Lloyd Eaton, American college football coach died he was , 88.

Lloyd W. Eaton  was an American footballplayer, coach, and executive. He served as the head coach at Alma College(1949–1955), Northern Michigan University (1956), and the University of Wyoming (1962–1970), compiling a career college football record of 104–53–4. Eaton then worked as the director of player personnel for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He was involved in the 1969 incident "Black 14", serving as the coach of the team.

(March 23, 1918 – March 14, 2007)

Growing up in Belle Fourche, South Dakota,^[1] Eaton was an outstanding football, track, and boxing athlete at Belle Fourche High School. After High School, he graduated from Black Hills State Teachers College where he played end and became captain of the team in his junior year. 

Eaton remained at Black Hills after graduation, becoming the line coach there for one year. He then coached football at DuPre High School for several years leading up to his service in World War II.

Following the War, he returned to coaching at Bennett County High School in Martin, South Dakota, and then earned a master's degree at the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, he coached the 150-pound football team.

He began doctoral studies at Indiana University Bloomington, then moved on to coach football at Alma College in Michigan. There his teams won the 1950 and 1951 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship titles, and he compiled a record of 40–20–2 died he was , 88. Denny Stolz, who later became a successful coach.

. His influence there was felt by player

Eaton was a detail-oriented disciplinarian who made a name for himself by introducing new techniques that helped smaller defensive linemen. "[Smaller defensive linemen] became very popular as a result," recalled Paul Roach, Eaton's assistant at Wyoming. "I think this became somewhat of a springboard for him to be elevated as a head football coach, and he certainly had an outstanding career as a head football coach".^[2]

Eaton left Alma in 1956, and coached at Northern Michigan University for one year before. From 1957 to 1961, Eaton served as defensive line coach at the University of Wyoming, and in 1962, he succeeded Bob Devaney as head coach there. In that role, he became one of the university's most successful coaches, compiling a record of 57–33–2. His greatest success came in the 1966, 1967, and 1968 seasons. In those three years, the team posted back-to-back 10–1 seasons, including a 14-game winning streak from November 5, 1966 to January 1, 1968, then followed this by going undefeated through the 1968 regular season. His teams won the 1966 Sun Bowl and played in the 1968 Sugar Bowl.

In 1969, he dismissed 14 Wyoming players from the team for planning to wear black armbands during a game against BYU. The situation known as the "Black 14", caused harmful repercussions for the University and he was eventually forced to step down after he went 1-9 the next year.^[3]

In 1972, the NFL came calling, and Eaton became the Director of Player Personnel for the Green Bay Packers,^[4] before being demoted to a scouting position four years later. He later served as the western regional director for the BLESTO player rating service of the NFL, before retiring in the mid-1980s.

In 1973, he was elected to the Alma (College) Athletic Hall of Fame, and in 1984 to the Wyoming Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

He was once married and divorced, living purposefully without a phone.^[9] Eaton died at the age of 88 on March 14, 2007 in Nampa, Idaho.^[1]

 

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Antonio Ortiz Mena, Mexican Finance Secretary (1958–1970), IDB President (1971–1987), died from complications from a fall he was 99

Antonio Ortiz Mena (was a Mexican economist who served as President of the Inter-American Development Bank (1971–1988) and as Mexico's Secretary of Finance during the administrations of Adolfo López Mateos and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1958–1970) died from complications from a fall he was 99.^[6]

^{(16 April 1907 – 12 March 2007)}  

According to Pedro Aspe —who served as Secretary of Finance almost two decades later— during Ortiz' tenure Mexico's per-capita income grew 3.4 percent annually for twelve years and economic growth averaged six percent a year; inflation often remained below three percent, and millions entered the middle class as the country began its transformation from a largely rural economy to an industrial one.^[2]

Ortiz was born in Parral, Chihuahua, and overtook his basic studies at the Colegio Alemán, Colegio Franco-Inglés, and at the National Preparatory Schoolof the Mexican capital. He later entered the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, 1925–1928) and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Law.^[3]

From 1932 to 1936 he held minor posts at the now-defunct Department of the Federal District, and later on he gained some experience in banking while working as an assistant to the director of the National Urban Mortgage Bank (1936–1945) and as deputy director of the National Mortgage Bank (1946–1952). President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines appointed him director-general of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) serving from 1952 to 1958.^[3]

