Ron Sproat died he was 77

Ronald Sproat was an American screenwriter and playwright known for Dark Shadows.

(died 6 November 2009 in Manhattan, New York, age 77)

Sproat served as head writer on Dark Shadows and created Barnabas Collins.^[3] Sproat has written for Never Too Young, a teen soap opera that aired on ABC from 1965 to 1966 and Strange Paradise, a Canadian soap opera that aired in syndication in the United States from 1969 to 1970.

In addition to television writing, Sproat has also written for musical theatre including Abie's Island Rose and Back Home: The War Brides Musical, both of which ran off Broadway.^[4][5]

Sproat received his MA from the University of Michigan, and performed undergraduate work at Hamilton College. While at Hamilton College, he won the William Duncan Saunders Award for creative writing. Sproat also attended Yale University where he earned a MFA. While attending Michigan, Sproat was also the recipient of the Avery Hopwood Award.^[3]

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William H. Avery died he was 98,

William Henry Avery died he was 98, Avery was an American Republican Party politician who served as the thirty-seventh Governor of Kansas from 1965 until 1967.

(August 11, 1911 – November 4, 2009)

Born in 1911 near Wakefield, Kansas, Avery graduated from the University of Kansas in 1934. While attending the KU he joined Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was a member of the Wakefield School Board, and served in the Kansas House of Representatives from 1951 to 1955, and in the Congress for the Republican Party from 1955 to 1965.^[1]

Avery is remembered as the governor who sanctioned the executions of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the murderers of the Clutter family, made famous by the Truman Capote book In Cold Blood. Capote describes the governor as "a wealthy farmer" conscious of public opinion. Also as governor, he dedicated a memorial in Delphos, Kansas for Abraham Lincoln and Grace Bedell, the eleven year old girl who suggested to presidential candidate Lincoln to grow his famous beard.^[2]

After losing the governorship to Robert Docking in the 1966 election, Avery attempted but failed to win a seat in the Senate, losing in the primary to future U.S. presidential candidate Bob Dole. Following his retirement from politics, he worked for Clinton Oil Company and became president of Real Petroleum Company.

He was one of five former governors interviewed for the documentary The Kansas Governor, in which he proudly stated that in his many years of politics he had never played a round of golf. Avery was married to Hazel Bowles ^[3] (January 4, 1914 - August 17, 2004)^[4] from 1940 until her death. He died on November 4, 2009 at age 98. Flags in the state were ordered lowered until November 14 in his honor.^[5]

At the time of his death, he was the second oldest living governor of any state behind Albert Rosellini of Washington and was the oldest living former U.S. Representative following the September 25, 2008 death of Glenn Andrews of Alabama. Avery's death left former New York Representative William F. Walsh as the oldest living former House member.

Art D'Lugoff, 85, American jazz nightclub owner

Art D'Lugoff died he was 85 D'Lugoff was an American jazz impresario. He opened The Village Gate, a jazz club in New York City's Greenwich Village, in 1958.^[1] D'Lugoff sought out the hottest talent, hosting prominent jazz artists, including Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin, and Miles Davis, as well as the best in comedy, including Bill Cosby, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, and John Belushi.(August 2, 1924 - November 4, 2009)

D'Lugoff turned away Bob Dylan, prompting the latter to write music in the basement of the club.^[2] He also fired a young Dustin Hoffman for providing poor table service. Playwright Sam Shepard once bused tables.^[3] D'Lugoff styled himself on the famous showman Sol Hurok.^[4] His avant-garde programming also set the stage for theatrical nudity in New York - the 1974 musical review Let My People Come featured a fully nude co-ed cast. ^[3]

Financial reverses led D'Lugoff to declare bankruptcy in 1991. He closed the club in 1994.^[4] In the wake of The Village Gate's closing, D'Lugoff dreamed of opening a new jazz club near Times Square. He worked on raising money for the development of a national jazz museum and hall of fame to be located in New York City.^[2][5] D'Lugoff's idea of a museum eventually developed into the National Jazz Museum of Harlem.^[6]

D'Lugoff won the Paul Robeson Award in 1992.

