George Livingston, American politician, first elected black mayor of Richmond, California (1985–1993), died from diabetes he was 78.

George Livingstonwas an American politician who served as the first elected African American Mayor of Richmond, California, from 1985 to 1993 died from diabetes he was 78..^[1] Livingston was appointed Mayor in 1985 by the city council. He won election as Richmond's first elected African American mayor in 1989 for a full term.^[1][2]

^{(c. 1933 – January 7, 2012)} 

Early life

Livingston was born and raised in rural Oklahoma.^[1][2] In 1952, he moved with his family to Richmond, California, where members of his family found employment in the East Bay shipyards.^[1][2]
Livingston graduated from Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California.^[2] He received his bachelor's degree in political science from Antioch University, which had a now defunct satellite campus in neighboring San Francisco.^[2] Livingston said that his interest in politics began in the early 1960s, when he met Martin Luther King Jr. at a speech at Contra Costa College.^[2][3]
Livingston earliest jobs included positions at a paper factory in Richmond and the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.^[2] He later worked in the regulatory department of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for the majority of his nonpolitical career.^[2]

Political career

Before entering local politics, Livingston became active in neighborhood and church groups.^[2]
Livingston was first elected to the Richmond City Council in 1965, becoming the second African American ever elected to the council (The first was George Carroll).^[3] Livingston served three consecutive terms beginning in 1965, before leaving office.^[1] In 1973, Livingston was elected again to the city council, where he remained until his appointment to the mayor's office in 1985.^[1]

Mayor

The position of Mayor rotated between city council members until 1981, when it became a popularly elected office.^[2] Thomas Corcoran was elected the first elected mayor.^[2]
Richmond Mayor Tom Corcoran died in office in 1985.^[1] According to city law, the city council needed to choose Corcoran's successor from the sitting members of the council.^[1] The city council appointed Livingston, a member of the council, to serve out the remainder of Cochran's unexpired term.^[1] Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia explained the council's decision to appoint Livingston to the mayor's office, "They thought George would be the best person to unite the council and the communities in Richmond...If you look at his legacy, he really worked hard at trying to find common ground among City Council members."^[1]
In 1989, Livingston announced his candidacy for a full term as mayor. He won the 1989 mayoral election, becoming Richmond's first elected African American mayor.^[1] As mayor, Livingston oversaw the construction of the city's 23rd Street overpass and the early redevelopment of the Port of Richmond.^[1] Livingston was able to attract new offices and businesses to Richmond, including a U.S. Social Security office, a U.S. Postal Service bulk mail facility, and the Hilltop shopping center.^[2]
In 1993, Livingston was defeated for re-election by Rosemary Corbin.^[1]
George Livingston died from complications of diabetes at Doctors Hospital in San Pablo, California, on January 7, 2012, at the age of 78.^[1] He was survived by his wife, Eunice Livington; daughter, Grace Livingston-Nunley; and son, George Jr.^[1] U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-California) called Livingston "...a leader and also a coalition builder," saying, "He was able to work across the entire community. His goal was the development and growth of Richmond."^[1]


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Milburn E. Calhoun, American book publisher, died he was 72.

Milburn Eugene Calhoun was a physician, philanthropist, and book publisher from New Orleans, Louisiana  died he was 72..

(January 15, 1930 - January 7, 2012) 

Background

Calhoun was born in West Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana to Darrell L. Calhoun and the former Mary Crowell. In 1947, he graduated from Ouachita Parish High School in Monroe. In 1949, he completed the curriculum at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, then known as "Northeast Junior College". In 1951, he completed his pre-medical education at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In 1955, he graduated from medical school at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans. He interned at New Orleans Charity Hospital. Thereafter, for nine years, he maintained a medical practice in Buras in Plaquemines Parish east of New Orleans. Calhoun served for two years in the United States Air Force, having attained the rank of major. He then practiced from 1965 until his retirement in 1997 at the Nicholson, Baehr, Calhoun Family Clinic in Marrero, a census designated place in Jefferson Parish. He was chief of staff at West Jefferson Hospital in New Orleans.^[1]

Publisher

Calhoun founded Bayou Books, an out-of-print dealership specializing in Louisiana and southern subjects. In 1961, he opened a bookstore under that same name in Gretna. In March 1970, he and family members acquired Pelican Publishing Company and relocated the company to Gretna, where they operated the enterprise for more than forty years, having peaked with some 2,500 titles in print. The sales doubled each year during the first decade of Calhoun’s leadership. Pelican books are sold in every state and in nearly all English-speaking countries worldwide. One of its most successful books was See You at the Top, Zig Ziglar's motivational bestseller, still in print but initially rejected by some thirty other publishers. Calhoun also developed the classic "Cajun Night Before Christmas series, which today includes twenty-nine titles.^[1]
Pelican publishes cookbooks, architecture titles, a series on editorial cartoons, and works on the American Civil War, the American South, and African American topics. Calhoun said that he operated the company on the principle of publishing otherwise rejected books for which there is nevertheless a willing market for such titles. The sales doubled each year during the first decade of Calhoun’s leadership. Today, Pelican is the largest independent trade book publisher in the South.^[2]

