Richard Harding Poff, American jurist and politician, U.S. Representative from Virginia (1953–1972) died he was , 87

Richard Harding Poff  was an American politician and judge died he was , 87. He was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1952, representing Virginia's Sixth District.^[3] A moderate Republican and a licensed attorney, he was given strong consideration for the United States Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon and was later appointed as a Justice (later Senior Justice) of the Virginia Supreme Court.


(October 19, 1923 – June 27, 2011)

Education

Poff did his undergraduate work at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia; and gained his law degree (LL.B.) from the University of Virginia in 1948.

Military service

During the Second World War, Poff served as a bomber pilot with the Eighth Air Force in England; flew thirty-five successful missions over Europe; awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross; was inactivated from the service as a first lieutenant serving from February 1943 to August 1945.

Legislative career

Poff, who was first elected to Congress in 1952, had his share of controversy during his decades in the House of Representatives. He was one of only two Republicans, along with the rest of Virginia's entire Congressional delegation, and nearly all members from Southern states, to sign the Southern Manifesto protesting the Supreme Court's mandate in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate public schools. A. Linwood Holton, former Governor of Virginia (1970–1974), and the commonwealth's first post-Reconstruction Republican Governor, suggests that Poff probably could not have been reelected unless he signed the manifesto.^[4] Despite that controversial decision, he was well liked by most, including many African Americans, who in an ABC News report on his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court described him as having a great interest in individuals; only one person in that report described him as a racist despite his having signed the Southern Manifesto. Consistent with his signing of the Manifesto, he also opposed all civil rights measures in the 1960s with the exception of the 24th Amendment; however, it is worth noting that in the 1970s he favored desegregation aid and voted for the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1971. He was the only member of the House Republican leadership who did not support President Eisenhower's proposal to increase the minimum wage and widen its coverage. According to John Dean, he was also the author of most of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States while serving on the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.^[5]

Nomination to Supreme Court of the United States

Before President Richard Nixon could formally nominate him for the U.S. Supreme Court, Poff withdrew (before nomination reached the Senate). John Dean wrote that Poff actually made that decision based on concerns that he would thus be forced to reveal to his then-12-year-old son that he had been adopted. Poff's concern was that the child would be negatively affected by that kind of information if revealed before he was old enough to understand.^{[6] [7]} Nevertheless, according to the New York Times, within weeks after he withdrew from consideration that sensitive personal information was revealed in Jack Anderson's column, and he was forced to inform the child of his adoption anyway. ^[8] By then, however, it was too late for reconsideration, and eventually Lewis Powell was confirmed to the Supreme Court in Poff's place.

Legislation

Poff is also well known as one of the men who, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, sponsored the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO. Poff had an interesting take on RICO, which has since been ignored by the Supreme Court. Poff stated in the Congressional Record that the Act should be used only against organizations, and not individuals.

Supreme Court of Virginia

Richard H. Poff went on to become Justice and then a Senior Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court, where he served until his retirement.
He died on June 27, 2011, in a life care center in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Legacy

The Richard H. Poff Federal Building in Roanoke, Virginia is named for Poff. It houses many of the primary federal offices in southwest Virginia, including the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the Internal Revenue Service.

 

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Lura Lynn Ryan, American First Lady of Illinois (1999-2003), died from cancer he was , 76

Lura Lynn Ryan was the First Lady of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1999 to 2003. She was the wife of former Illinois Governor George Ryan died from cancer he was , 76.

(July 5, 1934 – June 27, 2011) 

Biography

Early life

Ryan was born Lura Lynn Lowe on July 5, 1934, in Aroma Park, Illinois to parents, Lawrence and Dorothea Lowe.^[2][3] Her father was the owner of a hybrid seed company, while her mother was a Kankakee County school trustee.^[1][3] Lowe was raised on a family farm near Aroma Park.^[2]
Lowe met her future husband, George Ryan, while both were students in a freshman English class at Kankakee High School.^[1] Lowe mulled becoming a nurse following high school, but decided against that career path.^[2] She received a degree from the former Moser Business College.^[3]
She married Ryan at the Asbury United Methodist Church in Kankakee, Illinois, on June 10, 1956 after dating for eight years.^[1][3] The couple had six children, including one group of triplets.^[1] Their first child, Nancy, was born in 1957; daughter, Lynda, was born in 1961; triplets, Jeanette, Joanne and Julie were born in 1962; and her youngest, George Jr., was born in 1964.^[1] None of her children entered politics.^[2]
Her husband, George, entered politics when he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1972,^[2] with Ryan becoming a political spouse while simultaneously raising six small children.^[2]

