Jayne Walton Rosen died she was 92

Jayne Walton Rosen has died she was 92. Rosen didn't know the middle-aged man who asked to see her at Morningside Ministries at the Meadows last year. The man introduced himself, reached into his backpack and pulled out an 8-by-10 photograph of a young woman.

“I paid $40 for your picture on eBay,” he told the puzzled nursing home resident, asking for her autograph. Then he showed other residents the picture.

Jayne Walton Rosen, the second singer to dubbed the "Champagne Lady," holds a 1940s photo of herself.

It was from the era of baton-waving bandleaders and dancers whirling across ballroom floors. And the woman, so young in the photo and now 92, is forever linked to that era.

At birth, her name was Flanagan. On the stage, it was Walton. In the '50s, it became Rosen.

But in the end, Jayne Walton Rosen may be best remembered as “the Champagne Lady” who sang with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra during World War II, performing ballads in ballrooms throughout the Midwest and in New York.

meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11">

Rosen, who set out to become a professional singer as soon as she graduated from Brackenridge High School, died Sunday. She was 92.

As a child, she lived in Torreón, in Mexico's Coahuila state, where her father worked for a silver mining company.

Daniel Rosen, a law professor in Tokyo, said his mother was highly influenced by living in post-revolution Mexico. In addition to learning and singing in Spanish, she became aware of Mexico's wealth, poverty and “profound social divisions.”

“It created (in her) a sense of empathy for people,” he said.

But her life was most influenced by music. Her sister was a dancer. Their mother played piano, and an aunt was an organist at downtown San Antonio's Texas Theater.

Rosen won talent shows at the Majestic Theatre and around town, Daniel Rosen said.

Jayne Walton, as she was known, often sang on local radio stations, then on stations in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Chicago, as well as with bands elsewhere, her son said.

Welk heard her voice on the radio and asked her to join his band. She became a friend of the Welk family.

Rosen wasn't the first to be dubbed his “Champagne Lady,” but she sang with that billing for six years. Welk regarded her ability to sing in Spanish as “exotic,” Daniel Rosen said.

“The biggest record she had was ‘Maria Elena.' She recorded it with him and had a gold record.”

Rosen left the orchestra to become a solo performer, and, her son said, “she had considerable success in New York and Chicago” in the mid- to late '40s.

She married in 1952 and put her career on hold.

“She was an inspirational woman to have as a mother,” he said.

Rosen made guest appearances on Welk's long-running television show from time to time.

Later, Rosen worked as a saleswoman at the old Rhodes department store at Wonderland and Dillard's at Central Park Mall.

Retired for 20 years, Rosen enjoyed good health until recent years. She was on dialysis, had heart disease, then fell and broke her hip.

“She recovered to a remarkable extent,” her son said of her hip injury.

“She had a margarita every night over the holidays,” he said.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Mick Green, British rock and roll guitarist died he was , 65

Mick Green ^[1] died he was 65, Green was an English rock and roll guitarist. He is best known playing with Johnny Kidd & The Pirates and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

(22 February 1944 – 11 January 2010)

He was born Michael Robert Green,^[2] in Matlock, Derbyshire. Green began his career playing with Johnny Kidd & The Pirates in the early 1960s, then joined Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas in 1964. His ability to play lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously influenced a number of British guitarists to follow, including Pete Townshend and Wilko Johnson, the original guitarist for Dr. Feelgood.^[3] Green's song "Oyeh!" was on Dr. Feelgood's debut album, Down by the Jetty; and a song he co-wrote, "Going Back Home" appeared on Dr. Feelgood's 1975 Malpractice and the live album, Stupidity (1976).


Green reformed The Pirates in the mid 1970s (Kidd having died in 1966).
Green was also a member of the band, Shanghai, who released two albums, in 1974 and 1976, and supported Status Quo on their Blue for You tour.


In the 1980s and 1990s Green played with, amongst others, Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison and Paul McCartney, as well as playing with The Pirates with whom he continued to gig well into the 2000s. His other notable gigs included playing guitar for Van Morrison on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in 2005, and Paul McCartney at his return to the Cavern Club in support of the latter's Run Devil Run album in 1999.
In his spare time he taught guitar privately, as well as at various local schools.
In 2008, Green performed regularly with the Van Morrison band, and played guitar on five of the tracks on Van Morrison's 2008 album, Keep It Simple.
Green died on 11 January 2010, at the age of 65. The cause of his death was heart failure.


