Cesare Rubini, Italian basketball player and coach, water polo player died he was 87

Cesare Rubini  was an Italian basketball player and coach, and water polo player,died he was 87. One of the greatest European coaches of all time, Rubini was inducted intto the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994, the first and to this day one of the few Italian basketball figures to receive such an honour, together with Dino Meneghin and Sandro Gamba. He has also been inducted in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

(November 2, 1923 – February 8, 2011)

 Career

Rubini started to play basketball for his high school team in his native Trieste, where he graduated in 1941. The same year he began to play for Olimpia Milano, the most prestigious Italian basketball club at that time. He however had a long-lived passion for water polo: this led him later to become one of the rare world sportsmen to play at the highest level in two different team sports.
In 1946 he won a silver medal with the Italian basketball national team in the European Championships held in Geneva. The following year, he also won a silver medal at the European Championships, but this time with the water polo national team. In the meantime he had assumed the role of player-coach of Olimpia Milano: in 1948, however, he was called by the national teams of both sports. Rubini chose water polo, and won a gold medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, beating The Netherlands in the final. With Rubini as a full-time player, Italy could boast what was to be called the "Golden Settebello", one of the most valuable water polo teams ever, which also won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics and at the Turin European Championships of 1954. In both the events, Italy was behind traditional rivals of Yugoslavia and Hungary.
Rubini, also as player-coach, won 6 national titles in water polo with Canottieri Olona of Milan, Rari Nantes of Naples and Camogli teams. He totalled 84 caps for the Italian national team, 42 of which as captain.
As a basketball player, Rubini won 5 national titles in a row, from 1950 to 1954. After 1956 he devoted only to the coach role, winning 10 national titles with Olimpia. In these years he set an unparalleled record of a 322 victories and 28 defeats. As coach of the Milan team, Rubini totalled 488 victories, including the European Winner's Cup of 1966 and two European Cup Winner's Cups in 1971 and 1972: these were the first international victories of Italian basketball clubs.
As the manager of the national basketball team, Rubini took also part in the first international victories of Italy: these include the silver medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics. At the European Championships, Italy was first in 1983 at Nantes, second in 1991 at Rome and third in 1985 at Stuttgart.
Rubini was involved into his beloved sports until his death: he promoted water polo formation for young athletes, and was Honorary President of Olimpia Milano.

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Donald S. Sanford, American film and television writer (Midway) died he was , 92

 Donald S. Sanford was an American television, radio and film screenwriter  died he was , 92. Sanford was known for his work on numerous television series, as well as his role as the author of the screenplay for the 1976 World War II film Midway, starring Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda,^[1][2] which became a cult classic.

(March 17, 1918 – February 8, 2011)

Biography

Sanford was born March 17, 1918. He served as a chief sonar soundman in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945 during World War II.^[1]
Sanford began his career, initially in radio and television, after leaving the U.S. Navy.^[1] He began writing for the radio series Martin Kane, Private Eye, during the early 1950s.^[1] Sanford segued to television in the 1950s, and his professional credits ultimately included episodes of Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Dr. Kildare, Letter to Loretta, Perry Mason and The Outer Limits, among others.^[1][4]
Sanford's film screenplay credits during the 1960s included three feature films set during the World War II era: Submarine X-1, The Thousand Plane Raid, and Mosquito Squadron, all of which were released in 1969.^[1] However, Sanford's best-known screenplay was for the 1976 World War II film Midway, which was directed by Jack Smight and starred Charlton Heston.^[1][2]
Sanford's last screenwriting credit before his retirement was for the 1979 sci-fi film Ravagers.^[1] He later became chief executive officer of Stansbury, Inc., a mining company specializing in vermiculite.^[3] He remained active in the screenwriting industry, serving on the Pension and Health Finance Committee for the Writers Guild of American Pension and Health Fund.^[1] Sanford was also a full member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Writers Guild of America.^[1]
Donald S. Sanford died at a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, on February 8, 2011, at the age of 92.^[1] He was survived by his wife of 35 years, Teddi, and his three stepchildren, Jennifer Levinson, Daniel Levinson, and Michael Levinson.^[1]

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Marvin Sease, American blues singer, pneumonia died he was , 64.

Marvin Sease was an American blues and soul singer, known for his racy lyrics pneumonia died he was , 64..

