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Alan P. Bell, leader of Kinsey study
Bloomington, Ind. - Alan P. Bell, a research psychologist who led a groundbreaking Kinsey Institute study two decades ago suggesting that homosexuality has a biological basis, has died. He was 70.
Bell died of a stroke May 13 in a hospital in Bloomington.
A retired professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Bell was a senior research psychologist for 14 years at the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research.
Bell led the Kinsey Institute study, published in 1981, that suggested that homosexuals are born with that predisposition and not influenced by traumatic experiences during childhood.
Critics, however, questioned the study's controversial finding that there is almost no correlation between early family experience and adult sexual preference, and the researchers' method of relying on participants' memories in answering researchers' questions.
Paul Robinson, writing in Psychology Today, said Bell and his co-authors answer the question of why some people become homosexuals while others become heterosexuals "more satisfactorily than any previous study."
05/27/02
Milton Shedd, 79, was co-founder of SeaWorld
Newport Beach, Calif. - SeaWorld co-founder Milton Shedd, known as the "Walt Disney of the Sea, " died Friday of cancer. He was 79.
Shedd was active in marine conservation during much of his life, but his most famous contribution was SeaWorld, the San Diego aquarium that is home to Shamu, the killer whale.
The project began as a plan by four fraternity brothers to open a restaurant with a marine show.
Once the four - Shedd, Ken Norris, David DeMott and George Millay - got into the project, they found it expensive and difficult. So they plunged in and built an aquarium instead. With an initial investment of $1.5 million, SeaWorld opened in 1964.
05/29/02
Poet Stefan Doinas and wife, Irinel
Bucharest, Romania - Poet Stefan Augustin Doinas died Saturday from heart failure, a week after surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. He was 80.
He was married
for more than 42 years to former ballerina Irinel Licium, considered to be one of Romania's best dancers. She committed suicide a day after Doinas died.
Doinas wrote 23 books of poetry as well as children's books, essay collections and a novel during a career that spanned decades. His first poetry collection, the "The Book of Tides, " was published in 1964.
Doinas, who is best known for his ballad style, also translated works by dozens of noted authors, including Goethe and Shakespeare.
His wife, 74, took an overdose of sleeping pills.
05/29/02
Josephine Abady, Play House's controversial artistic director
Josephine R. Abady, the controversial artistic director of Cleveland Play House from 1988 until she was fired in 1994, died Saturday in her apartment in New York after a six-year struggle with cancer. She was 52.
Abady received accolades as one of the most prominent women in American theater and for leading the Play House into a new era.
"She had uncompromising artistic aspirations from which she would not back down, " said Ben Cameron, executive director of Theatre Communications Group, a New York trade organization for the nation's nonprofit theaters.
Abady, a native of Richmond, Va., earned her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University in 1971. She went on to receive a master's degree in 1973 from Florida State University's Asolo Theatre and directed Christine Lahti in "The House of Blue Leaves."
Abady taught at two New England colleges before becoming artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass., which she led from 1979 to 1988.
At the Play House, Abady immediately earned enemies by disbanding the long-standing resident company in favor of recruiting actors from New York. Her first directing assignment, a revival of "Born Yesterday" starring Ed Asner and Madeline Kahn, went on a national tour and to Broadway.
"The Abady years, from an artistic point of view, were the best the Play House has had in the past several decades, " said Richard Hahn, a Play House trustee.
Abady is credited with increasing ticket sales at the Play House, attracting black audiences and beginning an international-exchange effort that made her the first foreign woman to direct in what was then the Soviet Union.
The Play House board's sudden decision not to renew Abady's contract has remained a mystery, although some on the board were said to have found her experimentalism and her personal style not to their liking.
After Cleveland, Abady won an appointment to the leadership of Circle in the Square, a nonprofit Broadway house that declared bankruptcy in 1996. In New York, Abady was nominated for a Tony Award as producer of "The Rose Tattoo."
Despite the cancer that began in 1996 in one breast and spread to her bones and brain, Abady remained active. In the six months before her most recent and severe relapse this spring, she directed plays in Texas, Virginia and Florida.
Abady's funeral was yesterday at Hevreh Synagogue in Great Barrington, Mass., where she had a home. She is survived by her husband, Michael Krawitz, brother, Samuel A. Abady, and sister, Caroline Aaron.
A memorial service is planned in New York for Aug. 21, the 53rd anniversary of Abady's birth. Memorials may be made to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
05/29/02
Clarence E. 'Gene' Fordham
Cuyahoga Falls - A memorial service for Clarence E. "Gene" Fordham, who hiked 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail, will be at 7 p.m. today at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 104 W. Portage Trail Ext., Cuyahoga Falls.
