Obituaries in the news: Actor John Conte

John Conte

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) -- Actor John Conte, who worked in television, radio, films and on Broadway for decades before going behind the cameras and founding his own TV station, died of natural causes Monday, said Lee Fowler, spokeswoman for Eisenhower Medical Center. He was 90.

He appeared in numerous TV shows, including episodes of "The Untouchables," "Perry Mason," "Bonanza," "Your Show of Shows" and "Studio One." He also appeared in "The Carpetbaggers" and the classic Frank Sinatra film "The Man with the Golden Arm."

He also appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including "Windy City," "Carousel" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," and was host of many live productions for NBC's "Matinee Theater," one of the first daytime shows on network television.

Born in 1915 in Palmer, Mass., Conte was a permanent cast member in the companies of George Burns and Gracie Allen, Edward G. Robinson and "The Silver Theater."

In radio, Conte was the singing master of ceremonies on the "Maxwell House Show."

He founded the NBC affiliate, KMIR-TV, in the Palm Springs-Rancho Mirage area in 1968. He sold the station in 1999.

Conte, who was named a Desert Sun "Valley Legend" in 1999, has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and outside the Desert Museum on Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs.

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John Ripley Forbes

ATLANTA (AP) -- John Ripley Forbes, who helped establish more than 200 nature centers and museums around the country, died Aug. 26 of a heart attack at Emory Dunwoody Medical Center. He was 93.

He leaves behind a network of more than 200 nature centers and museums across the country that encourage people to love the outdoors as much as he did. Much of his work was done through two organizations he founded: the Natural Science for Youth Foundation and the Southeast Land Preservation Trust.

Forbes never graduated from college, but studied at the University of Iowa and Bowdoin College, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1987.

As president of the William T. Hornaday Foundation, which later became the Natural Science for Youth Foundation, he helped establish museums in Kansas City, Mo.; Nashville, Tenn.; Fort Worth, Texas; Naples, Fla.; and elsewhere. In Sacramento, Calif., he even set up an animal lending library, where instead of books, students could borrow pet skunks, rabbits and turtles for a week.

Forbes first came to Atlanta in 1946 to help establish the former Fernbank Nature Center, then settled in the area in 1971. He relocated the Natural Science for Youth Foundation headquarters to Atlanta while courting developers and civic leaders to support his land trust effort.

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Mary Lou Freeman

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- State Rep. Mary Lou Freeman, who served two terms in the Iowa Senate, two terms in the House and was seeking re-election this year, was found dead Tuesday at her home. She was 64.

The Buena Vista County Sheriff's Office said deputies found her body at 6 p.m. Tuesday at her home east of Alta, about 115 miles northwest of Des Moines.

Authorities said she appears to have died of natural causes.

Freeman served in the Iowa Senate from 1994 to 2002. In 2002, she was elected to the House. She was seeking a third term.

She served as chairwoman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. She also sat on the Commerce, Regulation and Labor Committee, the Human Resources and Natural Resources committees, and on the Economic Development Appropriations subcommittee.

Freeman was a teacher before she began her legislative career.

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William A. Garnett

NAPA, Calif. (AP) -- William A. Garnett, who expanded the boundaries of aerial photography with sweeping shots of sand dunes, swamps and fields, has died. He was 89.

A former University of California at Berkeley professor, Garnett died of natural causes Aug. 24 at his home in Napa, according to his wife, Eula Beal Garnett.

Garnett was known for breathtaking images of unique land patterns he took over the years while piloting his Cessna. His most popular photographs were "Sand Dune Number 1 Death Valley" and "Snow Geese Over Lake Buena Vista."

In 1968, Garnett was hired by UC Berkeley as chairman of the department of design. He retired as professor emeritus in 1984.

His books include "The Extraordinary Landscape" (1982), with an introduction by Ansel Adams, and "William Garnett Aerial Photographs" (1984).

Born in Chicago, Garnett moved to Pasadena with his family when he was 4 and became interested in photography as a teenager, building a darkroom with his brother at home. Garnett decided to shoot landscapes from the air after flying across the country following his discharge at the end of World War II.

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Mark Graham

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Mark Graham, a former University of Nebraska track star, died in Afghanistan while serving with the Canadian military. He was 33.

A Canadian soldier was killed Monday when two NATO warplanes mistakenly fired on a platoon during an anti-Taliban operation in Kandahar province after ground troops requested air support, NATO said in a statement. University of Nebraska and Canadian newspaper reports identified the soldier as Graham.

Five other soldiers were seriously injured. An investigation has been launched.

A Jamaican native, Graham grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. He was a member of Canada's 1992 Summer Olympics 4x400 meter relay team before coming to Nebraska in 1994.

