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NBC's Arthur Lord, 60, organized 'Operation Peacock' Republic news services
Sept. 29, 2002
LOS ANGELES - Arthur Lord, an Emmy-winning television news producer who as NBC's Saigon bureau chief risked his life to evacuate more than 100 Vietnamese in the last days of the war, has died. He was 60.
Lord died Sept. 25 at the UCLA Medical Center, his family said.
He had been hospitalized for more than two months. A cause of death was not released.
During his four-decade career, Lord had a unique eye on history.
He covered the wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, the Apollo moon landings and the Iran hostage crisis.
He won two Emmys and a Peabody.
Lord, a New York native, began working for NBC in 1966 after three years in the Air Force as a public-information officer.
He was hired as a news writer and producer and wrote reports for some of the network's top anchors, including Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Frank McGee.
In 1971, the network made him an on-air correspondent and sent him to Saigon to cover the war in Vietnam. He filed reports for 18 months before leaving to head the network's Houston bureau.
He returned to Asia in 1975 as Saigon bureau chief. There, he arranged the evacuation of 104 Vietnamese NBC employees and their families in the last days of the war.
On the way to the airport, Lord bribed officials with $100 bills to get the families to safety.
He often said the evacuation, dubbed "Operation Peacock" after NBC's longtime symbol, was his proudest accomplishment.
Lord headed NBC News' Burbank bureau from 1979 to 1982.
He closed his career at the network as a producer for special projects, including coordinating coverage of papal visits and presidential trips.
Lord was also a vocal critic of some journalism practices. He called the media's coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial "one of the most disgraceful periods in U.S. journalism."
"He was a man known for his extreme integrity," said NBC correspondent George Lewis.
Lord, who retired from NBC in 1996, is survived by his wife, Susan, and three children.
John Kappas, husband of Florence Henderson
Sept. 29, 2002
LOS ANGELES - John Kappas, a hypnotherapist and husband of Brady Bunch actress Florence Henderson, died Thursday after a long battle with cancer. He was 77.
Kappas, author of the 1984 book Improve Your Sex Life Through Self-Hypnosis, was a psychologist who taught and performed private therapy sessions.
Kappas founded the Hypnosis Motivational Institute, a clinic and college for hypnotherapy in Tarzana, Calif.
His other books included Professional Hypnotism Manual: Introducing Physical and Emotional Suggestibility and Sexuality and Self-Hypnosis: The Key to Athletic Success.
Kappas and Hendersen, who played Carol Brady on the 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch, married in 1987.
Bailey Aldrich, 95, judge almost 50 years
Sept. 29, 2002
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Bailey Aldrich, 95, a federal judge in Boston for almost half a century, died Wednesday.
Aldrich was appointed to the U.S. District Court in Boston in 1954 and advanced to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1959.
He was one of the nation's longest-serving federal judges, hearing cases even after his 90th birthday.
Aldrich grew up in Boston and attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School. His colleagues recorded his story in his own words in 1999 and stored the tape transcriptions in the United States Courthouse library in Boston.
Robert Cardoza, chairman of AAA
Sept. 29, 2002
MODESTO, Calif. - Robert J. Cardoza, chairman of the American Automobile Association, died after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 59.
Cardoza was elected national chairman of the 44 million member AAA in 2001, and was re-elected in April.
He became a director of the California State Automobile Association in 1979 and later became chairman of the CSAA's board of directors. He joined the AAA in 1995 and served as board secretary from 1997-1999 and vice chairman from 1999-2001.
In 1992, he received a Torch of Liberty award from the Central Pacific Region of the Anti-Defamation League. The award is given to those who fight anti-Semitism and prejudice and promote goodwill among racial, religious and ethnic groups.
R. Lee, water expert and ex-Idaho politician
Sept. 29, 2002
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - Former state Sen. Robert Lee, a conservative lawmaker and expert on state water issues, died Friday after a 12-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 70.
Lee was first elected to the Senate in 1994 and served in the Idaho Senate from District 27 for three terms. He resigned his seat in November because of health problems.
He was vice chairman of the Resources and Environment Committee and was also a member of the powerful budget-writing committee. During his later years in the Legislature, Lee was one of the leaders in the attempt to stem the growth of Medicaid.
He also was among a group of eastern Idaho lawmakers who put up a fierce challenge to the state's redistricting effort.