First Lady of Illinois

Ryan became the First Lady of Illinois on January 11, 1999.^[2] She sought to become an active Illinois First Lady similar to her predecessors, Jayne Thompson and Brenda Edgar.^[2] Ryan was considered particularly devoted to issues involving the arts, drug and alcohol abuse, organ donation, historic preservation and the recognition of Abraham Lincoln.^[2]

As First Lady, Ryan became a major fundraiser and first chairwoman of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which opened in 2005 in Springfield, Illinois.^[1][2] She launched the fundraising for the library by raising $250,000.^[3] Ryan also organized a program in which Illinois schoolchildren collected pennies for the construction of the presidential library, which raised $47,000 dollars. ^[3] Ryan was appointed to the 14-member Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission by the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives to commemorate the 200th birthday of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 2009.^[4] She served on the commission from 2001 to 2010.^[4]
She supported efforts to restore funding to the Illinois Department of Alcohol and Substance Abuse and drug prevention programs.^[2] Ryan supported after school programs and literacy campaigns aimed at discouraging drug use among young people in Illinois.^[1] The anti-drug nonprofit, Prevention First, honored Lura Lynn Ryan's work by naming two research libraries in Springfield and Chicago for her.^[1] Together, the two libraries hold one of the United States' largest collections on substance abuse.^[1]
Ryan collaborated with former Illinois Governor James Thompson to raise $250,000 to acquire 19th Century Amish quilts then housed by the Illinois State Museum.^[2] Ryan traveled with her husband on official international trips to promote Illinois products, including to Cuba, where they met with then President Fidel Castro, and South Africa, where she met Nelson Mandela.^[1][3]
Ryan co-authored a book, At Home with Illinois Governors: A Social History of the Illinois Executive Mansion, 1855-2003, with historian Dan Monroe in 2002 on the history of Illinois Governors and their families.^[3] She further promoted and spearheaded the success of Made in Illinois, a catalog which had been first launched in 1988 to promote crafts and other products produced in Illinois.^[3]
Ryan launched several renovations Illinois Executive Mansion. She refurbished much of the furniture in the mansion using private donations through the Executive Mansion Association.^[1][3] In particular, Ryan fixed items in the mansion's Kankakee Room, which honors former Illinois governors from Kankakee County - Lennington Small, Samuel Shapiro and her husband, George Ryan.^[3]

Later life

Ryan left her position as First Lady in 2003 at the end of her husband's term in office. Former Governor George Ryan was convicted of corruption in 2006 after a long trial.^[1] George Ryan was found guilty of using his office to for political benefits while serving as Governor and Secretary of State, as well as provided favorable state contracts to friends^[1] He was sent to prison in Indiana. Lura Lynn Ryan remained personally supportive of her husband.^[1] She wrote a letter in 2008 to former U.S. First Lady Barbara Bush appealing for clemency from President George W. Bush.^[1]
Lura Lynn Ryan was diagnosed with cancer during her later years.^[1] Her husband, George Ryan, was temporarily released from prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on four occasions between January and June 2011 as his wife's health declined in 2011.^[1] She died from complications of cancer and chemotherapy at a hospital in Kankakee, Illinois, on June 27, 2011, with her husband at her side.^[1]

 

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Elaine Stewart, American actress and model, died after a long illness she was , 81.

Elaine Stewart  was an American actress and model  died after a long illness she was , 81..

(May 31, 1930 – June 27, 2011)

Life

Stewart was born in Montclair, New Jersey as Elsy Steinberg. In 1961, nearing the end of her television career, she married actor Bill Carter. After her divorce from Carter, she married television producer Merrill Heatter on December 31, 1964. They had a son, Stewart, and a daughter, Gabrielle.^[1]

Career

Stewart made her debut by winning Miss See in See Magazine in 1952, with measurements 34-25-36. She was in many magazines such as Playboy and Photoplay.
She had a supporting role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), as Laila. She appeared in other films, such as Brigadoon, Night Passage and The Adventures of Hajji Baba.
Stewart was also known as the co-hostess on two 1970s game shows, Gambit with Wink Martindale and the nighttime edition of High Rollers with Alex Trebek, which were both produced by her husband.