Personal life

Calhoun was a longtime member and deacon of Oak Park Baptist Church in the Algiers section of New Orleans. In 1998, he established the Mary and Darrell Calhoun Recreational Center at the Louisiana Baptist Children's Home orphanage in Monroe. In 1999, he endowed the million-dollar Mary E. and Darrell L. Calhoun Chair in Pharmacology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, an institution with a pharmacy college. In 2009, he and his wife, the former Nancy Harris, established the Milburn and Nancy Calhoun Foundation to support religious and educational activities.^[1]
Following a lengthy illness, Calhoun died at West Jefferson Hospital. Services were held on January 9, 2012, at Oak Park Baptist Church^[2] and then on January 12, at a funeral home in his native West Monroe. He is interred at Sibley Cemetery in Choudrant in Lincoln Parish west of West Monroe.^[1]
In addition to his wife, Calhoun was survived by his daughter, Kathleen Calhoun Nettleton and her husband, Carl Joseph Nettleton, of New Orleans, a son, David Harris Calhoun and his wife, Sharon Crosland Calhoun of Spokane, Washington, a sister Gloria Calhoun Lee of Calhoun, Louisiana, a brother James L. Calhoun of Baton Rouge, and four granddaughters from Spokane.^[1]


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Tony Blankley, British-born American commentator, newspaper editor and child actor, died from stomach cancer he was 63.

Anthony David "Tony" Blankley  was an English-American political analyst who gained fame as the press secretary for Newt Gingrich, the first Republican Speaker of the House in forty years, and as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group died from stomach cancer he was 63.. He later became an Executive Vice President with Edelman public relations in Washington, D.C.^[6] He was a Visiting Senior Fellow in National-Security Communications at the Heritage Foundation,^[7] a weekly contributor to the nationally syndicated public radio program Left, Right & Center,^[8] the author of The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? and American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century.^[9]

^{(January 21, 1948 – January 7, 2012)}

He was a regular commentator for radio shows including The Diane Rehm Show,^[10] Left, Right & Center^[11] and The Steve Gill Show with a segment titled Fill In the Blanks.^[12] Earlier in his career, he was an editorial page editor for The Washington Times,^[13] a contributing editor and monthly columnist for George Magazine,^[14] and a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group.
Blankley's political opinions were generally considered to fall within traditional conservatism, although he was labeled as a neo-conservative by some critics. He denied this label, claiming that his views are more comparable to a classic conservative, such as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.^[15] His political career spanned several decades, and his most prominent position was a seven-year stint as House Speaker Newt Gingrich's press secretary.^[16]
Prior to his career on Capitol Hill, Blankley served President Reagan as a policy analyst and speechwriter,^[17] and was a staff writer for Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler.^[18] Before coming to Washington, D.C., he spent 10 years as a prosecutor with the California Attorney General's office.^[19]
He was briefly a child actor, appearing, most notably, as Rod Steiger's son in The Harder They Fall (1955).^[20] The movie was, as Blankley liked to joke, both his and his co-star Humphrey Bogart's last movie.^[21][22] He graduated from UCLA^[19] and Loyola Law School (Los Angeles), earning a J.D.^[17] He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1972.^[23]
Blankley continued to write for The Washington Times. He lectured at many universities and institutes. On November 19, 2009, he presented his lecture A Year out from the 2010 Congressional Elections – National Politics, Policy and their Communication at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics of Saint Anselm College.^[24]

Death

Blankley died in Washington, D.C. of stomach cancer on January 7, 2012 at Sibley Memorial Hospital, aged 63.^[2][21][25]


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Ibrahim Aslan, Egyptian novelist and short story writer, died from heart failure he was 77.

