Thursday, February 26, 2015

A00353 - Cardiss Collins, Illinois' First African American Congresswoman





Cardiss Collins, who reluctantly ran for a Chicago Congressional seat left vacant when her husband died in a plane crash and went on to become Illinois’s first black congresswoman, serving for nearly 25 years as a voice for racial and gender equality and expanded health care for the poor, died on Sunday in Arlington, Va. She was 81.
Her death was confirmed by Representative Danny K. Davis, who succeeded her in 1997 after she retired from Congress.
Mrs. Collins’s husband, George W. Collins, had served two years when he was among 45 people killed in the crash of United Airlines Flight 553 near Midway Airport in Chicago on Dec. 8, 1972. Local Democrats, led by Mayor Richard J. Daley, quickly endorsed Mrs. Collins to succeed him. Mrs. Collins, then 41 and an auditor for the Illinois Revenue Department who was worried about the couple’s 13-year-old son, Kevin, was wary of running but eventually agreed to do so.
She campaigned little but easily won the primary in April and cruised through the general election in June with 92 percent of the vote. Six years later, and after some early struggles in office — she had never considered a political career before she was thrust into one — she became chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. For much of the 1980s, she was the only black woman in Congress.



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Cardiss Collins in 1973.CreditAssociated Press

“In the last six years, my biggest roadblock has been shyness,” Mrs. Collins told The Washington Post in 1979. “I was basically an introvert, but once people learned I had something to say, I gained confidence.”
Mrs. Collins was openly critical of President Jimmy Carter, questioning his commitment to social programs and minorities. She did not invite him to speak at the caucus’s annual fund-raising dinner in 1979, although he had spoken there in previous years, and she expressed support for Senator Edward M. Kennedy when he signaled that he would run against Mr. Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.
When Ronald Reagan was elected that fall, she was no easier on him when he proposed cutting social programs.
“Mr. President, if you promise me you won’t hurt the poor I’ll sit down right now,” she said at a meeting in March 1981 after challenging Mr. Reagan’s description of welfare cheating.
Mrs. Collins, who rose to leading roles on a range of Congressional committees, was also a steady supporter of equity in college athletics, pressing the N.C.A.A. to honor the requirements of Title IX and requiring colleges to disclose more details about how they spent federal money.
She was particularly assertive on affirmative action and minority employment issues, criticizing various agencies and industries for what she called their poor records of hiring minorities. The Smithsonian Institution and the airline industry were among her targets.
She pushed through legislation in 1990 expanding Medicare coverage for mammography screening for older and disabled women and introduced resolutions designating October National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She wrote laws increasing safety labeling on toys, setting safety standards for bicycle helmets and expanding child care services for federal workers nationwide. She also sponsored several measures to make air travel safer.
Cardiss Hortense Robertson was born on Sept. 24, 1931, in St. Louis. Her family moved to Detroit when she was 10, and she graduated from high school there before attending Northwestern University in Chicago. After college, she initially worked as a stenographer at the Illinois Department of Labor. She married Mr. Collins in 1958.
Her survivors include her son and a granddaughter.

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Cardiss Hortense Collins, (née Robertson; September 24, 1931 – February 3, 2013), was a Democratic politician from Illinois who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. She was the first African-American woman to represent the Midwest in Congress. Collins was elected to Congress in the June 5, 1973 special election to replace her husband, George, who had died in the December 8, 1972 United Airlines Flight 553 plane crash. The seat had been renumbered from the 6th district to the 7th when she took the seat. She had previously worked as an accountant in various state government positions.

Congressional career[edit]

Throughout her political career, she was a champion for women’s health and welfare issues. In 1975, she was instrumental in prompting the Social Security Administration to revise Medicare regulations to cover the cost of post-mastectomy breast prosthesis, which before then had been considered cosmetic. [1] In 1979, she was elected as president of the Congressional Black Caucus, a position she used to become an occasional critic of President Jimmy Carter. She later became the caucus vice chairman. In the 1980s, Collins warded off two primary challenges from Alderman Danny K. Davis, who would finally be elected to replace her in 1996.[citation needed] In 1990, Collins, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.[2] In 1991, Collins was named chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her legislative interests were focused on establishing universal health insurance, providing for gender equity in college sports, and reforming federal child care facilities. Collins gained a brief national prominence in 1993 as the chairwoman of a congressional committee investigating college sports and as a critic of the NCAA. During her last term (1995–1997), she served as ranking member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. She also engaged in an intense debate with Rep. Henry Hyde over Medicaid funding of abortion that year.

