Emilio Navarro, Puerto Rican Negro league baseball player died he was , 105.

Emilio "Millito" Navarro was the first Puerto Rican to play baseball in the Negro Leagues. At age 105, Navarro was also the oldest living professional baseball player to have played in the Negro Leagues.


(September 26, 1905 – April 30, 2011)

Biography

Navarro was born in Patillas to Botello and Pepa Navarro, and raised in Ponce. His father was a well-known shoemaker in Patillas who died when Navarro was 6 years old. His widowed mother soon moved to Ponce where she had family and at a young age he helped his family economically by selling newspapers, peanuts and ice.^[2] In Ponce he attended Castillo Public School and worked after school shining shoes and delivering the foods which his mother prepared to sustain the family.^[2] His first contact with the game came about when he went to watch the school team play. Navarro developed a burning desire to play baseball. On one occasion he didn't have enough money to pay for an entrance ticket to watch a game between the Castillo and Reina teams. He therefore, jumped a fence, which happened to be in the outfield. It so happened that one of the Castillo team members became sick and when the coach saw Navarro jump the fence he asked him to play. He did and ever since then he's been playing baseball.^[3]
After graduating from high school, Navarro was offered a grant to attend the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez, which he turned down. Instead, 23-year-old Navarro felt that he should help his family financially and believed that he was more than ready to play in the Major Leagues in the U.S..^[3]

Baseball career

In the 1920s, the United States was a racially segregated nation and his color was therefore a problem; in baseball, blacks were not permitted to play together with their white counterparts. As a consequence of this policy, a group of white and black businessmen joined forces and organized their own "Negro Leagues". The teams played against each other and even had their own "World Series". Two of those teams were the "Cuban Stars", owned by Alex Pompez, and the "Cuban Giants".^[4] Both of those teams consisted mainly of African-American or Afro-Latino players.^[1]
Navarro played for two years with the Cuban Stars and had a batting average of .337. The experience was bittersweet for Navarro, especially when they played in the South. Not only did he feel discriminated because of the color of his skin, but also because he didn't speak English. After playing with the Negro Leagues, Navarro traveled and played for teams in the Dominican Republic and in Venezuela.^[1]
By the time baseball had become integrated in the U.S., Navarro had returned to the island. The experience and knowledge that he gained served him well when he became one of the founders of the Puerto Rican baseball team, "Leones de Ponce" (Ponce Lions). He played, coached and did a little bit of everything for the team. He dedicated 20 years to the team.

Later years and legacy

In 1938, Navarro was voted the "Ideal Professional Baseball Player" by Emilio Huike, considered by many as one of Puerto Rico's Best Sports Writers.^[1] After Navarro retired from active baseball, he was named administrator of the Francisco "Paquito" Montaner Stadium in Ponce, a position that he held for 20 years.
Navarro turned 105 on September 26, 2010. Many tributes to honor him have been planned in Puerto Rico and the United States. His life and experiences in baseball will be part of an American documentary called "Beisbol" which will be about the contributions and influence of Hispanics in America's national pastime. He was elected to the Puerto Rico Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.^[1] The Senate of Puerto Rico presented him with the resolution #1026 in recognition of his contributions to baseball on June 7, 2005.^[3] On December 29, 2006, Navarro was inducted into the "Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum". Former Astros great José (Cheo) Cruz presented the Museum's, which is located in Ponce, the Pioneer plaque of induction to Navarro as the 39th inductee into The Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum.^[5] Navarro, who considered to be the last surviving member of the American Negro League and the oldest baseball, softball player and trainer in the world, is also a member of the "Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Fame" and the "Puerto Rican Sports Hall of Fame".^[2]
On June 6, 2008, Major League Baseball held a ceremonial Negro League draft prior to the Amateur draft, in which Navarro was honored by the New York Yankees, being symbolically drafted by the team. Navarro was honored at a game during the final homestand in Yankee Stadium history on September 18, 2008.^[6][7] In 2010, Navarro was honored by the "Experience Works" who recognized him as an outstanding active Senior Citizen on the United States.^[2]
On April 27, 2011, Navarro was hospitalized at the San Lucas Hospital in the southern coastal city of Ponce after suffering a minor heart attack.^[8] On April 28, he was transferred to the hospital's intensive care unit after suffering a stroke.^[9] He died two days later, on April 30, 2011, after not being able to overcome the effects of his stroke.^[10][11] Navarro is survived by four children, 11 grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.^[12]

 

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Daniel Quillen, American mathematician died he was , 70.