Ibrahim Aslan  was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer died from heart failure he was 77..^[1]

^{(1935 – 7 January 2012)}

Life and work

Aslan was born in Tanta in the Nile delta in 1935, shortly before his family moved south to Cairo.^[2] His father was a Post Office employee, and Aslan too went on to work for the Cairo Post Office.^[3] The Cairene neighbourhoods of Imbaba and Kit Kat, where he lived and worked, are closely associated with his oeuvre.
Aslan emerged on the Arab literary scene in the mid-1960s, and is considered to be part of the movement known as the Sixties Generation which also included such authors as Gamal Ghitany, Sonallah Ibrahim, and Abdel Hakim Qasem.^[3] The avant-garde literary magazine Gallery 68 published eight of his stories during its short life.^[4]
Aslan published two volumes of short stories, three novels, and two volumes of non-fiction during a literary career spanning more than four decades.^[3] His first collection of short stories, called Buhayrat al-Masah (The Evening Lake), was released in 1971-72. A second collection called Youssef wal-Rida (Joseph and the Clothes) was published in 1987.
Aslan is best known for his first novel Malek al-Hazin (1983), translated by Elliott Colla under the English title The Heron; and its sequel 16 years later called As-safir al-Nil (1999), translated as Nile Sparrows by Mona El-Ghobashy. The Heron was selected as one of the top 100 Arabic novels by the Arab Writers Union and is his most famous work.^[3] The Heron was turned into an award-winning film (The Kit Kat, 1991) by leading Egyptian director Daoud Abdel Sayed. More recently, Magdi Ahmed Ali directed a film version under the title Birds of the Nile (2009).^[5]
Aslan won a number of literary prizes, including the Taha Hussein Award from the University of Minya in 1989 and the Egyptian State Incentive Prize in 2003-2004. Most recently, he won the 2006 Sawiris Prize for his book Hikayat min Fadlallah Uthman (Stories from Fadlallah Uthman).
Since 1992, Aslan had been culture editor at the Cairo bureau of the London-based al-Hayat newspaper.

Haydar Haydar controversy

In the summer of 2000, Aslan and fellow writer Hamdi Abu Golail were subjected to a lawsuit by a maverick Islamist lawyer following a campaign of agitation by the newspaper Al-Shaab.^[6] In their capacity as editors of Afaq al-Kitaba (Horizons of Literature),^[7] a series of modern Arabic classics published under the aegis of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Aslan and Abu Golail had decided to reprint A Banquet for Seaweed, a controversial novel by the Syrian writer Haydar Haydar.

Works

• Buhayrat al-Misa’ (Evening Lake) (short stories, 1971-2)
• Yusuf wa al-Rida’ (Yusuf and the Dress) (short stories, 1986-7)
• Malek al-Hazin (The Heron) (novel, 1983, English translation by Elliott Colla, AUC Press)
• Wardiyat Layl (Night Shift) (novella, 1991)
• As-safir al-Nil (Nile Sparrows) (novel, 1999, English translation by Mona El-Ghobashy, AUC Press)
• Hikayat min Fadlallah Uthman (Stories from Fadlallah Uthman) (short stories, 2003)
• Khulwat al-Ghalban (Poor Man's Hermitage) (non-fiction, 2003)
• Shay’un Min Hadha al-Qabil (Something Like That) (non-fiction, 2007)
• Hugratan wa Salah: Mutataliya Manziliyya (Two Rooms and a Hall: A Household Sequence) (2010)

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Clive Shell, Welsh international rugby player. [108] (death announced on this date), died he was 64.

Clive Shell was a Welsh international rugby union player died he was 64.. Shell made his debut for the Wales national rugby union team on 10 November 1973 against Australia where he kissed the ball on his first touch while putting the ball into a scrum. A scrum-half, he played club rugby for Aberavon RFC.^[2]

^{(9 September 1947 – 6 January 2012)}

Shell was one of several scrum halves of that era who were in competition with Gareth Edwards for a place in the Welsh side. Although the Australia encounter was his one and only cap, Shell played for Wales against Tonga (1974). In 1977, during a Welsh Cup semi-final, Shell received a broken jaw playing against Edwards and Cardiff RFC.
Shell formed a club half back partnership with John Bevan who was also capped by Wales. He captained Aberavon RFC in the seasons of 1977–78, 1978–79 and 1979–80 before retiring.
A school teacher by profession, Shell went on to coach Aberavon during the early 1980s. In 2007, he "narrowly avoided jail" on a drink-driving offence.^[3]
Shell's death was announced 6 January 2012.^[4]



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Spike Pola, Australian football player, died he was 97.

Jack Stephen "Spike" Pola was an Australian rules footballer who played for the West Perth Football Club in the Western Australian National Football League (WANFL) between 1935 and 1947 died he was 97..


