YBTL 2008 Deaths To Date

(Updated 07/14/08)

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1) Pater Caffrey	11) Georgia Frontiere	21) Margaret Truman	31) Emily Perry	41) Arthur C Clarke
2) Galyani Vadhana	12) Dan Wittman	22) Earl Butz	32) Janez Drnovsek	42) Paul Scofield
3) Choi Yo-sam	13) Suzanne Pleshette	23) Barry Morse	33) Myron Cope	43) Al Copeland
4) Milt Dunnell	14) Victor S Johnson Jr	24) Joshua Lederberg	34) William F Buckley	44) Richard Widmark
5) Ken Nelson	15) Louis de Cazenave	25) Maharishi Mahesh Yogi	35) Joseph Juran	45) Jules Dassin
6) George Moore	16) Kenneth Parnell	26) Phyllis Whitney	36) Philip Rabinowitz	46) Max Helton
7) Sir Edmund Hillary	17) Viktor Schreckengost	27) Baba Amte	37) Jeff Healey	47) Charlton Heston
8) Carl Karcher	18) Suharto	28) Roy Scheider	38) Howard Metzenbaum	48) Barbara McDermott
9) Milton Wolff	19) Gordon Hinckley	29) Smoky Dawson	39) Lazare Ponticelli	49) John Wheeler
10) Allan Melvin	20) Arch. Christodoulos	30) Lydia Shum	40) Mikey Dread	50) Ollie Johnston

51) Edward Lorenz	61) Robert Rauschenberg	71) Harvey Korman	81) Dody Goodman
52) Danny Federici	62) Sheik Saad Al Sabah	72) Yves Saint Laurent	82) Leonid Hurwicz
53) Aimé Césaire	63) Alexander Courage	73) Bo Diddley	83) Clay Felker
54) Daniel Lee Siebert	64) Willis E Lamb Jr	74) Mel Ferrer	84) Larry Harmon
55) John McConnell	65) Robert Mondavi	75) Ferenc Fejto	85) Jesse Helms
56) Enrico Donati	66) Huntington Hartford	76) Jim McKay	86) Mike Souchak
57) Albert Hofmann	67) Dick Martin	77) Tyrone Jones	87) Michael DeBakey
58) Sir Anthony Mamo	68) JR Simplot	78) Cyd Charisse	88) Tony Snow
59) Eddy Arnold	69) Sydney Pollack	79) Jean Delannoy	89) Bobby Murcer
60) Irena Sendlerowa	70) Earle Hagen	80) George Carlin	90) Henki Kolstad

Veteran Irish actor Peter Caffrey has died in England at the age of 58. The renowned stage, TV and film actor passed away Tuesday 01/01/08 following years of ill health after he suffered a stroke in 2000. Despite being left disabled by the stroke, he planned to return to acting in 2005 when he was cast to play a publican in the independent film "Sweet Dancer".

He was a familiar face on both sides of the Irish Sea and is best known for his role as Padraig O'Kelly in the BBC drama "Ballykissangel", watched by 15 million viewers, in which he starred in five of the six series. After the series was cancelled in 2001, he was a much sought-after film actor, starring in a number of roles. He played an Anglican minister, a gay television producer and a transvestite. He also received critical acclaim for his portrayal of the loudmouth Frank Grogan in the low-budget heist movie "I Went Down", which made him a star on both sides of the Atlantic. Caffrey was strongly praised for his portrayal of a transvestite in John Lynch's 1998 film 'Night Train', starring John Hurt.

He was a solid veteran of the stage, starring in West End productions in London and at Dublin's Abbey and Gaiety theatre. His theatre credits include "Whale" and "The Crucible" at the National Theatre as well as the Abbey Theatre's production of "The Patrick Pearse Motel", and Pat McCabe's "The Borstal Boy" at the Gaiety Theatre.

His numerous television credits include Channel 4's series "Criminal Conversations", RTE's series "Bracken" and "The Burke Enigma" and BBC

Northern Ireland's "The Hanging Gale" and "Shannongate". He also appeared in numerous roles in popular television dramas and sit-coms, including "Glenroe", "The Bill", "Coronation Street", "Father Ted" and "Casualty".

We start off the year with a 28-point hit! 3^rd year veteran The Famous Final Scene II gets the Harry Helmsley Award for First Stiff of the Year and adds an Under 65 age bonus to a solo hit (20+4+4). Give praise!

Princess Galyani Vadhana, the elder sister of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died Wednesday 01/02/08, the royal palace announced. She was 84 years old. Galyani's passing came after the 80-year-old king himself recovered from the symptoms of a stroke after being hospitalized for three weeksin October. Both were treated at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital. Galyani had been hospitalized since June, after doctors found she had abdominal cancer.

The princess was noted for her interest in the arts, especially theater and classical music, a taste cultivated when she, like the king, was educated in Switzerland, where she spent much time until later life. She spoke five languages, and loved to travel, documenting many of her journeys in books. She was the oldest child of Prince Mahidol - a son of King Chulalongkorn - and his commoner wife, Sangwal.

Galyani married Col. Aram Ratanakul Serireungriddhi, a royal aide but a commoner, in 1944, which meant she had to give up the royal title she was awarded in 1935. The couple had a daughter but were divorced in 1949. The royal title was restored by Bhumibol in 1950, after the divorce. She married again in 1969 to Prince Varananda Dhavaj, a professional pilot, who died in 1990.

A lifelong Francophile, she founded the Association of Teachers of French in Thailand, which she headed in 1977-81. She also took up an intensive schedule of charity work, which is a mainstay of royal responsibility. She was a patron of at least five health-related foundations.

Already Dead ascends to 2^nd in command with another solo hit, this one for 20 points.

South Korean boxer Choi Yo-sam, who fell into a coma after winning his WBO intercontinental flyweight title fight last week, was declared officially dead early Thursday 01/03/08. He was 33. The declaration was made at 12:18 a.m. (1518 GMT Wednesday) as doctors stopped the flow of blood to Choi's heart and took him off life support. His heart, liver, both kidneys and both corneas were removed for donation to six patients awaiting transplants. Doctors were required to get approval from the prosecutors' office before the organs could be removed.