Daniel Gray "Dan" Quillen  was an American mathematician died he was , 70..
From 1984 to 2006, he was the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is renowned for being the "prime architect" of higher algebraic K-theory, for which he was awarded the Cole Prize in 1975 and the Fields Medal in 1978.

(22 June 1940 – 30 April 2011)

Education and career

Quillen was born in Orange, New Jersey, and attended Newark Academy. He entered Harvard University, where he earned both his BA (1961) and his PhD (1964), the latter of which was completed under the supervision of Raoul Bott with a thesis in partial differential equations. He was a Putnam Fellow in 1959.
Quillen obtained a position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after completing his doctorate. However, he also spent a number of years at several other universities. This experience would prove to be important in influencing the direction of his research. He visited France twice: first as a Sloan Fellow in Paris, during the academic year 1968–69, where he was greatly influenced by Grothendieck, and then, during 1973–74, as a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1969–70, he was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he came under the influence of Michael Atiyah.
In 1978, Quillen received a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Helsinki.
His Ph.D. students include Kenneth Brown, Howard Hiller, Jeanne Duflot, Mark Baker, Varghese Mathai (with whom he collaborated on the Mathai-Quillen formalism), and Jacek Brodzki.
Quillen retired at the end of 2006 and died in April 2011.^[1]

Mathematical contributions

Quillen's most celebrated contribution (mentioned specifically in his Fields medal citation) was his formulation of higher algebraic K-theory in 1972. This new tool, formulated in terms of homotopy theory, proved to be successful in formulating and solving major problems in algebra, particularly in ring theory and module theory. More generally, Quillen developed tools (especially his theory of model categories) which allowed algebro-topological tools to be applied in other contexts.
Before his ground-breaking work in defining higher algebraic K-theory, Quillen worked on the Adams conjecture, formulated by Frank Adams in homotopy theory. His proof of the conjecture used techniques from the modular representation theory of groups, which he later applied to work on cohomology of groups and algebraic K-theory. He also worked on complex cobordism, showing that its formal group law is essentially the universal one.
In related work, he also supplied a proof of Serre's conjecture about the triviality of algebraic vector bundles on affine space.
He was also an architect (along with Dennis Sullivan) of rational homotopy theory.

Selected publications

• Quillen, Daniel G., Homology of commutative rings, unpublished notes
• Quillen, Daniel G. (1967), Homotopical algebra, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 43, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, doi:10.1007/BFb0097438, ISBN 978-3-540-03914-3, MR0223432
• Quillen, Daniel (1969), "On the formal group laws of unoriented and complex cobordism theory", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 75: 1293–1298, doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1969-12401-8, MR0253350
• Quillen, D. (1969), "Rational homotopy theory", Annals of Math (Annals of Mathematics) 90 (2): 205–295, doi:10.2307/1970725, JSTOR 1970725, MR0258031
• Quillen, Daniel (1971), "The Adams conjecture", Topology. An International Journal of Mathematics 10: 67–80, doi:10.1016/0040-9383(71)90018-8, ISSN 0040-9383, MR0279804
• Quillen, Daniel (1971), "The spectrum of an equivariant cohomology ring. I", Annals of Mathematics. Second Series 94: 549–572, ISSN 0003-486X, MR0298694 Quillen, Daniel (1971), "The spectrum of an equivariant cohomology ring. II", Annals of Mathematics. Second Series 94: 573–602, ISSN 0003-486X, MR0298694
• Quillen, Daniel (1973), "Higher algebraic K-theory. I", Algebraic K-theory, I: Higher K-theories (Proc. Conf., Battelle Memorial Inst., Seattle, Wash., 1972), Lecture Notes in Math, 341, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 85–147, doi:10.1007/BFb0067053, MR0338129
• Quillen, Daniel (1975), "Higher algebraic K-theory", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians (Vancouver, B. C., 1974), Vol. 1, Montreal, Quebec: Canad. Math. Congress, pp. 171–176, MR0422392 (Quillen's Q-construction)
• Quillen, Daniel (1974), "Higher K-theory for categories with exact sequences", New developments in topology (Proc. Sympos. Algebraic Topology, Oxford, 1972), London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., 11, Cambridge University Press, pp. 95–103, MR0335604
• Quillen, Daniel (1976), "Projective modules over polynomial rings", Inventiones Mathematicae 36: 167–171, doi:10.1007/BF01390008
• Quillen, Daniel (1985), "Superconnections and the Chern character", Topology. An International Journal of Mathematics 24 (1): 89–95, doi:10.1016/0040-9383(85)90047-3, ISSN 0040-9383, MR790678

 

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Ernesto Sabato, Argentine writer (El Túnel, On Heroes and Tombs), died from pneumonia he was , 99.