To see more of who died in 2010 click here

George Garanian died he was 75

George Garanian died he was 75. Garanian was an ethnic Armenian Russian jazz saxophone player, bandleader and composer. He was the People's Artist of Russia in 1993.


(15 August 1934 – 11 January 2010)
Born in Moscow, Garanian was one of the first Russian musicians who attracted attention of Western world as part of the jazz from the USSR. He belonged to the first generation of Russian jazzmen who started to perform after World War II. As a musician (alto saxophone), conductor and composer he was the leader of country's best big bands: Melodia (1970s-1980s) and Moscow Big Band (1992–1995). He led the Municipal Big Band in the Southern Russian city of Krasnodar.
He died from cardiac arrest in Krasnodar on 11 January 2010 at the age of 75.^[1]


To see more of who died in 2010 click here







^{To see more of who died in 2010 click here}

Juliet Anderson died she was 71

Juliet Anderson (born Judith Carr),^[3] died she was 71. Anderson also known as Aunt Peg, was an American pornographic actress and adult movie producer, relationship counselor and author.^[1] Entering the adult movie business relatively late in life (at age 39), she quickly built a reputation as one of the premier performers in the so-called "golden age of porn," appearing in over seventy films--many of them as "Aunt Peg", where she portrayed a giddy, insatiable woman determined to enjoy life and sex to the maximum extent possible.^[4] In 1984, she started a new career as a relationship counselor and massage therapist, before returning to adult entertainment in the mid 1990s.

(July 23, 1938 – January 11, 2010)

Judith Carr was born and grew up in Burbank, California, the daughter of a jazz trumpet player and an aspiring actress. She was afflicted with Crohn's disease and spent a sizable portion of her youth in the hospital or on bedrest.^[4] Graduating from Burbank High School in 1959 (where she was a straight-A student),^[5] she briefly attended Long Beach State College as an art major before relocating to Hayama, Japan with her then lover, a Navy sailor. A brief marriage to him did not work out, and Juliet spent the next eighteen years in various occupations, including teaching English to foreign students in Japan, Mexico, Greece and Finland.^[5] While teaching in Finland, she also worked as a radio producer. In 1963, while living in Miami, Anderson was secretary to a producer of "nudie" movies and a receptionist at the Burger King home office; she also worked for Avis during this period. In her website autobiography, she indicates that she appeared in an (unnamed) sexploitation film in 1963, portraying a police sergeant.^[5]

During this time, Anderson was known by her birthname of Judith Carr. She did not begin using the moniker "Juliet Anderson" until later in her adult film career, when she made the transition from 8mm productions to feature films.^[6] She has also used the stage names of Alice Rigby, Judy Callin, Ruby Sapphire, Judy Carr, Aunt Peg, Judy Fallbrook, and Judith Anderson.^[7]

After a further period overseas, Anderson returned to the United States during the early 1970s, and became involved in the pornography business while a student at San Francisco State University. She was working in advertising when she answered an ad by hardcore pornography producer Alex d’Renzy, who was looking for an actress.^[4] Cast in the movie Pretty Peaches, Juliet's career quickly took off from there. She acquired the name of "Aunt Peg" during a movie where she was portrayed as having sex with a niece, who cried out: "oh, Aunt Peg!";^[8] It is this moniker by which Anderson is best known to her fans. She appeared in several pornographic magazine pictorials during this timeframe, made appearances on radio and television, and operated a mail-order business, casting agency and a phone-sex service. She also performed in stage shows across the United States, combining comedy and sex in her performances. Anderson later indicated that these stage exhibitions were the "most gratifying" portion of her adult career.^[5]

Although Anderson portrayed many characters during her movie career, all tended to be tough-talking and unsentimental, yet rambunctious, vibrant and even comedic--all at the same time.^[4] She was said never to have faked an orgasm in any of her films.^[9] Author Charles Taylor wrote that she "brought a persona of classic movie-broad to porn," referring to her as "the Joan Blondell of porn". Another critic, Howard Hampton, opined that "her tough, no-nonsense older woman routine would be at home in the margins of any Howard Hawks movie".^[4]

In 1984, Anderson chose to leave the adult film business due to differences between herself and producers regarding the editing of Educating Nina, a film she directed starring Nina Hartley. She moved to northern California, where she ran a bed and breakfast for a time and opened a massage therapy office.^[5] Anderson chose to return to pornography in 1995, making new movies as an actress, producer and director.