On Wednesday, a hospital committee pronounced Choi brain dead after conducting a series of tests. He had been in a coma since shortly after winning the fight against Indonesian challenger Heri Amol in Seoul on Dec. 25. A former world champion, he was knocked down just before the end of the 12th and final round of the bout but got back up and was declared the winner on points before collapsing.

Choi was the WBC light flyweight world champion from Oct. 1999 to July 2002, and fought for the WBA light flyweight world title in Sept. 2004.

In 1982, South Korean lightweight Kim Duk-koo died four days after being knocked out by Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini in a WBA lightweight world title fight in Las Vegas. Kim was knocked out in the 14th round, prompting the WBC to reduce the length of its bouts from 15 to 12 rounds, with the other major sanctioning bodies following later.

Another South Korean fighter, bantamweight Lee Tong-choon, died of acute swelling of the brain in 1995, four days after losing consciousness following a Japanese title fight against Setsuo Kawamasu in Tokyo.

Our first multi-shot hit is also our first Un-Natural Death. AA88, Already Dead, Die2K, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, Monty Python's Dying Circus, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Skeleton In Their Closet, The Finish Line, TO DIE FOR and Van Owens Body all get smacked with 27 points each (5 for the 11-way hit+12 for Under 45+10 for Un-Natural).

Former columnist and sports editor Milt Dunnell, a Toronto Star legend and Hall of Fame journalist known for his deft turn of phrase and encyclopedic breadth of experience, has died. He was 102. Dunnell died at North York General Hospital late Thursday night 01/03/08.

Dunnell, who turned 102 on Christmas Eve, was an honoured member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and the Football Reporters of Canada Hall of Fame. Dunnell was known around the newsroom as Mr. Sports or, more fondly, as Uncle Miltie.

Dunnell's work took him around the world, covering Olympics from Melbourne to Mexico City or following Muhammad Ali to Zaire and the Philippines. He reached retirement age in 1970 but kept writing until 1994, when he was just shy of 89. In all Dunnell wrote some 11,000 columns for the Star. And he did it like no other.

His 1966 report on the Ali-George Chuvalo fight in Toronto started: "They had a contest between a bull and a bumblebee at Maple Leaf Gardens last night - with the usual result. The bull came out of it with his face looking like a bucket of balls at a golf driving range."

Dunnell, from St. Marys, Ont., began his career writing for his hometown paper, the St. Marys Journal-Argus, before spending 13 years with the Stratford Beacon-Herald, including five as sports editor. He joined the Star in 1942 and seven years later was named sports editor. He retired from the position in 1970 but continued writing five columns a week - and to work for another 24 years.

A book containing 77 of his columns, "The Best of Milt Dunnell," was published in 1993.

In 1996, Sports Media Canada gave Dunnell its Achievement Award.

Century Mark and Tailgaiting with Jesus open up the mic and announce they got 18 points on the Canadian Sportscaster. He shoots, he scores!

Ken Nelson, the record producer behind the twangy Bakersfield Sound made popular by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, died on Sunday 01/06/08 at his home in Somis, CA. He was 96. He died of natural causes.

Although best known for his work with Mr. Owens and Mr. Haggard, Mr. Nelson also helped reinvent country music when 1950s rock ’n’ rollers like Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins began supplanting perennial hitmakers like Red Foley and Eddy Arnold on the country charts. Rather than treating the big-beat incursion of Mr. Presley and Mr. Perkins as a threat, Mr. Nelson, then the head of the country division of Capitol Records, saw it as an opportunity to take rural music in a more sophisticated direction.

First he persuaded a rising singer named Sonny James to record “Young Love”, a smooth romantic ballad, which topped both the country and the pop charts in 1957. He also recruited the Jordanaires, the uptown vocal chorus that had already backed Mr. Presley and Mr. James, to sing on “Gone”, a No. 1 country hit for the crooner Ferlin Husky, which reached the pop Top 5. Both “Young Love” and “Gone” became prototypes for the Nashville Sound, which would give country music more mainstream appeal.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nelson had signed several young rockabilly acts of his own, most notably Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. For Mr. Vincent he produced the hiccupping “Be-Bop-a-Lula”, a Top 10 hit on the pop, country and R&B charts in 1956. With Ms. Jackson, Mr. Nelson cut the raucous “Let’s Have a Party” in 1960.

A musical omnivore who briefly oversaw the Capitol label’s jazz division as well, Mr. Nelson recorded a broad array of music under the country rubric in his nearly three decades there. The harmony duo the Louvin Brothers and the swing-inflected band of Hank Thompson both came under his direction. Known for being a hands-off producer who let his artists record with their touring bands instead of insisting that they work with studio professionals, Mr. Nelson consistently supervised a roster of acts whose music demonstrated how durable and elastic the country genre could be.

Kenneth F. Nelson was born on 01/19/11, in Caledonia, Minn. Placed in an orphanage by his mother when he was an infant, he spent his childhood in Chicago, where he would go on to work in a music store and, later, at a radio station, WJJD. Promoted to music director at the station, Mr. Nelson did everything from announcing broadcasts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to scouting talent for its “hillbilly” variety show, “Suppertime Frolic”.

After serving in the Army during World War II, Mr. Nelson returned to Chicago and WJJD. He also began producing sessions for Capitol, eventually moving to Hollywood in 1948 to work for the label full time. By his retirement in 1976 he had produced around 100 chart-topping country hits, including “The Wild Side of Life”, a No. 1 record for Mr. Thompson for 15 weeks in 1952. Mr. Owens and Mr. Haggard accounted for more than three dozen of Mr. Nelson’s No. 1 recordings. Many of these were unvarnished, emotionally direct performances that reached beyond country audiences to influence rock acts like the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Mr. Nelson’s wife June died in 1984. He is survived by his daughter, Claudia Nelson, and three grandchildren.