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist died from pneumonia he was , 99.. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America". Upon his death El País dubbed him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature".

(June 24, 1911 – April 30, 2011)

Sabato was distinguished by his bald pate and brush moustache and wore tinted spectacles and open-necked shirts.^[4] He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his studies at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. He then studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a Ph.D. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost faith in science and started writing.
Sabato's oeuvre includes three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre héroes y tumbas (1961) and Abaddón el exterminador (1974). The first of these received critical acclaim upon its publication from, among others, fellow writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann.^[1] The second is regarded as his masterpiece, though he nearly burnt it like many of his other works.^[2] Sabato's essays cover topics as diverse as metaphysics, politics and tango.^[2] His writings led him to receive many international prizes, including the Legion of Honour (France), the Prix Médicis (Italy) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain).^[1]
By request of President Raúl Alfonsín, he presided over the CONADEP commission that investigated the fate of the desaparecidos during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The result of these findings was published in 1984 bearing the title Nunca Más (Never Again).

Biography

Early years

Ernesto Sabato was born on June 24, 1911, in Rojas, Buenos Aires Province, son of Francesco Sabato and Giovanna Maria Ferrari, Italian immigrants from a town in Calabria of Arbereshe (Albanian) ancestry. His father was from Fuscaldo and his mother from San Martino di Finita. He was the tenth of a total of eleven children. Being born after his ninth brother's death, he carried on his name "Ernesto".^[5]
In 1924 he finished primary school in Rojas and settled in the city of La Plata for his secondary education at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. There he met professor Pedro Henríquez Ureña, an early inspiration for his writing career.^[6] In 1929 he started college, attending the School of Physics and Mathematics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
He was an active member in the Reforma Universitaria movement,^[7] founding "Insurrexit Group" in 1933 - of communist ideals - together with Héctor P. Agosti, Ángel Hurtado de Mendoza and Paulino González Alberdi, among others.^[8]
In 1933 he was elected Secretario General of the Federación Juvenil Comunista (Communist Youth Federation).^[9] While attending a lecture about Marxism he met Matilde Kusminsky Richter, aged 17, who would leave her parents house to live with Sabato.^[10]
In 1934 he started to doubt communism and Stalin's regime. The Communist Party of Argentina, which had noted this, sent him to the International Lenin School for two years. According to Sabato "it was a place where either you recovered or ended up in a gulag or psychiatric hospital".^[11] Before arriving at Moscow, he traveled to Brussels as a delegate from the Communist Party of Argentina at the "Congress against Fascism and the War". Once there, fearing not coming back from Moscow, he left the congress to escape to Paris.^[11] It was there where he wrote his first novel: "La Fuente Muda", which remains unpublished.^[9][11] Once back in Buenos Aires, in 1936, he married Matilde Kusminsky Richter.

His years as a scientist

In 1938 he obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Thanks to Bernardo Houssay, he was granted a research fellowship in atomic radiation at the Curie Institute in Paris.^[9] On May 25, 1938 Jorge Federico Sabato, his first son, was born. While in France he made contact with the surrealist movement, studying the works of Oscar Domínguez, Benjamin Péret, Roberto Matta Echaurren and Esteban Francés among others. This would have a deep influence on his future writing.^[12]

During that time of antagonisms, I buried myself with electrometers and graduated cylinders during the morning and spent the nights in bars, with the delirious surrealists. At the Dome and in the Deux Magots, inebriated with those heralds of chaos and excess, we used to spend many hours creating exquisite cadavers.

—Ernesto Sabato.^[12][5]

In 1939 he transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Once in 1940 he came back to Argentina intent on leaving physics behind. However, serving an obligation to those responsible for his fellowship Sabato started teaching at the Universidad de La Plata for Engineering admission, and relativity and quantum mechanics for post graduate degrees. In 1943, due to an "existential crisis", he left science for good to become a full-time writer and painter.^[11]
In 1945, his second son, Mario Sabato was born.

