Friday, Sep. 14, 1962

Married. Sir William Alexander Bustamante, 78. bull-voiced Prime Minister of newly independent Jamaica; and Gladys Longbridge, 45, his private secretary and confidante for 27 years; she for the first time, he for the second; at a private ceremony in Kingston.

Died. Eleven executives of the Ashland Oil & Refining Co., of Ashland. Ky.. and their pilot and copilot, when the company's twin-engined Lockheed Lodestar spun into a pasture and burst into flames; near Ravenna, Ohio. Ashland is the nation's 20th largest oil company, with sales of $312 million last year; it was the worst industrial-aircraft accident in U.S. history.

Died. Francis H. (Fran) Striker, 59, author of the saga of the masked rider of the plains. The Lone Ranger, by far the most enduring of all western radio heroes; in a head-on automobile collision near his home in Arcade. N.Y. Striker first conceived of the straight-shooting lawman in 1930, and the first episode was broadcast by Detroit radio station WXYZ in 1933. Until the program went off radio nine years ago (it is now a regular television feature). Striker, who sold the rights to Lone Ranger, continued to write the scripts. He turned out some 3,000 half-hour shows, all of which glorified justice, cowboy good conduct and loyalty to the Lone Ranger's Indian friend Tonto. Faithfully tuned in by uncounted millions of schoolchildren for 29 years, the ringing prologue ("From out of the West come the thundering hoofbeats . . .'') and the Lone Ranger's cry of "Hi Ho, Silver, Away!" to his great white stallion, became part of the American idiom.

Died. Edward Estlin (e.e.) Cummings, 67, popular American poet who scattered syntax to collect bright images; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in North Conway, N.H. (see page 102).

Died. Baroness Blixen Finecke, 77, author, under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen, of gracefully ghostly short stories (Seven Gothic Tales) and a popular volume of memoirs called Out of Africa; in Rungstedlund, Denmark.

Died. William R. Blair, 87, retired U.S. Army Signal Corps physicist, whose experiments with the measurement of radio microwaves bouncing off distant objects led in 1937 to his invention of a prototype radar set that could measure the distance and speed of moving ships and airplanes; of a heart attack; in Fair Haven, N.J. The device was kept a military secret until after World War II, when the Army applied for a patent in Blair's name that was finally granted in 1957; the Army, which got free use of the invention (Blair received royalties from all non-Government manufacturers), gratefully proclaimed him "Father of Radar.''

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