AP Features, December 16th, 2007
Rep. Julia Carson
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Rep. Julia Carson, who rose from a childhood of poverty and segregation to become the first black and first woman to represent Indianapolis in Congress, died Saturday. She was 69.
Carson died of lung cancer at her home, where she had spent the past several weeks, family spokeswoman Vanessa Summers said.
Carson said last month that she would not seek election in 2008 to a seventh term.
The Democrat was first elected to Congress in 1996. She championed children's issues, women's rights and efforts to reduce homelessness, and was a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq.
Carson opposed the war in Iraq and told protesters in Indianapolis just weeks before the 2003 invasion that it was an act of aggression only to protect U.S. oil interests.
She began her political career in the 1960s when then-Rep. Andy Jacobs Jr. hired her. Jacobs encouraged Carson to run for the Indiana Legislature in 1972 — the first of more than two dozen victories in local, legislative and congressional elections. She ran for Congress in 1996 after Jacobs retired.
Carson's highest-profile action came in 1999, when she pushed to award the Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights leader Rosa Parks.
Gov. Mitch Daniels will have to call a special election to choose a replacement for the last year of Carson's term.
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Brian Sean Griffith
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Brian Sean Griffith, a former bodyguard to figure skater Tonya Harding who admitted a role in the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan during Olympics tryouts, has died. He was 40.
Griffith died Wednesday of what his doctor reported as natural causes, according to the Washington County medical examiner's office. The specific cause of death is expected to be listed when the doctor files a death certificate, which could take two weeks, the medical examiner's office said.
Formerly Shawn Eckardt, Griffith had changed his name since the attack in an attempt to put it behind him.
Griffith, of Beaverton, was Harding's bodyguard when the Portland-born skater competed for a spot on the U.S. Olympic figure skating team in 1994.
That January, an assailant clubbed Kerrigan in the knee, forcing her out of the competition. The International Committee of the U.S. Figure Skating Association granted Kerrigan a spot anyway, and she recovered in time to win a silver medal at the Olympics.
Days after the attack, Griffith confessed, detailing a plan that he and Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had hatched. The investigation also eventually netted convictions of Shane Stant, the actual attacker, and Stant's uncle, Derrick Smith, who drove the getaway car.
Griffith was sentenced to 18 months in prison for racketeering but was released four months early, in September 1995.
Harding has always said she didn't know of the plan. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder an investigation and was banned from U.S. Figure Skating Association competitions.
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Laura Archera Huxley
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Laura Archera Huxley, the widow of "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley, who worked to preserve his legacy for nearly half a century after his death while authoring her own books, has died. She was 96.
Huxley died of cancer Thursday night at her Hollywood Hills home, said Karen Pfeiffer, her legal ward, who helps direct Huxley's nonprofit foundation, Children: Our Ultimate Investment.
During the seven years of her marriage and for the decades after Aldous Huxley died of cancer in 1963, Huxley explored the vistas of psychotherapy, New Age spirituality, consciousness-raising and natural health regimens.
She and her husband experimented with LSD, Huxley wrote in her memoirs, and well into her 90s she was doing yoga and other exercises.
Childless herself, Huxley created her foundation in the 1970s, dedicating it to "the nurturing of the possible human."
The foundation has conducted school seminars in the U.S. and Britain for at-risk teenagers on issues such as anger management and pregnancy prevention.
After Aldous Huxley died, she devoted herself to preserving his writings and legacy.
Huxley wrote several books herself, including a 1963 best-selling self-help guide, "You Are Not the Target," and a memoir of her life with Huxley called "This Timeless Moment."
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Diane Middlebrook
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Diane Middlebrook, a leading feminist scholar who wrote acclaimed biographies of poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, died Saturday. She was 68.
Middlebrook, who helped launch feminist studies at Stanford University, where she taught literature for 35 years, died of cancer in San Francisco, according to Stanford officials.
She is best known for her 1991 best-seller "Anne Sexton: A Biography," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and "Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, a Marriage," a 2003 best-seller about the tumultuous marriage of the poets.
Middlebrook also wrote "Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton," a 1998 biography about a female jazz musician who lived as a man. A biography about the Roman poet Ovid is expected to be published next year to coincide with the 2,000th anniversary of his birth.
Born in Idaho in 1939, Middlebrook grew up in Spokane, Wash., graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1961 and earned her doctorate at Yale University in 1968. She was among the first women to teach in Stanford's English department.
During her career, she received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, Stanford Humanities Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Study Center of Bellagio.