Writing career

In 1941, Sabato published his first literary work, an article about La invención de Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, in the magazine Teseo from La Plata. Also, in concert with Pedro Henríquez Ureña, he published a collaboration in the renown Sur magazine.
In 1942, working for Sur magazine reviewing books, he was put in charge of the "Calendario" section and participated in "Desagravio a Borges" in Sur nº 94. He also published articles for La Nación, and his translation of The Birth and Death of the Sun by George Gamow was published. The next year he published the translation for The ABC of Relativity by Bertrand Russell.
In 1945, his first book, Uno y el Universo, a series of essays criticizing the apparent moral neutrality of science and warning about dehumanization processes in technological societies, was published; with time he would turn towards a libertarian and humanist standing. That same year he was awarded a prize by the municipality of Buenos Aires for his book and the honor wand of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores.
In 1948, after being rejected by several Buenos Aires' editors, Sabato published in Sur his first novel, El túnel, a psychological novel narrated in first-person. Framed in existentialism, it was met with enthusiastic reviews by Albert Camus, who had the book translated by Gallimard into French. It has been further translated to more than 10 languages.^[13] Others to enjoy the book included Thomas Mann.^[1][4]
France's literary industry named his book Abaddon el Exterminador (The Angel of Darkness) as 1976's best foreign book.^[1]
In 1998 his wife passed away.^[14] In 1999 he acquired the Italian citizenship, in addition to his original Argentine one.^[15]
Sabato died in Santos Lugares, on April 30, 2011, two months short of his 100th birthday.^[16][17] His death was as a result of bronchitis according to his companion and collaborator Elvira Gonzalez Fraga.^[18] World reaction to his death said he had "surpassed the world of literature to gain a more iconic status".^[3] El Mundo of Spain said he was "the last survivor of Argentine writers with a capital letter".^[3]

Works

Novels

• 1948: El túnel (Translated by Harriet de Onis in 1950 as The Outsider and again by Margaret Sayers Peden in 1988 as The Tunnel.)
• 1961: Sobre héroes y tumbas (Translated by Helen R. Lane in 1981 as On Heroes and Tombs.)
• 1974: Abaddón el exterminador (Translated by Andrew Hurley in 1991 as The Angel of Darkness.)

Essays

• 1945: Uno y el Universo (One and the Universe)
• 1951: Hombres y engranajes (Men and Mechanisms)
• 1953: Heterodoxia (Heterodoxy)
• 1956: El caso Sabato. Torturas y libertad de prensa. Carta abierta al General Aramburu (The Sabato Case. Tortures and Liberty of Press. Open Letter to General Aramburu)
• 1956: El otro rostro del peronismo (The Other Face of Peronism)
• 1963: El escritor y sus fantasmas (Translated by Asa Zatz in 1990 as The Writer in the Catastrophe of our Time.)
• 1963: Tango, discusión y clave (Tango: Discussion and Key)
• 1967: Significado de Pedro Henríquez Ureña (Significance of Pedro Henríquez Ureña)
• 1968: Tres aproximaciones a la literatura de nuestro tiempo: Robbe-Grillet, Borges, Sartre (Three Approximations to the Literature of our Time: Robbe-Grillet, Borges, Sartre)
• 1973: La cultura en la encrucijada nacional (Culture in the National Crossroads)
• 1976: Diálogos con Jorge Luis Borges (Dialogues with Jorge Luis Borges) (Edited by Orlando Barone.)
• 1979: Apologías y rechazos (Apologies and Rebuttals)
• 1979: Los libros y su misión en la liberación e integración de la América Latina (Books and their Mission in the Liberation and Integration of Latin America)
• 1988: Entre la letra y la sangre. Conversaciones con Carlos Catania (Between Letter and Blood. Conversations with Carlos Catania)
• 1998: Antes del fin (Before the End)
• 2000: La resistencia (The Resistance)
• 2004: España en los diarios de mi vejez (Spain in the Diaries of my Old Age)

Others

• 1964: Itinerario (Itinerary)
• 1966: Romance de la muerte de Juan Lavalle. Cantar de Gesta (Romance of Juan Lavalle's Death. Cantar de gesta)
• 1984: Nunca más. Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la desaparición de personas (Never Again. Report from the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons)