In 1998, she directed Ageless Desire, a hardcore video featuring several over-50 real-life couples, including Juliet and her current partner.^[10] Numerous awards followed: Induction into the Erotic Legends Hall of Fame in 1996, an X-rated Critics Organization Hall of Fame Award in 1999, and a "Lifetime Achievement Actress Award" from the Free Speech Coalition in 2001. In 2007, Anderson received an honorary Doctor of the Arts from The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.^[5]

By 2009, Anderson lived in Berkeley, California with four cats.^[5] She continued to work in the adult film industry, and had announced plans to produce new films. She also worked as a relationship counselor, giving private workshops for couples focusing on "Tender Loving Touch," in which sexual touching is seen as "play, not as foreplay."^[4] She has contributed to the books The New Sexual Healers: Women of the Light and The Red Thread of Passion, and has authored articles for magazines and newspapers.^[5]

Anderson's body was discovered by a friend on the morning of January 11, 2010. The cause of death was not immediately known, but she was known to have been suffering from Crohn's disease, a painful ailment.^[3]

Awards

• AVN Awards Hall of Fame^[11]
• XRCO Hall of Fame (inducted 1999)^[12]

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Eric Rohmer died he was 89

French New Wave director Eric Rohmer, known for "My Night at Maud's," ''Claire's Knee," and other films about the intricacies of romantic relationships and the dilemmas of modern love, died on Monday. He was 89. Rohmer, also an influential film critic early in his career, died in Paris, said Les Films du Losange, the production company he co-founded. The cause of death was not immediately given. The director — internationally known for his films' long, philosophical conversations — continued to work until recently. His latest film, the 17th-century costume tale "Les amours d'Astree et de Celadon," ("Romance of Astree and Celadon"), appeared in 2007. In 2001, Rohmer was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his body of work — dozens of films made over a five-decade career. Rohmer's movies were full of romantic temptation and love triangles, pretty girls and handsome youths. Often they took a lighthearted, chatty form, with serious themes hidden under the surface. French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to a "great auteur who will continue to speak to us and inspire us for years to come." "Classic and romantic, wise and iconoclast, light and serious, sentimental and moralist, he created the 'Rohmer' style, which will outlive him," Sarkozy said in a statement. Six of Rohmer's films comprised an influential cycle of "moral tales" that addressed the thorny questions of modern love: whether to compromise your beliefs in the face of passion, for example, or how to maintain a sense of individual freedom in a relationship. In 1969's "Ma nuit chez Maud" ("My Night at Maud's"), a churchgoing young engineer played by Jean-Louis Trintignant must choose between a seductive divorcee and a woman who meets his ideals. The film's screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1970's "Le Genou de Claire" ("Claire's Knee"), a diplomat is overwhelmed by his desire to stroke the knee of a teenage girl he meets. France's culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, said Rohmer's "very personal, very original" movies appealed to cinephiles and ordinary filmgoers alike. Serge Toubiana — who heads the Cinematheque, France's famous film preservation society — said Rohmer worked closely with his crews and described his creative process as a collaborative effort with the actors. "He knew that he needed them and because of that he showered them with love," Toubiana told France Info radio. "Each film was a kind of shared game, with its own rules in which each person played his role." Born in 1920 in the central French city of Tulle, Rohmer got his start as a literature professor and a film critic for the influential Cahiers du Cinema magazine, becoming its editor. Though his name at birth was Maurice Scherer, he created his artistic pseudonym by rearranging the sounds in his first and last name to come up with Rohmer, he told Le Monde newspaper in 2007. As a director, Rohmer became a leading force in France's convention-smashing New Wave cinema, alongside directors Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, his colleagues at the Cahiers. With Claude Chabrol, another director, Rohmer published a classic study on one of their heroes, Alfred Hitchcock. Along with his series of moral tales, Rohmer produced a cycle of modern-day relationship fables for each season of the year, and another dubbed the cycle of "comedies and proverbs," with each film taking its inspiration from a proverb. One popular film in that series was 1983's "Pauline a la plage" ("Pauline at the Beach"), focusing on a teenager on a seaside holiday. Thierry Fremaux, who runs the Cannes Film Festival, told BFM television that though Rohmer's films weren't "trendy," they were timeless. "He proved that you can make great movies with small budgets," Fremaux said. "And that's good to keep in mind in the times we live in." Rohmer was a very private person, but his survivors are believed to include his younger brother, philosopher Rene Scherer, and his son journalist Rene Monzat. To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Miep Gies died she was 100

Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.