(born Giovanni Stefano Pola; 16 November 1914 – 6 January 2012)

Career

Born in Fremantle in 1914 as Giovanni Stefano Pola, he anglicised his name to Jack Stephen Pola before a state schoolboys' football carnival in 1928 on the advice of his mother.^[2] Originally playing for Mount Hawthorn in the Metropolitan Junior Football Association, Pola progressed to West Perth's affiliated team in the Western Australian National Football Association (WANFA), which acted as a sort of reserves team for the club. In July 1935, he was selected in a WANFA representative side which toured the Goldfields.^[1] He made his senior debut for West Perth later that year. In 1941, he was named captain of West Perth, having served as vice-captain the previous year, and also played in West Perth's premiership side. He also shared the 1941 Breckler Medal, awarded to the club's best and fairest player, with Ted O'Keefe.^[3] Pola joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in January 1943 as a leading aircraftman, and was discharged in February 1945.^[4] He returned to West Perth in 1945, and was named captain for the season. He retired two years later, having played 152 games and kicked 203 goals. Pola died in January 2012 at his home in Mount Lawley, and was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery. He was the last surviving member of the 1941 premiership team.^[5]


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Sybil Plumlee, American teacher and police officer, died she was 100.

Sybil Virginia Plumlee  was an American teacher, caseworker and pioneering Portland, Oregon police officer who became the oldest living former member of the city's police force before her death died she was 100..

(née Burgess; April 29, 1911 – January 6, 2012)

Born in Seattle in 1911, Plumlee attended high school in Portland and graduated from Oregon Normal School, now known as Western Oregon University. She became a school teacher in Clarno, Oregon, but later returned to Portland, married and had a son. Following a divorce in 1943, she worked as an educator with the Ellis Mining Company in Bourne, Oregon. In 1945 she married Virgil "Paul" Plumlee, who died in 2010.
From 1947 to 1967 Plumlee served in the Portland Police Bureau unit then known as the Women's Protective Division. She is recognized as a pioneer in the law enforcement field, which was dominated by men. Plumlee wrote an unpublished memoir of her time on the police force called "Badge 357" and at age 96 published the book Stories of Hester Ann Bolin Harvey and Her Family, a collection of family stories and history. Plumlee died in 2012.

Early life, education and career

Sybil Burgess was born April 29, 1911 in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Charles and Stella Burgess. The family moved to Portland, where she attended both Lincoln High School and Jefferson High School, graduating from Jefferson in 1930.^[1] After graduating from Oregon Normal School (now Western Oregon University) she worked for a time as a teacher in a one-room school in Clarno, Oregon. She returned to Portland, married Lloyd Barker (also a teacher) and had a son named Louis Barker. The couple divorced in 1943. Sybil remained a single mother during World War II, working as a teacher with the Ellis Mining Company in Bourne, Oregon and buying a house in nearby Sumpter for $150. In 1945, she married Virgil P. "Paul" Plumlee.^[1] She survived the 1948 flooding of Vanport City, Oregon.^[2] Plumlee also worked at various times as a soda fountain clerk at a drugstore in northeast Portland and as a cab driver.^[2][3]
Plumlee became a caseworker for the Clackamas County Welfare Department after a female police officer encouraged her to take a civil servant test. She passed the test and was selected to join the force's single open position from a pool of 300 applicants.^[1][2] Plumlee served from 1947 to 1967 in the unit then known as the Women's Protective Division.^[1][3] Policewomen in that division did not work with male officers and did not wear uniforms. Their work focused on crimes such as child abuse, domestic violence and rape that generally were investigated in privacy.^[3] Records also show that Plumlee participated in undercover investigations, including one anti-homosexual campaign led by Mayor of Portland Dorothy McCullough Lee. In 1949 the Women's Protective Division sent Plumlee and Edna Trout to Music Hall, known in the 1940s for catering to gay men and lesbians, with the intent to "apprehend lesbians who might approach them and solicit attentions".^[4]
According to Louis Barker, his mother became a police officer "for the money" rather than to "make the world safe"; the household needed her income and she was also contributing to the support of her mother.^[3] Plumlee later said of the unit: "In some ways, the old Women's Protective Division was archaic, but on balance we did a lot of good."^[5] Plumlee is recognized as a pioneer in the law enforcement field,^[1][2][6] which was largely dominated by men.^[3]
Plumlee purchased her first computer when she was in her eighties and continued driving until age 98.^[3] Her husband died in 2010.^[1] She celebrated her centennial birthday at her residence in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Guests included Multnomah County Sheriff Daniel Staton, Lt. Mary Lindstrand and Frank Springer, the oldest living male retiree of the Portland Police Bureau. Birthday wishes and certificates of appreciation were also offered by President Barack Obama and Mayor of Portland Sam Adams.^[2] Plumlee died in 2012 and was survived by her son, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.^[1] Before her death, Plumlee was the oldest surviving former member of the Portland Police Bureau.^[1][3]

Writing and other interests

Plumlee wrote an unpublished memoir of her time on the police force called "Badge 357".^[1][2] At age 96, she published the book Stories of Hester Ann Bolin Harvey and Her Family. The collection of stories, such as her grandmother's journey across the Oregon Trail in 1850, included photographs and more than a century of family history.^[6] Plumlee also enjoyed camping, fishing and traveling.^[1]


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