Environmental writer Philip Fradkin dies at 77

Philip L. Fradkin, a native of New York, the fascination the West has turned into a being capable chronicler of the history of the region and its environmental heritage books on topics such as the great San Francisco earthquake, the aftermath of nuclear tests in Nevada and survival of Colorado River, died Saturday at home in Point Reyes Station, California for 77 years.

The cause was cancer, said his son, Alex.

A Times reporter early in his career, Fradkin is the author of 13 books, including "A river no more: the Colorado River and the West" (1981), "The Seven States of California: A Natural History Human "(1995) and" Wallace Stegner and the western United States "(2008).

He has also written three books on the physical effect of the earthquake, and social policy, especially in "The great earthquake and fire storms of 1906," The New Yorker said that "begins as a history of the environment, but s' Tragedy has become a parable about the human response to disaster.

" Published in 2005, the centennial of the San Francisco earthquake was coming, has demonstrated an abuse of dynamite fire caused fires that have consumed much of the city, and human frailty exacerbated after the flames diminished.

"The path I follow is the path of politics and power," said Fradkin, who also contributed to the Library of UC Berkeley Bancroft building an archive of thousands of images and documents on the earthquake, the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005.

His book on the depletion of Colorado River remains the seminal work on the subject, according to historian Kevin Starr California, said in an interview Tuesday that Fradkin occupied "a central place in the history of the environment of the writing ", alongside such figures as Stegner, Edward Abbey and James Houston.

Prof. G. Forrest Robinson, an expert from the University of California Santa Cruz, in Western literature, Fradkin described as a literary descendant of the 19 th century explorer John Wesley Powell and Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize, two of whom wrote perspicaçment Resources natural resources and problems of the West, including those resulting from the devastation of the Colorado River.

"Fradkin career was a tribute to and through the indirect influence of Stegner Stegner Powell," said Robinson, who also has called on the book by Fradkin Stegner "easily the best album I've made life Stegner."

Fradkin was born in New York February 28, 1935, and grew up in Montclair, New Jersey when he was 14 years, the Russian Jewish father, Leon, took him on a tour of the West - through Yellowstone, Zion, the Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City, Yosemite, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver - that sparked his love of the region.

After graduating in political science at Williams College in Massachusetts and served in the army, went to California in 1960 and took a job as an ad salesman for a Bay Area this week. Influenced by his mother, Elvira, Vassar-educated writer and political activist, has decided to become a journalist and worked for papers in Modesto and San Rafael before the time in 1964.

Fradkin was part of the team of Times reporters and editors who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Watts riots of 1965 and then spent a year in the Vietnam War. In 1970 he became a reporter for the newspaper environment.

He left the Times in 1975 after his editors told him their stories too tilted to the ecological point of view. Fradkin disagree and joined the administration of Governor Jerry Brown, as assistant secretary of the California Resources Agency, which helped push legislation that established the California Coastal Commission as a permanent body.

In 1976 he became editor of Audubon magazine, West, leaving in 1981, when "A River No More," was published. Loaded and walked along the Colorado River through seven states of Mexico, showing how the various requirements for irrigation, livestock, food and recreation that had been left out of the Colorado River basin that has not reached its natural outlet to the Gulf of Mexico.

Fradkin book has a theme that runs throughout his work - "the emotion, drama and sense of loss we feel in the West," said San Francisco Book Review in February.

He said his aim in writing Stegner and other environmental issues has been to illustrate the effect of the western landscape his people.

Showed, for example, as Stegner's life was formed by the failure of his father's farm. A similar connection inspired Fradkin latest book, "said Everett Streets: his short life, death, beyond the mysterious and surprising" (2011), which examines the legend of the young artist and wanderer who died in the desert Utah in 1934 at age 20.

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Crisis Budgeter Donald D. Kummerfeld Dies at 78

Donald D. Kummerfeld, a budget director and deputy mayor, the emphasis on financial discipline policy and an excellent touch to help New York City from bankruptcy in 1970, died Thursday at Jersey City.

He was 78 years.

I was sick, and gardening in the intense heat and died in a hospital emergency room, his wife, Elizabeth, said.

In 1975, financial markets closed the door to New York after years of indebtedness, and the State of New York intervened to issue bonds to run the city. However, the State requested financial rigor.

Mr. Kummerfeld role was to attend the details of the cleaning of bad accounting practices of the city, imposing budget cuts and for the first time that prolong the years of financial planning in the future.

