Obituaries in the news

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jody Powell, who was White House press secretary and among the closest and most trusted advisers to President Jimmy Carter, died Monday of a heart attack. He was 65.

Powell, a member of the so-called Georgia Mafia that descended on Washington after Carter was elected president, was stricken at his home on Maryland's eastern shore, said Jack Nelson, a retired reporter and close friend of Powell.

Nelson said Powell had been working with firewood with a helper who briefly stepped away. Powell was discovered later on the ground. Powell was said to have had a previous heart attack in the 1990s.

Powell, who first worked with Carter during his campaign for governor in Georgia the 1960s, joined Carter's presidential campaign in 1976 and served as chief White House spokesman from 1977 to 1981.

After leaving the White House, he headed the Washington public relations firm of Ogilvy&Mather, buildingit from about a dozen people to nearly 100 before leaving to found the Powell Tate public relations firm in Washington with Sheila Tate, former press secretary to first lady Nancy Reagan.

Born on a cotton and peanut farm, Powell grew up in Vienna, Ga., and had aspirations to become an Air Force pilot. But he was expelled from the U.S. Air Force Academy during his senior year for cheating and went on to attend Georgia State University and later Emory University where he received a masters degree in political science.

He joined Carter's gubernatorial campaign as a driver and all-around handyman and stayed with him through his presidency.

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Crystal Lee Sutton

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Crystal Lee Sutton, whose fight to unionize Southern textile plants with low pay and poor conditions was dramatized in the film "Norma Rae," died Friday. She was 68.

Sutton died in a hospice after a long battle with brain cancer, her son, Jay Jordan, said.

Actress Sally Field portrayed a character based on Sutton in the movie and won a best-actress Academy Award.

In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity. In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.

Bruce Raynor, president of Workers United and executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, worked with Sutton to organize the Stevens plants. In 1974, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union won the right to represent 3,000 employees at seven Roanoke Rapids plants in northeastern North Carolina.

Jordan said his mother spent years asa labor organizer in the 1970s. She later became a certified nursing assistant in 1988 but had not been able to work for several years because of illnesses.

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Patrick Swayze

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

He died in Los Angeles "after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said his publicist, Annett Wolf.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer. He kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series.

Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," ''Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar."

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Elizabeth "Beth" Rickey

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Elizabeth "Beth" Rickey, who helped refute former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's claims that he had renounced neo-Nazi ties, died Saturday. She was 53.

Rickey died at a hotel in Santa Fe, N.M., said friends and associates. Her longtime friend Quin Hillyer, now a reporter for The Washington Times, said Rickey had been in ill health for years, with ailments including Crohn's disease. She was running out of money and unable to find steady work because of her health, Hillyer said.

Duke had been an unabashed neo-Nazi and former Klan leader on the fringe of Louisiana politics when he made a successful move into the mainstream, narrowly winning election to an open seat in the Louisiana House as a Republican from suburban New Orleans in February 1989.

He claimed to have renounced extremism, recalled Lance Hill, who worked with Rickey and others to found the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism when Duke's political star was rising.

But Rickey, a Republican researcher, exposed the fact that his office was selling books advocating Nazism and questioning whether the Holocaust occurred. Rickey's purchase of the books including "Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last," that helped expose those ties.

Rickey also traveled to Chicago in 1989, where she taped Duke's speech to the right-wing Populist Party of America. Duke later apologized to the House for any embarrassment caused after he was photographed at the convention shaking hands at the convention with Art Jones, then the vice chairman of the American Nazi Party.

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September 15, 2009 05:10 AM EDT

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