Retirement, death and honors[edit]

Collins did not seek re-election in 1996, citing her age and the Republican majority in the House. In 2004, she was selected by Nielsen Media Research to head a task force examining the representation of African Americans in TV rating samples. Collins lived in Alexandria, Virginia[citation needed] until her death on February 3, 2013, at the age of 81.[3][4] The United States Postal Service's Cardiss Collins Processing and Distribution Center, located at 433 W. Harrison St. in Chicago, Illinois, is named in her honor and was completed in 1996 to replace the old Main Post Office across the street on Van Buren Street.[5]
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Cardiss Hortense Collins, (née Robertson) (September 24, 1931 – February 3, 2013), was a Democratic politician from Illinois who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. She was the first African American woman to represent the Midwest in Congress. Collins was elected to Congress in the June 5, 1973 special election to replace her husband, George, who had died in the December 8, 1972 United Airlines Flight 553 plane crash. The seat had been renumbered from the 6th district to the 7th when she took the seat. She had previously worked as an accountant in various state government positions.

Throughout her political career, she was a champion for women’s health and welfare issues. In 1975, she was instrumental in prompting the Social Security Administration to revise Medicare regulations to cover the cost of post-mastectomy breast prosthesis, which before then had been considered cosmetic.  In 1979, she was elected as president of the Congressional Black Caucus, a position she used to become an occasional critic of President Jimmy Carter. She later became the caucus vice chairman. In the 1980s, Collins warded off two primary challenges from Alderman Danny K. Davis, who would finally be elected to replace her in 1996. In 1990, Collins, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1991, Collins was named chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her legislative interests were focused on establishing universal health insurance, providing for gender equity in college sports, reforming federal child care facilities. Collins gained a brief national prominence in 1993 as the chairwoman of a congressional committee investigating college sports and as a critic of the NCAA. During her last term (1995–1997), she served as ranking member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. She also engaged in an intense debate with Representative Henry Hyde over Medicaid funding of abortion that year. 

Collins did not seek re-election in 1996, citing her age and the Republican majority in the House. In 2004, she was selected by Nielsen Media Research to head a task force examining the representation of African Americans in TV rating samples. Collins lived in Alexandria, Virginia until her death on February 3, 2013, at the age of 81. 


A00352 - Mario Vazquez Rana, Publisher and Olympic Movement Power

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Mario Vázquez Raña in 2008.CreditGreg Baker/Associated Press
Mario Vázquez Raña, a Mexican newspaper publisher who briefly owned United Press International and was a powerful member of the International Olympic Committee, died on Sunday in Mexico City. He was 82.
Carlos Padilla Becerra, the leader of the Mexican Olympic Committee, confirmed Mr. Vázquez Raña’s death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Vázquez Raña, the owner of more than 60 newspapers in Mexico, took over the struggling U.P.I. news agency with a partner, Joe Russo, in 1986, paying $40 million. At the time, Mr. Vázquez Raña’s fortune was estimated to be $1 billion. He sold the company after two rocky years. It is now owned by an affiliate of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.
Mr. Vázquez Raña led the Association of National Olympic Committees from 1979 to 2012. In that role, he was one of the most powerful people on the International Olympic Committee for years. He also served on the committee’s executive board.
He was a close ally of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001.
Mr. Vázquez Raña resigned from all of his Olympic positions in 2012 in the face of a possible revolt by delegates to the Association of National Olympic Committees.
He was the president of the Pan American Sports Organization at the time of his death.
“He had outstanding merit within the Olympic movement, and we will always remember him as a great Olympic leader,” Thomas Bach, the current I.O.C. president, said in a statement.
The Olympic flag at the I.O.C. headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, was to be flown at half-staff in his honor, Mr. Bach said. 