A co-founder of the Country Music Association, Mr. Nelson was president of that organization’s board in 1961 and 1962. In 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He published an autobiography, “My First 90 Years Plus 3”, last year.

Fecal Matter, Forrest Tucker's Ghost and Swan Song get their toes tapping on a 3-way hit worth 16 points on the CMHOFer.

George Moore , who died on Tuesday 01/08/08 aged 84, was one of Australia's greatest jockeys, dominating the sport in his native country in the 1950s and 1960s; he also made his mark overseas, winning both the Epsom Derby and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Moore died in a Sydney nursing home. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and had undergone two heart bypass operations.

Moore - nicknamed "Cotton Fingers" for his delicate handling of his mounts - formed a successful partnership with the trainer Tommy ("TJ") Smith. The relationship between the two men was sometimes cantankerous, but no one doubted its fruitfulness. Although Moore never won the Melbourne Cup, he amassed a record 119 Group One races in Australia, and rode Smith's great racehorse Tulloch to 19 of its 36 victories. In 1957-58 he and Tulloch took the Rosehill and Caulfield Guineas; the Australian Jockey Club (AJC), Victoria and Queensland Derbys; and the Victoria and AJC St Legers.

George Thomas Donald Moore was born on 07/05/23 at Mackay, Queensland. In 1938, at the age of 15, he was apprenticed to the trainer Louis Dahl in Brisbane; he then transferred his services to Jim Shean, and rode his first metropolitan winner on New Year's Day 1940. In 1943 he went to Sydney, attached to Peter Riddle's stable, and in that year he won his first senior jockeys' premiership (or championship), in Brisbane. He then moved to Sydney, and in 1949 began his association with Tommy Smith. In the same year he rode Playboy, a 100-1 chance, to victory in the AJC Australian Derby.

Like many top jockeys, Moore was no stranger to the stewards' room. The most serious of these encounters was in the 1950s, when he was given a two-and-a-half-year suspension for placing a bet on a horse called Flying East which won a race at Hawkesbury; not only was Moore its registered owner, he also rode another horse in the same race.

Back on the racetrack Moore won the jockeys' premiership titles in 1957 and 1958. The next year he accepted an invitation to ride Prince Aly Khan's horses being trained in France by Alec Head. He duly won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (on Saint Crespin), as well as, in Britain, the 2,000 Guineas on Prince Aly Khan's Taboun. In May 1960 the prince was killed in a motor accident, but Moore continued to ride for his son, the Aga Khan, winning that year's Prix du Jockey Club (the French Derby) on Charlottesville.

He returned to Australia for another successful spell before crossing the globe again, in 1967, to ride in Britain for Sir Noel Murless, whose stable jockey, Lester Piggott, had gone freelance. In that year Moore won three Classics for Murless - the 1,000 Guineas (on Fleet) and, on Royal Palace, both the 2,000 Guineas and the Epsom Derby. He also won the King George on Busted.

It was a remarkable season, but Moore was unable to capitalize on his success in Britain owing to a sinister turn of events. It is said that he began to receive telephone calls demanding that he throw races; and that his flat in London was broken into and his clothes cut to ribbons. Rather than expose his family to risk (the telephone calls had threatened violence ) Moore returned to Australia.

He won many other races over the course of his brief career in Britain, among them the Coronation Cup, Ascot Gold Cup, the Gimcrack and the Ebor. He also took Fiorentina to victory in the Irish 1,000 Guineas. In the United States he won the San Diego Stakes.

He finally retired from the saddle in 1971, his last winner being Classic Mission in the Victoria Derby. He had ridden a total of 2,278 winners, and his big race victories included two WS Cox Plates (1957 and 1958); two Golden Slippers (1970 and 1971); three Sydney Cups (1946, 1966 and 1968); two Victoria Derbys (1957 and 1971); and five AJC Derbys (1949, 1957, 1962, 1963 and 1971). He also won 10 jockeys' championships in Sydney between 1957 and 1969.

Moore continued to be involved in the sport after retiring as a jockey, taking out a trainer's licence. He trained briefly in France before going to Hong Kong, where he won the trainers' championship 11 times in 13 years. He then returned to Australia, settling in the Gold Coast area of south-east Queensland.

The first jockey to be granted a place in the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame (in 1986), Moore is also remembered in the form of the George Moore Medal, presented annually to Sydney's outstanding jockey.

In 1972 he was appointed OBE. Unable to attend an investiture, he received his medal through the post.

Already Dead, Decay NY, Die2K, Goatsucker and Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, all veterans of the game, race across the line with 12 points each on the Aussie jockey.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest in 1953 and was renowned as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died. He was 88. Hillary died Friday 01/11/08 at Auckland Hospital from a heart attack.

The New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called Ed and considering himself an "ordinary person with ordinary qualities".

The climbing accomplishment, part of a British climbing expedition, even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first acts.

But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of his climbing companion Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on 05/29/53.

Hillary remains the only nonpolitical person outside Britain honored as a member of the Britain's Order of the Garter, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II on just 24 knights and ladies living worldwide at any time.

Honored by the United Nations as one of its Global 500 conservationists in 1987, he was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities in several parts of the world.

One of his accolades was the Smithsonian Institution's James Smithson Bicentennial Medal for his "monumental explorations and humanitarian achievements," awarded in 1998.

Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Dead Wringers, GHOSTBUSTIN' BABE, If You're Still Alive...You're Dead To Me!!, Mhor Rioghain (Queen O' the Dead) and Reporting For Plastination all begin their ascent with 10 points each on the mountaineer. Team Dirt gets the first Taxi Squad hit of the year worth 3 points.

Carl N. Karcher, who parlayed a $325 investment in a hot-dog cart into one of the largest hamburger chains in the West died Friday 01/11/08. He was 90. The founder of the Carl's Jr. fast-food chain suffered from Parkinson's disease and was being treated for pneumonia when he died at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, said Beth Mansfield, a spokeswoman for CKE Restaurants.