Further reading

• Conde, David (1981). Archetypal Patterns in Ernesto Sabato's Sobre héroes y tumbas'.
• Foster, David William (1975). Currents in the Contemporary Argentine Novel: Arlt, Mallea, Sabato, and Cortázar.
• Francis, Nathan Travis (1973). Ernesto Sabato as a Literary Critic.
• Oberhelman, Harley D. (1970). Ernesto Sabato.
• Petersen, John Fred (1963). Ernesto Sabato: Essayist and Novelist.
• Predmore, James R. (1977). A Critical Study of the Novels of Ernesto Sabato.
• Price Munn, Nancy Elaine (1975). Ernesto Sabato: Theory and Practice of the Novel, 1945-1973.
• (Spanish) Wainerman Gonilsky, Luis (1978 [1971]). Sábato y el misterio de los ciegos.

 

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Apostolos Santas, Greek Resistance veteran died he was , 89.

Apostolos Santas  commonly known as Lakis, was a Greek veteran of the Resistance against the Axis Occupation of Greece during World War II, most notable for his participation, along with Manolis Glezos, in the taking down of the German flag from the Acropolis on 30 May 1941 died he was , 89..

(February 22, 1922 – April 30 2011)

Apostolos Santas was born on 22 February 1922 on the Ionian island of Lefkada, Greece. His family moved to Athens in 1934. He completed his secondary education in Athens and was accepted to the law school of the University of Athens, completing his law studies after the liberation of the country from Nazi occupation in 1944.
On the night of 30 May 1941, he and Manolis Glezos climbed on the Acropolis of Athens and tore down the Nazi flag, which had been there since 27 April, when the Nazi forces had entered and occupied Athens, replacing it with the Greek flag. That was one of the first resistance acts in Greece. The act inspired the Greeks to resist occupation, and made the two into folk heroes.^{[citation needed]} The Germans responded by sentencing Glezos and Santas to death in absentia.^[1][2]
In 1942, he joined the fledgling National Liberation Front (EAM), and a year later the guerrilla force ELAS, with which he participated in several battles with the Axis troops throughout Central Greece.^[3] After the Occupation, because of his leftist beliefs, he was sent into internal exile to Ikaria in 1946, then to Psyttaleia in 1947 and finally to the Makronisos island in 1948. He managed to escape to Italy, from where he went to Canada where he was granted political asylum. He lived in Canada until 1962, when he returned to Greece, where he spent the rest of his life. In 30 April 2011 he died in Athens.
Apostolos Santas received numerous awards from various institutions in Greece and other Allied countries.

 

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Eddie Turnbull, Scottish football player and manager died he was , 88.

Edward Hunter Turnbull  was a Scottish professional football player and manager  died he was , 88..

(12 April 1923 – 30 April 2011)

During the late 1940s and 1950s he was one of the Famous Five, the noted Hibernian forward line, along with Gordon Smith, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, and Willie Ormond. During his time with Hibernian they won three Scottish Football League titles, and in 1955 he was the first British player to score in a European club competition.
Although Turnbull was selected nine times to play for Scotland and played in the 1958 FIFA World Cup, he did not physically receive an international cap at the time.^[1] This was because he did not play in any Home International matches, and caps were only awarded for playing in those matches until the mid 1970s.^[1] This situation was rectified in 2006 as a result of Gary Imlach's successful campaign for his father Stewart Imlach and other players affected by this rule to receive recognition.^[1][2]
He was manager of Aberdeen between 1965 and 1971, during which time he had some success, winning the 1970 Scottish Cup and finishing second in the league in 1971.^[3] After that he returned to Edinburgh to become manager of Hibernian, where he won the 1972 Scottish League Cup Final, against Celtic. He also masterminded their most famous victory, a 7–0 win over their Edinburgh derby rivals Heart of Midlothian on 1 January 1973.
Turnbull died on 30 April 2011, aged 88.^[4] Hibernian chairman Rod Petrie stated that no-one had made a greater contribution to the club than Turnbull.^[4]

 

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Waldemar Baszanowski, Polish weightlifter died he was , 75.

Waldemar Romuald Baszanowski , was a Polish weightlifter. He took part in four Olympic Games (from 1960 to 1972).