A00351 - Billy Casper, Golf Champion

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Billy Casper, left, being helped into a Masters jacket in 1970. He won 51 times on the PGA Tour. CreditAssociated Press
Billy Casper, a two-time United States Open victor, a Masters champion and the player with the seventh most wins in PGA Tour history, died on Saturday at his home in Springville, Utah. He was 83.
The cause was a heart attack, said his company, Billy Casper Golf, which owns or operates many courses around the country. It said he had been in failing health in recent months.
A brilliant putter with a superb short game as well, Casper was nonetheless overshadowed in his prime by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. But he won 51 PGA Tour eventsfrom 1956 through 1975. Only Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Palmer and Byron Nelson have won more PGA tournaments.
“Billy was a fantastic player, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for being one,” Nicklaus said on his Facebook page upon Casper’s death.
Casper played on eight Ryder Cup teams, winning 23 ½ points, more than any other American, and he was the captain of the victorious 1979 squad. He was the PGA Tour player of the year in 1966 and 1970, won the Vardon Trophy for best stroke average five times, and was the tour’s leading money winner twice. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1978.
Casper also won nine times on the senior tour, including two majors, the 1983 United States Senior Open and the 1988 Senior Tournament Players Championship.
“If I had to pick a man to play one round and my life depended on it, that man would be Billy Casper,” Nelson was quoted by The Deseret News of Salt Lake City as having said in 1970.
“Billy was a killer on the golf course,” the tour pro Dave Marr said, as related by the Hall of Fame. “He just gave you this terrible feeling he was never going to make a mistake, and then of course he’d drive that stake through your heart with that putter.”
Casper’s first major victory came at the 1959 United States Open at Winged Foot, in Mamaroneck, N.Y., when he set a tournament record with only 114 putts over 72 holes. Relying on his short game as well, he laid up in front of the narrow green on the 216-yard, par-3 third hole in each round, then got up and down for par.
His most thrilling triumph came at the Olympic Club in San Francisco in the 1966 United States Open, when he trailed Palmer by seven strokes with nine holes left, caught him with a four-under 32 and beat him by four shots in an 18-hole playoff. Over the 90 holes, he never three-putted.
“He’s the greatest putter on the pro tour,” Palmer said after losing in the playoff.
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Billy Casper after sinking a 25-foot putt during his playoff with Arnold Palmer for the 1966 U.S. Open title, which Casper won by four shots. “He’s the greatest putter on the pro tour,” Palmer said afterward. CreditAssociated Press
Casper won the 1970 Masters in an 18-hole playoff against Gene Littler, who was a fellow junior golfer during his youth in Southern California. Casper hit what he called the best shot of his career on the par-5 second hole in the playoff. In tall grass and with a small log two or three inches behind his ball, he used a 9-iron to loft a shot over tall pines and onto the fairway.
Johnny Miller once told Sports Illustrated, “Billy has the greatest pair of hands God ever gave a human being.”
William Earl Casper Jr. was born on June 24, 1931, in San Diego, but his family soon moved to Chula Vista, near the Mexican border. When he was 4, his father put a golf club in his hands on a three-hole course he built on a New Mexico farm where the family was living at the time.
He was a chubby child, taunted as Fatso by his schoolmates, but an athletic career beckoned. He caddied at the San Diego Country Club in Chula Vista. At the end of the day, the caddies played cards, then went to a green and practiced putting in the dark.
“On a pitch-black night, when you walk up to the hole just to see where it is, it stamps a very strong image in your mind,” Casper told Golf Digest in 2005. “You develop a feel for everything: the moisture on the grass, the small change in elevation, the exact distance to the hole, all kinds of things your eyes alone can’t tell you.”
When he was 16, Casper watched Ben Hogan play in an exhibition, and he grew to idolize him as a master course manager and shotmaker.
Casper recalled that the first time he played with Hogan in a threesome, Hogan’s putting deserted him. As Casper told it in Golf Digest: “The next morning, Mr. Hogan called me over. He looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. Then he whispered: ‘Billy, tell me. How do you putt?’ ”
Casper attended Notre Dame briefly, and while serving in the Navy, he was assigned to recreational activities. He turned pro in 1954. He won his first PGA Tour event two years later.
Soon he was among the game’s finest golfers, but he lacked charisma. He seemed to be known as much for his weight swings (he weighed between 180 and 220 pounds in winning his three PGA Tour majors), numerous allergies that prompted a diet plentiful in buffalo meat and organic vegetables, and a conversion to Mormonism in 1966.
“He’ll have me eating buffalo meat soon,” Palmer quipped after Casper caught him in the fourth round at the 1966 Open.
Casper won his last senior tournament in 1989.
He is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Shirley Franklin Casper; his sons Billy, Robert, Byron, David, Charlie and Tommy; his daughters Linda, Judi, Jeni, Julia and Sarah; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Long after his greatest days in golf, Casper pondered his place in the sport’s history.
“I think people recognize what I did more readily now than when it happened,” he said in 1989. “In my best years, everybody was talking about Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player.”
Miller once told the Copley News Service: “Billy didn’t waste energy on galleries, on chitchat. He was out there to get a job done, very professional. He was like a hit man.”
Correction: February 8, 2015 
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the given name of Billy Casper's agent. He is Rich Katz, not Phil Katz.