Richard Ravitch, an advisor to Governor Hugh L. Carey during the crisis, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that the work was Mr. Kummerfeld said. "To have a balanced budget, this is what you do"

Mr. Kummerfeld led to years of experience as a budget official in Washington and as a investment banker on Wall Street.

But those who worked with him say that his negotiation skills combined with his experience with numbers. The New York Times in 1977 quoted an official who had dealt with him, saying:

"What I like about Don is that at least does not pretend to understand. Even when you put in the position of having to act as 2 and 2 is 5, you can say, 'Don, please' And he looks at you and shake his shoulders and said: 'Yes, but this is our policy here.' "

In an interview, Felix Rohatyn, who led the agency to restructure the debt of the city during the crisis, said: "What has brought to the table and had a great knowledge of the facts and politics of the situation."

Your signature does not necessarily mean that popular. The news at the time said the agency goes up in tears after meeting with Mr. Kummerfeld. At a public hearing has been accused of "insensitivity."

But medicine has worked hard, and since 1977 the city was beginning to turn a corner. "It is not always obvious, but the city is run now, mainly because Kummerfeld," said Peter C. Goldmark Jr., the director of the state budget, told the Times.

When Edward I. Koch, after defeating Mr. Beame and other Democratic candidates in the three main rivals in the general election, became mayor of 01 January 1978, Mr. Kummerfeld asked to remain as deputy mayor, but without title of Deputy Prime Minister. Mr. Kummerfeld refused.

Mr. Koch said in an interview on Tuesday that it had decided not to have a deputy mayor of New York because I wanted to see who takes the city personally. "It would have been wonderful," Koch said of Mr. Kummerfeld, he described as "a true hero who helped save New York."

Mr. Kummerfeld once accepted an appointment by Governor Carey to be Executive Director of the Board of Control of New York state financial emergency.

This meant that Mr. Kummerfeld be responsible for overseeing the financial operations of the city that had just left. "I know for a fact that all the details of what to look for," he said.

Mr. Kummerfeld has continued with the direct participation of the American Society of Rupert Murdoch and two trade groups, publishers of journals in America and the International Federation of the Periodical Press.

It is also recommended that the new mayor of New York and other elected officials on tax matters.

Working group of citizens led by Mr. Ravitch and A. Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve will release a report on the week's state budget crisis and face. Will be dedicated to Mr. Kummerfeld, who has a lot of work into it.

Besides his wife, the former Elizabeth Miller, Mr. Kummerfeld, who lived in Jersey City, survive him his daughter, Theodosia Kummerfeld, and a grandson.

Along with the public service, gardening is a passion of Mr. Kummerfeld, for many years and grew vegetables and flowers on the terrace of his penthouse, Fifth Avenue. His hobby is reading seed catalogs.

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Former Rams lineman John Williams dies at 66

John Williams, one of his assistants Angeles Rams in 1970, he went to school with the teeth out of season and started a dental practice in Minneapolis after his retirement from football, has died.

He was 66 years.

Williams, who had recently undergone a kidney transplant, died Sunday while on a walk near home, the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The office of the Hennepin County coroner confirmed his death.

Born in Jackson, Mississippi, 27 October 1945, John McKay, Williams was a football star in high school in Toledo, Ohio. Three-year letterman at the University of Minnesota, was an All-American and All-Big Ten offensive assistants in 1967, when the ground squirrels went 8-2 and won the title role in the conference .

In the 1968 NFL draft, the Baltimore Colts selected him in the first round, 23 overall. He played four seasons with the Colts and went to two Super Bowls, winning a ring with the team's 16-13 victory over Dallas after the 1970 season.

Williams was traded to the Rams to a No. 1 pick in 1972 and started at right offensive tackle for six years. He played as a guard in 1979, when the Rams advanced to the Super Bowl, losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-19, in January 1980.

At this time, Williams had a plan for his life after football. He earned a degree in education from Minnesota, but really wanted to be a dentist, so he began taking classes at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

"I knew I was doing the right thing, when I could not get a decent off-season work in 1970 after playing in the Super Bowl team in Baltimore," he told The Times in 1978.

It took five years as part-time student, before he received his doctorate in dentistry. He retired from the NFL after tearing a calf muscle during the 1979 season and returned to Minneapolis to open his dental clinic.

The 6 feet 3 inches and 256 pounds described his work with patients outside the field in the interview with the Times.

