AP News, June 12th, 2007
Gilbert Gude
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Gilbert Gude, a former Maryland Republican congressman and state lawmaker who championed environmental causes that included preserving the Potomac River, has died. He was 84.
Gude died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Sibley Memorial Hospital, said Bill Grigg, who was an aide during Gude's 1967-1977 tenure as representative for Maryland's 8th Congressional District, which borders Washington.
Gude was the lead sponsor of a House bill that led to national park status for the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, a waterway that parallels the northern shore of the Potomac for 185 miles. Built in the 19th century to bring coal and other goods from western Maryland to Washington, the scenic canal had been designated as the route for a freeway.
In 1953, Gude was appointed to a two-year term in the Maryland House of Delegates, and later won an election for four more years. He served in the state Senate from 1962 to 1967, working on parkland and waterway issues.
After leaving Congress, Gude spent 10 years as director of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress. He later taught courses at Georgetown University and published two books on the history of the Potomac.
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Vern Hoscheit
NEW YORK (AP) _ Vern Hoscheit, a coach on four World Series championship teams with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Mets, died Monday in Pierce, Neb. He was 85.
Hoscheit, the Mets' bullpen coach from 1984-87, died at the Pierce Manor nursing home following a long illness, team spokesman Jay Horwitz said.
Hoscheit was a catcher in the New York Yankees' farm system for 12 seasons starting in 1941. He was a general manager for Quincy (1955-56), Peoria (1957), Greensboro (1958-59), then became president of the Three-I League in 1960.
Hoscheit joined the Baltimore Orioles and was a scout and minor league coordinator (1962-67) and coach (1968). He switched to the Oakland Athletics and was a coach from 1969-74, earning World Series rings in his final three seasons.
He coached for the California Angels (1976) and was the Mets' Gulf Coast League manager in 1983. With the parent team, he served as bullpen coach when New York won the World Series in 1986.
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Jim Killingsworth
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) _ Jim Killingsworth, who took over a struggling TCU basketball team in the 1980s and coached the Horned Frogs to the NCAA tournament, has died. He was 83.
Killingsworth died Sunday from complications from a stroke, the university said.
When he arrived in 1979, TCU had won just three of its previous 48 Southwest Conference games. His teams steadily improved and in 1986 qualified for the NIT, where the Horned Frogs fell in the second round to Florida.
In 1987, Killingsworth's team made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament but lost to Notre Dame. He retired after that season, with a 130-106 record in eight seasons.
TCU teams under Killingsworth became known as the "Killer Frogs," a nickname given to them by local newspapers during the 1981 SWC tournament.
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Ray Mears
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Ray Mears, the Tennessee basketball coach who presided over the "Ernie and Bernie show" during his 15 seasons guiding the Volunteers, died Monday, university said. He was 80.
In the mid-1970s, Mears coached future NBA players Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King. Mears' teams went 278-112 at Tennessee between 1962 and 1978.
Under Mears, the Vols won or shared Southeastern Conference titles in 1967, 1972 and 1977. The 1967 championship was the school's first in 24 years. Three of his teams made the NCAA tournament before it expanded.
He had coached at Wittenberg, Ohio, and compiled a record of 121-23, including the Division II national title in 1961.
Mears was known for his promotional flair. He spearheaded the idea of "Big Orange Country" as the designated region for school support, reveled in wearing bright orange blazers and enjoyed parading along the sideline to agitate opponents.
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Sembene Ousmane
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) _ Sembene Ousmane, the father of Senegalese cinema and one of the pioneers of the art in Africa, has died. He was 84.
Ousmane died over the weekend at his home after a long illness.
A self-educated fisherman, Ousmane was born in 1923 in the Casamance region of this former French colony. During World War II, he was drafted into the French army and later settled in Marseilles, where he worked on the docks, joined the Communist Party and began writing novels.
He wrote more than half-a-dozen books, many critically acclaimed, including "Voltaiques," a volume of short stories published in 1962.
It included a story that he turned into a film two years later, earning credit for being sub-Saharan Africa's first feature film.
He went on to make at least 10 movies, including his last film "Moolade," which won a prize at Cannes when it was released in 2004. Like his novels, his films tackled issues from female circumcision to the plight of railroad workers.
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Richard Rorty
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) _ Philosopher and Stanford University comparative literature professor Richard Rorty has died. He was 75.
Rorty died from pancreatic cancer at his campus home on Friday, the university said.
Rorty's landmark book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979), rankled some of his peers by arguing that there is no distinction between objective and subjective realities, a theme he continued to develop throughout his career.
Rorty came to Stanford as a fellow at the Humanities Center in 1996 and then joined the faculty of the comparative literature department in 1998. His decision to teach comparative literature instead of philosophy reflected his belief that the two were essentially the same.
Born in New York City, Rorty, at the age of 14, enrolled at the University of Chicago, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy. He attended Yale University from 1952 to 1956, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy.
The bulk of Rorty's academic career was spent at Princeton University, where he taught from 1961 until 1982, when he moved on to the University of Virginia.
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Homer J. Stewart
ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) _ Homer J. Stewart, an early pioneer of rocket research who helped develop the first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer I, has died. He was 91.
Stewart, an emeritus professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology, died May 26 at his home in Altadena, the school said in a statement.
Stewart came to Caltech in 1936, but in the late 1950s took a leave of absence to advise on the preparation of Explorer I.
Following the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I in October 1957, there was a frenzied effort by the United States to launch a satellite of its own.
Explorer I was sent into orbit in January 1958, upping the ante in the space race, played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, in which the Americans and Soviets engaged in a decades-long quest to achieve supremacy in space.
In that year, Stewart became director of planning and evaluation for NASA. He later joined Wernher von Braun, the German rocket pioneer, on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate panel about the lagging performance of the United States in aerospace and missile development.
The panel was told that Russian missile guidance system had become accurate enough to hit an American city from 5,000 miles away and Russian space and missile technologies were a full 12 to 20 months ahead of their American counterparts.
The senators urged stepping up the pace of the "national approach" to defense and aerospace technology.
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Sun Yuan-liang
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) _ Retired Gen. Sun Yuan-liang, who helped lead Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in China's struggle against Japan during World War II, has died in Taiwan, a newspaper reported. He was 103.
Sun died at his home in Taipei on May 25, the United Daily News quoted his son Sun Hsiang-chung as saying. His body was cremated on Saturday, the report said.
The Nationalists led China from the 1920s until their defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong's Communists in 1949.
Sun joined the Nationalist army at the age of 19 and was among the most celebrated graduates of the prestigious Huangpu Military Academy founded by Chiang in Guangdong Province.
He came to prominence confronting Japanese efforts to gain a foothold in the Shanghai region in the 1930s.
Sun led the Nationalists in a crucial battle to beat back Japanese naval forces attacking Shanghai in 1932. He led another famous battle in the city in 1937, holding onto the Nationalist base for 76 days despite heavy casualties.
Despite Sun's achievements, many historians have criticized the Nationalist performance during World War II, saying poor and ineffectual leadership and widespread corruption helped allow Japan to take control of wide swathes of the Chinese mainland.
During that civil conflict, Sun lost a crucial battle in 1948 when more than half a million Nationalist troops were killed in eastern Jiangsu Province. Partly because of the defeat, Sun retired shortly after he followed Chiang in his retreat to Taiwan in 1949.
