Dirk Verbeuren and Sylvain Demercastel, out here doing good in the world

Very nice article about Louise Bland's life in today's Tulsa World, with some information I hadn't been aware of.

Mike Miller posted a link to the Tulsa World obituary for longtime Tulsa newsman Bob Hower, who passed away at age 87 last Saturday.

Tributes paid to much-loved local broadcaster.

Prime force of rock’n’roll who made an explosive impact with songs such as Tutti Frutti, Good Golly, Miss Molly, Lucille and Long Tall Sally

Little Richard, who has died aged 87, was the self-proclaimed king of rock’n’roll. Such was his explosive impact that many of the baby boom generation will vividly recall the moment when they first encountered his assault on melody.

Awopbopaloobop alopbamboom! That first hit, Tutti Frutti, released in October 1955, was wild, delicious gibberish from a human voice as no other, roaring and blathering above a band like a fire-engine run amok in the night. We glimpsed a new universe. The Sinatra-sophisticats were slain with a shout. Enter glorious barbarity, chaos and sex. With a few others – Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly – Little Richard laid down what rock’n’roll was to be like, and he was the loudest, hottest and most exhibitionist of them all.

Radio and TV producer who revitalised The Archers during his tenure as editor

Despite being a soft-spoken Lancastrian of mild-mannered appearance, the writer and producer William Smethurst, who has died aged 71, was known to his detractors in radio and television as “Butcher Bill”. But the ruthless skills combined with mischievous flair that he displayed as editor of The Archers for eight years from 1978 were widely credited with saving Radio 4’s flagging rural soap opera and making it the cult show it later became. Smethurst was the man who licensed writers to scandalise sleepy Ambridge and once persuaded Princess Margaret to make a guest appearance.

He was less successful when Central TV lured him from BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham to pull off the same trick with Crossroads, its Midlands motel saga, which had run out of steam. Smethurst ditched Tony Hatch’s theme tune, killed off characters (much as he had Dan and Doris Archer), and made the plots (and scenery) more credible and the cast much more glamorous, with the help of the motel swimming pool he installed. Some critics preferred its previous awfulness and the show folded in 1988.

Howard Green, who has died aged 91, was my first editor, a journalist of the old school who worked his way up from junior reporter at 15 to the board of Thomson Regional Newspapers (TRN) when it was a force in the British regional press.

In the mid-1960s he was a key player in the plans of his Canadian proprietor, Lord (Roy) Thomson of Fleet, to ring London with new evening papers, located on the emerging motorway network and printed on state-of-the-art web offset presses. With well-run local papers still profitable, the big idea was eventually to print and distribute Fleet Street newspapers away from the clutches of its famously disruptive unions.

John Goodwin, who has died aged 97, was a theatre public relations man whose skills earned him an influence far beyond the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, with which he was associated for most of his working life.

He was born in London, where his father, Albert Goodwin, worked for the Inland Revenue; his mother was the musical comedy actor Jessie Lonnen, whose father, EJ Lonnen, had also been a star in burlesque, and Johnny was drawn to the theatre from childhood. After second world war service in the Royal Navy, during which he saw action on a destroyer in the North Atlantic, he first joined what was then still the Shakespeare Memorial theatre in Stratford in 1948.

For more than 20 years Robin Callard, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 73, was professor of immunobiology at University College London, attached to the Institute of Child Health (ICH), clinical partner of Great Ormond Street hospital.

Born and raised in Hamilton, New Zealand, Robin was the eldest child of Eddie Callard, an entrepreneurial Australian photographer, and Vivienne (nee Wilson), who ran a fashion shop. A fourth generation Kiwi, Vivienne was also a descendant of Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century radical polymath and scientist widely credited with the discovery of oxygen.

Little Richard, one of the pioneers of the first wave of rock’n’roll, has died. He was 87. His 1955 song Tutti Frutti, with the lyric ‘awopbopaloobop alopbamboom’, and a series of follow-up records helped establish the genre and influenced a multitude of other musicians

• Little Richard, rock'n'roll pioneer, dies aged 87
  

On this edition of "Two Way Street," Georgia musician Adron stops by to talk and play a few songs from her new album "Water Music" before setting sail for the west coast. We also hear from a woman who made a career of saying goodbye: Kay Powell.

