AP Features, October 4th, 2007
Hugo Black III
MIAMI (AP) _ Assistant U.S. Attorney Hugo Black III, who shared a name with his grandfather the former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, died Saturday. He was 54.
Colleagues at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami confirmed that Black died from intestinal bleeding at his Miami-area home.
The state House of Representatives, where Black served from 1976 to 1978, held a moment of silence in his honor Wednesday.
In addition to being the grandson of former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, he also was the son of longtime Miami prosecutor Hugo Black Jr.
Hugo Black III grew up in Miami and attended Yale. He received a law degree from Stanford and early in his career worked at a Los Angeles law firm.
He joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in 1995 and mostly prosecuted white collar fraud cases.
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Stanley P. Butchart
LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) _ Stanley P. Butchart, a former top research pilot for NASA and its predecessor agency, died Monday. He was 85.
Butchart, who had been in failing health, died of natural causes, said Alan Brown, a spokesman for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base.
In 1951, Butchart joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' High Speed Flight Research Station, which later became Dryden.
He flew numerous research and mission-support aircraft in his 25-year career, becoming the center's principal multiengine aircraft pilot during a period of air-launches of early X-planes, NASA said.
Butchart received the NACA Exceptional Service Medal for actions to save his aircraft and crew when an X-1A rocket plane exploded while attached to the B-29 launch aircraft he was flying on Aug. 8, 1955.
In 1966, he became chief pilot and then director of flight operations at Dryden. He retired in 1976.
Butchart was trained to fly as a civilian and then joined the Navy in 1942. In World War II he flew TBM Avenger torpedo bombers in the South Pacific, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross, among other medals.
After the war, he earned bachelor's degrees in aeronautical and mechanical engineering at the University of Washington and worked as a design engineer for Boeing Aircraft before joining NACA.
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Mieke Frankenberg
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Mieke Frankenberg, the mother of actress Jane Seymour and a survivor of a Japanese concentration camp, died Monday. She was 92.
Frankenberg died in Hillington, England, of complications from a stroke, said Seymour's publicist, Dick Guttman.
Seymour said her mother was born in Holland and lived in Indonesia during World War II, where she spent more than three years in a Japanese concentration camp. After that, she moved to England, married a doctor named John Frankenberg and had three daughters. Her husband died in 1990.
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George Grizzard
NEW YORK (AP) _ Broadway and screen actor George Grizzard, who won acclaim, and a Tony Award, for performing in Edward Albee's dramas, died Tuesday. He was 79.
Grizzard died at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center of complications from lung cancer, said his agent, Clifford Stevens.
Grizzard's film roles included a bullying U.S. senator in "Advise and Consent" in 1962 and an oilman in "Comes a Horseman" in 1978. On television, Grizzard made regular appearances on "Law & Order" and won a best supporting actor Emmy for the 1980 TV movie "The Oldest Living Graduate," which starred Henry Fonda. His TV credits stretch back to the '50s, when he appeared in various anthology series such as "Playhouse 90."
But he considered himself primarily a stage actor.
He had made his Broadway debut in 1955 as Paul Newman's brother and fellow convict in "The Desperate Hours." He was nominated for Tonys for "The Disenchanted" in 1959 and "Big Fish, Little Fish" in 1961.
Among his other credits were Neil Simon's 1976 "California Suite," a 1975 revival of "The Royal Family" and the 2001 drama "Judgment at Nuremberg."
With Albee, Grizzard appeared in the original 1962 production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and won a Tony more than 30 years later in 1996 for his performance in a revival of a 1967 play, "A Delicate Balance."
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James W. Michaels
NEW YORK (AP) _ James W. Michaels, who transformed business journalism as the editor of Forbes magazine for nearly four decades, died Tuesday. He was 86.
He died of pneumonia in New York, the magazine said.
He joined Forbes in 1954 as a reporter covering mutual funds and was promoted to editor in 1961, steering the magazine into its trademark blunt, opinionated style.
Business executives, often skewered in the pages of Forbes, may not have been too pleased with the coverage, but readers liked the product. The monthly magazine's circulation grew from 130,000 when Michaels joined to 785,000 when he stepped down as editor in 1999.
After he left the post, he was editor emeritus and oversaw efforts to move Forbes content to television and the Web until his death.
Michaels was named one of the 10 outstanding business journalists of the 20th century and earned a Loeb Award in 1972 for lifetime services to financial and business reporting and a Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994.
He was born in Buffalo in 1921, attended the Culver military academy and graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics.
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Tony Ryan
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) _ Tony Ryan, who founded Europe's leading budget airline Ryanair, died Wednesday after a long illness, the airline and his family said. He was 71.
Ryan founded Ryanair in 1985 with a single 15-seat plane. By the time he floated the company on the Irish and British stock exchanges, Ryanair Holdings PLC was already expanding across the European continent with eye-popping fares, new routes and trademark boastful marketing.
Today it operates 557 routes in 26 countries and plans to carry more than 50 million people this year.
Ryanair shattered an air market in Ireland dominated by state flag carriers Aer Lingus and British Airways.
Its 1990s rise foreshadowed a 21st century market where Ryanair sets the ruthless standard and state-owned carriers are dead or dying.
Ryan was the son of a train driver. His first job was as a sales clerk at Aer Lingus, Ireland's state-owned airline _ which saw its monopoly status shattered by the launch and rapid ascent of Ryanair.