In 2008 the Village Gate re-opened under the name "Le Poisson Rouge", with D'Lugoff as a consultant. ^{[7] [1]}

On November 4, 2009, after complaining of a shortness of breath, he was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital where he died at the age of 85. ^[3] On November 7, 2009, citing an unnamed source, the New York Post claimed that at the time of his death, D'Lugoff was weeks away from re-launching his nightclub at an even bigger downtown venue.^[3]

D'Lugoff's wife, Avital D'Lugoff, worked as a photographer. The couple had four children: Sharon, Dahlia, Racheal, and Raphael. To see more stars who died click here

Charles August died he was 90,

Charles "Chuck" J. August died he was 90. Augusr was an American businessman who founded Monro Muffler and Brake.^[1][2](c. 1919 – November 3, 2009)

August's career in automotive maintenance and repair began as a Midas Muffler franchisee in 1957 in Rochester, New York.^[1] In 1966, he discontinued his affiliation with Midas.^[2] August launched a new company, Monro Muffler, the same year with two business partners, his brother, Burton S. August, and Sheldon Lane.^[1] The company was named for Monroe County, New York, except August dropped the "e" in the name.^[1] The company later added brake service several years later and was renamed Monro Muffler Brake Inc.^[1]

In 1977, Monro Muffler had twenty stores in New York.^[2] By the mid-1980s, August's Monro Mufflers had expanded to 59 stores, which sales of $21 million per year.^[1] Most of these stores were located in upstate New York.

August sold his controlling interest in Monro Mufflers in 1984 to an investment group headed by Donald Glickman and Peter J. Solomon.^[1] The company later had its initial public offering in 1991.^[2] August remained as a member of the Monro Muffler board of directors during the 1990s, when the company rapidly expanded.^[2] He resigned and retired from the board in 2002.^[2]

August actively supported the Boy Scouts during his life. He was a member of the Otetiana Council Boy Scouts of America for more than 60 years, and served as the council's president.^[2] He was rewarded the Silver Antelope Award and the Silver Beaver citation for his involvement with the Boy Scouts.^[2]

He donated more than $1 million dollars to the United Way of Greater Rochester over a period of 10 years.^[1] The United Way awarded August with the Tocqueville Award in 1992.^[2]

August was named to the Rochester Business Hall of Fame in 2003. He was a member of the Nathaniel Rochester Society at Rochester Institute of Technology.^[2] August was also a founder of the Temple Sinai in Brighton and a member of the board of directors of the Jewish Home Foundation.^[2]

August originally resided in Brighton, New York, with his family for many years before moving to nearby Pittsford, New York.^[1]

August died on November 3, 2009, at the age of 90.^[1] He was survived by his wife, Jean August; his brother and co-founder of Monro Mufflers, Burton August; and three grown children - Susan Eastwood, Jan August and Andrew August.^[1] His memorial service was held at the Temple Sinai in Brighton, New York.

Carl Ballantine died he was 92,

Carl Ballantine died he died he was 92, Ballantine was an American actor, magician and comedian. Billing himself as "The Great Ballantine," "The Amazing Ballantine" or "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician," his vaudeville-style comedy routine involved transparent or incompetent stage magic tricks, which tended to flop to the wisecracking Ballantine's mock chagrin.^[1](born Meyer Kessler; September 27, 1917 - November 3, 2009)

Ballantine was born in Chicago, Illinois. In his early career, Kessler did a straight manipulation act but gave up "real magic" when he realized he could not be as good as some of his peers. He changed his name to Ballantine early on after he noticed a bottle of Ballantine whisky in an advertisement and decided that the name of his magic act was to be "Ballantine, the World's Greatest Magician." He proved successful enough that he became the first magician to headline in Las Vegas.

Nicknamed the "Jipper," Kessler was inspired at age 12 by his barber who would do magic tricks with thimbles while cutting the boy's hair. His first job was working as a printer. In Chicago in the 1930s, Kessler was doing professional straight magic, first as "Count Marakoff" & "Carl Sharp," then, since the early 1940s, switched to comedy magic as "Carl Ballantine." He was billed as "The Amazing Mr. Ballantine" when he played the New York Capitol in 1950, The Ed Sullivan Show in 1953 and the Las Vegas El Rancho Vegas in 1956. He won Tannen's "Louie" Award and the 1985 AMA Performing Fellowship.