After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."


Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam in 1922 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.

Touched by Anne's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.

"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Anne wrote.

In her own book, "Anne Frank Remembered," Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health as she approached her 100th birthday.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Art Clokey died he was 88,

Arthur "Art" Clokey died he was 88. Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia^[1], influenced by his professor Slavko Vorkapich at the University of Southern California.

From the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth invented Gumby. Since then Gumby and his horse Pokey have been a familiar presence on television, appearing in several series beginning with the "Howdy Doody Show" and later "The Adventures of Gumby."^[1] The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live. In the 1990’s Gumby: The Movie came out sparking even more interest.^[1].

(born Arthur C. Farrington, October 12, 1921, Detroit, Michigan —died January 8, 2010)

Clokey's second most famous production is the duo of Davey and Goliath, funded by the Lutheran Church in America.

When Clokey was 9 years old, his parents divorced and he stayed with his father. After his father died in a car accident, he went to live with his mother in California, but was placed in a half-way house orphanage after one year because his stepfather did not want him around. At age 12, he was adopted by Joseph W. Clokey, a classical music composer and organist who taught music at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and who encouraged young Arthur's artistic inclinations. The aesthetic environment later became the home of Clokey's most famous character, Gumby, whose name derives from his childhood experiences during summer visits to his grandfather's farm, when he enjoyed playing with the clayey mud called "gumbo".

At Webb School in Claremont, young Clokey came under the influence of teacher Ray Alf, who took students on expeditions digging for fossils and learning about the world around them. Clokey later studied geology at Pomona College, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1943.

Art Clokey also made a few highly experimental and visually inventive short clay animation films for adults, including his first film Gumbasia, the visually rich Mandala—described by Clokey as a metaphor for evolving human consciousness—and the equally bizarre The Clay Peacock, an elaboration on the animated NBC logo of the time. These films have only recently become available via the Rhino box-set release of Gumby's television shorts, all appearing on the bonus DVD (disc 7).

His student film Gumbasia (1955), consisting of animated clay shapes contorting to a jazz score, so intrigued Samuel G. Engel, then president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association, that he financed the pilot film for what became Art Clokey's The Gumby Show (1957). The title Gumbasia is an homage to Walt Disney's Fantasia.

Clokey is credited with the clay-animation title sequence for the beach movie Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), starring Vincent Price and Frankie Avalon. His son, Joe Clokey, continued the Davey and Goliath cartoon in 2004. In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their Truly CA series.

In 2007, Princeton Architectural Press published an interview between Art Clokey and Dorian Devins (illustrated by Glenn Head) in "The Best of LCD (Lowest Common Denominator): The Art and Writing of WFMU" edited by Dave the Spazz.

Art Clokey died on January 8, 2010, aged 88, at his home in Los Osos, California.^[2]

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Blanca Sanchez died she was 63,

Actress Blanca Sánchez died she was 63. Sánchez died from a severe decrease in platelet levels in her blood. She was hospitalized for over a month at a medical center in Mexico City for serious kidney problems before passing, a passing that shocked doctors and her family.

Nine years ago the legendary actress received a kidney transplant and it was only a few months ago when it began to cause issues.

Blanca’s career began at age 11 with the soap opera nights of anguish. Among her most important telenovelas, she is remembered as the mother of both Quinceañera Thalia (1987) and Light and Shadow (1989). Other films include Time to Die, When the children leave, I am Chucho el Roto and Mama Dolores.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Yvonne Zanos died she was 60

Yvonne Zanos has been fighting for consumers at KDKA since 1997. She lost her own personal battle with cancer. Yvonne passed away surrounded by family following a courageous two-year battle with ovarian cancer. She had just turned 60-years-old on Wednesday.