(February 16, 1946 - February 8, 2011)














Born in Blackville, South Carolina,^[1] Sease started as a gospel artist, joining a gospel group called the Five Gospel Crowns,^[1] located in Charleston, South Carolina. After singing with them, Sease then left at age 20 for New York City. At this young age settling into New York, he then joined another gospel group called the Gospel Crowns. Having a preference for the musical style of R&B, Sease left the gospel circuit to form his own R&B group. In this group Sease was accompanied by his own three brothers, and named the backing band Sease.^[1] This band did not find popularity and eventually broke up. He did not quit performing musically, but began to cover songs that started a career with a recurring gig at the Brooklyn club, Casablanca.
In 1986, he recorded a self titled album, featuring one of his more popular songs, "Ghetto Man". This started his professional career with his fans in the South's circuit of bars, blues festivals, and juke joints. While promoting his self produced and publicized debut album, he entered a recording contract with Polygram. With this contract, he was able to launch his music nationally with the re-release of his self titled LP on Mercury Records in 1987. This updated release of his previous material also included the new ten minute track "Candy Licker," which became an instant success for Sease through the South.^[2] Success had finally come to Sease without the help of airplay which deemed his sound too explicit for the audience.^[3] Over the next decade Sease released several more records for Mercury and Jive Records, which ranked on the US Billboard R&B chart. Sease's success was notably linked with his chart topping song "Candy Licker", and ensured a strong female based following.

He was said to have a comparable sound to Johnnie Taylor and Tyrone Davis, but without the commercial success.
Sease died of compilcations from pneumonia in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on February 8, 2011, eight days before his 65th birthday.^[4][5]
There was a poster depicting Sease in the film, Pretty in Pink.

[edit] References

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Eugenio Toussaint, Mexican composer and jazz musician, died from a heart attack he was 56,

Eugenio Toussaint Uhtohff , was a Mexican composer, arranger and jazz musician.

(October 9, 1954 – February 8, 2011)









He began playing as a pianist in 1972 with the band "Odradek". In 1975, he took part in the jazz band "Blue Note" (which was also the name of his first album) and a year later he founded the Mexican band "Sacbé", one of the most important Mexican jazz bands. This band started October 2, 1976 and included brothers Enrique Toussaint on bass and Fernando Toussaint on drums,^[1] Mexican saxophone player Alejandro Campos was also part of the founding members of the band. In 1979 the band moved to the USA and did some work in Minneapolis with guitar player Will Sumner.
In 1980, the Mexican Government gave him a scholarship and he moved to Los Angeles, California to study at the Dick Grove Music School, where he met Jon Crosse, a well established teacher and performer in the Los Angeles area.
With Jon Crosse, a new version of Sacbé which was signed by the local Discovery/Trend label. "Street Corner", "Aztlan", and "Dos mundos" were international success.
The same year, he studied orchestration with Dr. Albert Harris.

He worked with Paul Anka and trumpet player Herb Alpert from 1982 to 1983. He returned to Mexico City in 1986 to compose concert music. He has been active in the worlds of jazz music and classical music. He was nominated for two Latin Grammy Awards dor best classical music Cd in 2001 with his album Gauguin and in 2004 with his Musica de Cámara (Chamber Music).Most recently he released the album Oinos with his jazz trio including world famous bass player Eddie Gomez and drummer Gabriel Puentes from Chile.
A reformed version of Sacbe, as a trio with his two brothers, have performed at the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival,^[1] at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, at Haitis Port Au Prince Jazz Festival and at the Philippines Jazz Festival in Manila and at the Java Jazz Festival in Jakarta. He is currently traveling with Doc Severinsen's band (trumpet player that used to be musical conductor for the Tonight Show Band when Johnny Carson was the host), he has also established a very important educational website called musycom.com that gives free music lessons over the internet. Eugenio passed away 8 of February 2011 in Mexico City.3

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Maria Altmann, Austrian-born American art heiress, died after a long illness she was , 94

Maria Altmann  was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Austria, noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis during World War II, from the Government of Austria  died after a long illness she was , 94.

