included the 24,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on TV stations around the country and the 9,600-student Liberty University.
Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.
Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University.
After the 2004 presidential election, he formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and more conservative elected officials.
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Yolanda Denise King
ATLANTA (AP) _ Yolanda Denise King, the eldest child of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died. She was 51.
King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. He said the family did not know the cause of death but that relatives think it might have been a heart problem.
Born in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala., King was just an infant when her home was bombed during the turbulent civil rights era.
As an actress, she appeared in numerous films and played Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries "King." She appeared in "Ghosts of Mississippi," and founded a production company called Higher Ground Productions.
She was also an author and advocate for peace and nonviolence.
Her death comes more than a year after the death of her mother, Coretta Scott King.
Yolanda King is survived by her sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King; two brothers, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King; and an extended family.
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Charles Lazarus
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Charles Lazarus, the last member of his family to lead the Lazarus chain of department stores, has died. He was 93.
He died Monday after a brief illness at home in suburban Gahanna, his son Stuart Lazarus said.
The chain, founded in 1851 by Lazarus' great-grandfather as a one-room men's clothing store in Columbus, eventually grew to more than 40 stores in five states in the Midwest. The family's influence in the stores declined when Federated Department Stores Inc. moved Lazarus' headquarters to Cincinnati in 1986.
Lazarus started working as a sales clerk in his family's Columbus store in 1936 after he graduated from Yale University with bachelor's degrees in American history and art history. He became president of the department store chain in 1959 and added the titles of chairman and chief executive officer 10 years later.
He was named a board member at Federated, Lazarus' corporate parent, in 1973. When he retired in 1981, his family's business had 16 stores in Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia.
In 2005, Federated renamed Lazarus stores as Macy's.
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Bob Oke
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) _ Former state Sen. Bob Oke, a Republican known for battling the tobacco industry and promoting a new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, has died. He was 66.
Oke, a 16-year veteran of the Senate, died Monday night at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Seattle after a three-year battle with multiple myeloma, a rare form of cancer that targets plasma cells and weakens the bones, the Senate Republican caucus said.
His death occurred weeks before the scheduled July opening of the new bridge linking Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula he represented. Oke championed the bridge even though the $800 million toll project nearly cost him re-election.
Oke was a favorite with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle before retiring in January. He had been open about his struggles with the disease.
He underwent stem-cell transplants twice, as well as chemotherapy and radiation therapy that kept the disease at bay for part of his final four-year term. He missed part of the 2005 session.
Oke was born in Spokane. He served in the Navy for 26 years, retiring as a senior chief petty officer. He was elected to the Senate in 1990 and re-elected three times.
Oke was best known for his staunch support for the new Narrows bridge and for his efforts to combat youth smoking.
His proudest accomplishment was pushing through a ban on free tobacco samples, a bill that was later overturned by a federal judge.
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Jean Saubert
BIGFORK, Mont. (AP) _ Jean Saubert, who won two skiing medals for the United States at the 1964 Olympics, has died. She was 65.
She died Monday of breast cancer, Johnson Mortuary of Kalispell said.
Saubert, who was born in Roseburg, Ore., was a member of the U.S. Ski Team from 1962 through 1966. She shared a silver medal in the giant slalom and won a bronze in the slalom at the Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. She was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1976.
After her ski career, she taught school in Vail, Colo., and Salt Lake City before earning a master's degree at Brigham Young and teaching physical education there for three years. She also taught in Hillsboro, Ore.
She retired in 2000 and that year attended the Sydney Olympics. She moved back to Salt Lake City to volunteer for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
She then moved to Bigfork, where she volunteered at elementary schools, participated at a local church and served as president of the ladies' golf association at Eagle Bend golf course.