Ballantine is probably best remembered as Lester Gruber, one of the PT boat sailors in the ABC sitcom McHale's Navy (1962-1966), starring with Ernest Borgnine, Joe Flynn and Tim Conway. He made his only appearance on Broadway as Lycus the slave merchant in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers.^[2] His most recent film appearance was in Aimee Semple McPherson, a 2006 biopic about the female evangelist.

Ballantine's wife was actress Ceil Cabot;^[3] (March 8, 1927 - January 24, 2000)^[4] He was known as an inveterate smoker of Cuban stogies. He died of natural causes on November 3, 2009^[5] at his Hollywood, California home. He is survived by his daughters actress Sara Ballantine^[6] and Molly and his sister Esther Robinson.^[7]

Brother Blue died he was 88, American storyteller, performance artist, after short illness

Hugh Morgan Hill died he was 88, hill who performed as Brother Blue was an African American storyteller, actor, and street performer. He attended and graduated from Harvard College after serving as a lieutenant in the segregated U.S. army in World War II, received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute having delivered his doctoral presentation in prison being accompanied by a 25 piece jazz orchestra. He regularly performed on the streets around Cambridge, most notably in Harvard Square. He was the official storyteller of Boston and Cambridge.

(born Cleveland, Ohio in 1921, died Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 3, 2009)

He appeared as an actor in the 1981 film Knightriders directed by George Romero. His wife was the oral historian Ruth Edmonds Hill. A tribute to the Hills was published as AHHHH! by Yellow Moon Press, and featured contributions by Romero as well as such authors as Seamus Heaney, Stephen Jay Gould, Howard Zinn, Ossie Davis, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and fellow storytellers Utah Phillips, Linda Goss, Jay O'Callahan, and Diane Wolkstein.

Shel Dorf died he was 76, American founder of the San Diego Comic-Con, diabetes-related complications.

Sheldon "Shel" Dorf was an American comic-strip letterer and freelance artist and the founder of the San Diego Comic-Con International.Dorf lettered the Steve Canyon comic strip for the last 12 to 14 years of the strip's run.

(July 5, 1933 – November 3, 2009)

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Dorf studied at Chicago's Art Institute before moving to New York and beginning his career as a freelancer in the field of commercial design. Dorf was also a fan of comic books and comic strips, particularly Chester Gould's work on the daily strip Dick Tracy.He was eventually employed as a consultant on Warren Beatty's big-screen adaptation of the strip in 1990. In the 1960s Dorf had made the acquaintance of a number of creators working in the two fields, among them Jack Kirby, upon whom Dorf would occasionally call.

In 1964, Robert Brusch organised a convention for fans of the medium, and the next year Jerry Bails and Dorf took over the event, christening it the "Detroit Triple Fan Fair" and organizing it as an annual event. In 1970, the year Dorf moved to San Diego, California, he organized a one-day convention "as a kind of 'dry run' for the larger convention he hoped to stage." with Forrest J Ackerman was the star attraction.

Dorf's first three-day San Diego comics convention, the Golden State Comic-Con, was held at the U. S. Grant Hotelfrom August 1-3, 1970. It would eventually grow into the San Diego Comic-Con International.^[9] The con moved in subsequent years to the El Cortez Hotel; the University of California, San Diego; and Golden Hall, before settling into the San Diego Convention center in 1991.^[10]

Dorf would also contribute interviews to the comics press, and his conversations with Milton Caniff and Mort Walker have both been collected in the University Press of Mississippi's Milton Caniff: conversations and Mort Walker: Conversations respectively. In 1984 Dorf also published the Dick Tracy comic strips in comic book format with Blackthorne Publishing, "proudly"publishing ninety-nine issues and collecting the material again in twenty-four collections. Chester Gould's daughter, Jean Gould O'Connell credits Dorf with bringing "Tracy out to another generation." Comics historian Mark Evanier said Caniff "honored Shel by making him into a character. It was a well-meaning football player named "Thud Shelley" who appeared a few times in the Canyon strip. Jack Kirby also made Shel into a character ... a father figure named Himon who appeared in Mister Miracle. Dorf received an Inkpot Award at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con.

Dorf died aged 76 on 3 November 2009 from diabetes-related complications in Sharp Memorial Hospital, San Diego. He is survived by his brother Michael.