Writer Ernesto Sabato, who led probe of crimes committed by Argentina's dictatorship, dies at 99

Writer Ernesto Sabato, who led the government's probe of crimes committed by Argentina's dictatorship, has died. He was 99.

Sabato died Saturday of complications of bronchitis at his home near Buenos Aires, his friend and collaborator Elvira Gonzalez Fraga told Radio Mitre.

He was a widely admired intellectual and author of works such as "On Heroes and Tombs" when President Raul Alfonsin asked him to lead an investigation into crimes committed under the soldiers who led Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

Sabato called his work of helping to document the murders, tortures and illegal arrests committed by a regime he had initially supported a "descent into hell." The commission's report, "Never Again," served as the basis for prosecuting key figures in the dictatorship after the return to civilian rule.

Official and independent agencies estimate that 12,000 to 30,000 people were killed by government forces seeking to wipe out leftists.

Elizabeth Taylor: donations and memorial

Publicists for Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday at 79, said a memorial service will be announced later, after a private family funeral this week.

Her family has requested that instead of flowers contributions can be made to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, c/o Derrick Lee, Reback Lee & Co., Inc., 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1275, Los Angeles, CA 90025, or online at http://www.elizabethtayloraidsfoundation.org.

Personal messages can be posted on a Facebook tribute page.

--Elaine Woo

 

Elizabeth Taylor's obituary: outtakes from a 12-year work in progress

Elizabeth Taylor's death Wednesday moved me in an odd way. Although I never met or spoke to her, I had a "relationship" with her that spanned a dozen years: Hers was the first advance obituary I ever wrote for The Times. The assignment, which I received in 1999, probably was precipitated by one of Taylor's nearly annual brushes with death. I read a mountain of articles and books over a three-month period before writing a lengthy piece. And nearly every year since then I updated the article, adding a worthwhile quote or details about her latest illness. I felt I had come to know her and, unlike many of my subjects, I liked her.

More recently, I revisited the obit to shorten it. Some pithy quotes had to go, such as this one from writer Truman Capote, who once said: "Her legs are too short for the torso, the head too bulky for the figure in toto; but the face with those lilac eyes is a prisoner's dream, a secretary's self-fantasy."

And this one from Paul Newman, her co-star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He called her "a functioning voluptuary."

Elizabeth Taylor: A life in pictures

One of my favorite anecdotes that didn't make the final cut concerned Howard Hughes, the nutty billionaire who tried to run a movie studio after making a fortune building planes. After Taylor separated from her first husband, Conrad Hilton Jr. of the Hilton hotel chain, she was lying by a pool in Palm Springs when Hughes landed a helicopter next to her. "Come on, get your clothes on, we are getting married," he told the raven-haired beauty. She told him he was mad, whereupon he dipped his hand into a coat pocket and scooped out a handful of diamonds, which he then proceeded to sprinkle on her. Taylor roared with laughter and ran into her friends' house, scattering the diamonds behind her.

The diamonds from Richard Burton, the Welsh actor who accounted for two of her eight marriages, were another matter: She kept most of those. I loved his recollection of his desire for a $1.1-million, 69-carat diamond ring from Cartier in New York, which he acquired for Taylor after outbidding Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. "I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely," Burton said. "And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world. I would have had a fit if it went to Jackie Kennedy or Sophia Loren or Mrs. Huntingdon Misfit of Dallas, Texas." 

I noticed that when Taylor spoke about herself, she rarely took herself too seriously, a quality that made her appealing. "People have called me accident-prone," she told Life magazine in 1997. "That really pissed Richard Burton off. He'd say, no, you're incident-prone."

You can read the obituary here.

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The Taylor-Burton Diamond

Paul Newman on Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor on "What's My Line"

 -- Elaine Woo

Photo: Elizabeth Taylor in 2009.

Credit: Los Angeles Times

Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, who became anti-abortion activist, dies at 84 [updated]

Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson, an early abortion rights champion who oversaw tens of thousands of the procedures before having a change of heart and becoming a prominent anti-abortion activist, has died in New York. He was 84.

Nathanson died Monday at his Manhattan home after a long fight with cancer, said his wife, Christine Reisner-Nathanson.

Nathanson was an obstetrician-gynecologist who in 1969 helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now called NARAL Pro-Choice America. When abortion was legalized in New York the following year, he became director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, an abortion clinic.

