2013 Obits

waltky · Apr 8, 2013

Margaret Thatcher & Annette Funicello...

Ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher dies, aged 87
8 April 2013 : Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died "peacefully" at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke while staying at the Ritz hotel in central London.

David Cameron called her a "great Briton" and the Queen spoke of her sadness at the death. Lady Thatcher was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the first woman to hold the role. She will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother. The ceremony, with full military honours, will take place at London's St Paul's Cathedral. The union jack above Number 10 Downing Street has been lowered to half-mast while Parliament will be recalled from its Easter recess on Wednesday to enable MPs to pay tributes to the former prime minister.

Obama tribute

After cancelling planned talks in Paris with French President Francois Hollande and returning to the UK, Mr Cameron made a statement outside No 10 in which he described Lady Thatcher as "the patriot prime minister" and said she had "taken a country that was on its knees and made it stand tall again". "Margaret Thatcher loved this country and served it with all she had. For that she has her well-earned place in history - and the enduring respect and gratitude of the British people," he said. Lady Thatcher, who retired from public speaking in 2002, had suffered poor health for several years. She had been staying at the Ritz hotel since being discharged from hospital at the end of last year.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said Lady Thatcher - whose husband Denis died in 2003 - had been a controversial politician who inspired "passion" among her critics and supporters. Her government privatised several state-owned industries and was involved in a year-long stand-off with unions during the Miners' Strike of 1984-5. She was also in power when the UK fought a war following Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Lady Thatcher survived an assassination attempt in 1984, when the IRA bombed the Brighton Grand Hotel, where she was staying for the Conservative Party's annual conference.

During her later years in office she became increasingly associated with Euroscepticism. She is also seen as one of the key movers behind the fall of communism in eastern Europe. She stood down in 1990 after she failed to beat Michael Heseltine by enough votes to prevent his leadership challenge going into a second round. World leaders and senior UK figures have been paying tribute to Lady Thatcher. US President Barack Obama said the world had "lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty" and that "America has lost a true friend".

More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22067155
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Disney Child Star Annette Funicello Dies at 70
April 08, 2013 - Annette Funicello , who became hugely popular as a child actress in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club television show, has died at age 70.

The Walt Disney Company said she died Monday at a California hospital from complications of multiple sclerosis.

As a teenager in the 1950s Funicello starred as one of the original "Mousketeers," receiving 10 times more fan letters than any of the other 23 young performers.

She went on to star in a number of beach-based movies in the 1960s such as Beach Party, Bikini Beach and Beach Blanket Bingo.

Funicello was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1980s. The disease causes degeneration of the brain and spinal cord leading to muscle weakness, and loss of the ability to walk and speak clearly.

Source
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waltky · Apr 12, 2013

She was a whiz of a Wiz...

BBC in hot seat as anti-Thatcher song climbs chart
Apr 12,`13 -- Opponents of the late Margaret Thatcher are taking a kind of musical revenge on the former prime minister, pushing the song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" up the British charts in a posthumous protest over her polarizing policies.

By Friday the online campaign had propelled the "Wizard of Oz" song to No. 1 on British iTunes and into the top five of the music chart used by the BBC to compile its weekly radio countdown. David Karpf, who studies online campaigns, said the chart battle was an example of a new kind of protest enabled by social media - "A way for people to signal protest en masse without shouting from the rooftops." "It's a form of symbolic protest," he said.

The unusual campaign has caused a headache for the BBC. With the ditty near the top of the charts, the broadcaster faced the prospect of airing the words "The Wicked Witch is Dead!" on its Sunday countdown show, just days before Thatcher's funeral, scheduled for Wednesday. Some lawmakers from Thatcher's Conservative Party had called for the publicly funded broadcaster to drop the song, while others warned that such a move would mean censoring a form of dissent. The BBC, caught between allegations of censorship and complaints about poor taste, split the difference, saying it would broadcast only part of the tune - along with a news item explaining why it was there.

BBC director-general Tony Hall said that while the broadcaster found the campaign "distasteful and inappropriate," he and other executives had decided the song should not be banned - but should not be broadcast in full, either. "We have agreed that we won't be playing the song in full, rather treating it as a news story and playing a short extract to put it in context," he said in a statement. Ben Cooper, controller of Radio 1 - which broadcasts the chart show - said the clip would be "four or five" seconds long, though he did not say what part of the song would be aired.

The controversy - which made the front pages of many national newspapers - serves as a strange musical coda to Thatcher's time in office. The woman known to many as the Iron Lady was in power for 11 years, during which she wrenched Britain from the economic doldrums and successfully retook the Falkland Islands after Argentina's 1982 invasion. Many still resent Thatcher for her uncompromising stance against the country's labor unions and what they saw as her inhumanity toward the working class. The campaign to send "Ding Dong!" to the top of the charts began soon after she died Monday of a stroke at London's Ritz Hotel.

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waltky · Apr 15, 2013

Hilary Koprowski, polio oral vaccine developer passes on at 96...

Polio vaccine developer Koprowski dies at 96
Mon, Apr 15, 2013 - Hilary Koprowski, the Polish-born researcher who developed the first successful oral vaccination for polio, died this week at his Philadelphia home. He was 96.

Although not as well-known as fellow researchers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, Koprowskis 1950 clinical trial was the first to show it was possible to vaccinate against polio, the crippling and sometimes fatal disease that is now all but eradicated. Koprowskis son, Christopher, said on Saturday that his father liked the scientific recognition his work received without the celebrity of Salk and Sabin. He enjoyed not having his scientific work disrupted, Christopher Koprowski said. Not that he was a modest individual, mind you.

Christopher Koprowski said his father had been sick for several months before dying on Thursday in the same home he had lived in since 1957. Hilary Koprowski self-administered the live-virus oral vaccine he developed before the 1950 trial about two years before Salks injectable version using a dead form of the virus began testing with the backing of the US National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now the March of Dimes. Sabin, who Koprowskis son said sometimes collaborated with his father, was the first to get the more effective oral version, which did not require boosters, licensed for use in the US.

Koprowski went on to become the director of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia from 1957 to 1991. Under his leadership, the independent research institution developed a rubella vaccine that helped eradicate the disease in much of the world, Wistar officials said. It was during that time the institute also developed a more effective rabies vaccine. A talented musician, Koprowski was a penniless immigrant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, making money teaching piano before hooking up with a lab there and eventually moving to the US, his son said. He was a great dad. He was colorful, charismatic, Christopher Koprowski said. Hes still the most brilliant person Ive ever met.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/04/15/2003559705
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Wizard From Oz · Apr 15, 2013

Jimmy Dawkins

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago bluesman Jimmy "Fast Fingers" Dawkins, known for his excellent guitar playing and mellow singing voice, has died. He was 76.

Delmark Records owner Bob Koester said Dawkins died Wednesday. The cause of death wasn't immediately known.

Dawkins was born in Mississippi. An only child, Dawkins taught himself to play guitar before moving to Chicago in the 1950s.

Koester says Dawkins began playing Chicago's blues clubs in the 1960s, gaining a reputation as an excellent side man and playing with such notables as Otis Rush and Buddy Guy.

Dawkins recorded his first album on the Delmark label in 1969.

Koester says the album boosted Dawkins' reputation, particularly in Europe and Japan, where he toured frequently. Dawkins also was a frequent contributor to Living Blues magazine.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...+usatoday-LifeTopStories+(Life+-+Top+Stories)

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