 

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Charles W. Whalen, Jr., American politician, U.S. Representative from Ohio (1967–1979) died he was , 90

Charles William Whalen Jr. was a Republican U.S. Representative from Ohio's 3rd congressional district died he was , 90. He served 6 terms in congress and was notably the leader of the Republican party's opposition to the Vietnam War.

(July 31, 1920 – June 27, 2011) 

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Whalen graduated from Oakwood High School, from the University of Dayton with a degree in business administration in 1942, and from Harvard University Graduate School of Business in 1946. He enlisted in the United States Army during World War II and was discharged as a first lieutenant in 1946.
Whalen was vice president of the Dayton Dress Company from 1946 to 1952, and was a professor of economics and chairman of the department at the University of Dayton from 1962 to 1966.

Ohio state legislator

In 1954, Whalen was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives where he served for three terms until his election to the Ohio State Senate in 1960. In 1962, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio. In a crowded primary, his main opponent in the race was John Brown a former two-term Lieutenant Governor who also served as Governor for 11 days after the resignation of Frank Lausche. Whalen took only 15.8% of the vote in the loss.
Whalen served two more terms in the State Senate.

U.S. representative

Whalen next ran for Congress in 1966. In the general election, he took on freshman incumbent Rodney Love. Whalen won with 53.8%. This would prove to be Whalen's only competitive race for Congress. In five more races, Whalen faced token opposition taking more than 70% of the vote three times and running unopposed once. ^[3]
He retired in 1979 and was succeeded by Democrat Tony P. Hall.
Whalen had a moderate to liberal voting record in his career. While in the State Senate, Whalen wrote Ohio's fair housing law. He also supported the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Whalen opposed the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[4]

Author

After his retirement from Congress, Whalen authored two books with his wife Barbara, a former columnist for the Dayton Journal Herald and the voice of Elsie the Cow. The first, The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, chronicled the legislative process behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act. His second book, The Fighting McCooks – America's Famous Fighting Family, discussed a local family with a long military history.
Whalen died in Bethesda, Maryland on June 27, 2011. He was 90.

 

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Maciej Zembaty, Polish writer and singer died she was , 67.

 Maciej Zembaty was a Polish artist, writer, journalist, singer, poet and comedian. Despite being considered one of the classics of Polish black humour, he is perhaps best known as a translator and populariser of songs and poems by Leonard Cohen.

(16 May 1944 – 27 June 2011) 

Life

·         Maciej Zembaty was born May 16, 1944 in Wadowice in southern Poland. He graduated from a musical lyceum (piano class) and attended an artistic lyceum (which he never graduated from). Afterwards he graduated from the Warsaw University's faculty of Polish language and literature. His thesis was one of the first studies of grypsera, a distinct slang language used by the criminals and inmates of prisons in Poland.

·         His stage debut was a brief appearance at the Opole Song Festival in 1965, where he was awarded with a prize for the best featuring song author. In 1972, together with Jacek Janczarski, he created the story of Poszepszyński Family, one of the best-known and longest-running comic series ever aired in the Polish Radio. It has been aired for 25 consecutive years and became one of the icons of the Polish popular culture of the epoch. Zembaty himself also appeared in the series giving his voice to the iconic personality of Maurycy.

·         Later that year he also received a number of records of Leonard Cohen, whose songs he started to translate. In several months he created a dozen or so translations, most of which became hits in Poland even before the original songs by Cohen became available and known to wider audience. From that time on Zembaty became known primarily as the translator of Leonard Cohen's work into Polish. He holds the record for Leonard Cohen covers, having translated and recorded at least 60 songs over 10 albums. One of the albums (1985 Alleluja) was sold in over 400,000 copies in Poland and became a golden record. In addition, Zembaty published a number of books with translations of Cohen's poetry, some of them in official printing houses, while other unofficially in the samizdat. Zembaty's translation of The Partisan became one of the informal anthems of Solidarity during the Martial Law in Poland.

·         Apart from his career as a translator of poems by Cohen, Zembaty continued his career as a journalist, comic and writer. He co-authored the screenplays to a number of films, as well as being the author of many songs. He also translated a number of Russian folk songs, most of them related to Blat, a Russian version of the Polish grypsera.