(February 18, 1916 – February 7, 2011)

She was born Maria Victoria Bloch, in Vienna. The family name was changed to Bloch-Bauer the following year.^[1] She was a niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy Jewish patron of the arts who served as the model for some of Klimt's best-known paintings, including two of those eventually recovered by her niece. After an Austrian researcher questioned the Austrian state's ownership of the paintings in 1998, Maria Altmann experienced some years of fruitless negotiations and efforts to litigate in the Austrian court system, before a 2004 ruling in her favor by the United States Supreme Court opened the door to an Austrian arbitration process. The arbitration panel of three Austrian judges in turn ruled in 2006 that the art must be returned to Altmann and other family heirs. Altmann died on 7 February 2011, shortly before her 95th birthday. Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications internationally.^[2]

Background to the Klimt case

In 1937, Maria married Fredrick ("Fritz") Altmann. Not long after their Paris honeymoon, the 1938 Anschluss incorporated Austria into Nazi Germany (in Maria's later account: "The women were throwing flowers, the church bells were ringing. They welcomed them with open arms. They were jubilant"). Under the Nazis, Fredrick was arrested in Austria and held hostage at the Dachau concentration camp to force his brother Bernhard, by then safely in France, to transfer the Bernhard Altmann textile factory into German hands. Fredrick was subsequently released and the couple fled for their lives. They made a harrowing escape, leaving behind their home, loved ones and property, including jewelry that later found its way into the collection of Hermann Göring. Many of their friends and relatives were either killed by the Nazis or committed suicide. Traveling by way of Liverpool, England, they reached the Unied States and settled first in Fall River, Massachusetts, and eventually in Los Angeles, California. Maria became a naturalized American citizen in 1945; the couple had four children.
Maria's uncle, Czech sugar magnate Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, owned a small collection of artwork by the Austrian master Gustav Klimt, including two portraits of his wife, Adele Bloch-Bauer. In her will, Adele, who died in 1925, well before the rise of the Nazis, had "kindly asked" her husband to leave the Klimts to the Austrian State Gallery upon his own death; a much-debated point in more recent years has been whether this request should or should not be considered legally binding upon her husband. In any event, following the Nazi Anschluss of 1938 and Ferdinand's flight from Austria, the paintings were looted, initially falling into the hands of a Nazi lawyer. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer died in 1946, soon after World War II, leaving his estate to a nephew and two nieces, including Maria Altmann. By this time, five of these paintings had made their way into the possession of the Austrian government.^[3]
With Austria under pressure in the 1990s to re-examine its Nazi past, the Austrian Green Party helped pass a new law in 1998 introducing greater transparency into the hitherto murky process of dealing with the issue of restitution of artworks looted during the Nazi period. Inter alia, by opening the archives of the Ministry of Culture for the first time, the new law enabled the Austrian investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin to discover that, contrary to what had been generally assumed, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had never in fact donated the paintings to the state museum.^[4]
On learning of Czernin's findings, Altmann at first sought to negotiate with the Austrian government about receiving some of the paintings back. At this stage she asked them only for the Klimt landscapes belonging to her family, and was willing to allow Austria to keep the portraits. Her proposal was not, however, treated seriously by the Austrian authorities, and no common ground was reached. In 1999 she sought to sue the government of Austria in an Austrian court. Under Austrian law, however, the filing fee for such a lawsuit is determined as a percentage of the recoverable amount. At the time, the five paintings were estimated to be worth approximately USD $135 million, making the filing fee over USD $1.5 million. Although the Austrian courts later reduced this amount to $350,000, this was still too much for Altmann, and she dropped her case in the Austrian court system.
In 2000 Altmann filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The case, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, ended up in the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in 2004 that Austria was not immune from such a lawsuit. After this decision, Altmann and Austria agreed to binding arbitration by a panel of three Austrian judges.^[5] On 16 January 2006, the arbitration panel ruled that Austria was legally required to return the art to Altmann and the other family heirs, and in March of the same year Austria returned the paintings.
The works are:

Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907 Adele Bloch-Bauer II, 1912 Buchenwald/ Birkenwald, 1903 Apfelbaum I, 1912

Häuser in Unterach am Attersee, 1916

The paintings were estimated to be collectively worth at least US$150 million when returned. In monetary terms this represented the largest single return of Nazi-looted art in Austria. The paintings left Austria in March 2006 and were on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until June 30, 2006. There were unsuccessful attempts by Austrians to buy some of the works back. Months after the Austrian government returned Altmann's family's belongings, she consigned the Klimt paintings to the auction house Christie's, to be sold on behalf of her family. The sale of the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for $135 million was at the time the highest sum ever paid for a painting. Since July 13, 2006, the painting has been on public display in the Neue Galerie in New York City, one of the leading centers internationally for early twentieth century German and Austrian art, which was established by Lauder in 2001. The four additional works by Klimt were also exhibited at the Neue Gallerie for several weeks in 2006.^[6]
In November 2006, Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) was sold at auction at Christie's in New York fetching almost $88m. In total the four remaining paintings sold for $192.7 million and the proceeds were divided up among several heirs.

