Obituaries in the news

The Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — NCAA president Myles Brand, who as head of Indiana University sparked massive protests by firing Hall of Fame basketball coach Bob Knight, died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 67.

NCAA officials, who announced Brand's death, were not ready to say who would replace Brand or when they may begin searching for a successor.

The first former university president to run college sports' largest governing body, Brand worked to change the perception that wins supersede academics.

Brand gained national attention in May 2000 whenhe put Knight on a zero-tolerance policy after a former player alleged that the coach had choked him during a practice years earlier.

Four months after that announcement, freshman Kent Harvey accused Knight of grabbing him, and Brand did what fans considered unthinkable — he fired the coach who won three national championships in Bloomington.

Knight later moved on to Texas Tech, stepping aside for son, Pat Knight, in February 2008.

Indiana students protested at the time of the firing, but Brand's decision gave him a platform to address the problems he saw in college sports.

During a January 2001 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Brand criticized the growing "arms race" in college sports, saying school presidents faced tough challenges with celebrity coaches and suggesting the emphasis on winning championships endangered the real mission of universities.

In October 2002, Brand was hired to lead the NCAA and used that position to move his agenda forward.

___

W. Horace Carter

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — W. Horace Carter, a North Carolina newspaper publisher and editor whose crusades against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s earned him a Pulitzer Prize, died Wednesday. He was 88.

Mitchell Ward, director of Inman Funeral Home in Tabor City, confirmed that Carter died at New Hanover Regional Medical Center after suffering a heart attack one week ago.

Carter's paper, The Tabor City Tribune, and the nearby Whiteville News Reporter shared the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service "for their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities," according to the Pulitzers' Web site.

Carter's campaign against the Klan began in 1950 when klansmen rode through Tabor City's black neighborhoods before reaching downtown, where they handed out recruiting information.

During his two-year campaign, Carter's reporting on Klan rallies exposed him to death threats, as well as threats to his family, his pets and his business. The grand dragon of the Klan told Carter that he would order members to stop reading the newspaper and businesses to stop advertising with him.

___

Dave Fuller

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Dave Fuller, the winningest baseball coach in University of Florida history, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Fuller died at North Florida Regional Hospital in Gainesville.

He guided the Florida baseball program from 1948 to 1975, compiling a 557-354-6 record and winning three Southeastern Conference championships (1952, 1956, 1962).

He also was a member of the football staff for 29 years (1948-76), the longest run of any assistant coach in school history. Fuller served in many capacities as head freshman coach, varsity assistant, head scout and a key recruiter under head coaches Bob Woodruff, Ray Graves and Doug Dickey.

___

Henry Gibson

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Henry Gibson, the veteran comic character actor best known for his role reciting offbeat poetry on "Rowan&Martin's Laugh-In," died Monday. He was 73.

Gibson's son, James, said Gibson died at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer.

After serving in the Air Force and studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Gibson — born James Bateman in Philadelphia in 1935 — created his Henry Gibson comic persona, a pun on playwright Henrik Ibsen's name, while working as a theater actor in New York. For three seasons on "Laugh-In," he delivered satirical poems while gripping a giant flower.

After "Laugh-In," Gibson went on to appear in several films, including "The Long Goodbye" and "Nashville," which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. His most memorable roles included playing the menacing neighbor opposite Tom Hanks in "The 'Burbs," the befuddled priest in "Wedding Crashers" and voicing Wilbur the Pig in the animated "Charlotte's Web."

His recent work included playing cantankerous Judge Clarence Brown on ABC's "Boston Legal" for five seasons and providing the voice of sardonic, eye-patched reporter Bob Jenkins on Fox's "King of the Hill." In 2001, Gibson returned to the stage in New York in the Encores! New York City Center production of Rodgers and Hart's "A Connecticut Yankee."

___

Jack Kightlinger

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Jack Kightlinger, a retired White House photographer who worked for five U.S. presidents, died Monday. He was 77.

Kightlinger was killed along with his wife, Adele, following a fiery wreck in their hometown of Flat Rock, N.C., his son-in-law said. Authorities said the collision happened when a truck crossed a center line.

Kightlinger died at the scene, his son-in-law Brad Fellrath said. Kightlinger's wife, also 77, died a day later at the hospital.

Kightlinger took behind-the-scenes photos of presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan over a 19-year span ending in 1985. The images included a young Amy Carter sprinting across the White House lawn to a waiting helicopter, Richard Nixon bowling and dozens of state dinners.

Kightlinger serving in the Army Signal Corps and supervised 200 photographers at a military photography lab in California in 1967 when he received a telegram directing him to go to Washington for a possible assignment, he said. He'd been chosen to compete with photographers from each branch of the military for a spot on the White House photography staff. He got the job after seven days of interviews and two polygraph tests, he said.

Kightlinger said he was especially proud of a Reagan photo that was used as the basis for a postage stamp of the former president released in 2005.

___

Melvin Simon

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Melvin Simon, who led what is now Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group Inc. for nearly 40 years and also owned the NBA's Indiana Pacers with his brother, died Wednesday, a company spokesman said. Simon was 82.

Details on the circumstances of his death were not released.

Building suburban indoor malls that drew generations of American shoppers was Simon's specialty. He was among the first to jump on the trend in the 1960s, starting a company that eventually made him a billionaire and became the largest in the business.

Simon was working for an Indianapolis real estate company when he and his younger brother, Herbert, started their own company in 1960. Simon Property Group, a real estate investment trust, now has full or partial ownership of more than 300 shopping malls in the United States, Europe and Japan, netting Simon a fortune that Forbes magazine estimated this year at $1.3 billion.

Simon's interests also extended to politics and the movies. He and his wife were major Democratic Party donors, and he was best known in Hollywood for producing the raunchy teen comedy "Porky's."

The Simon brothers were credited with keeping professional basketball in Indianapolis when they bought the Pacers in 1983 at the behest of city leaders to head off a deal that could have seen the team move — less than a year before the NFL's Colts moved to the city from Baltimore.

___

Mary Travers

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, diedWednesday. She was 72.

Travers, who battled leukemia for several years, died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut, said the band's publicist, Heather Lylis.

Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s.

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," ''Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)"

They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington.

And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.

The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," ''Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind."

At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.

They debuted at the Bitter End in 1961, and their beatnik look — a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal.

(This version CORRECTS Gibson's birthplace to Philadelphia, sted Germantown, a Philadelphia neighborhood.)

___

September 17, 2009 01:56 PM EDT

Copyright 2009, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.