He finally stepped down from the post on August 1970, just months before the inauguration of President Luis Echeverría. His resignation took many by surprise,^[6] but a few months later the governments of Mexico and the United States announced they were supporting his bid to become the next president of the Inter-American Development Bank, replacing Chilean Felipe Herrera, its founding chairman.^[1] Both Argentina and Venezuela nominated different candidates, but on 27 November 1970 Ortiz received the majority of votes, although the U.S. Secretary of Treasury, David M. Kennedy, reported to Richard Nixonthat the election had been "contentious".^{[nb 2]}

He remained as president of the IADB for seventeen years until his resignation in 1988 —three years before the end of his last term— amid suspicions that U.S. President Ronald Reagan was trying to intervene in its internal affairs since his Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, had tried to block a 58 million USD loan to a then-Sandinista Nicaragua.^[5] According to Elisabeth Malkin of The New York Times, during his tenure lending increased tenfold and he concentrated most of its efforts on supporting Latin American infrastructure projects, heavy industries and first financing operations for microenterprise.^[2]

Back in Mexico he served as director of Banamex, one of the country's top commercial banks that had been recently nationalized. He died in Mexico City on 12 March 2007 at the age of 99, after spending two weeks in a hospital recovering from a fall.^[5]

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Vilma Ebsen, American actress, sister and dancing partner of Buddy Ebsen died she was , 96

 Vilma Ebsen  was an American musical theatre and film actress best known for dancing in Broadway shows and Metro-Goldwyn died she was , 96-Mayer musicals in the 1930s with her more famous brother, Buddy Ebsen.

(February 1, 1911 – March 12, 2007)

 

Ebsen was born in Belleville, Illinois. During her childhood, her family relocated to Florida. She learned to dance at her father's dance studio in Orlando, Florida, in the 1920s. Vilma and Buddy Ebsen moved to New York in 1928, where they formed a vaudeville act. One of their first appearances together was in Eddie Cantor's Ziegfeld production, Whoopee.

When Whoopee closed after a year and a half, Vilma and Buddy Ebsen took their act to Atlantic City, where they caught the eye of celebrity columnist Walter Winchell. A one-paragraph rave in Winchell's column lifted the Ebsens from obscurity.

Vilma and Buddy Ebsen performed their dance act on Broadway, as well as around the United States in vaudeville theatres and supper clubs throughout the early 1930s. Some of the Broadway productions they starred in were Flying Colors (1932) and Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. They came to Hollywood in 1935, where Vilma Ebsen starred in one film, playing Sally Burke in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935).^[1]

After the success of Broadway Melody of 1936, the studio decided to separate the Ebsens. Vilma Ebsen was not interested in accepting Louis B. Mayer's offer to make her "the next Myrna Loy" and moved back to New York with her husband, composer and bandleader Robert Emmett "Bobby" Dolan, whom she had married on June 24, 1933. Back in New York, she appeared in one more Broadway musical comedy, Between the Devil, with British dancing stars Jack Buchanan, Evelyn Laye, and Adele Dixon. This show ran from December 22, 1937, until March 12, 1938.

She then retired from show business to become a full-time homemaker. She and Dolan moved to Pacific Palisades, California, in 1941. They had one child, a son named Robert, but later divorced in January 1948. Later that year she married tennis player Stanley Briggs. They also had a son, Michael.^[2]

In the 1950s she opened a dance school in Pacific Palisades with her sister, Helga, which was also partially funded by their brother, Buddy. Her son Robert Dolan was one of the dance teachers. Another was Arthur Mahoney, a ballet master from New York. The school offered lessons in tap, jazz, ballet, and ballroom dance. It also gave annual dance recitals and cotillions at the Riveria Country Club, Deauville Beach Club, and other notable venues.

The Ebsen Dance Studio was in a large two story building on Swarthmore Drive, and Vilma and Helga lived in a house behind the studio. The studio had a large room below and several smaller dance rooms above. The studio staged a community theatre production of The Teahouse of the August Moon circa 1960, but thereafter discontinued its community theatre and dismantled the stage to enlarge the space into a larger dance area.^[3]

She died at the age of 96 in Thousand Oaks, California.

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Arnold Drake, American comic book writer (Doom Patrol),died from pneumonia and septic shock he was 83

Arnold Drake ^[1][2] was an American comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating  DC Comicscharacters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others.

the

(March 1, 1924 – March 12, 2007)

 

Drake was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Famein 2008.