Fordham died Friday in his home, a day before his 88th birthday.
He was born to homesteaders in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Waukesha, Wis. He became an American citizen while in Hawaii serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Following the war, Fordham earned a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin.
Fordham worked for 29 years as an electronic engineer in early space and computer projects at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron.
He was an elder and charter member of Northminster Presbyterian. He was a volunteer with Girl Scouts of America and an avid outdoorsman.
Fordham was a National Park Service volunteer and a member of the Appalachian Trail and Buckeye Trail councils. In his 50s and 60s, he hiked 500 miles of the historic 2, 100-mile Appalachian Trail that runs from Maine to Georgia.
"That was something that he absolutely was very proud of, " said Mark Lipari, a son-in-law.
His first wife, Shirley K. Fordham, died in 1998. Fordham is survived by his wife, Bette E. Fordham, daughters, Cyndie Lipari of Reston, Va., and Pennie Stringer of Richfield; six sisters; and four grandchildren.
Memorial contributions can be made to the church. Arrangements are by Cremation Society of Ohio.
05/29/02
Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson
Original 'Nancy Drew' author dies at 96
Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, a journalist for 80 years who inspired legions of women through her Nany Drew mysteries, died Tuesday. She was 96.
Benson became ill Tuesday while working on her weekly column at the Toledo Blade. She died a short time later.
Benson was the original author of the Nancy Drew mysteries, a series first published in 1930. The stories, which featured a smart, plucky, 16-year-old girl, made their debut when women usually were relegated to supporting roles, in book and in real life.
Benson worked for Toledo newspapers for 58 years before reluctantly retiring from full-time work in January.
She covered Toledo City Hall, the courthouse and police at the Blade when female journalists were few and mostly reported on society doings.
Benson was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. She also received the lifetime achievement award from the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association in 1997.
"She broke the mold, " said Thomas Walton, editor of the Blade.
"She showed women they could do anything. She often said that of Nancy Drew and the same could be said of her, " Walton said.
Benson was born in Ladora, Iowa. She wrote children's stories when she was in grade school and won her first writing award at 14.
In 1927, she was the first woman to earn a degree from the University of Iowa's graduate program in journalism.
She wrote more than 130 books, including the Penny Parker mystery series and countless short stories.
Benson wrote the first 23 Nancy Drew books under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
A contract kept her silent until 1980, when a court decision allowed her to reveal her authorship.
Nancy Drew was a beautiful, blonde rich girl who wore stylish sweater sets, white gloves and heels while climbing through attics and haunted mansions to solve mysteries and to catch crooks.
"She was one of the first girls who was in a role that was unique for the time, " said Raechel Brooks, a librarian at Stephen E. Howe School in Cleveland.
"I can't think of any other series with a woman as a main character doing something important, " the librarian said.
Benson was paid just $125 per book and collected no royalties from the series or its spin-offs, which included a television show, board games and four movies.
The series is still in print and has sold more than 200 million books in 17 languages.
The stories have universal appeal and always teach a life lesson, said Elaine Leonard, librarian at Clara E. Westropp School in Cleveland.
"It's the kind of book I felt you could give it to any child, " she said. "If I can get kids to read one, they'll probably read all of them."
Today, several "Carolyn Keenes" write the new adventures of Nancy Drew, who has evolved into a halter-top-wearing, Rollerblading high schooler who hangs out at the mall.
Benson is survived by her daughter, Peggy Wirt of Logansport, Ind.
Benson was married
twice, both times to journalists: Asa Wirt, who died in 1947; and George Benson, who died in 1959.
Services will be private.
05/30/02
Col. Ruby Bradley, 94, most-decorated female veteran
Hazard, Ky. - Col. Ruby Bradley, an Army nurse who was one of the nation's most-decorated female veterans and a World War II prisoner of war, died Tuesday of a heart attack suffered last week. She was 94.
At a Japanese prisoner of war camp, Bradley went hungry to give most of her food to children who were being held captive. She and other nurses set up a clinic to care for the sick and wounded.
A native of Spencer, W.Va., Bradley became a nurse in 1933 after a stint as a teacher and joined the Army Nurse Corps as a surgical nurse in 1934.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, she was a 34-year-old administrator serving in the Philippines at Camp John Hay. She was captured three weeks later.
Bradley was moved to Santo Tomas in Manila on Sept. 23, 1943. She was among a group of imprisoned nurses who became known as the Angels in Fatigues. Not only did they provide medical treatment for prisoners, they also were adept at stashing food for the children.
Bradley weighed about 80 pounds on Feb. 3, 1945, when the American troops arrived at Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, Philippines, freeing her after three years of captivity.
05/30/02