"Mark was a great person and probably one of the most gifted student-athletes we have ever had here at Nebraska," Husker track coach Gary Pepin said Tuesday. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family."

Graham was the oldest of three brothers. He had one daughter.

At Nebraska, Graham earned two All-America honors at the NCAA Indoor Championships by finishing seventh in the 400-meter dash and running on the eighth-place 4x400-meter relay.

He also won the Big Eight indoor title in the 400 that season, while adding an outdoor conference crown in the 4x400-meter relay. Graham followed former Nebraska assistant coach Steve Rainbolt to Kent State after the 1995 season.

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Olga Jonasson

CHICAGO (AP) -- Dr. Olga Jonasson, a surgeon who broke gender barriers in a male-dominated medical specialty, died Aug. 30 after a brief illness. She was 72.

Jonasson, a surgery professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a pioneer on organ transplantation. She developed one of the first transplant services in Illinois and in 1969 performed one of the state's first kidney transplants.

She was a UIC faculty member from 1967 to 1987, when she moved to Ohio State University to become the first woman in the United States to head an academic surgery department.

She was a member of the editorial boards of the Annals of Surgery and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons; a reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine; and an honorary fellow of England's Royal College of Surgeons.

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J. Bazzell Mull

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Rev. J. Bazzell Mull, the southern gospel music radio personality and promoter, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Mull had been in declining health for some time and living at a nursing home, said Mike Clark, a disc jockey at Mull's flagship radio station, WJBZ-FM in Knoxville.

Born in Burke County, N.C., and legally blind since he fell into an open fireplace when he was 11 months old, Mull developed a passion for gospel music as a child playing banjo in the Valdese Sacred Band with members of his family.

He began preaching at 18 and seven years later began broadcasting his sermons and playing gospel music on North Carolina radio stations. In 1942, he came to Knoxville, beginning a long career in gospel music programming on radio and television and in concerts.

Mull eventually owned four radio stations in Tennessee, provided programming to stations elsewhere and organized several churches in North Carolina and Tennessee.

He was inducted into the halls of fame of the Southern Gospel Music Association and the Gospel Music Association.

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Willi Ninja

NEW YORK (AP) -- Willi Ninja, the star of the documentary "Paris is Burning" who was considered the godfather of the dance art form voguing and who inspired Madonna's "Vogue" music video, died Saturday, friends and relatives said Tuesday. He was 45.

Ninja died of AIDS-related illnesses at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, they said.

Ninja, inspired by Fred Astaire, "Great Performances" on PBS, Asian culture and Olympic gymnasts, was a self-taught performer who stitched together a patchwork of a career that extended into the worlds of dance, fashion and music.

Ninja, whose real name was William Leake, performed with dance companies, worked under renowned choreographers and instructed models and socialites how to walk and pose for the paparazzi with frisson.

But it was for the magic Ninja worked on the ballroom floor and in the 1990 documentary "Paris is Burning" that he was probably best known.

The documentary chronicles elaborate competitions in which participants in drag compete in various categories or themes and are judged on the realness of their impersonations. On a deeper level, the competitions are spins on issues of gender, class and race, observers say.

Around the same time "Paris is Burning" was released to critical acclaim, Madonna released "Vogue," one of the biggest songs for her career.

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Astrid Varnay

BERLIN (AP) -- Astrid Varnay, the Swedish-American soprano who made her Metropolitan Opera debut -- virtually without rehearsal -- in a nationally broadcast performance and went on to sing for half a century, died Monday. She was 88.

Varnay died in a Munich hospital of a pericardial infection, said Donald Arthur, a longtime friend who ghostwrote her autobiography. She had been seriously ill for some time, he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

She was a contemporary of some of the great Wagnerian sopranos, singing in an era that included Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson, Helen Traubel and Martha Moedl.

New York Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine, who conducted her final Met performances in 1979, met her frequently in Germany during his tenure as music director of the Munich Philharmonic.

Varnay got her break on Dec. 6, 1941 -- a day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- when she filled in for an indisposed Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde in Wagner's "Die Walkuere" in a performance conducted by Erich Leinsdorf that was broadcast nationally on radio.

Six days after her debut, Varnay sang her second professional performance, taking over from an ill Traubel as Bruennhilde, one of the toughest soprano roles in the repertoire.

Arthur worked with Varnay for five years on her autobiography, "Fifty-Five Years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera."

She would sing some 200 performances with the Metropolitan Opera over her career.

Varnay became a mainstay at some of the world's great opera houses, particularly in Germany, where she sang at venues around the country.

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