He estimated that he oversaw about 75,000 abortions in the 1960s and '70s before turning away from abortion rights, his wife said.

It was while working at the abortion clinic that Nathanson said he developed misgivings about the procedure. He said the use of ultrasound images led to his change of heart.

After joining the anti-abortion movement, Nathanson lectured internationally. He was a frequent visitor to the Ronald Reagan White House and narrated the 1986 anti-abortion film "The Silent Scream," which graphically depicts the abortion of a 12-week-old fetus.

Nathan also produced "Eclipse of Reason," a film about a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion, in which the fetus is partially extracted before being destroyed. He published several books, including an autobiographical account of his experiences.

His wife described him as a "real Renaissance man" and said he "had a lot of guts."

"When he was an abortion doctor he was seen as a pariah by the medical community, and when he went pro-life he was scorned by the women in the pro-abortion movement," she said.

Nathanson, born in New York to a Jewish family, converted to Catholicism in the late 1990s. He was baptized into the Catholic faith by the late Cardinal John J. O'Connor in a private ceremony.

He earned his bachelor's degree from Cornell University and a medical degree from McGill University in 1949.

He wrote in his memoir that he knew "every facet of abortion."

"I helped nurture the creature in its infancy by feeding it great draughts of blood and money," he wrote. "I guided it through its adolescence as it grew fecklessly out of control."

Besides his wife, Nathanson also is survived by a son, Joseph Nathanson.

[updated 8:06 p.m.] The complete Times obituary is here.

-- Associated Press

Jack LaLanne, fitness guru, dies at 96

Jack LaLanne, the seemingly eternal master of health and fitness who first popularized the idea that Americans should work out and eat right to retain youthfulness and vigor, has died. He was 96.

LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, Calif., his agent, Rick Hersh, told the Associated Press

Though for many years dismissed as merely a "muscle man" — a notion fueled to some extent by his amazing feats of strength — LaLanne was the spiritual father of the health movement that blossomed into a national craze of weight rooms, exercise classes and fancy sports clubs.

LaLanne opened what is commonly believed to be the nation's first health club, in Oakland in 1936. In the 1950s, he launched an early-morning televised exercise program keyed to housewives. He designed many now-familiar exercise machines, including leg extension machines and cable-pulley weights. And he proposed the then-radical idea that women, the elderly and even the disabled should work out to retain strength.

Full of exuberance and hyperbolic good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination of cheerleader, rescuer and savior. And if his enthusiasm had a religious fervor to it, well, so be it.

"Well it is. It is a religion with me," he told What Is Enlightenment, a magazine dedicated to awareness, in 1999. "It's a way of life. A religion is a way of life, isn't it?"

"Billy Graham was for the hereafter. I'm for the here and now," he told The Times when he was almost 92, employing his usual rapid-fire patter.

Our complete news obituary can be found here.

--Claudia Luther

Photo: Known for his exuberance and good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination cheerleader, rescuer and savior.

Tullia Zevi, leader in Italy’s Jewish community, dies at 91

Tullia Zevi, a pillar of Italy's Jewish community and an ardent anti-fascist who spent the war years in exile in Switzerland, France and the U.S., died Saturday. She was 91.

Zevi, the only female president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, died in Rome, current union president Renzo Gattegna said.

One of four children of a bourgeois Jewish family, Zevi was vacationing with her parents in Switzerland in 1938 when Italy passed its racial laws. The family, known for her father's anti-fascist beliefs, moved to France and later the United States.

She returned to Italy in 1946 and worked as a journalist as well as with various center-left political parties.

In a biographical article she wrote in 1999, Zevi said she returned because she wanted to help Italy and its Jews rebuild after the war.

"The horrors of the war had just been discovered; the mass extermination of the Jews, the gypsies and political opponents, the devastation of Jewish communities," she wrote.

"It seemed right, having had the fortune of having survived, to return and participate in the reconstruction of this traumatized community in chaos, and also to participate in the rebirth of democracy in Italy following the defeat of fascism."

She headed the Union of Italian Jewish Communities from 1983 to 1998, and even after remained active in the Jewish community, frequently commenting in the media about Jewish-Vatican relations in particular.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Tullia Zevi in 1996

 

 

West Virginia environmental activist Judy Bonds dies at 58

West Virginia environmental activist Julia "Judy" Bonds, who garnered national attention for her homespun opposition to mountaintop removal coal mining, has died, the environmental group Coal River Mountain Watch said Tuesday. She was 58 and had cancer.