Born Yvonne Marquer, she grew up in the South Hills and graduated from Bethel Park High School and Bethany College.

Her magnetic smile attracted the notice of modeling agencies. She portrayed a warmth and occasional quirkiness that was easy to see.

Whether she was warning people about a scam -- letting them know about the latest product recalls or putting projects to the test in her "Does It Really Do That" segments, Yvonne loved to have fun and it showed.

A brief modeling career led to her selection as runner-up in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant. She took over the title when the winner went on to become Miss America.

She also caught they eye of former Pitt football star Jim Zanos. Their marriage led to two daughters, and five grandchildren -- four granddaughters and a grandson.

As a mother, she never tired of telling stories of her two daughters and their families.

Though she has worked as KDKA's consumer editor since 1997, this was actually her second stint at KDKA. Yvonne made her television debut on "Evening Magazine" in 1977.

Yvonne's humanitarian stories helped her win a prestigious Gabriel Award and many other honors. She was nominated several times for Mid-Atlantic Emmys and recently won the Patti Burns Award for excellence; but what really made her happy was helping others.

Yvonne's love for children carried over into her annual appearance on our Children's Hospital Free Care Fund telethon.

Her work for needy families also helped to feed thousands of needy residents through the KDKA Turkey Fund.

She fought off this increasingly debilitating illness to raise a record amount for the KDKA Turkey Fund this past Thanksgiving – despite a recession. It would be the final triumph for the reporter who has helped so many.

Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007, Yvonne appeared as honorary chair of the Walk to Break the Silence on Ovarian Cancer in October.

Yvonne covered her private pain to deliver messages of hope to fellow survivors. She fought through the pain and exhaustion of her final months to visit schools and community organizations best described as heroic.

Yvonne shared her compassion, determination to make a difference and, of course, her laughter up to the very end.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Jean Biden died she was 92

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Jean Biden, who raised her son Vice President Joe Biden to believe in what he called "America's creed ... everyone is your equal," died Friday after falling seriously ill in recent days. She was 92.

In a statement, the vice president said she died in Wilmington surrounded by her family and loved ones. She had suffered a broken hip in a fall in March 2009.

"Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor," he said in the statement. "Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us."

Joe Biden Jr. was first elected to the Senate in 1972, shortly before his 30th birthday. His mother helped out by organizing coffee klatches — part of a family effort that also included Biden's father, sister and brothers.

"Those of you who have met my mom, you know she's fairly politically astute, and she still runs the show," the vice president quipped shortly after she fell last year.



The former Catherine Eugenia Finnegan was born July 7, 1917, in Scranton, Pa. In 1941, she married businessman Joseph Biden Sr., with whom she had four children. The couple moved from Scranton to Claymont, Del., in 1953, when their eldest son, Joe, was 10 years old. Joseph Biden Sr. died in 2002 at age 86.

According to Biden's 2007 autobiography, "Promises to Keep," his mother had some reservations about whether he should risk a promising career as a young lawyer to enter politics.

"You're not going to run for Senate and ruin your reputation, are you?" he recalled his mother asking.

"And once Mom was reassured that my future was safe, win or lose, she would do anything," Biden wrote.

Biden was elected vice president as Barack Obama's running mate. In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, he paid tribute to his mother, who was in the audience.

"My mother's creed is the American creed: No one is better than you," he said. "Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you. My parents taught us to live our faith, and to treasure our families. We learned the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough."

Biden said he also learned honor and loyalty from his mother.

"When I got knocked down by guys bigger than me, and this is the God's truth, she sent me back out the street and told me, 'Bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day.' And that's what I did."

Raised in a family with a strong Irish Catholic tradition, Jean Biden leaned on her faith in comforting her eldest son after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in December 1972, the month after he was elected to the Senate. His two sons were seriously injured.

"After the accident, she told me, 'Joey, God sends no cross that you cannot bear,'" Biden recalled.

In his autobiography, Joe Biden recalled being mocked by a seventh-grade nun for his stuttering, an incident that sent his mother to his school in a fury, her children in tow.

"If you ever speak to my son like that again, I'll come back and rip that bonnet off your head. Do you understand me?" she told the nun.

Joe Biden also recalled how when his mother couldn't find a pair of cufflinks for him to wear to an eighth-grade dance, she fashioned a pair from nuts and bolts, which left him mortified.