A00350 - Norm Drucker, N.B.A. Referee

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Norm Drucker, right, in 1967 with Wilt Chamberlain, left, whom he gave a telling technical foul in January 1962. CreditDick Raphael/NBAE via Getty Images
Norm Drucker, one of pro basketball’s most prominent referees, who notoriously ejected Wilt Chamberlain from a game — the only minutes Chamberlain missed in his epic 1961-62 season — died on Friday. He was 94.
His death was confirmed by his son Jim, a former commissioner of the Arena Football League and the Continental Basketball Association, The Associated Press reported.
In the 1952-53 season, when Drucker began refereeing regularly in the N.B.A., there was no 24-second shot clock, the league had only 10 teams, TV exposure was minimal and the officials were paid $40 a game.
Drucker saw the N.B.A. evolve from an often plodding, highly physical game to a crowd-pleasing spectacle.
“When I started, the game was played on the floor,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “When I reffed my last game, it was played two feet off the floor.”
Drucker became a familiar face in the striped shirt alongside officials like Sid Borgia, Mendy Rudolph, Earl Strom and Richie Powers. But he jumped to the rival American Basketball Association in 1969 for a lucrative multiyear contract.
Drucker returned to the N.B.A. in 1976, when the leagues merged. In recounting his departure for the A.B.A., he told Charles Salzberg in the oral history “From Set Shot to Slam Dunk” (1987), “I think that led to the total improvement in referees’ salaries and working conditions that are now enjoyed by pro officials.”
The N.B.A.’s current commissioner, Adam Silver, said in a statement upon Drucker’s death that he was “a frequent choice to preside over some of the biggest games in N.B.A. history.”
In the 1961-62 season, during which Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points a game for the Philadelphia Warriors and scored 100 points in a game against the Knicks, Chamberlain played every minute of every matchup on the 80-game regular-season schedule — except on the night of Jan. 3, 1962.
With 8 minutes 33 seconds remaining in the Warriors’ game against the Lakers in Los Angeles, Strom gave Chamberlain a technical foul for complaining about a call. Chamberlain then “made reference to Earl Strom’s old mother,” according to Drucker’s report to the league, as cited in Gary M. Pomerantz’s book “Wilt, 1962” (2005).
When Chamberlain “yelled at Strom that he must be gambling on the game,” according to Drucker’s report, he slapped Chamberlain with a second technical, causing an automatic ejection. Drucker tacked on a third technical after “additional sequences of profane words” from Chamberlain.
Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics’ Hall of Fame coach, who often battled with referees, saved much of his ire for Drucker and Borgia. After Drucker gave Auerbach a second technical foul in a November 1961 game, causing him to be ejected for a second straight game, Auerbach was suspended for three games by the N.B.A.’s president, Maurice Podoloff.
Drucker grew up in Brooklyn and played basketball for Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush and then for Coach Nat Holman at City College. A 5-foot-11 guard, he played with Red Holzman, who went on to become the Knicks’ coach, on the City College squad that went to the 1942 National Invitation Tournament.
After serving as an Army officer in World War II, Drucker played on weekends in the American Basketball League. He also refereed in that league and in college games before joining the N.B.A.
Drucker was a teacher and an administrator in the New York City school system while building his career as an N.B.A. official. An off-season job was a necessity. He recalled that when he went to Podoloff’s office to ask for a $10-a-game raise for the 1956-57 season, Podoloff pounded his desk and roared, “Are you trying to bankrupt the N.B.A.?”
During the league’s early years, referees were confronted by angry fans, especially at the Syracuse Nationals’ War Memorial Auditorium, where the officials had to walk through the stands to get to their dressing room.
“As we walked off the floor, we’d take off our belts and wrap them around our fists with the buckles obvious to everyone,” Drucker told Neil D. Isaacs in the oral history “Vintage N.B.A.” (1996). “This was going to be our protection.”
After 17 seasons as an N.B.A. referee, Drucker was recruited by the A.B.A., then in its third season. He and three fellow referees — Strom, Joe Gushue and John Vanak — each received a $25,000 bonus and an annual salary of $25,000 a year in three-year deals, far in excess of what they were earning in the N.B.A., where they were still being paid according to the number of games they officiated.
Drucker remained in the A.B.A. for seven years, working as a referee and as supervisor of officials. He returned to the N.B.A. for a final season as a referee after the A.B.A. merger and then became the N.B.A.’s supervisor of referees in 1977, holding that post for four seasons. He was later the director of operations for the World Basketball League, a minor circuit.
A complete list of Drucker’s survivors was not immediately available.
In January 1984, Drucker returned to the court when he and Borgia were paired as referees for the N.B.A.’s first old-timers’ game, played in Denver.
Auerbach was the coach of the East team. After it lost by 2 points, Auerbach raged at Drucker for calling a foul that gave the West its margin of victory.
Drucker was hardly perturbed. As he put it, “What else is new?”