Karcher, a deeply religious father of 12, was famous in the fast-food industry for his rags-to-riches story - a tale that was tainted in later years by an insider trading scandal and feuds with his board of directors that led to his eventual demise as chief executive officer.

The company and its founder grew even more estranged in recent years when Carl's Jr., seeking to woo a younger male clientele, launched a series of ads that included a scantily clad Paris Hilton washing a car and Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner, surrounded by beautiful women, expounding on the advantages of being able to enjoy a different variety of hamburger every night of the week.

In happier years, Karcher had appeared in the chain's ads himself, cutting a grandfatherly figure as he stood alongside the smiling Carl's Jr. "Happy Star" logo.

Karcher was working as a bread-truck driver in South Central Los Angeles when he noticed the large number of hot dog stands in the neighborhood and saw a business opportunity. He borrowed $311 on the 1941 Plymouth Super Deluxe he owned with his new bride, Margaret, added the rest in cash and bought his first pushcart hot dog stand. One cart soon became four, and by the end of World War II Karcher had opened his first restaurant, Carl's Drive-In barbecue, in Anaheim. He opened the first Carl's Jr. - named "Jr." to distinguish it from his full-service eatery - in 1956.

"With the help and support of my wife and children, my faith in God, my good health, my belief in the free enterprise system, and my willingness to work hard, there was no way I could have failed," he wrote in his 1991 autobiography, Never Stop Dreaming.

From the beginning, Karcher wanted to appeal to a slightly higher-end customer who would pay a little more for quality fast food. Some of his restaurants had carpeting and allowed customers to have their orders delivered to their table. Karcher was also among the first to pick up on America's growing interest in healthier fast food, introducing grilled chicken sandwiches and salad bars. The business fit well with the postwar boom and California's emerging car culture.

Today, Carl's Jr. has more than 1,000 locations across the West; its parent company, the Carpenteria, CA-based CKE Enterprises (CKE), made $1.52 billion in sales in 2006 and had 29,000 employees.

CKE also owns the Hardee's, La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill and Green Burrito chains.

Eternal Dirtnap gets a solo hit on the restauranteur, but only gets 5 points for the Taxi Squad hit. Sizzle!

THE last American commander of anti-Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War – who befriended Ernest Hemingway during the conflict – has died. Milton Wolff, 92, died on Monday 01/14/08 of heart failure in Berkeley, California, according to Peter Carroll, the chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an organisation devoted to preserving the history of North American volunteers in the war.

While in Spain, Mr Wolff met Hemingway, who was writing about the conflict, and the author served him his first ever Scotch.

Hemingway described Mr Wolff as being "tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed.”

Born in New York City on 10/07/15, Mr Wolff was only 21 when he stepped off the soapboxes in his native city, where he defended his Communist views, and into the Spanish war. By the time he was 22, he was the ninth leader of what was known as the Lincoln Brigade, which fought to support Spain's elected socialist government against General Francisco Franco.

About 3,000 Americans fought in volunteer battalions in Spain and more than 900 were killed. About 40 are still alive today.

Soon after the American fighters returned home on 12/15/39, Madrid fell to the Fascists, and the war was over.

But Mr Wolff never stopped fighting for what he considered worthy causes, including integration in baseball, and against the Vietnam War.

More Hemlock Please takes down a field marshall worth 20 points.

Allan Melvin, a popular character actor who played Cpl. Henshaw on the classic 1950s sitcom "The Phil Silvers Show" and later portrayed Archie Bunker's neighbor and friend Barney on "All in the Family," has died. He was 84. Melvin, who was in the original Broadway cast of "Stalag 17" in the early 1950s, died of cancer Thursday 01/17/08 at his home in Brentwood, said his wife of 64 years, Amalia.

During his five-decade career, Melvin made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, including playing different roles on at least eight episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" and playing Dick Van Dyke's old Army buddy on "The Dick Van Dyke Show". He also played Sgt. Charlie Hacker on "Gomer Pyle: U.S.M.C."; portrayed butcher Sam Franklin - Alice the housekeeper's boyfriend - on "The Brady Bunch"; and continued playing Barney when the hit "All in the Family" became "Archie Bunker's Place".

Melvin, who appeared in only one movie - the 1968 Doris Day comedy "With Six You Get Eggroll" - also did voice-over work in cartoons, including providing the voices of Magilla Gorilla and Bluto on "Popeye". He worked on numerous TV commercials as well, including playing Al the Plumber in the Liquid-Plumr commercials for 15 years.

After launching his show business career in the sound effects department of NBC radio in New York in 1944, Melvin began acting on radio soap operas and then moved into live television. At the same time, he did movie star impressions in Manhattan in a nightclub act written by his friend Richard Condon, who later wrote "The Manchurian Candidate".

Melvin's stand-up act led to his winning "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" radio show in the late 1940s.

He was playing Reed in "Stalag 17," the hit 1951-52 Broadway play set in a German POW camp during World War II, when he first caught Silvers' attention. "The Phil Silvers Show", originally titled "You'll Never Get Rich," was set on an Army base in Kansas and ran from 1955 to 1959. As Cpl. Henshaw, Melvin was the right-hand man to Silvers' con-man extraordinaire, Sgt. Ernie Bilko. "He was brilliant" as Henshaw, Mickey Freeman, who played Pvt. Zimmerman on the show, said Friday. In recent years, when fans would ask Freeman how many surviving cast members were left, he would reply, "Allan Melvin and me - that's a high mortality rate for a noncombatant unit."

Noting that Melvin "was a great mimic of voices," Freeman recalled an episode in which an officer arrived at Ft. Baxter to stop the men from gambling. One of the ways the officer did that, Freeman said, was to make them listen to his wife lecture on art. But the woman had an unusual twitch - pulling on her skirt - and Bilko and the other soldiers placed bets on how many times she would do that during her lecture.

