MRS. MARY LEE WITHERSPOON (DEC. 21, 1931 – MAR. 24, 2010)
Sister Mary Lee Witherspoon lit up the world when she entered on a beautiful day on December 21, 1931. She lived a life of devotion, discipline and perseverance. From the time she lived in the town of Terrell, Texas, where she was born, and Forney, Texas, and when she moved to Houston, Texas, where she lived out the remainder of her life, she stove to be a good and dutiful woman who always lived her life in obediance and devotion to the laws of God.
She married Mr. Alfred Witherspoon, Sr., and was a loyal and loving wife to him in good times and in bad times. She was a mother to eleven beautiful children, whom she loved deeply with all of her heart.
On Wednesday, March 24, 2010, God lifted Mrs. Mary from Earth to Eternity. She was preceeded in death by her husband, Alfred Witherspoon, Sr.; and one daughter, Delores Sherry Witherspoon.
She leaves to mourn her passing ten children:
-Sandra Marie Taylor, Alfred Witherspoon, Jr., Gloria Short, Joyce Witherspoon, Bobby Leon Witherspoon, Mark Erwin Witherspoon, Marcus Witherspoon, Bernard Lynn Witherspoon, Veronica Davis and Jonathan Tobias Witherspoon; and a host of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, other relatives and friends.
Great Grandmother
Strong and fine she was mine; the love I have for her can’t be definedShe is a part of me, I can feel it; she has gone away, I can’t bear it.Her beautiful mind, no one can steal, she will rest in my heartStill that I can feel. The Lord took her away from us – we don’tunderstand why, for a greater purpose we have to say goodbye.Her intelligence and grace is how I rememberShe has touched many with her cleverness. . . .I love you Grandmother, I hope you know it for it’s true.For you have to be strong and may you restpeacefully within our hearts, in our minds, and in our souls.Brittany J. Jacob
Mother, may you find peace and eternal joy in the loving arms of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
May you forever receive the blessings from God you have so rightfully earned.
Rest in peace, Mother.
Rest in peace.
Your loving daughter,
“Ann”
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JOHN FORSYTHE, ‘DYNASTY’ AND ‘CHARLIE’S ANGELS’ ACTOR
The actor John Forsythe in 1983.
His publicist, B. Harlan Boll, said the cause was complications of pneumonia, following a yearlong battle with cancer. Mr. Forsythe had earlier received a diagnosis of colon cancer, and in 1979 underwent quadruple bypass surgery.
Mr. Forsythe may be best remembered as Blake Carrington, the dapper, silver-haired but ruthless Denver oil tycoon on “Dynasty,” which ran from 1981 to 1989 and took its place as a symbol of the affluent decade of the Reagan administration. He often expressed amusement that the role, as the object of two women’s fierce affection — that of Joan Collins and Linda Evans — had made him a sex symbol in his 60s.
His first leader character in a series was another dashing, well-dressed, self-possessed man of means: Bentley Gregg, the playboy Beverly Hills lawyer in the sitcom “Bachelor Father” (1957-62). Gregg was bringing up his teenage niece (Noreen Corcoran), whose parents had died in an accident.
Between those two series, Mr. Forsythe played a crucial role in “Charlie’s Angels” (1976-81), the hit show about three young, attractive female detectives, originally played by Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett. Mr. Forsythe’s part was as the sexy telephone voice of their boss, a millionaire private eye who had others handle his cases.
His role in “Dynasty” brought him four Golden Globe award nominations and two Golden Globes as well as three Emmy Award nominations.
Mr. Forsythe was often endearingly forthright with interviewers. In 1981 he told The Associated Press: “I figure there are a few actors like Marlon Brando, George C. Scott and Laurence Olivier who have been touched by the hand of God. I’m in the next bunch.”
Another time, speaking of a fictional nation featured in the later seasons of “Dynasty,” he said: “Moldavia — we’re still living that down. That was one of our less effective story lines.”
It was certainly one of their most preposterous. The story hit its peak with a season finale in which revolutionaries barged into a royal wedding with machine guns blazing; half the glamorous cast were left for dead until fall.
John Lincoln Freund was born on Jan. 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, N.J. His family later moved to New York City, where his father was a stockbroker and where John graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.
He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but dropped out after three years because of a particularly successful summer job as an announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. People liked his voice so much that he easily moved into radio acting.