Lee was the first chairman of the Idaho Water Resource Board, formed in the mid-1960s.
Warren Burnett, Texas lawyer took big cases
Sept. 29, 2002
Warren E. Burnett, a whiskey-swigging, Shakespeare-quoting Texas lawyer who achieved near-legendary status by winning big jury awards, taking on seemingly impossible murder cases and defending the powerless, died on Monday while visiting Fort Davis, Texas. He was 75.
He was sitting on a porch with a beer in his hand when he had a heart attack, said his wife, Kay Taylor Burnett.
Burnett lived in League City, Texas, near Galveston, but began building his reputation by hanging a shingle in Odessa, on the plains of West Texas, after World War II.
In a state where sensational trials are high sport, the angular Burnett - with size 14 shoes and stentorian oratory owing not a little to the King James version of the Bible - cut a striking figure.
Whitney Blake, 'Hazel' actress
Oct. 2, 2002
EDGARTOWN, Mass. - Whitney Blake, the versatile actress who portrayed comedienne Shirley Booth's housewife employer on the long-running television series Hazel and co-created the edgier sitcom One Day at a Time, has died. She was 76.
Blake died Saturday at her home in Edgartown, after a long illness, said her husband, writer-producer Allan Manings.
The actress, who also maintained a home in Malibu, Calif., portrayed Dorothy Baxter, wife to Don DeFore's lawyer George Baxter, from 1961-65 on Hazel, the series modeled on the mouthy maid of Ted Key's Saturday Evening Post cartoons.
The show, in which Booth as Hazel ran the household rather than Blake as the homemaker, was so popular, Blake told the Los Angeles Times in 1963, because "we make people happy."
But the sitcom carrying Blake's credit as co-creator a decade later did deal with deeper problems and broke new ground by making a divorced single mother (Bonnie Franklin) head of the fictional household. One Day At a Time, set in an Indianapolis apartment house, with Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli as the teenage daughters, ran from 1975-84.
Blake, who co-created the show with her husband for then-boss Norman Lear, was determined to depict a single-mother household because of her own family experiences. She had been reared by her own divorced mother, and she herself was a divorced mother before marrying Manings, bringing up three children, sons Richard and Brian, and her daughter, actress Meredith Baxter. Her daughter had also been a single mother. All the involved children, Blake told the Los Angeles Times in 1975, "turned out fine, but there were terrible things that happened along the way."
Luther Henderson, led rise of Pier 1 Imports
Oct. 2, 2002
FORT WORTH - Luther Henderson, the leader of a group of investors who bought Pier 1 Imports in 1966 and transformed the company into a national retailer, died Saturday of injuries suffered in a traffic collision. He was 82.
Henderson was Pier 1's chairman and president from 1966 to 1983 and its chairman from 1983 until 1985. He served as a director and founder-chairman from 1985 until 1993.
Henry 'Hank' Jansen, freight hauling magnate
Oct. 2, 2002
LYNDEN, Wash. - Henry "Hank" Jansen, who built a two-truck business into a major West Coast and Alaska freight hauling conglomerate, died Sunday. He was 84.
Jansen endowed a charitable foundation after making Lynden Inc. one of the state's largest privately held businesses.
The company, now based in Seattle, has 1,400 employees and includes eight businesses, including marine, trucking and air divisions.
After years as a major contributor to area causes ranging from church groups to Western Washington University in Bellingham, Jansen provided $2.5 million for the Eleanor and Henry Jansen Foundation five years ago.
Sir John Rennie, ran Mideast aid program
Oct. 2, 2002
LONDON - Sir John Rennie, who kept a U.N. aid program for Palestinian refugees going during conflict in the Middle East in the 1960s and '70s, died Aug. 12 of a heart condition. He was 85.
From 1968 to 1977, Rennie was deputy commissioner at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
From 1971, he served as commissioner general for the agency, established in 1950 to care for Palestinians made homeless by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Rennie entered the British Colonial Administrative Service, earning a knighthood when he was made governor of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius in 1962.
During his six-year term, he oversaw Mauritius' transition from a British colony to an independent nation and was asked by the island's prime minister to stay on for six months as governor general and personal representative of Queen Elizabeth II.
Soon afterward, he joined the refugee agency, which was based in Beirut.
Rennie steered the agency through the 1973 Middle East war and the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon.