Freeman recalled that Melvin, as Henshaw, was positioned outside the lecture hall with a microphone, broadcasting to the other soldiers on the base -- " 'She's up to 42 now . . . 43 . . . 44, and she's not even breathing heavy.' He made a whole racetrack thing out of it," Freeman said. "He was wonderful."

Melvin was born 02/18/23, in Kansas City, MO. His family soon moved to New York City, where he graduated from Columbia University as a journalism major.

Melvin retired from acting about 10 years ago - long after becoming a household face who was used to people spotting him in public and saying, "Hey, Henshaw" or "Hey, Sam the Butcher!"

Life's a Bitch, Then You Die and Playin for Bonz get some meat for their diets, scoring 18 points each on the character actor.

Georgia Frontiere, the St. Louis native who became a hometown hero when she brought the NFL's Rams from Los Angeles in 1995, died Friday 01/18/08. She was 80. Frontiere had been hospitalized for breast cancer for several months, the Rams said in a statement posted on their Web site.

The one-time nightclub singer was married seven times, starting at age 15. Her sixth husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, owned the Los Angeles Rams at the time of his drowning death in 1979.

The Rams moved twice under Frontiere's leadership, first relocating from the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1980 to Anaheim, 35 miles away. St. Louis' original NFL franchise, the Cardinals, had left for Arizona in 1988. After the city failed to land an expansion team, civic leaders built a $260 million, taxpayer-financed domed stadium anyway, in hopes of luring another team.

Frontiere, born in St. Louis, agreed in January 1995 to move, causing her to be demonized in Southern California but heralded in her hometown. At a downtown rally soon after the move was announced, thousands chanted "Georgia! Georgia!" "You take my breath away," Frontiere told the crowd. "It's so good to be back in St. Louis, my hometown." The Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000.

The Rams were the first major sports team to arrive in California when then they moved from Cleveland in 1946. They became the first football or baseball team to leave the state with the move to St. Louis.

Frontiere was a fixture at Rams games during the heyday of the "Greatest Show on Turf" teams that made the playoffs five out of six seasons from 1999 through 2004. Led by quarterback Kurt Warner, running back Marshall Faulk and receivers Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, the Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl 23-16 and lost the Super Bowl two seasons later on a last-second field goal by the New England Patriots.

Frontiere was born Georgia Irwin on 11/21/27, and attended Soldan High School before moving to California at age 15. She wed that year, though the marriage was eventually annulled, according to published reports. Her second husband was killed when hit by a bus. She left her third husband to try to make it as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Her fourth marriage - to a stage manager of the Sacramento Music Circus - ended in divorce after three years. Husband No. 5 was a Miami television producer.

She married Rosenbloom in 1966, shortly after he took over the Baltimore Colts. He eventually swapped that franchise for the Rams, which his wife took control of after he drowned. Frontiere remarried again after Rosenbloom's death. Her seventh husband, Dominic Frontiere, was an award-winning composer. They divorced in 1988 upon his release from prison after serving time on tax charges related to the scalping of more than 2,500 tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl in Pasadena.

Frontiere left day-to-day operation of her team to Shaw, both when the franchise was in Southern California and after the move to St. Louis. Shaw continues to run the team from Los Angeles. The team has missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.

Frontiere became involved in several philanthropic efforts in St. Louis after moving the team, including the creation in 1997 of the St. Louis Rams Foundation. According to the team's Web site, the Rams and the foundation have contributed more than $5 million to charities in the St. Louis area.

Frontiere also committed $1 million to the Fulfillment Fund, an organization that helps needy high school students pay for college. She has served as a member of several boards, including the United Way of Greater St. Louis, Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club, Saint Louis Symphony, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

In addition to her two children, she is survived by six grandchildren, and Earle Weatherwax, her companion of 19 years.

Already Dead, Bud Dwyer's Brains, Check the Cut List Redux, Decay NY, Goatsucker, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, Life'll Kill Ya, More Hemlock Please, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, Skeleton In Their Closet, SPT On Your Grave, Sudden Death/Game Over and Team Dirt all get the minimum 5 points for the NFL franchisee. Don't Fear the Reaper and Happiest Epitaphs catch 3 points each for the taxi Squad hit.

Don Wittman, who has called some of Canada's most significant sporting events, died of cancer Saturday 01/19/08. He was 71.

For more than 40 years, Wittman was a familiar face on CBC television. He did the play-by-play for Grey Cups and Stanley Cups, and covered curling, golf, and track and field, as well. He was a fixture at both summer and winter Olympics. Wittman called Ben Johnson's steroid-tainted victory in the 100 meters at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and he was there when Donovan Bailey sprinted to gold in the same event in the 1996 Games at Atlanta.

Wittman saw Wayne Gretzky win Stanley Cups and was in Czechoslovakia in 1987 for the Canada-USSR brawl at the world junior hockey championships.

During the 1972 Olympics in Munich he stood on a balcony and looked into the masked face of one of the terrorists who kidnapped nine Israeli athletes.

Wittman, chosen as the 2002 broadcaster of the year by Sports Media Canada, was a member of the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame and Manitoba's provincial sports hall of fame.

Already Dead, Ethnic Cleansing, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Goatsucker, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, Skeleton In Their Closet and Van Owens Body all get the call on the Canadian sportscaster worth 8 points each.

Suzanne Pleshette, 70, a smoky-voiced actress who appeared in hundreds of television programs and was best known as Bob Newhart's sardonic TV wife in the 1970s, died Saturday night 01/19/08. She had under gone chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, and died of respiratory failure at her home in Los Angeles.

Ms. Pleshette was a strikingly beautiful actress and had one of the deepest, most distinctive voices in show business. "Telephone operators have called me 'sir' since I was 6," she once said. Yet her dark allure never quite translated into a movie career that was her aim in the late 1950s.

Her talents were easily adaptable across film genres, from westerns to Disney fare. Her most-remembered film role was the schoolteacher killed by crazed gulls in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963). Yet several of her starring projects were terrible, including the 1965 adaptation of John O'Hara's book "A Rage to Live," in which she was a socialite nymphomaniac.