Film

Altmann's story has been recounted in three documentary films. Adele's Wish by filmmaker Terrence Turner, the husband of Altmann's great-niece, was released in 2008. The film features interviews with Altmann, her lawyer (E. Randol Schoenberg), and leading experts from around the world. Altmann's story was also the subject of the film Stealing Klimt, which was released in 2007. That film also featured interviews with Altmann and others who were closely involved with the story. The documentary The Rape of Europa, which was about Nazi plunder of European art generally, also included material about Altmann.

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Bobby Kuntz, American CFL player (Toronto Argonauts, Hamilton Tiger-Cats), died from Parkinson's disease he was , 79

Robert John "Bobby" Kuntz Sr. , was a former professional Canadian football linebacker who played eleven seasons in the Canadian Football League for the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats died from Parkinson's disease he was , 79. He was a part of the Tiger-Cats 1963 and 1965 Grey Cup winning teams.

(January 10, 1932^[1] – February 7, 2011)

Kuntz's football career began ^[2] when he moved from Cleveland to Kitchener, Ontario. He was discouraged by football coaches in Cleveland, but at St. Jerome's High School he found Clem Faust, a coach willing to support his desire to play. After playing for McMaster University in Hamilton, and a senior football team in Ontario, he was signed by the Argonauts in 1955 to play his first full season in the CFL. 10 years later, his older brother David died and he was forced with a difficult decision to return home to join the family electroplating business or continue playing football. His decision to return home was short-lived, after only a few months he was coaxed out of retirement by Jim Trimble, coach of the Argo's main rival, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
During his time in the CFL, Bobby was a fan favourite, particularly in his hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Upon his return home after retirement, and rejoining the family business, he become heavily involved in the community.^[3] Bobby was a founding member of St. Francis Assisi Parish, and involved with St. Mary’s General Hospital Foundation, Mosaic Counselling and Family Services, the United Way, the Congregation of the Resurrection and St. Jerome’s University.
Kuntz was the co-owner of the family's surface finishing company Kuntz Electroplating. He was involved with the business from his retirement in 1966 from football until shortly before his death along with his brother Paul who predeceased him in early 2011.^[4] Bobby was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 2000, and lived in nursing homes in the last years of his life.^[5]
On February 7, 2011, Kuntz died due to complications from Parkinson's disease at the age of 79 in Waterloo, Ontario, surrounded by his wife and children.^[6]
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Eric Parsons, British footballer died he was , 87.

Eric "Rabbit" Parsons was a footballer who played for West Ham United, Chelsea and Brentford died he was , 87..

(9 November 1923 - 7 February 2011) 

A winger and crowd favourite whose blistering pace earned him the nickname "the Rabbit", Parsons started his career with West Ham United, spotted by the club during a game against West Ham Boys at Upton Park while playing for Worthing Boys. He played his first game for the Irons on 4 January 1947, in a Division Two game against Leicester City, then his second a week later against the same club in the FA Cup. He was an ever-present during the 1947-48 and 1948-49 seasons, and made a total of 152 appearances for the club, scoring 35 goals. His last game came against Notts County on 25 November 1950.
He served in Montgomery's Eighth Army during the Second World War.
Parsons joined Chelsea in November 1950 for a then club record fee of £23,000. A pacy winger, Parsons was unfortunate to play in an era of great English wingers, such as Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, which limited his international opportunities to two "England B" caps. Nevertheless, Parsons formed an important part of Ted Drake's Chelsea side of the early 1950s, as both goalscorer and creator. Despite this, he was occasionally barracked by sections of the Chelsea crowd. He played in every game of Chelsea's Championship-winning side in 1955 and contributed 11 goals, including two in the 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday which clinched the title. During the title celebrations and speeches following the win over Wednesday, he finally won over the crowd at Stamford Bridge, who chanted "We want Rabbit." ^[1]
Parsons left Chelsea in 1956 for Brentford. He sustained a broken leg while at the club, but still managed to take his total to over 400 League appearances before retiring from football. When Chelsea won the Premier League title in 2004-05 Parsons was among several surviving members of the 1954-55 title-winning side to be invited to the trophy presentation at Stamford Bridge. He continued to live in his home town of Worthing and died on 7 February 2011.

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