Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005
Milestones
By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Golnoush Niknejad, Logan Orlando, Elspeth Reeve
SPARED. ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE in South Dakota; the NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE NEW LONDON in Groton, Conn.; and Maine's PORTSMOUTH NAVAL SHIPYARD; by the independent base-closing commission, which voted to keep them open in a rejection of the Pentagon's cost-saving plans; in Arlington, Va. At the same time, the panel voted to close the historic but aging Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which has treated Presidents, foreign leaders and military men and women for a century. The recommendations must still be approved by President Bush and Congress.
ARRESTED. SATISH and DEEPAK KALPOE, 18 and 21, brothers previously detained and released in the May disappearance of Alabama tourist Natalee Holloway, 18, in Aruba; along with unidentified others, as a result of "new facts and circumstances," according to prosecutors; in Oranjestad, Aruba.
DIED. ROBERT MOOG, 71, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, credited with ushering in the age of electronica in the 1960s and '70s; in Asheville, N.C. As a boy, he built gadgets with his engineer father and became intrigued with the theremin, an earlier relative of the synthesizer. His eponymous instrument first drew widespread attention in 1968 with the release of Switched-On Bach, Walter Carlos' electrified reworking of pieces by the baroque composer, and was later adopted by artists such as Pink Floyd and the Beatles.
DIED. BROCK PETERS, 78, stage and screen actor best known for his moving portrayal of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of rape and defended by Gregory Peck, in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird; of pancreatic cancer; in Los Angeles. Born George Fisher in Harlem, N.Y., the gifted bass singer toured cabaret clubs before making his film debut in 1954 as a vicious sergeant in Otto Preminger's landmark all-black production of Carmen Jones. Determined to shed his villainous image, he played a gay trumpet player in the film The L-Shaped Room and won a Tony nomination for his lead role as a South African preacher in the 1972 Broadway musical Lost in the Stars.
DIED. JACK SLIPPER, 81, Scotland Yard detective who, despite his reputation as a master, will be remembered for his thwarted global pursuit of nemesis Ronald Biggs, one of the masked men who robbed a night mail train from Glasgow to London of -L-2.6 million ($7 million) in what became known as the Great Train Robbery of 1963 and who, though caught, soon escaped jail; reported in London. Slipper tracked Biggs to Rio de Janeiro in 1974 (greeting him with "Long time no see, Ronnie!"), but Brazilian officials refused to deport Biggs, who remained a fugitive until 2001, when he turned himself in.
DIED. FRANC,OIS DALLE, 87, longtime CEO of L'Oreal, instrumental in transforming it from a 25-employee company into a global cosmetics giant; in Geneva. In the 1950s, before taking the company's helm, he expanded marketing into the U.S. and Japan, in part by taking the then radical step of selling products in retail stores rather than only hair salons. Later he signed licensing deals with designers like Guy Laroche and oversaw the acquisition of such prestige brands as Lancome, Garnier and Biotherm.
By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Golnoush Niknejad, Logan Orlando and Elspeth Reeve