Obituaries in the news

Roy Boehm

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) — Roy Boehm, who helped start the U.S. Navy's first SEAL team, died Dec. 30. He was 84.

Boehm, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, died at his southwest Florida home, his son Robert Boehm said.

The Navy's elite unit — whose name stands for Sea, Air and Land forces — are deployed for operations such as reconnaissance missions and unconventional warfare. Boehm, who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, helped assemble the first SEAL team during the 1960s. He eventually chronicled his experiences in his book, "First SEAL."

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Don Galloway

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Don Galloway, an actor whose career was launched in the early days of television soap operas and later included the big screen, died Thursday. He was 71.

Galloway died at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, his family said.

His television career began in the 1950s on the soap opera "The Secret Storm." In the early 1960s, he was a regular on ABC's "General Hospital."

Galloway also played Officer Ed Brown on the show "Ironside," starring Raymond Burr, and starred in the 1983 movie "The Big Chill."

He was born July 27, 1937, in Brooksville, Ky.

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Joe Henry

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Joe Henry, the former Negro Leagues player who earned the nickname "Prince" for his skill at entertaining crowds, died Friday. He was 78.

The Officer Funeral Homes in East St. Louis, Ill., confirmed his death.

Henry grew up in Brooklyn, Ill., and played in the Negro Leagues from 1950-59 as an infielder for Memphis, Detroit Stars, Indianapolis and the Detroit Clowns.

According to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Henry later worked for American Motors. He became one of the first African-Americans in United Auto Workers' history to serve as a chief steward.

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Charles Morgan Jr.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Charles Morgan Jr., a civil rights-era lawyer from Alabama who represented Julian Bond and Muhammad Ali and argued for the "one man, one vote" principle that redrew political maps, died Thursday. He was 78.

Family members said Morgan, known as Chuck, died at his home in Destin, Fla., of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

A native of Birmingham who fought that city's segregationist leaders in the early 1960s, Morgan opened the American Civil Liberties Union's Southern Regional office in Atlanta in 1964 and became legislative director of the ACLU's national office in Washington in 1972.

In an Alabama reapportionment case known as Reynolds v. Sims, he won a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that required voting districts to be equal in population, a blow to the political power of rural legislators who until then dominated the statehouse.

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John Neuhaus

NEW YORK (AP) — Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a leading intellectual of the Christian right who helped build a new coalition of conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics and informally advised President George W. Bush, died Thursday. He was 72.

Neuhaus died from the side effects of cancer treatment, said Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things, a journal of religion and public policy that Neuhaus founded.

A one-time Lutheran minister, Neuhaus led a predominantly African-American congregation in New York in the 1960s, advocating for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War. With Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic peace activist, Neuhaus led the anti-war group Clergy Concerned About Vietnam.

He later broke with the left, partly over the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling legalizing abortion. He converted to Catholicism in 1990, and a year later was ordained a priest.

He then worked to break down the historic mistrust between evangelicals and Catholics over their theological differences, helping build the coalition of churchgoers across faith traditions who became key to Republican electoral victories in recent years.

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Gaston Lenotre

PARIS (AP) — Gaston Lenotre, considered one of France's best-ever pastry-makers, died Thursday. He was 88.

Lenotre died at his home in the Sologne region, south of Paris, after a long illness, the company that bears his name said without elaborating.

Success came fast and he quickly diversified, expanding into catering in 1960, organizing receptions from start to finish. Today, the Lenotre company is present around the globe with 35 shops in 12 countries stretching from Japan to Kuwait and Dubai to the U.S.

In 1971, he founded a cooking school. The hotel group Accor bought the Lenotre company in 1985.

Lenotre is credited with taking a new approach to pastry-making, notably making it lighter and less sugary.

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Ned Tanen

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ned Tanen, a former Universal Pictures and Paramount chairman who gave the green light to a string of hits including "Top Gun" and "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," died Monday. He was 77.

Tanen died at his Santa Monica home, his friend Alisa Covington said.

Tanen's entertainment career began with MCA in 1954. He became a talent agent, packaged television shows and then founded MCA's Uni Records, which helped launch stars such as Neil Diamond, Elton John and Olivia Newton-John.

In the 1970s, he moved to MCA's movie division, Universal Pictures, where he was involved in "American Graffiti," a low-budget movie by then-unknown director George Lucas.

He was president of Universal from 1976 to 1982, a tenure marked by Oscar-winning successes such as "Coal Miner's Daughter," "E.T." and "On Golden Pond."

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Cornelia Wallace

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Cornelia Wallace, a former Alabama first lady who threw herself over her husband when he was shot in a 1972 assassination attempt, died Thursday. She was 69.

Wallace's cousin, Melissa Boyen, said the former first lady had been suffering from cancer.

Cornelia Wallace was the niece of former Gov. James E. "Big Jim" Folsom. She married George Wallace in 1971, shortly before his second term as governor.

She was accompanying her husband on the Democratic campaign trail for president in Laurel, Md., when he was shot four times. A news camera captured photos of her throwing herself over her husband's body to shield him as he lay bleeding in a shopping center parking lot.

The Wallaces ended up divorcing in 1978 amid claims she had bugged his phone in the Governor's Mansion.

In 1997, Turner Network Television made "George Wallace" and cast actress Angelina Jolie to portray Cornelia Wallace. The role earned Jolie a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress in a TV movie or miniseries, but Wallace criticized the script for portraying her as a shallow sex kitten.