Instead of a career as a front-rank movie actress, Ms. Pleshette thrived as a fetching personality on television and in interviews. She proved capable of sassy, well-timed bon mots. To one reporter, she described how she won roles with her best physical asset by saying, "I got every job I ever got walking out of the office." Such risque commentary made her a popular guest on "Hollywood Squares" and Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show. Her banter with Carson brought her to the attention of comedian Newhart, and she eagerly agreed to a leading part in his self-titled sitcom.

"When I started in movies they said I'd be this big star, but I was only a moderate one," she told the Toronto Star in 1989. "Not enough good pictures. It's important to be in a good piece of work no matter the size of one's own part."

She received two Emmy nominations for best actress for her work on "The Bob Newhart Show," which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1978. She portrayed Emily Hartley, an elementary school teacher married to Newhart, who played a Chicago psychiatrist named Bob Hartley.

Ms. Pleshette reprised the role of Emily for the ending of CBS's "Newhart," Bob Newhart's successor sitcom of the 1980s in which he was a Vermont innkeeper named Dick Loudon. In the final episode, Newhart is knocked unconscious by a golf ball. When he wakes, he finds himself in bed with Emily on his old television-show set and tells her about a terrible dream in which he owned a New England hotel. The episode was regarded as one of the cleverest finishes of a television series, and one of the few times an ending in which "it was all a dream" worked.

In the interim, Ms. Pleshette had a long career as a sitcom guest star and in made-for-television movies, the best of which was her Emmy-nominated leading role in CBS's "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean" (1990), as the social-climbing Manhattan real-estate magnate convicted of federal income tax evasion.

New York Times television critic John J. O'Connor wrote:

"Even with prosthetic cosmetics, Ms. Pleshette is considerably more attractive than Mrs. Helmsley, but her performance captures what could very well be the essence of the woman. The portrait is all the more effective for being not entirely critical."

Suzanne Pleshette was born on 01/31/37, in New York. Her father, Eugene, became a theater and television executive. Her mother, Geraldine, was a ballerina. As a child, Ms. Pleshette appeared in a revival of Maxwell Anderson's "Truckline Cafe" at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse. She attended a performing arts high school and the now-defunct Finch College, both in Manhattan, and studied social work at Syracuse University before starting her entertainment career in earnest.

In 1958, she won good reviews for supporting roles in Broadway shows such as S.N. Behrman's drama "The Cold Wind and the Warm" - Meisner, her early mentor, was also in the cast. That same year, she made her film debut in the Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy".

Ms. Pleshette also began a prolific television career in such series as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Ben Casey" and "The Fugitive". She received an Emmy nomination for her guest appearance as a happy-go-lucky woman dying of leukemia on a 1961 episode of "Dr. Kildare". Also that year, she

replaced Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan in the Broadway play "The Miracle Worker", and a magazine photo of Ms. Pleshette captured the attention of film producer-director Delmer Daves. He cast her in "Rome Adventure" (1962), in the leading role of a teacher who finds love in Italy with artist, played by Troy Donahue.

She married her co-star but the relationship deteriorated quickly. They were divorced after eight months, although she and Donahue put aside differences to act together in Raoul Walsh's poorly received 1964 western, "A Distant Trumpet". Ms. Pleshette was married to businessman Tom Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000. The next year, she married TV comedian Tom Poston, whom she had known for decades. He died in April 2007. Survivors include three stepchildren, Francesca Poston of Nashville, Jason Poston of Los Angeles and Hudson Poston of Portland, Ore.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, she played opposite Steve McQueen ("Nevada Smith") and Tony Curtis ("40 Pounds of Trouble"). She was particularly well cast with the laconic James Garner in "Mister Buddwing," in which she loves amnesiac Garner, and "Support Your Local Gunfighter," in which she loves con man Garner. She starred in several Disney comedies of the period, including "The Ugly Dachshund" with Dean Jones, "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin" with Roddy McDowall and "Blackbeard's Ghost" with Peter Ustinov and Jones.

Ms. Pleshette periodically returned to the screen in family fare ("Oh, God! Book II," "The Shaggy D.A.") and did voice-over work on more recent animated films, such as "The Lion King II" and "Spirited Away." She also played on Broadway with Richard Mulligan as a divorced couple in a

1982 flop called "Special Occasions."

She remained a durable television performer, even if she never quite equaled the success of "The Bob Newhart Show." In recent years, Ms. Pleshette took guest roles on sitcoms such as "8 Simple Rules" and "Will & Grace," often as the outspoken mother of a main character. The parts were not far-fetched. When starring in NBC's short-lived medical drama "Nightingales" in 1989, she told a reporter: "You call us 'Charlie's Angels' in white uniforms and I'll sock ya!"

Adios Amigos, Already Dead, Cape Cadaver, Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Dead Like Them, Death Be Not Proud, Don't Fear the Reaper, Excuse Me For Coffin, Gratefull Dead, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, I Am Stretched On Your Grave, Made It Ma! Top Of the World!, Mhor Rioghain (Queen O' the Dead), Otis' Cirrhosis from Rafe Hollister's Still, Reporting For Plastination, Schadenfreude, Sweeney Todd's Pie Filling, Ten Toes Up and What's a TSCU? all get 5 points for the husky-voiced actress. Dead Can Dance settles for 3 points with their Taxi Squad hit.

Victor S Johnson Jr, president of Aladdin Industries and one of Nashville's most prominent citizens outside the music industry, died Saturday 01/19/08. He was 91.

Mr. Johnson was born in Chicago, IL on 06/12/16. He received his BA degree from Amherst College in 1938 and earned his law degree from Yale University in 1941. During his lifetime, he was awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College, Hamilton College and Meharry Medical College. Upon graduation from law school, he served in the Judge Advocate General's office, rising to the rank of Captain.