Bonds died Monday evening at a hospital, Coal River Mountain Watch co-director Vernon Haltom said.

A descendant of generations of West Virginia coal miners, Bonds became known as a passionate and fearless opponent of mountaintop removal mining that she blamed for devastating the environment and the lives of coalfield residents. The mining practice involves blasting and scraping away mountaintops to expose multiple layers of coal.

In 2003, Bonds won the $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism. The international prize is awarded annually to one person each from Africa, Asia, Europe, island nations and North, South and Central America.

"The thing about Judy, she never backed down from anything," Haltom said, recalling a story about Bonds chasing away a bear armed only with her grandson's track shoe. "That's the kind of courage she had and the kind of courage that she needed to stand up to great odds with only her courage and conviction to back her up."

A prime target of her activism was Massey Energy Co. Bonds blamed the Richmond, Va.-based mine operator for the devastation in the Coal River Valley's Marfork Hollow and other Appalachian communities.

Bonds regularly testified against the practice at regulatory hearings, filed lawsuits against surface mining and led protests against Massey. In 2009, she was slapped by a Massey supporter while marching alongside actress Daryl Hannah and NASA scientist James Hansen to protest the presence of a Massey coal slurry dam and storage silo near a West Virginia elementary school.

Massey is among the region's largest coal producers and operates numerous mountaintop mines.

But Bonds labeled Massey an "outlaw" after Coal River Mountain Watch, the Sierra Club and other groups filed a lawsuit last April accusing the company of violating the Clean Water Act.

Massey spokesman Jeff Gillenwater offered condolences Tuesday.

"We extend our sympathies to the family and friends of Judy Bonds," he said in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

After winning the national Goldman Prize, Bonds told the Associated Press that her activism arose from the day her grandson stood in the stream her family had enjoyed for six generations with his little fists full of dead fish — and dead fish floating all around.

" 'What's wrong with these fish?' he asked. That day I knew that if I didn't do something, that would be the future of our children," she said.

-- Associated Press

Kay Kerr, co-founder of Save the Bay, dies at 99

Catherine "Kay" Kerr, 99, co-founder of the first environmental organization dedicated solely to protecting San Francisco Bay, died Dec. 18 at her home in El Cerrito, the University of California said.

 Kerr was the widow of former University of California President Clark Kerr. She and two other wives of UC Berkeley faculty, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick, founded Save the Bay in 1961 to fight a plan by the city of Berkeley to fill in part of the bay.

The organization became a model of early environmental grassroots activism and helped start the country's first coastal protection agency, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

Save the Bay also secured a moratorium on landfill in the bay and pushed for the establishment of one of the country's largest urban wildlife refuges.

She was born Catherine Spaulding on March 22, 1911, in Los Angeles and received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Stanford University. She married Clark Kerr in 1934; he died in 2003.

 

 

-- Associated Press

Hong Kong democracy activist Szeto Wah dies at 79

Veteran Hong Kong democracy activist Szeto Wah, a leading campaigner for the victims of Beijing's 1989 crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square and a voice for mainland dissidents, died Sunday of lung cancer. He was 79.

A teacher and a former primary school principal, Szeto started his political career organizing fellow teachers, building Hong Kong's Professional Teachers' Union into one of the territory's most powerful unions.

But he is best known as a democracy advocate. Szeto was shocked by Beijing's military suppression of the pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen, in which at least several hundred people were killed.

Along with others he organized the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Movements in China. The group, which he headed until his death, became a key advocate for both the victims of Tiananmen and for mainland dissidents jailed by the Chinese government.

The group continued to criticize the Tiananmen crackdown and called on Beijing to apologize, even after Hong Kong became a semiautonomous Chinese territory in 1997. Every June 4 the alliance hosts a candlelight vigil to mourn the victims which typically draws tens of thousands of people.

Chinese officials still consider the 1989 protests a “counterrevolutionary” movement.

Szeto was widely admired by the student leaders of the Tiananmen protests and other supporters of the movement. His death drew emotional tributes from fellow activists.

