Monday, Feb. 10, 1997
MILESTONES
CLEARED. JOHN SALVI, who died in November, an apparent suicide, while serving a life sentence for killing two abortion-clinic workers; of those murder convictions by virtue of a state ruling that dismisses charges if a defendant dies before his court appeal can be heard; in Dedham, Massachusetts.
DIED. FRANK TEJEDA, 51, U.S. Representative from Texas; of pneumonia after battling a brain tumor; in San Antonio. The Democrat rose from high school dropout to lawyer to first Congressman from the new Hispanic 28th District in 1992.
DIED. A. RICHARDSON GOODLATTE, 57, New York City's successful anti-subway graffiti warrior; of cancer; in Huntington, New York. Their work scrubbed out as soon as they scribbled, graffitists threw in the spray can.
DIED. ALFONSO ORTIZ, 57, Native American anthropologist whose writings offered a rare and richly detailed insider's view of the pueblo; from heart complications; in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His classic 1969 book, The Tewa World, was a breakthrough in Native American scholarship.
DIED. NOEL KEANE, 58, lawyer and controversial champion of surrogate parenting; of melanoma; in Dearborn, Michigan. Keane pioneered artificial-insemination contracts between husbands of infertile wives and willing child bearers. He helped broker 600 such arrangements.
DIED. JEANE DIXON, 79, celebrity astrologer, psychic and widely read syndicated columnist; in Washington. Dixon's star (she was a Capricorn) began to rise following her prediction (published in 1956) that a young Democratic President elected in 1960 would die in office. A number of her prophecies came true (the fall of the Berlin Wall), but to skeptics' delight, many did not (Soviets getting to the moon first).
DIED. HERB CAEN, 80, classic newspaper columnist; in San Francisco. In the brightly written rat-a-tat of the daily column he produced for 58 years, mostly in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pulitzer-prizewinning Caen was raconteur, funnyman, tipster, nightclubber, friend of the powerful and tireless chronicler of "Baghdad by the Bay," the city he loved and that loved him back.
DIED. LOUIS MARTIN, 84, influential presidential confidante responsible for bringing black and minority concerns into the corridors of power; in Orange, California. Dubbed "the godfather of black politics," he helped clinch black votes for Kennedy in 1960; persuade Johnson to appoint Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court; advise Carter on minority affairs; and propel the career of Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan.
DIED. MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES, 90, novelist and correspondent for the New Yorker who wrote the magazine's Letter from London for more than four decades, chronicling Britain from Churchill to Thatcher; on Jan. 22; in a nursing home in Surrey, England.