Friday, Feb. 02, 1968
Born. To Pfc. Gary Lewis, 22, Comedian Jerry's son and lead singer for the rocking Gary and The Playboys until his induction into the Army a year ago, and Sara Jane Suzuara Lewis, 23, a Philippine philosophy student whom he met while touring the Far East in 1966: their first child, a daughter; in Monterey, Calif.
Divorced. George F. Getty II, 43, J. Paul's eldest son, executive vice president and crown prince of the Getty Oil empire; by Gloria Gordon Getty, 37; on grounds that he was "aloof, cold, indifferent and insulting"; after 16 years of marriage, three children; in Los Angeles. Gloria gets their Los Angeles estate plus $66,000 yearly alimony and child support.
Died. David Stacton, 42, U.S. historical novelist; of a stroke; near Copenhagen. Often brilliant, sometimes exasperating, Stacton wrote 13 novels illuminating history's dark corners, from the courts of Pharaoh Ikhnaton (On a Balcony), to 14th century Japan (Segaki), to the assassination of Lincoln (The Judges of the Secret Court). In each, his epigrammatic, sinewy prose evoked the ambiance of an age so effectively that critics rated him one of the best of the postwar crop of American authors.
Died. Rear Admiral Bruce McCandless, 56, Congressional Medal of Honor winner in World War II; of multiple sclerosis; in Washington, D.C. As a 31-year-old lieutenant commander on the cruiser San Francisco in a battle off Guadalcanal in November 1942, Mc-Candless was knocked unconscious by a direct hit, recovered to find that all his superior officers were either dead or dying, took command of the fleet flagship himself and so boldly attacked the superior Japanese forces that a major U.S. naval victory resulted as the San Francisco alone disabled a battleship and sank a destroyer.
Died. Homer Martin, 66, first president of the United Auto Workers; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. A onetime Baptist minister, Martin quit the pulpit in 1933 to work at General Motors, where he helped organize employees and became head of the fledgling union in 1936 when it bolted the A.F.L. to join the more militant C.I.O. After three years, during which union membership grew from 27,000 to 149,000, he lost out in an intra-union power struggle with the Reuther brothers and eventually left the labor movement.
Died. Henrietta Malkiel Poynter, 66, co-founder and editor of the Congressional Quarterly; of a stroke; in St. Petersburg, Fla. Convinced that the daily press missed much of what went on in Congress, Henrietta and her publisher husband Nelson (St. Petersburg Times) in 1945 started printing their Quarterly--now a weekly--which keeps tab on everything from the attendance of Senators to the doings of lobbyists. Circulation barely brushes 4,000, but includes a wide variety of organizations which pay subscription rates running higher than $1,000.
Died. Yvor Winters, 67, poet, critic and longtime (1937-66) Stanford literature professor; of cancer; in Palo Alto, Calif. As a critic, he was formidable, engaging his peers in bitter polemics. He preferred Robert Bridges to T. S. Eliot, once called Ezra Pound "a barbarian loose in a museum." His own poetry, for which he won Yale's 1960 Bollingen Prize, was a mirror of the man, cool, sharp, diamond-hard, as in his definition of his work:
Few minds will come to this.
The poet's only bliss
Is a cold certitude--
Laurel, archaic, rude.
Died. Duke Kahanamoku, 77, Hawaii's fabled swimmer, surfer and all-round citizen; of a heart attack; in Waikiki Beach. His name might as well have been King: tall (6 ft. 3 in.), mahogany-skinned and magnificently muscled, a descendant of Polynesian royalty, Kahanamoku burst upon the athletic world in 1911 when he swam 100 yds. in 55.4 sec., breaking the record by an astonishing 4 sec. His novel flutter kick outmoded the standard scissors kick overnight, and in the next 13 years he collected a slew of world records and three Olympic gold medals. That, plus his single-handed rescue of eight people from a capsized launch off the California coast in 1925, boosted a new career in Hollywood, but he returned home in 1929 and served 36 years as sheriff of Honolulu. Age never daunted him. To the last, he was a symbol of the islands, surfing, swimming, and appearing as the 50th state's official greeter.
Died. Ralph T. Reed, 77, president of American Express Co. from 1944 to 1960; after a short illness; in Manhattan. As the senior godfather of American tourism, Reed applied all the ingenuity of U.S. business to luring people abroad and making their trips a pleasure. To the 105-year-old company's already long list of services (traveler's checks, package tours, free mail handling), he added credit cards, rent-a-car operations, travel guides, offered every kind of trip from a visit to African Pygmy villages to a whirlwind eleven-nation tour in 22 days. Before his retirement, Reed saw his company grow from 50 offices around the world to nearly 400, handling billions of dollars in tourist business each year.
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