Mr. Forsythe made his stage and film debuts in the early 1940s. In 1942 he appeared on the New York stage in a supporting role as a coastguardsman in “Yankee Point,” a home-front drama. His first credited movie appearance was as a sailor in “Destination Tokyo” (1943), starring Cary Grant. That same year he was in the ensemble of “Winged Victory,” Moss Hart’s Broadway tribute to the United States Army Air Forces, the military’s aviation branch during World War II, in which Mr. Forsythe served.
Beginning in 1948, Mr. Forsythe did guest appearances on dozens of television series. Twice in the early 1950s he played a newspaper editor, in “The Captive City” (1952) and “It Happens Every Thursday” (1953).
He was back in a military uniform for his big Broadway break, playing a bumbling American officer in occupied Japan in “The Teahouse of the August Moon” (1953). Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, called Mr. Forsythe “as perfect in the part of the captain as Henry Fonda was in ‘Mister Roberts.’ ”
Mr. Forsythe did several Broadway shows, including replacing Henry Fonda in “Mister Roberts,” and was an original member of the Actors Studio, New York’s bastion of Method acting. But for the sake of his family, he chose the security of television.
“I’ve had a good time,” he told The Globe and Mail, the Toronto newspaper, in 1984. “But if I had been willing to starve so that I could play Hamlet, I might have been a better actor than I am today.”
Like many television regulars, he had his share of less successful network ventures. They included three sitcoms: “The John Forsythe Show,” in which he played an Air Force major running a girls’ school (it lasted one season, 1965-66); “To Rome With Love,” about a widowed professor living in Italy (1969-71); and “The Powers That Be,” about a clueless United States senator whose life is run by others. It ran for 21 episodes (1992-93), possibly because viewers weren’t interested in seeing a clueless John Forsythe.
One of his finest television roles was outside the series format. He starred as the theater critic Al Manheim in the acclaimed 1959 television film “What Makes Sammy Run?”
His film career covered various genres. He played a helpful artist in Alfred Hitchcock’s comic mystery “The Trouble With Harry” (1955); a wealthy political type in “Kitten With a Whip” (1964), a crime drama with Ann-Margret; the rich man whose family makes his young wife disappear in “Madame X” (1966); and the chief murder investigator in “In Cold Blood” (1967).
His last full-fledged major film appearance was in the 1988 holiday comedy “Scrooged.” He played a contemporary Marley’s Ghost, returning from the dead in rotting golf clothes.
Mr. Forsythe’s voice was heard, however, in the 2000 “Charlie’s Angels” film and its 2003 sequel. His last television appearance was in May 2006, participating in a “Dynasty” cast reunion.
Mr. Forsythe was briefly married to Parker McCormick, with whom he had a son. Three years after their divorce, he married Julie Warren. They had two daughters and were together, for more than 50 years, until her death in 1994. Nicole Carter became his third wife in 2002 and survives him.
He is also survived by his son, Dall; his daughters, Page Courtemanche and Brooke Forsythe, all of Southern California; six grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
“I always said life consists of love and work,” Mr. Forsythe told a writer for TV Guide not long after his second wife’s death. “I tried to balance it 50-50. And, of course, now I’m so happy I did.”
Correction: April 4, 2010
An earlier version of this obituary gave an incorrect length of the time for the marriage of Mr. Forsythe to Parker McCormick.
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EUGENE ALLEN, BUTLER TO PRESIDENTS
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 2, 2010
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Kevin Clark/The Washington Post
Eugene Allen in 2008. He worked for presidents from Truman to Reagan, then attended President Obama’s inauguration.
His death was caused by renal failure, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Mr. Allen, who was black, started at the White House in 1952, when racial segregation prohibited him from using public restrooms in his native state, Virginia. When he left the White House in 1986, he had witnessed not only defining moments in the country’s history, but also in America’s civil rights movement.
And on Jan. 20, 2009, he watched Barack Obama being sworn in as the nation’s first black president.
“I never would have believed it,” Mr. Allen told The Post from his seat at the inauguration. “In the 1940s and 1950s, there were so many things in America you just couldn’t do. You wouldn’t even dream that you could dream of a moment like this.”
Mr. Allen began washing dishes and stocking cabinets at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue before rising to maître d’hôtel during the Reagan presidency.
He crossed paths with entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington and Elvis Presley. He met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., traveled to Romania with President Richard M. Nixon and had a seat at the table as a guest at one of Mr. Reagan’s state dinners.
Although Jacqueline Kennedy invited him to President John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Mr. Allen volunteered to stay at the White House to help with the meal after the service. She gave him one of the president’s ties, which Mr. Allen framed.