“I am very, very sad. Uncle Wah was a spiritual leader for me and for the democracy movement,” exiled student leader Wang Dan told Hong Kong's Cable TV.

Szeto, who never married, was also active in Hong Kong's own democracy campaign. He was a founding member of the United Democrats of Hong Kong, which later became the Democratic Party, the territory's leading opposition party. He retired from the Hong Kong legislature in 2004.

His legacy was slightly tarnished last year when he backed the Democratic Party's decision to vote for limited reforms for Hong Kong's half-elected legislature that were endorsed by Beijing, a move that drew a huge backlash from hard-line activists. Szeto was badly heckled when he attended Hong Kong's annual pro-democracy protest march last July 1.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Szeto Wah in 2009. Credit: Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

Uruguay human rights activist Maria Esther Gatti de Islas dies at 92

Maria Esther Gatti de Islas, a human rights activist who helped found Uruguay's organization of relatives of people who disappeared during South America's "dirty wars," died Sunday, her group said. She was 92.

A photograph of the eyes of her missing 18-month-old granddaughter became a symbol of the struggle of Uruguayan families to find out what happened to their loved ones who were taken away by a military dictatorship.

The girl was taken at the same time Gatti's leftist activist daughter, Maria Emilia Islas, and son-in-law Jorge Zaffaroni were abducted in 1976 in Argentina as part of a crackdown coordinated by the dictatorships then ruling the nations of southern South America.

Gatti became a militant in denouncing political disappearances. Working with an Argentine activist group, the Organization of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Gatti helped start the Uruguayan Assn. of Relatives of the Disappeared.

After a long investigation following the restoration of democracy, Gatti's granddaughter, Mariana Zaffaroni, was found in 1992 living with a family of a former official of Argentina's repressive regime. Her identity was restored and her kidnappers were punished.

The fate of Gatti's daughter and son-in-law are still unknown. They are among nearly 30 Uruguayans unaccounted for at home and some 300 who went missing in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, rights groups say.

--Associated Press

One year ago: Alice McGrath

 
Alice McGrath played a key role in the defense of young Mexican Americans who were wrongly convicted in the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon trial.

McGrath initially wrote summaries of the trial for attorney George Shibley, who was defending 22 Mexican Americans charged with killing a Mexican farmworker.

The defendants were called "zoot suit gangsters" by the press after the long coats and pegged pants that were popular among Mexican Americans.

McGrath became the executive director of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, which worked for an appeal after they were convicted, including 12 for murder.

Her story became part of "Zoot Suit," the play by Luis Valdez that became a movie in 1981. Valdez called her "one of the heroines of the 20th century."

The convictions were overturned in 1944.

McGrath died a year ago at age 92. Her news obituary appeared in The Times on Nov. 29, 2009.

--Keith Thursby

Photo: Alice McGrath. Credit: Los Angeles Times

One year ago: Rena 'Rusty' Kanokogi

Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi had to pose as a man to compete in a sport she loved. By her perseverance, however, she successfully got women's judo into the Olympics and became the coach of the U.S. team. Kanokogi died one year ago at age 74.

Brooklyn-born Kanokogi learned judo from someone in her neighborhood, but her attempts to compete in the city's judo clubs were met with resistance. Although she won the 1959 New York State YMCA judo championships, she was forced to hand over her medal when she revealed her gender.

She persevered, however, and traveled to Japan where she became the first woman at the main dojo with men. She later returned to the United States and slowly drummed up support for women in the sport.

"It was everything piece by piece," she said of organizing the 1980 world championships in New York. "I didn't care if I slept or ate. It was do or die."

Men's judo became an Olympic sport in the 1964 Games, and Kanokogi threatened legal action if women's judo was not treated equally.

Her efforts were rewarded when women's judo joined the Olympics in 1988 with Kanokogi as U.S. coach. And last year, the Brooklyn YMCA awarded her the gold medal she was forced to give up in 1959.

Kanokogi in 2008 received the Emperor's Award of the Rising Sun, bestowed on foreigners who have had a positive influence on Japanese society.

For more on the woman who fought for women's judo, read Rena Kanokogi's obituary by The Times.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Rena Kanokogi displays the gold medal for the 1959 New York State YMCA Judo Championships that was stripped from her when it was discovered she was a woman competing against men. It was returned in 2009. Credit: Associated Press