After his father's sudden death in 1943, Mr. Johnson assumed the role of interim president of the Mantle Lamp Company of America, the company his father founded in 1908 to provide superior kerosene lighting to rural America. Upon completing his military obligation in 1946, Mr. Johnson entered the family business on a full time basis at its headquarters in Chicago. In 1949, he decided to move both the executive offices and the manufacturing facilities to a newly constructed plant in Nashville. Later named Aladdin Industries, he led the company as its Chairman and CEO for the next thirty-five years. Under his leadership, the company expanded its business interests from kerosene lamps to thermos bottles, school lunch boxes, electronic components, food service systems and real estate development.

Johnson was an industrial and civic lion, and one of ten most influential people in Nashville. He kept Aladdin alive, due to his love of the lamp created by his father, despite declining sales. Johnson supported collectors and attended Gatherings of Aladdin Knights in Nashville. The lamp division was purchased by 14 passionate Aladdin Knights in 1999 to continue manufacture in Clarksville, TN.

In 1971 he became a partner in a massive real estate development project to convert an eight hundred fifty acre floodplain just north of Nashville's central business district into one of the city's premier business parks knows as MetroCenter. Additionally, he was an influential force behind the idea to create the Tennessee Performing Arts Center where he served on the Board of Directors of its foundation and received the organization's Applause Award in 1985. He is also credited with proposing to then Governor Ned McWherter that the State of Tennessee acquire land north of the State capitol for what later became the Tennessee Bicentennial Mall.

Over the years, Mr. Johnson was involved with United Way, the Nashville Committee on Foreign Relations, the Atlanta Regional Panel of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships, and the Tennessee Historical Commission to name a few.

Century Mark carries away 20 points in their Speed Racer lunch box for the solo hit on the industry icon. The Rules Committee voted 4-3 in favor of Johnson, ruling that major media missed the death of this important industrialist.

World War I veteran Louis de Cazenave died Sunday 01/20/08 at age 110, leaving just one known French survivor of the 1914-1918 conflict. De Cazenave, who took part in the Battle of the Somme, died in his home in Brioude in central France, said his son, also named Louis de Cazenave.

"He died at his house, in his sleep, without suffering," the son said by telephone. He said his father was to be buried Tuesday in Brioude.

The last known French veteran of World War I - known as "poilus", meaning hairy or tough - is Lazare Ponticelli, also 110.

Born 10/16/1897, de Cazenave was called up to fight in 1916 and served in different infantry regiments before joining an artillery unit in January 1918, according to a statement from the French president's office.

De Cazenave took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, in which more than a million soldiers died, and in the liberation of France from German forces, the statement said.

"His death is an occasion for all of us to think of the 1.4 million French who sacrificed their lives during this conflict, for the 4.5 million wounded, for the 8.5 million mobilized," President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement.

Goodbye Cruel World shoots up a solo hit for 20 points on the old soldier and takes the lead for Oldest Stiff.

Convicted sex offender Kenneth Eugene Parnell, known for kidnapping Steven Stayner in 1972, died of natural causes on Monday 01/21/08 at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, CA.

Parnell was 76 and was in hospice status when he died. He was serving a 25-years-to-life term under the state's three strikes law for attempting to buy a 4-year-old boy for $500 in 2003. The Alameda County jury found him guilty in 2004 of soliciting a person to kidnap someone, attempting to buy a person and attempted child stealing. Parnell actually had five strikes. In December 1972, he kidnapped 7-year-old Steven Stayner of Merced, the younger brother of Cary Stayner who was convicted of killing three tourists and a Yosemite National Park naturalist in 1999.

On 02/14/80, Parnell abducted 5-year-old Timothy White of Ukiah in 1980. He was arrested after Stayner and White hitchhiked to Ukiah and went to a police station. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison and was paroled to Berkeley in 1985 after serving five years.

Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1985.

Parnell's criminal history began at age 19 when he reportedly abducted and sodomized a 9-year-old Bakersfield boy in 1951. He also was convicted of robbery and grand larceny for using a gun to rob a service station owner of $150 in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1960.

Flatliners steals away with a 20-pointer solo hit on the notorious criminal.

Richard Darman, a former White House budget director who helped convince former President George HW Bush to renege on his no new taxes pledge, has died. He was 64. Darman died Friday 01/25/08 in Washington after battling leukemia for several months, according to a statement issued by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a longtime friend.

Darman was chief architect of a compromise designed to reduce the federal budget deficit. Although it drew praise from many economic analysts, the plan included tax increases that broke Bush's 1988 election promise, "Read my lips, no new taxes!" Although the change of policy is partly blamed for Bush's re-election defeat to Bill Clinton, it contributed to balancing the federal budgets in the late 1990s.

Darman sometimes drew criticism for being abrasive, intellectually arrogant and overly concerned with his standing in the White House pecking order. He had a reputation for being so crafty that "Darmanesque" became a word to describe maneuvering that was clever and Machiavellian. He had a more playful side and was known for pranks. He once donned a gorilla suit to amuse his boss, the president.

Darman began his government career in 1971 as a deputy assistant secretary in the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He later held high-level posts in the Defense, Justice and Commerce departments. He served as a top aide to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who lost his job in the "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal. He was deputy chief of staff to President Reagan while Baker was running

the staff. Baker became his mentor, which helped Darman survive in the Bush White House. When Baker switched jobs to become Treasury secretary, Darman went with him, becoming deputy Treasury secretary.

Along with his jobs in many federal agencies, Darman taught at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives got some good advice on the Washington insider and now has 24 more points (20 for solo, 4 for Under 65).

Viktor Schreckengost, a celebrated industrial designer whose products included mass-produced dinnerware, riding lawn mowers, bicycles and coffins, and who revolutionized trucking by putting the cab over the engine, died of respiratory arrest 01/26/08 at his Tallahassee, FL condominium. He was 101.

Mr. Schreckengost was one of the world's most prolific artists of commercial goods, and his impact on the economy once was calculated at more than $200 billion. He spent decades as an independent contractor for such companies as American Limoges, Harris-Seybold and Sears, Roebuck. During World War II, he worked on a top-secret radar-recognition project for the Navy.