"Now look, Joey, if anybody says anything to you about these nuts and bolts, you just look them right in the eye and say 'Don't you have a pair of these?'" she told him.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Stephen Huneck died he was 60

Folk artist Stephen Huneck, whose whimsical paintings, sculptures and woodcut prints of dogs celebrated his love of animals and won him a worldwide fan base, has died. He was 60.

Huneck, of St. Johnsbury, committed suicide Thursday in Littleton, N.H. His wife said he was despondent after being forced to lay off employees at his Dog Mountain studio and dog chapel.

"Like many Americans we had been adversely affected by the economic downturn," Gwen Huneck wrote in a letter Friday announcing his death.


"Stephen feared losing Dog Mountain and our home. Then on Tuesday we had to lay off most of our employees. This hurt Stephen deeply. He cared about them and felt responsible for their welfare," she wrote.

Two days later, he shot himself in the head while sitting in a parked car outside the office of his psychiatrist, she said.


"He was one of the most creative and active members of the Vermont crafts community," said Jennifer Boyer, co-owner of the Artisans Hand craft gallery in Montpelier. "I appreciate how much energy he put into his works, which were whimsical and sardonically funny. He really had a unique sense of humor."

A native of Sudbury, Mass., he started out whittling wooden sculptures and later dog-themed furniture, like the wooden pews eventually installed in the chapel, which he built in 2000, a miniature version of the 19th-century churches that dot Vermont's landscape.

Built of wood harvested from his 175-acre Dog Mountain property, it had vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows with images of dogs pieced into them.

"Welcome all creeds, all breeds. No dogmas allowed," says the sign outside.

"When dogs pull up in here, they may never have been here before, but it's like they saw the 'Disneyland' sign," said Huneck in a 2008 interview with The Associated Press. "They just get so excited, so happy," he said.

Dog lovers would make the trip to Vermont just to see the chapel, many writing handwritten notes to their long-gone pets and affixing them to the interior walls, where they remained.

Huneck's books, about his beloved Labrador retrievers, including "Sally Goes to the Beach," ''Sally Goes to the Farm" and "Sally Gets a Job," featured woodcut prints accompanied by quirky captions.

"They were totally unique, very insightful, particularly for dog lovers," said Irwin Gelber, executive director of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, a library and art center where Huneck frequently gave readings. "He seemed to create works and captions that just captured that expressed every dog lover's insights into owning and loving animals."


To see more of who died in 2010 click here

Arthur E. Bartlett died he was 76,

He pioneered conversion franchising, persuading independent real estate agents to come under the umbrella of big corporation for more clout. He sold the company after seven years for $89 million.

Arthur E. Bartlett, a consummate salesman and co-founder of the real estate behemoth Century 21, died New Year's Eve at his Coronado home after a long bout with Alzheimer's disease and other sicknesses, his daughter Stacy Bartlett Renshaw said. He was 76.

A firm believer in the power of the large, corporate brand, Bartlett pioneered the concept of conversion franchising, in which he persuaded independent real estate agents across the country to don the signature mustard-colored jacket and market themselves as Century 21 salespeople.

The formula worked. Seven years after starting the company at the age of 38 with Marshall Fisher, he sold it to Trans World Corp. for $89 million in cash and stock. These days Century 21 is a subsidiary of Realogy Corp. based in Parsippany, N.J., and a global company with 7,700 independently owned offices in 67 countries and territories.

"He really was one of the true pioneers, visionaries, who recognized early on the power of franchising and branding for growing and expanding a business," said Matthew R. Shay, president of the International Franchise Assn. in Washington, D.C. "He recognized there was a built-in market to expand his brand by going after people who were already in the industry."

Bartlett was born in Glens Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 26, 1933, the second of three children of Raymond, a truck driver for General Mills, and Thelma, a hairdresser.

The family moved to Long Beach in the 1940s. Bartlett attended Long Beach City College but did not graduate, and worked part-time at a men's clothing store. He left school to join the Army but was discharged shortly after joining when doctors discovered an old football injury that rendered him unable to serve.

He met his future wife, Collette, at a party, and the couple married in 1955. The pair had one daughter, Stacy.