Born on July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va., Mr. Allen shared a birthday with President Gerald R. Ford and joined in Mr. Ford’s birthday parties at the White House.
Mr. Allen’s wife of 65 years, Helene, died in 2008. He is survived by his son, Charles; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
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JAIME ESCALANTE, INSPIRATION FOR THE MOVIE ‘STAND AND DELIVER’
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: March 31, 2010
- Jaime Escalante, the high school teacher whose ability to turn out high-achieving calculus students from a poor Hispanic neighborhood in East Los Angeles inspired the 1988 film
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Warner Brothers, via Associated Press
Jaime Escalante, right, and the actor who portrayed him in the 1988 hit movie “Stand and Deliver,” Edward James Olmos.
“Stand and Deliver,” with Edward James Olmos in the starring role, died Tuesday at his son’s home in Rosedale, Calif. He was 79 and lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The cause was pulmonary arrest brought on by pneumonia, his son Jaime said.
Mr. Escalante, a Bolivian immigrant, used unconventional techniques to explain mathematical problems and to convince his students at James A. Garfield High School, known for its dismal test scores and high drop-out rate, that they could compete with students from wealthier schools. Rock ’n’ roll records played at full blast, remote-controlled toys and magic tricks were all brought into play.
“Calculus need not be made easy,” read one of the motivational signs in Mr. Escalante’s classroom. “It is easy already.”
In 1982, 18 students in the special calculus program that Mr. Escalante had created at Garfield four years earlier took the College Board’s advanced placement test in calculus. Seven of them received a 5, the highest possible score; the rest, a 4.
Officials at the company administering the test suspected cheating and asked 14 students to take the exam again. A dozen did, and their performance validated the original results.
Mr. Olmos’s performance in “Stand and Deliver” earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor and turned Mr. Escalante into an educational hero. The year of the film, Henry Holt published “Escalante: The Best Teacher in America,” by Jay Mathews.
“He was working with a group of students who did not have much in life,” said Erika T. Camacho, who took algebra with Mr. Escalante and now teaches mathematics at Arizona State University. “They were told that they were not good enough and would not amount to much. He told them that with desire and discipline, they could do anything.”
Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez was born on Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, where his parents were elementary school teachers. He taught physics and mathematics there for several years before political unrest led him to emigrate with his family to the United States in 1963.
In addition to his son Jaime, Mr. Escalante is survived by his wife, Fabiola, another son, Fernando, of Elk Grove, Calif., and six grandchildren.
While attending Pasadena College, where he earned an associate degree in arts in 1969, Mr. Escalante worked as a busboy in a coffee shop and as a cook. He later found work testing computers at the Burroughs Corporation while studying mathematics at California State University in Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973.
After receiving his teacher’s certificate from Cal State in 1974, he began teaching at Garfield. The events telescoped into a single year in “Stand and Deliver” unfolded over a much longer time. Beginning with five calculus students in 1978, Mr. Escalante developed a program that eventually attracted hundreds of students keen to go on to college. In 1988, 443 students took the College Board’s advanced placement test; 266 passed.
Success, acclaim and the celebrity status that came with “Stand and Deliver” brought strife. Mr. Escalante butted heads with the school’s administration and fellow teachers, some jealous of his fame, others worried that he was creating his own fief. The teacher’s union demanded that his oversubscribed calculus classes be brought down in size.
In 1991, Mr. Escalante left Garfield to teach at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento. Without him, Garfield’s calculus program withered. In 2001 he retired and returned to Bolivia.
Mr. Escalante always impressed on his students the importance of “ganas” — desire. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he once told his class. “I’ll teach you math, and that’s your language. You’re going to go to college and sit in the first row, not in the back, because you’re going to know more than anybody.”
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HERB ELLIS, JAZZ GUITARIST
The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, Mitch.
Mr. Ellis was an early disciple of Charlie Christian, whose deft improvisations, built on long single-note lines, established the template for modern jazz guitar in the 1940s. But he was always more than an imitator: his style mixed the harmonic sophistication of bebop with the earthy directness of the blues and seasoned the blend with a twang more typical of country music than jazz.
While never a major star, he was long a favorite of critics and musicians. In 1959 a fellow guitarist, Jim Hall, praised his “fantastic fire and drive.” In 1990 Gary Giddins of The Village Voice raved about the “easy, loping quality” of his playing, “buoyed by familiar dissonances yet surprisingly free of cliché.”