"There is curiosity and a little" normal fan-athlete identification, "he said." But most important is a good value. Rapport is all in dentistry. The ability to inspire confidence. "

In Minneapolis, Williams has worked to revitalize the city neighborhood where he established his business and was named Volunteer of the Year in the city in 1992.

Trained in Forensic Dentistry, Williams joined a team of public health professionals who helped identify the remains of the victims after the attacks of 9/11 terrorists.

"A terrible," said Williams in Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2002.

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Robert de La Rochefoucauld Dies at 88

Robert de La Rochefoucauld belonged to one of the oldest noble families in France. He was a descendant of Francois de La Rochefoucauld, author of a book-century classic of 17 maximum.

For 30 years he was mayor of Trézée-sur-Ouzou, an idyllic village on the canal of the Loire Valley, and use the noble title of Count.

But is particularly remembered as a brave and famous saboteur who fought for the honor of France in World War II as a secret agent with the British.

His exploits are legendary, involving a very eclectic collection of resources and tools to service sabotage and escape, including loaves of bread, a stolen limousine, not the leg of a table, a bike and a nun's habit, to mention the most successful spy devices such as parachuting, explosives and a submarine.

And perhaps corresponds to a man's adventures in wartime were carried out through the eyes of the public, the news of his death on May 8, Trézée-sur-Ouzou, emerged gradually, announced first by his family to Le Figaro newspaper in France and then returned in late June, the British press. He was 88.

Robert Jean-Marie de La Rochefoucauld (pronounced foo-to-Roash Council of Europe), was born September 16, 1923, in Paris, one of 10 children of a family living in a fashionable area of ??the Eiffel Tower. He attended private schools in Switzerland and Austria, and, at the age of 15 years, has received a slap on the cheek by Hitler in his class to visit the Alpine retreat of Berchtesgaden, the British newspaper The Telegraph.

Two years later, Hitler's army invaded France, and the father of M. the Rochefoucauld was taken prisoner. M. the Rochefoucauld became a follower of Charles de Gaulle, who was the editor Free French forces in England, and one day an employee of the emails warned that a letter had been denounced to the Gestapo.

With the help of the French resistance, he took a pen and fled to Spain in 1942 with two British airmen who were also being slaughtered by metro. I was hoping to go to England and link up with the movement of De Gaulle.

The Spanish authorities were interned three men, but the British secured their freedom and were so impressed with the enterprising M. de La Rochefoucauld who asked him to join the Directorate of Special Operations, the unit secret known as SOE, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill created in 1940, in his words, "put Europe in flames," in collaboration with the resistance groups on the continent occupied by the Germans.

M. the Rochefoucauld was an advantage for the British in another way. As its ambassador in Spain, said, according to the Telegraph: "The courage and skills of British agents is unmatched 's just that his French accent is terrible. ".

The British flew Mr. de la Rochefoucauld in England to train to jump from airplanes, to blow up the explosives and kill a man faster using only their hands.

He parachuted to France in June 1943. There, he destroyed an electrical substation and railroad tracks were flown at Avallon, but was captured and sentenced to death by the Nazis.

While being taken to execution, he jumped from the back of the truck of his captors, dodged bullets, and then ran through the streets near the edge of the settlement of a headquarters Germany, where he realized a limousine flying the flag with the swastika, its driver Near there, the keys in the ignition.

He entered the car and then took a train to Paris, hidden in one of their bathrooms.

"When we arrived in Paris, I felt drunk with freedom," the Telegraph quoted the saying.

The S.O.E. he later evacuated to England with a submarine, but in May 1944 was parachuted in France. Dressed as a workman, he was smuggling explosives in a huge German munitions factory near Bordeaux, hidden in hollowed bread loaves.

It was launched on 20 May explosives and fled on a bicycle, but was captured by the Germans once again.

In his cell, he pretended an attack of epilepsy, and when a guard opened the door of M. de La Rochefoucauld hit him in the head with a table leg and then broke his neck.

He took the guard's uniform and gun, fired two more guards, and escaped and contacted an employee of the French Resistance, the sister was a nun. He wore the dress and went quietly to the house of a senior official, who was hiding.

The S.O.E. disbanded in 1946. As a military officer in the war with France, Mr. de la Rochefoucauld troops trained in the French war in Indochina, the Suez campaign, when France joined Britain and Israel against Egypt for control of the Suez Canal. Later, followed by international business companies.

M. the Rochefoucauld is survived by his wife, Bernadette, his son, Jean, and their daughters, Astrid, Constance and Hortensia, according to The Independent in Britain.