Rick May, best known to furries and non-furries alike as the voice of Peppy Hare in the English version of the game Star Fox 64 passed away April 13, 2020 due to COVID-19. May was born September 21, 1940 (with the full name of Richard J. May), meaning he would have turned 80 later this year. May had also recently suffered a stroke in February, making him even more vulnerable to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

May will forever be known as the man who originally uttered the memetic line "Do a barrel roll! (Z or R twice.)" in Star Fox 64, explaining to players how to perform what is technically an aileron roll in order to deflect enemy attacks. May also played the villain of Star Fox 64, Andross. Outside of furry video games, May is probably best known for voicing the Soldier of Team Fortress 2; furries might also recognize his voice behind the villainous Dr. M from the third Sly Cooper game. In addition to voice work for video games, May has had a long history of working both on and for the stage as both a director and actor, beginning with USO shows while stationed in Japan. His part in a Renton, Washington production of Cotton Patch Gospel featured a combination of his voice and stage work, as he used different voices to portray 21 characters in what was reportedly his favorite stage role.

read more

Brian Whiston, who led Michigan's department of education since 2015, died May 7. He was 56.

In the face of well-funded opposition to organized labor, teachers will not be silenced, writes NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

Lynn Faulds Wood, Journalist and TV presenter

Hamish Wilson, radio producer and actor

Born: July 9, 1938;

Jill Gascoine, actress and novelist

George Forfar: An appreciation

An appreciation by Maxwell Macleod

Saroj Lal

Alan Gray – An Appreciation

Richard DuFour, a renowned education consultant and author who advocated collaborative teaching environments, died Feb. 8. He was 69.

Gary D. Marx, the longtime director of communications at AASA, the School Superintendents Association, has died. He was 80.

Bollywood star and popular member of India’s celebrated movie dynasty

Rishi Kapoor, who has died aged 67 of bone marrow cancer, starred as a leading man in almost 100 Bollywood films and was a member of the remarkable Kapoor family of actors and film-makers.

The son of the great director, producer and actor Raj Kapoor, Rishi started as a child actor, aged three, in his father’s hugely popular film Shree 420 (1955). But his proper debut came in Raj’s 1970 film Mera Naam Joker, playing the younger version of his father’s leading role. Rishi said that his father only gave him the part as he was unable to pay for a recognised star, and the film was not a commercial success in any case. The movie that gave Rishi stardom was his next, Bobby (1973), the story of a love affair between Raja, a rich Bombay teenager, and a poor girl, Bobby, from the wrong side of the tracks, played by Dimple Kapadia. In the story, also directed by Raj, he was Hindu and she was Catholic, which was in itself a bold move.

The prime minister will hopefully continue to ignore those who claim the oil and gas industry is dead, Rob Breakenridge says.

Singer and entertainer who, in a duo with her husband, Teddy Johnson, transformed the UK’s Eurovision prospects in the 1950s

In 1959 the husband and wife duo of Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson were invited to look at songs with which they could represent the UK in the fourth staging of the Eurovision song contest. These were pleasant ballads that owed nothing to the prevailing climate of rock and roll, and there was a trite but cheerful novelty song, Sing, Little Birdie. The pair saw how they could develop it into a routine with solo lines, immaculate harmonies and sideways glances at each other – and chose it as their UK song for Cannes. They came second, losing to a rendition of Een Beetje by Teddy Scholten for the Netherlands. In the event Sing, Little Birdie topped the charts in the Netherlands, having also made No 12 in the UK.

Carr, who has died aged 98, would like to have been remembered for something more substantial than that song, but it did demonstrate that the UK might actually win Eurovision. Sing Little Birdie’s writers, Stan Butcher and Syd Cordell, submitted Pickin’ Petals for Carr and Johnson as a contender for the UK entry in 1960, but this time Teddy’s younger brother, Bryan, represented the UK with Looking High, High, High – and also came second. The UK eventually won in 1967 with Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String.

ICI executive who helped turn its bioscience business into the pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca

Sir David Barnes, who has died aged 84, was the self-effacing but determined and clear-sighted chief executive who turned the bioscience interests of ICI into one of the world’s major pharmaceutical corporations, AstraZeneca.

Teased at its launch in 1993 that Zeneca sounded like a Czechoslovakian camera, Barnes responded that its performance would define its brand – and was vindicated. The first suggested name had been Zenica, but then Barnes, tracking the Bosnian conflict days before the launch, found to his horror that hostilities were threatening to spread to a previously unremarked town of that name. Alarmed that it “could become as notorious as Guernica”, he changed the spelling and held his breath.

My cousin John Greenacre, who has died aged 85, was a renowned teacher. He was totally committed to Peterhouse school, near Marondera, Zimbabwe, where he recorded 56 years of service. He taught maths and coached tennis and cricket. He also led safaris to the Kalahari desert and Chimanimani national park.