His 1932 cab-over-engine truck for White Motor Co. was a huge boon to laborers during the Depression, who were paid by the freight they could carry. The extra cargo space would allow the truckers to pay off their vehicle in a year. He also influenced many generations of artists and industrial designers who passed through the industrial-design department he founded in 1931 at what became the Cleveland Institute of Art. His students included Joe Oros, chief designer of the Ford Mustang.

Mr. Schreckengost - whose name means "frightening guest" in German - was born 06/03/1906, in Sebring, OH. He learned clay sculpting from his father, a commercial potter, and said his parents expected their children to make their toys. One creation of Mr. Schreckengost's was a plywood plane that had a 10-foot wingspan and was built from piano crates. He used a wound-up inner tube to power the propeller and showed perhaps greater ingenuity by having a friend test-fly it - from an elementary-school fire escape three stories off the ground. The plane did not work, but the friend survived.

As a young man, Mr. Schreckengost was interested in cartooning, but he moved to ceramics while studying at the Cleveland School of Art. After his graduation in 1929, he went to Austria to continue his artistic studies. He became a proficient jazz saxophonist in Vienna.

Upon his return, he created for Cowan Pottery of Rocky River, OH. Possibly his most famous work: an art deco punchbowl featuring images of New York nightlife. Unknown to him at the time, it was commissioned by future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a gift for her husband. The "Jazz Bowl" sold at Sotheby's auction house for $254,400 in 2004.

In the early 1930s, he was hired by American Limoges to design what widely is believed to be the first modern mass-produced dinnerware. Its patterns had a Manhattan theme and became ubiquitous in homes of that era.

Mr. Schreckengost went on to design more than 100 bicycles for Sears, including the Spaceliner, Western Flyer and Campus Compact. He also was chief bicycle designer for Murray-Ohio, for whom he also designed the Pursuit Plane and other pedal cars.

He never had children but was known in his Cleveland Heights neighborhood for taking a keen interest in the playing habits of young people. At one point, he designed a little red wagon with a handle that bent to allow steering control by the person in the wagon.

In addition to the National Medal of Arts, which he received in 2006, Mr. Schreckengost earned the highest honor of the American Institute of Architects.

He continued teaching into his 90s and enjoyed painting Mexican fish.

Easel Kill Ya! designs a 20-pointer on the commercial artist.

Former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday 01/27/08. He was 86. Dozens of doctors had been rushed to the Pertamina Hospital in the capital, Jakarta, after Suharto's blood pressure fell suddenly Saturday night. Suharto had slipped out of consciousness for the first time in more than three weeks of treatment, doctors said. Suharto had been in intensive care with lung, heart and kidney failure since he was admitted to the hospital on 01/04/08. Over the past week his physicians had spoken of a recovery, but by Sunday that had changed dramatically. He had been in and out of the hospital several times since being toppled by a pro-democracy uprising during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis for heart problems and internal bleeding.

Suharto, who led a regime widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most brutal and corrupt, has lived a reclusive life in a comfortable villa in downtown Jakarta for the past decade. Historians say up to 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed during Suharto's rise to power from 1965 to 1968. His troops killed another 300,000 in military operations against independence movements in Papua, Aceh and East Timor. Suharto's poor health had kept him from facing trial, and no one has been punished for the killings.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International has said Suharto and his family amassed billions of dollars in stolen state funds, allegations the family is fighting in court.

Suharto's successors as head of state - BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - vowed to end corruption that took root under Suharto, yet it remains endemic at all levels of Indonesian society. With the court system paralyzed by corruption, the country has not confronted its bloody past. Rather than put on trial those accused of mass murder and multibillion-dollar theft, some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.

Some noted Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of

Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era's stability, when fuel and rice were affordable. But critics say Suharto squandered Indonesia's vast natural resources of oil, timber and gold, siphoning the nation's wealth to benefit his cronies and family like a mafia don.

Those who profited from Suharto's rule made sure he was never portrayed in a harsh light at home, so even though he was an ''iron-fisted, brutal, cold-blooded dictator,'' he was able to stay in his native country.

Like many Indonesians, Suharto used only one name. He was born Haji Mohammad Suharto on 06/08/21, to a family of rice farmers in the village of Godean, in the dominant Indonesian province of Central Java.

When Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch in 1949, Suharto quickly rose through the ranks of the military to become a staff officer. His career nearly foundered in the late 1950s, when the army's then commander, Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, accused him of corruption in awarding army contracts.

Absolute power came in September 1965 when the army's six top generals were murdered under mysterious circumstances, and their bodies dumped in an abandoned well in an apparent coup attempt. Suharto, next in line for command, quickly asserted authority over the armed forces and promoted himself to four-star general. Suharto then oversaw a nationwide purge of suspected communists and trade unionists, a campaign that stood as the region's bloodiest event since World War II until the Khmer Rouge established its gruesome regime in Cambodia a decade later. Experts put the number of deaths during the purge at between 500,000 and 1 million.

Over the next year, Suharto eased out of office Indonesia's first post-independence president, Sukarno, who died under house arrest in 1970. The

legislature rubber-stamped Suharto's presidency and he was re-elected unopposed six times. During the Cold War, Suharto was considered a reliable friend of Washington, which didn't oppose his violent occupation of Papua in 1969 and the bloody 1974 invasion of East Timor. The latter, a former Portuguese colony, became Asia's youngest country with a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite in 1999.

Even Suharto's critics agree his hardline policies kept a lid on Indonesia's extremists. He locked up hundreds of suspected Islamic militants without trial, some of whom later carried out deadly suicide bombings with the al-Qaida-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Meanwhile, the ruling clique that formed around Suharto - nicknamed the ''Berkeley mafia'' after their American university, the University of California, Berkeley - transformed Indonesia's economy and attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment.

By the late 1980s, Suharto was describing himself as Indonesia's ''father of development,'' taking credit for slow