 

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Alan Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry, British jurist, Supreme Court judge died he was , 66

Alan Ferguson Rodger, Baron Rodger of Earlsferry, FRSE, FBA, PC  was a Scottish lawyer and Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom died he was , 66.
He served as Lord Advocate, the senior Law Officer of Scotland, before becoming Lord Justice General and Lord President of the Court of Session, the head of the country's judiciary. He was then appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary (Law Lord) and became a Justice of the Supreme Court when the judicial functions of the House of Lords were transferred to that Court.

(18 September 1944 – 26 June 2011)

Early life

Alan Rodger was born on 18 September 1944 in Glasgow, to Professor T Ferguson Rodger, Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Glasgow, and Jean Margaret Smith Chalmers, and educated at the independent Kelvinside Academy in the city.^[2] He studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA, and at the University's School of Law, taking an LLB.^[2] He then studied at New College, Oxford—under David Daube, Regius Professor of Civil Law—where he graduated with an MA (by decree) and DPhil, and was Dyke Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford from 1969 to 1970 and a Fellow of New College from 1970 to 1972.^[2]
He became an advocate in 1974^[3] and was Clerk of the Faculty of Advocates from 1976 to 1979. He was a Member of the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland from 1981 to 1984, and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1985.^[2][3] He was an Advocate Depute from 1985 to 1988 and was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland in 1989, being promoted to Lord Advocate in 1992, at which time he became a life peer as Baron Rodger of Earlsferry, of Earlsferry in the District of North East Fife, and was appointed to the Privy Council.^[2][3]

Judicial career

Rodger was appointed a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the High Court of Justiciary and Court of Session, in 1995, and became Lord Justice General and Lord President in 1996. He was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 2001, upon the retirement of Lord Clyde. He and nine other Lords of Appeal in Ordinary became Justices of the Supreme Court upon that body's inauguration on 1 October 2009.

[edit] Significant judgements

As Lord Justice General:

• Drury v Her Majesty's Advocate 2001 SCCR 583: definition of murder in Scotland

As Justice of the Supreme Court:

• HJ and HT v Home Secretary [2010] UKSC 31: homosexuality in asylum claims

Honours

Lord Rodger of Earlsferry was appointed a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991, and the same year was the Maccabaean Lecturer at the Academy. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an Honorary Bencher at Lincoln’s Inn in 1992, and an Honorary Bencher of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland in 1998. Hon. Mem., SPTL, subseq. SLS, 1992; Corresp. Mem., Bayerische Akad. der Wissenschaften, 2001. Pres., Holdsworth Club, 1998–99. Hon. Fellow, American Coll. of Trial Lawyers, 2008. He has received honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the Universities of Glasgow (1995), Aberdeen (1999) and Edinburgh (2001).
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry had been the Visitor of St Hugh's College, Oxford since 2003,^[4] High Steward of the University of Oxford since 2008,^[5] and an Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow School of Law since July 2009.^[3]

Death

Lord Rodger of Earlsferry died on 26 June 2011 after a short illness.^[1][6] Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who provoked fury after criticising Rodger less than a month earlier,^[7] said he had made an "outstanding contribution" to Scottish public life.^[6]

 

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Edith Fellows, American actress, died from natural causes she was , 88.

 Edith Marilyn Fellows was an American actress who began her professional career at age 6 died from natural causes she was , 88..


(May 20, 1923 – June 26, 2011)

Personal life

When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. She appeared in 70 films and television shows between 1929 and 1995.
After a divorce, nervous breakdown, and stunning emotional recovery, Fellows was featured on the Ralph Edwards TV show This Is Your Life in the 1950s. Fellows began acting again in character roles in the 1960s. In 1983, she portrayed costumer designer Edith Head in a television film on the life of actress Grace Kelly. In 1985, producer/director Jackie Cooper, himself a former child actor who preceded Fellows in death by only a few weeks, announced plans to film a television movie on her life, but the project never came to fruition.^[2]

Selected early filmography

• Madame X (1929)
• Shivering Shakespeare (1930)
• Daddy Long Legs (1931)
• Birthday Blues (1932)
• Mush and Milk (1933)
• Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934)
• Jane Eyre (1934)
• Keeper of the Bees (1935)
• She Married Her Boss (1935)
• Pennies From Heaven (1936)
• Her First Romance (1940)

Death

Fellows died of natural causes at the Motion Picture Country Home on June 26, 2011.^[3]

 

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