Bartlett then worked as a salesman for the Campbell Soup Co. and later for the real estate company Forest E. Olson in the San Fernando Valley, first as an agent and later as branch and district manager. Before forming Century 21, he co-founded Four Star Realty and Comps Inc., which he later sold.

Bartlett first learned of the concept of real estate franchising from Fisher, one of his former Forest Olson employees who was working at a rival real estate company, CJS. Over a chance encounter at a diner, Fisher explained the concept and Bartlett became intrigued. In 1971, the pair opened the first Century 21 in Santa Ana.

Through "sheer force of personality and determination," Shay said, Bartlett was able to convince thousands of smaller, independent real estate companies to become Century 21 businesses.

Bartlett believed that franchising was the right way for a small entrepreneur to survive. His aim was to build the company into a national force, marketing the brand on television and radio, giving what was once a local endeavor national attention.

"Correct or not, consumers have confidence in the big, brand name," Bartlett told The Times in 1982. "Franchising has been the savior of free enterprise in this country. It has given the small businessman a way to survive."

After selling Century 21, Bartlett tried carrying his franchising success into the home repair business, founding Mr. Build International, which sold remodeling franchises to contractors. The company did not take off the same way Century 21 did and is no longer in operation, his daughter said. He also served as the president of the Larwin Square shopping center in Tustin and invested in residential real estate throughout the Southland.

His wife, Collette, died in 2002. Bartlett married his second wife, Nancy, his former assistant, in 2005. Besides his wife and his daughter, he is survived by his granddaughter Bella Collette Renshaw, his stepson Larry Wells, his brother Ray and his sister Millie Schneider.

In his free time Bartlett enjoyed collecting classic cars -- including a 1934 Ford Coupe and a 1957 Thunderbird -- as well as boating and taking road trips with his family. He was also a gun enthusiast and enjoyed target shooting at local ranges.

Mary Daly died she was 81

Radical feminist Mary Daly, the iconoclastic theologian who proclaimed, "I hate the Bible," and retired from Boston College rather than allow men to take her classes, has died. She was 81.

Daly died Sunday of natural causes at Wachusett Manor nursing home in Gardner, Mass., said her longtime friend, Nancy Kelly.

Daly's tumultuous career at the Jesuit-run Boston College ended after three decades when she refused to open her classroom to men, believing women did not freely exchange ideas if men were present. Men, she said, "have nothing to offer but doodoo." But Emily Culpepper, a friend and professor at the University of Redmond in California, said Daly was not anti-male.

"She was anti-male domination, which is a different thing," Culpepper said.

Poet Robin Morgan called Daly "the first feminist philosopher."

"She really pushed the boundaries, and that drove some people bananas," Morgan said. "But that kind of intellectual courage is, in fact, what usually moves the species forward, even if it gets trampled on in its own time."

Daly grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., the only child of an ice cream freezer salesman and telephone operator. She received her bachelor's degree from the College of Saint Rose, then a master's degree at Catholic University of America. She later earned doctorates at Notre Dame and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland before becoming a professor at Boston College in 1966.

Daly's career at BC ended in 2001, when she retired to settle a lawsuit. Daly sued BC after the school tried to force her to retire over her refusal to accept men in her classes. She had agreed to privately tutor men who wanted to take her classes.

Daly wrote about her intellectual formation in a 1996 article in the New Yorker "Sin Big," in which she recalled being mocked by a male classmate, and altar boy, at her parochial school because she could never "serve Mass" because she was a girl.

"(T)his repulsive revelation of the sexual caste system that I would later learn to call 'patriarchy' burned its way into my brain and kindled an unquenchable Rage," she wrote.

Daly described herself as a pagan, an eco-feminist and a radical feminist in a 1999 interview with The Guardian newspaper of London. "I hate the Bible," she told the paper. "I always did. I didn't study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know."

Her first book, "The Church and the Second Sex" in 1968, criticized the church as a product and fount of sexism amid the growing women's movement. Five years later, she wrote "Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation." Her other books included "Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy" in 1984.

Gloria Steinem called Daly "a brilliant writer, a brilliant theoretician," who enabled women to move beyond the oppression of male-dominated religious hierarchies to see "that there's God in themselves and in all living things."

"She was enough ahead of her time so that I believe she will be appreciated far beyond it," she said.

To see more of who died in 2010 click here