Although John was born in Putney, south-west London, his family had long been based in Durban, South Africa. It was there that his father, Kenneth – an RAF pilot during the second world war – was director of the family department store, Greenacre’s. His mother, Elizabeth (nee Brett), was a devoted wife and mother.

My mother, Mary Tandon, who has died aged 82, undertook many roles as a lawyer, writer and campaigner. Her life was punctuated by flights from her home because of political violence – and fresh starts in new countries.

She was born in Malacca, British Malaya (now Malaysia). While Mary was at a tender age, she and her mother, Fong Ah Soo, were the sole survivors of a Japanese bombing raid in which the family home and the rest of her extended family were killed.

Masterful drummer and co-creator of Afrobeat, the fusion of funk, jazz and African styles that he pioneered with Fela Kuti

On 12 and 13 March there were two concerts in the Church of Sound series at St James the Great Church in Clapton, east London. They were staged in the round, with both the audience and the small band of brass, keyboards and guitar circled around the star player, arguably the finest drummer on the planet.

As ever, Tony Allen looked cool and relaxed, sporting a hat and dark glasses, sitting upright with the rest of his body hardly moving as his hands and feet beat out the thrilling, complex rhythms, or “patterns” as he called them. The music came from his latest album, Rejoice, recorded with his friend Hugh Masekela, and these were to be his last shows.

Robert Armstrong, who has died from a brain tumour aged 76, was a Guardian sports writer, specialising in football, rugby and tennis, his own game. Known for the “no frills” accuracy of his reports, he filed reassuringly ahead of deadline from World Cups and major tours in far-flung corners of the world, as well as from Wimbledon.

But he also left his mark on the paper for which he worked for almost 30 years as a highly effective National Union of Journalists (NUJ) official, championing better pay and conditions for his colleagues.

George Mackie, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 70, was a straightforward man, but one of paradox. He was a Kincardineshire Scot who lived in southern England, an Essex farmer who was also a socialist, a formidable Scottish rugby international who was notably soft-spoken. “A gentle giant, never the loudest around the dinner table, but usually the wisest,” said his friend Brian Wilson, the politician.

The son of Jeannie (nee Inglis Milne) and John Mackie, George sprang from a progressive farming dynasty in north-east Scotland. Radicalised by poverty he saw in Glasgow as a young man, his father became a leading Tribune Group leftwinger. MP for Enfield East (1959-74), he was a respected junior agriculture minister, later chairman of the Forestry Commission (1976-79) until Margaret Thatcher sacked him.

Peruvian politician and diplomat who served for two terms as the UN secretary general and helped to end the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who has died aged 100, was a cautious and conservative Peruvian diplomat who became the secretary general of the United Nations for two terms during a difficult and dismal decade from 1982. He also served, briefly, as prime minister of Peru in 2000-01.

As secretary general, Pérez de Cuéllar faced a series of global crises, including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf war, and he had to deal with the difficulties caused by the permanent hostility of the Ronald Reagan administration to the UN, as well as the consequent failure of the Americans to pay their dues.

Chef and restaurateur who, with his brother, Albert, transformed the British dining experience

The chef Michel Roux, who has died aged 78, was the younger half of the formidable partnership with his brother, Albert, that transformed the British restaurant scene in the late 1960s with their Michelin-starred restaurant Le Gavroche. Later, as sole director of the Waterside Inn, situated by an idyllic stretch of the Thames at Bray, Michel proved he was a chef’s chef. His menu was a statement of the most classic form of French cooking – nouvelle cuisine had no part to play. Luxury ingredients, many mousses and forcemeats, the finest of pâtisserie, were integral. Michelin soon recognised the quality and this restaurant gained three stars, perhaps the highest professional accolade available, in 1985, which it has retained for longer than any outside France.

From the outset, the Roux brothers’ style of cooking embraced wholeheartedly the standards and practices of classic haute cuisine while offering a refined interpretation of a more homely cuisine bourgeoise. The rapid success of Le Gavroche from its star-studded opening on Lower Sloane Street, London, in 1967, attended by Ava Gardner, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and a brace of marquesses, enabled the construction of a veritable empire, largely driven by the entrepreneurial spirit of Albert. The pair took in more restaurants, retail outlets, a restaurant supply business distributing produce shipped in from Paris markets, contract and outside catering, and production of vacuum-packed restaurant dishes. Michel was an integral part of this furious activity, while concentrating to an ever greater degree on the kitchen at the Waterside.