Mitchell Herbert Ellis was born in Farmersville, Tex., on Aug. 4, 1921, and played banjo and harmonica as a child before taking up guitar. He studied at North Texas State Teachers College (now the University of North Texas), one of the first colleges to offer instruction in jazz (and later the first to offer a jazz degree).
In 1947 he and two associates from Jimmy Dorsey’s band, the pianist Lou Carter and the bassist Johnny Frigo, formed the vocal and instrumental trio the Soft Winds, whose song “Detour Ahead” became a jazz standard, recorded most memorably by Billie Holiday.
He first attracted wide attention during his five-year stint with Peterson’s popular group, which, like the Soft Winds, included a bassist (Ray Brown) but no drummer. The absence of a percussionist required Mr. Ellis to provide the rhythmic foundation for Peterson’s energetic playing as well as the guitar solos; he did it so well that when he left the trio in 1958, Peterson replaced him not with another guitarist but with a drummer.
Mr. Ellis’s reputation grew when he toured and recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, from 1958 to 1962. He was also a frequent participant in the impresario and record producer Norman Granz’s all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic touring shows, and in Granz-supervised recording sessions led by Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and, on occasion, Mr. Ellis himself.
When jazz fell out of fashion in the 1960s, Mr. Ellis became a busy studio musician in Los Angeles, earning his living mainly on television variety shows. He returned to jazz in 1973, teaming with his fellow guitarists Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd in the group Great Guitars. He recorded frequently over the next two decades, with that group and as a leader, for the Concord Jazz label.
In addition to his son, of Los Angeles, Mr. Ellis is survived by his wife of 52 years, the former Patti Gahagan; a daughter, Kari Ellis Yedor, also of Los Angeles; and three grandchildren.
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JUNE HAVOC, ACTRESS AND VAUDEVILLE STAR
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United Artists
Ms. Havoc in the film “Hi Diddle Diddle” (1943), one of several films in the 1940s in which she played supporting roles.
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June Havoc in Stamford, Conn., in 2003
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“Early Havoc”/Simon & Schuster
June Havoc, right, in her vaudeville act with her sister, who later became famous as the strip-tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee.
June Havoc as Dainty June in her vaudeville days.In “Gypsy” — whose book, by Arthur Laurents, was based on a memoir by her sister, the strip-tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee — the adorable, pampered June (by then known as Dainty June, having outgrown the baby billing) quits show business to elope with one of the boys in her act and is never heard from again. In real life, not long after her sister gained burlesque fame in the 1930s, Ms. Havoc established a solid career on Broadway and in Hollywood films.
She did not have an easy time of it at first. The little girl who had earned as much as $1,500 a week on the vaudeville stage — when the average American worker earned roughly that much annually — spent her teenage years on the edge of destitution.
Her marriage to Bobby Reed (who had indeed been a performer in her stage act) did not last long, but the two stayed together professionally out of necessity. To keep body and soul together during the Depression, they went on the grueling dance marathon circuit, dancing thousands of hours just to get the free meals provided to contestants. Because they were so young, they posed as brother and sister.
In New York, Ms. Havoc slept on bus-station benches and survived on food-stand meals while trying to break into legitimate stage work, although her mother and her sister were living in luxury just a subway ride away. Her mother did take her in (albeit as a paying tenant) when June turned up pregnant by a married marathon promoter and determined to bring up the child alone.
By the time her daughter was in school, Ms. Havoc was working on Broadway. Her star-making Broadway role was as the scheming chorus girl Gladys Bumps in the original 1940 production of “Pal Joey.” Her best-received film performance was in “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), in which she played Gregory Peck’s self-hating Jewish secretary, who passes for gentile.
Most of Ms. Havoc’s film work was in supporting roles, often as the heroine’s wisecracking pal or a major male character’s wife. Her movies included the original “My Sister Eileen” (1942) and “When My Baby Smiles at Me” (1948). But occasionally she was the leading lady, as in the crime drama “Intrigue” (1947), with George Raft, and “Lady Possessed” (1952), a romantic thriller with James Mason.
Onstage she often had her name in lights. In addition to being in “Pal Joey,” she had the title role in the melodrama “That Ryan Girl” (1945), replaced Ethel Merman in “Sadie Thompson” (1944) and played the society hostess in a revival of “Dinner at Eight” (1966). She received a Drama Desk Award nomination for her role as a housekeeper in the 1975 farce “Habeas Corpus” and a Tony Award nomination for directing “Marathon 33” (1963), a play based on her memoir about the marathon dance era. In 1982 she took over the role of the evil Miss Hannigan in the original Broadway production of “Annie.” It was her final Broadway appearance.