M. Rochefoucauld was the mayor-sur-Ouzou Trézée 1966-1996. His memoirs, "La Liberté C'est Mon Plaisir, 1940-1946" was published in 2002.

In 1997 he pleaded on behalf of Maurice Papon, French exfuncionari wartime collaborationist Vichy government, which had been tried on the charge of the deportation of Jews from France were sent to Nazi death camps. M. the Rochefoucauld told the court that Mr. Papon had risked their lives to help the resistance and the allies.

Mr. Papon was convicted of complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity but fled to Switzerland while appealing. It was arrested at a hotel in Gstaad, where he was registered as Robert Rochefoucauld. One of Mr. Papon's lawyers later said that Mr. de La Rochefoucauld gave his passport to Mr. Papon.

Mr. Papon was returned to France and has less than three years of his sentence before being released. He died in 2007.

M. Rochefoucauld was a knight of the French Legion of Honour and a recipient of the Medal of the French Resistance, and was decorated for his bravery by the British. At his death, is believed to have been one of the last French life SOE Churchill

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Oscar Award Winner Ernest Borgnine dies at 95

Ernest Borgnine seemed born to play the heavy when he burst onto the Hollywood scene as "Fats" Judson, a sadistic stockade sergeant who brutally beat to death a private in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity. "

However, two years later came the starring role in "Marty," Borgnine on the stocky, toothless challenged the encasellament and has been recognized as a versatile actor who inhabit the one butcher in the Bronx the search for love.

After a long career spent in seven to ten years in film and television, including the easy villains and representations in a serious role in the comedy television series of 1960 "McHale's Navy" and a lot of pieces his grandfather.

Borgnine, who won an Oscar for her performance in "Marty," died Sunday of apparent renal failure in hospital Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his publicist for a long time, Harry Flynn. He was 95 years.

The role alongside Frank Sinatra in "From Here to Eternity," based on the bestselling novel of military life that represents James Jones in Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Borgnine moved to the top of the bad of the film in movies like "True Cross" and "Bad Day at Black Rock."

He left behind expectations in "Marty," the 1955 film version of the original game series on a Paddy Chayefsky television butcher sensitive Italian American bachelor who yearns for something more than hanging out with friends Saturday night.

"Well, I waddaya do tonight?" Marty's best friend, Angie, played by Joe Mantell, asks in return is often quoted in the film.

"I do not know, Ang, Wadden you want to do?" Marty replies.

Borgnine sensitive portrait of the self-described as "bad fat", not only earned him an Oscar for best actor, but the film also won Oscars for Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann, the Oscar for Best film.

In a film career began in 1951, Borgnine has appeared in over 115 films, including "Johnny Guitar," "Demetrius and the Gladiators," "The Flight of the Phoenix", "The Oscar", "The Dirty Dozen "" The Wild Bunch "," Willard "," The Adventure of Poseidon "and" The Emperor of the North ".

Between 1962 and 1966, played the leading role in the ABC comedy "McHale's Navy." Since the breakup of a captain regulation torpedo boat in the South Pacific during WWII, Borgnine was constantly frustrated pitted against Captain Binghamton (played by Joe Flynn). Tim Conway McHale played bumbling companion, the lieutenant Charles Parker.

Born Ermes Effron Borgnino in Hamden, Connecticut, January 24, 1917, Borgnine was the son of Italian immigrants.

His parents separated when he was two years old, and his mother took him to live in Italy, returning after several years.

Borgnine graduated from New Haven High School in 1935, then worked a couple of weeks as a vegetable truck driver before enlisting in the Navy as an apprentice seaman.

He was discharged two months before the Pearl Harbor attack, and quickly returned to soldier. He spent the war as a gunner mate on a destroyer.

After his discharge, Borgnine returned home, not knowing what was going to do.

Finally, the mother suggested she give it a good shot. After all, he said, "You're always making a fool in front of people."

After six months of study at the Randall School of Dramatic Art in Hartford, Connecticut, the GI Bill, Borgnine got a job in the theater exchange in Abingdon, Virginia, working backstage before finally landing a $ 30 a week acting in place of street theater company.

"We conducted 14 exhibitions in our heads all the time," said columnist Hedda Hopper of Hollywood in 1956. "We have gone from 'John Loves Mary" in "Much Ado About Nothing" -. What kind of theater training school is fine, but the road is where you learn "

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