Arnold Drake was the third child of Max Druckman, a Manhattan furniture dealer who died in June 1966 at his home in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City,^[3] and Pearl Cohen. His eldest brother, Ervin Drake, born Ervin Maurice Druckman, and the middle brother, Milton, both became notable songwriters.^[4] His family was Jewish.^[5]

At age 12, Drake contracted scarlet fever, confining him to bed for a year, a time he spent drawing his own comic stripcreations.^[2] Years later, turning to writing, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri and later at New York University.^[2]

Collaborating with co-writer Leslie Waller (together using the pseudonym Drake Waller) and artist Matt Baker, Drake wrote St. John Publications' pioneering It Rhymes with Lust, a proto-graphic novel comics magazine sold on newsstands in 1950.^[6] At some unspecified point before or after this, he met a neighbor of one of his brothers: Bob Kane, the credited creator of Batmanfor one of DC Comics' precursor companies. After collaborating with Drake on some projects, Kane introduced Drake to editors at DC.^[2]

Comic books during this time did not routinely list creator credits; historians have, however, pinpointed Drake's first DC work as the first seven pages of the eight-page Batman story "The Return of Mister Future" in Batman #98 (March 1956).^[7] Soon, Drake was scripting stories across a variety of genres for DC, from adventure drama ("Fireman Farrell" in Showcase #1, April 1956) to humor (1960s stories for the company's Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis comics) to mystery and supernatural fiction (the anthology series House of Mystery) to science fiction (the feature "Tommy Tomorrow" in World's Finest Comics #102, June 1959, and elsewhere, and the feature "Space Ranger" in several issues of Tales of the Unexpected, to give a sampling).^[8]

In the late 1960s, Drake freelanced for Marvel Comics, beginning with Captain Savage #5 (Aug. 1968), starring a World War IIMarines squadron; he would additionally script some later issues of that series, plus a single issue of the WWII series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. Drake wrote the run of X-Men #47–54 (Aug. 1968 – March 1969, co-writing his initial issue with Gary Friedrich), which included two rare circumstances of stories drawn but not written by the noted comics writer-artist Jim Steranko. Drake introduced several new characters to the series including Mesmero,^[23] Lorna Dane,^[24] and Havok.^[25]Drake as well wrote issues of the space-alien superhero Captain Marvel, stories for the superhero satire comic Not Brand Echh, and a story of the jungle lord Ka-Zar. In Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (Jan. 1969), Drake and editor Stan Lee co-created the Guardians of the Galaxy,^[26][27] a far-future team of freedom-fighters gathered from different planets of our solar system. The characters would star in a 62-issue series in the 1990s, and inspire a new team of that name in the 2000s.

By mid-1969, however, Drake had left Marvel. His next new comics work to be published was a supernatural anthology story in Gold Key Comics' Grimm's Ghost Stories #1 (Jan. 1972) – the first of many stories for that company, including for the series Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, and the licensed TV-series titles Dark Shadows, Star Trek, and Twilight Zone, among others.^[8]His Gold Key work included what comics historian Mark Evanier called "a particularly long and delightful stint on Little Lulu",^[2]beginning with issue #232 (May 1976). In 1973, Drake began freelancing again for DC occasionally, writing stories for series as varied as Weird War Tales and Supergirl.^[8] Beginning in 1977, Drake contributed stories to several issues of Charlton Comics' black-and-white satirical-humor magazine, Sick.

Drake contributed to all four issues of Starstream, a 68-page anthology series with cardboard covers that adapted classic science-fiction stories. That series was published by Whitman Comics, the rights-holder to several properties it licensed to Gold Key, and Drake would continue with Whitman when it began distributing Little Lulu and its other properties itself in 1980.^[8] By 1981, Drake was executive director of the Veteran's Bedside Network, an organization through which actors, actresses and sound engineers would perform scripted material to entertain patients in Veterans Administration hospitals in the New York City area.^[28]

Drake's last known original comics story for nearly 20 years was the six-page "G.I. Samurai" in DC's G.I. Combat #276 (April 1985). He resurfaced two decades later with the 12-page "Tripping Out!", illustrated by Luis Dominguez, in the mature-audience comics magazine Heavy Metal vol. 26, #6 (Jan. 2003). This story was accompanied by a one-page biography of the two creators.^[8]

Drake wrote the foreword, introduction, preface and afterword of DC's 2002 hardcover reprint collection The Doom Patrol Archives #1. He was also working on a new Doom Patrol graphic novel, a prequel story, at the time of his death.^[29] He as well wrote a five-page afterword, "The Graphic Novel – And How It Grew", in Dark Horse Books' March 2007 reprint of his and collaborators Leslie Waller and Matt Baker's pioneering, 1950 proto-graphic novel It Rhymes with Lust.^[8]

^{Drake collapsed days after having attended the February 23–25, 2007 New York Comic Book Convention, where he had had, organizers said, "a touch of pneumonia".[2] Admitted to New York City's Cabrini Medical Center, he died of pneumonia and septic shock.[30]}

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