Ellen Evangeline Hovick was born on Nov. 8, 1912, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Or so Ms. Havoc concluded. Her mother reportedly carried five birth certificates for her younger daughter, to satisfy the child labor laws of every state, so June wasn’t sure exactly how old she was.
Her parents — Rose Thompson Hovick, depicted as the indomitable Momma Rose in “Gypsy,” and John Olav Hovick — separated when June was only a baby. Constantly traveling between vaudeville dates, June never attended school, but in her memoir “More Havoc” (Harper & Row, 1980) she recalled being taught to read by theater stagehands.
After her brief marriage, Ms. Havoc took modeling jobs in New York, then filled in for another performer as the straight woman to a dancer-comedian. That led to her 1936 Broadway debut, a small role in a bad musical. “Forbidden Melody,” about the king of Romania, ran only 32 performances, but Ms. Havoc’s performance was noticed.
She made her movie debut (not counting one-reelers that she may have made as a child during the silent-film era) in “Four Jacks and a Jill” (1942), a romantic musical in which her character runs away with Desi Arnaz’s. And she made some notable appearances in the early days of television, starring in “The Egg and I,” “Anna Christie” (opposite Richard Burton) and “Cakes and Ale” on various anthology series in the early 1950s.
Long after her glory days, Ms. Havoc continued to work on both stage and screen. She was artistic director of the New Orleans Repertory Theater in 1970 but stayed only one season. In the early 1980s she toured with a stage show, “An Unexpected Evening With June Havoc.” In 1995 she starred in an Off Broadway production of “The Old Lady’s Guide to Survival,” a two-character comedy about the friendship of two elderly women. Critics praised Ms. Havoc’s stage presence but panned the play.
Her final film role was in “A Return to Salem’s Lot” (1987), about a New England town filled with vampires. Her final screen appearances were on television, in several episodes of the daytime drama “General Hospital” in 1990.
In her 60s Ms. Havoc ventured outside show business by creating Cannon Crossing, a Connecticut real estate venture that included antiques, crafts and gift shops and a restaurant in 19th-century buildings that she had restored. She sold her jewelry and other possessions to buy the eight-acre property, in Wilton, and declared it her greatest passion until she sold it in 1989.
In 2003, a 99-seat Off Off Broadway performance space in an office building on West 36th Street was dedicated as the June Havoc Theater.
After her teenage elopement, Ms. Havoc remarried twice. She married Donald Staley Gibbs, an aspiring writer, in the 1930s and divorced him when she went to Hollywood. Her third husband was William Spier, a radio and television director and producer. They were married from 1947 until his death in 1973. Her daughter, April Hyde, died in 1998.
Over the years Ms. Havoc tended to be diplomatic when speaking of her mother and her sister. But in a 2003 interview with Alex Witchel of The New York Times, she was particularly straightforward:
“My sister was beautiful and clever — and ruthless. My mother was endearing and adorable — and lethal. They were the same person. I was the fool of the family. The one who thought I really was loved for me, for myself.”
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Douglas MacArthur, Army Commander, Dies at 84
(April 5 , 1964)
Igor Stravinsky, Composer, Dies at 88
(April 6, 1971)
Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 72
(April 6, 1992)
P. T. Barnum, Great Showman, Dies at 80
(April 7, 1891)
Henry Ford, Automotive Pioneer, Dies at 83
(April 7, 1947)
Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Prodigious Artist, Dies at 91
(April 8, 1973)
Joe Louis, Heavyweight King, Dies at 66
(April 12, 1981)
Jean-Paul Sartre, French Philosopher, Dies at 74
(April 15, 1980)
Greta Garbo, Screen Icon, Dies at 84
(April 15, 1990)
Albert Einstein, Great Scientist, Dies at 76
(April 18, 1955)
John Maynard Keynes, Influential Economist, Dies at 63
(April 21, 1946)
Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President, Dies at 81
(April 22, 1994)
Cesar Chavez, Union Organizer, Dies at 66
(April 23, 1993)
Willa Cather, Novelist, Dies at 70
(April 24, 1947)
Ginger Rogers, Who Danced With Astaire, Dies at 83
(April 25, 1995)
Edward R. Murrow, CBS Broadcaster, Dies at 57
(April 27, 1965)
Frank Lloyd Wright, Famed Architect, Dies at 89
(April 29, 1959)
Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator, Dies at 56
(April 30, 1945)
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 