(August 15, 1935 – April 29, 2011)


Baszanowskim, who was born in Grudziądz, was a two-time Olympic champion in the lightweight category, winning gold in Tokyo 1964 and in Mexico City 1968). He won five World Championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1969) in the same category. His first wife Anita was killed in a car accident in 1969, in which Waldemar Baszanowski was the driver.
He set twenty five World Records in his career.
In 1993 he was elected member of the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame.^[1] In 1999, he became the President of the European Weightlifting Federation. Baszanowski died in Warsaw at the age of 75.

Notes and references

1.       ^ "Weightlifting Hall of Fame". International Weightlifting Federation. Retrieved 2008-08-07.

Awards
Preceded by Jerzy Pawłowski	Polish Sportspersonality of the Year 1969	Succeeded by

 

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Robert B. Duncan, American politician, U.S. Representative from Oregon (1963–1967, 1975–1981) died he was , 90.

Robert Blackford Duncan was an American politician from the state of Oregon died he was , 90.. A Democrat, he served multiple terms in the Oregon Legislative Assembly and as a U.S. congressman from Oregon. In the Oregon House he served as speaker for four years, and in the U.S. House he represented two different districts. The Illinois native and World War II veteran twice ran unsuccessful campaigns to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

(December 4, 1920 – April 29, 2011)

Early life

Duncan was born in Normal, Illinois, on December 4, 1920, and attended public schools in Bloomington.^[1] In 1939, he began college at the University of Alaska, staying through 1940 when he transferred to Illinois Wesleyan University where he graduated in 1942 with a bachelors degree.^[1] In college he met fellow student Marijane Beverly Dill (born June 30, 1920) and the two were married on December 19, 1942.^[2] The couple would have seven children together: Nancy, Angus, David, James, Laurie, Bonnie and Jeanne.^[2] While in Alaska he had worked in the gold fields, and while in Illinois he had worked for a bank and seed company.^[1]
During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine and United States Naval Air Force from 1942 to 1945.^[1] In 1948, Duncan received his law degree (LL.B) from the University of Michigan and passed the bar in October of that year.^[1] After graduation Duncan and his family moved from Michigan to Portland and then to Medford in Southern Oregon, where he moved to join the law practice of William M. McAllister.^[2]

Political career

In 1954, Duncan was nominated as a write-in candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives.^[1] Although he declined for economic reasons, in 1956, he was elected to the Oregon House,^[1] serving three terms and was elected Speaker of the Oregon House by his colleagues. In 1962, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives representing Oregon's 4th congressional district based in Medford.^[1]
In 1966, Duncan was the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate seat vacated by retiring Senator Maurine B. Neuberger.^[1] While Duncan strongly supported President Johnson's Vietnam war policies, his Republican opponent, Mark O. Hatfield, was an outspoken critic.^[3] The differences between Duncan and Hatfield on the war would produce one of the great splits in the modern Oregon Democratic Party.^[4] The state's senior U.S. Senator, Wayne Morse—a staunch Democratic opponent of the Vietnam war—endorsed Hatfield over fellow Democrat, Duncan,^[5] an act that infuriated Democratic Party regulars.^[6] This factor, along with Hatfield's statewide popularity as Governor of Oregon, gave Hatfield a narrow victory.^[7] In 1967, Duncan moved to Portland where he lived until 1974,^[2] returning to the practice of law.^[1]
In 1968, Duncan came back to challenge Senator Morse in the Democratic Senate primary. Again, Duncan's war views played a role. Though Duncan was initially far ahead of the anti-war maverick Morse, Morse closed the gap at the end and won a narrow victory, aided by the beginning of the Paris Peace Accords, which brought the possibility of the end of the war.^[8] Morse went on to lose in the general election to Republican Bob Packwood, who favored continued funding of the war.
Duncan returned to his Portland law practice, but after Edith Green retired from Congress, Duncan was elected to her seat in 1974 and returned to the House, this time representing the 3rd district in Portland. He served another three terms, and was upset in the 1980 Democratic primary by eventual winner Ron Wyden.^[9]

Later years and family

In 1985, he returned to live in Oregon, settling in the coastal community of Yachats.^[2] He served on the Northwest Power Planning Council from 1984 to 1988, and as its chairperson in 1987.^[1] Duncan’s first wife, Marijane, died November 9, 1990.^[2] Duncan remarried Katherine Boe and lived in Portland until his death on April 29, 2011 at the age of 90.^[10]

 

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