Tribute to those who made a difference

WITH such names as Rothermere, English and Cudlipp featuring in the obituaries of 1998, Britain marked the passing of a newspaper era.

Globally, many tears were shed for Frank Sinatra, none for Pol Pot.

At home, we lost a social conscience with the passing early in the year of the Commissioner for Children, Laurie O'Reilly.

These are just some of the people whose deaths this year reminded us of the mark they left, in one way or another, on the world.

JANUARY

Helen Wills Moody, American tennis player who won eight Wimbledon titles, the United States open at 17 and the tennis gold medal at the Paris Olympics in 1924, aged 92.

Frank Muir, British comedian best known for his collaboration with Denis Norden in such classics as Take It from Here, My Word and My Music, 77.

Salvatore (Sonny) Bono, songwriter (the Searchers' Needles and Pins) and singer who, as one half of the Sonny and Cher duo, took root at the top of the pop charts (I Got You Babe, The Beat Goes On) before moving into politics, 62.

Georgi Sviridov, Russian composer described by Dmitri Shostakovich as his most talented pupil, 82.

Sir Michael Tippett, ranked as one of Britain's most important contemporary musical talents whose compositions included imaginative new sounds such as the wind machine that ends his Fourth Symphony, 93.

Laurie O'Reilly, as Commissioner for Children renowned for his commitment to the welfare of young New Zealanders, of cancer, 55.

Kenichi Fukui, Japanese winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his theories explaining more clearly the course of chemical reactions, 79.

Walter E. Diemer, Philadelphia accountant whose Double Gum creation in 1928 became the first commercial bubble gum, 93.

Carl Perkins, singer-songwriter (Blue Suede Shoes) who was there at the birth of rock 'n' roll and in whose debt are such names as Presley, Lennon, Clapton and Dylan, 65.

Pierre Boulat, French photographer whose famous pictures for Life magazine included the Algerian war and a study of the United States military academy at West Point, 73.

Jack Lord, lead actor in the cast of Hawaii Five-O, which with 12 seasons from 1968 was the longest-running police drama on American television, 77.

Shinichi Suzuki, Japanese teacher whose Suzuki method of learning the violin at an early age spread worldwide, 99.

Victor Passmore, leading figure in British abstract art, 89.

FEBRUARY

Haroun Tazieff, Polish-born French adventurer, environmentalist, vulcanologist and cabinet minister who brought the power of volcanic eruptions to the public through dramatic films of lava streams, 83.

Enoch Powell, British politician whose 1968 "river of blood" speech on halting immigration saw him reviled in some quarters and revered in others for expressing the opinion of many British people, 85.

Carl Wilson, founding - and often stabilising - member of the Beach Boys and lead singer on many of their hits, including Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, of lung cancer, 51.

Halldor Laxness, Icelander author and playwright who won the 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature, 95.

Martha Ellis Gellhorn, American writer and journalist who as one of the first women war correspondents rejected objectivity in favour of damning the bad guys, covered the civil war in Spain, the London Blitz, the Vietnam and central American conflicts while being permanently irritated that she was better known to many as the third wife, from 1940 to 45, of Ernest Hemingway, 89.

Bob Merrill, American songwriter whose first big hit was If I Knew You Were Coming I'd've Baked a Cake and went on to produce such hits as How Much is that Doggie in the Window? Sparrow in the Tree Top and Mambo Italiano as well as writing music or lyrics or both for Broadway musicals including Funny Girl and Breakfast at Tiffany's, 74.

Ces Blazey, sports administrator whose positions included chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Union and chairman of the New Zealand Amateur Athletics Association at the time of the divisive 1981 South African rugby tour, 88.

Henny Youngman, London-born son of honeymooning American Russian emigres whose six decades of joking, "Take my wife – please"; "I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother," earned him the title King of the Oneliners, 91.

George Hitchings, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Dr Gertrude Elion for their research for Burroughs Wellcome (now Glaxo Wellcome) that led to the creation of drugs to treat leukaemia, gout, malaria and immune deficiencies including AZT for Aids, 92.

Henry Livings, English playwright and actor whose best-known work was Eh?, which Peter Hall subsequently filmed as Work is a Four-letter Word, 68.

Todd Duncan, the first Porgy in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, premiering at the Alvin Theatre in 1935, and, in 1945, the first black singer to join the New York City Opera, singing Tonio in a production of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, 95.

MARCH

Dermott Morgan, Irish actor who played the title role in the television series Father Ted, of a heart attack, 45.

Fred Friendly, president of CBS News from 1964 to 1966 (they departed company after the network decided to broadcast a Lucille Ball rerun instead of a key Senate committee hearing on Vietnam) whose commitment to quality television news coverage probably left him forever frustrated, 82.

James McDougal, Arkansas businessman and key witness in the Whitewater investigations against President Clinton, of a heart attack in a Texas medical prison where he was serving three years for savings and loan corruption, 57.

Lloyd Bridges, father of acting brothers Jeff and Beau, a blacklisted actor in the McCarthy era before becoming for five decades a familiar face on the large (High Noon) and small (Sea Hunt) screens, 85.

Eleanor Shuman, who remembered the screams when, as an 18-month-old, she survived the sinking of the Titanic. One of the last half-dozen survivors, she died just a fortnight before the latest film of the event swept the Oscars, 87.

Clarence Beeby, key figure in the development of New Zealand education, 95.

Benjamin Spock, the American paediatrician whose revolutionary 1946 book, Baby and Child Care, which sold 43 million copies in English-speaking countries and was translated into 38 languages, became virtually a security blanket for post-war parents. Twenty years later, he led the products of those families in anti-Vietnam war protests, 94.

Tim Douglas, owner-trainer whose 1974 Horse of the Year, Battle Heights, carried his colours to cup victories on both sides of the Tasman, 78.

Hideo Shima, Japanese engineer who designed the Tokaido Shinkansen, or bullet train, network, 96.

Bryce Subritzky, star of New Zealand speedway who also had success on the highly competitive English circuit, 67.

Sir Derek Barton, English scientist who won the 1969 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for research that added a third dimension to the prevailing two-dimensional view of chemical structure, 79.

Galina Ulanova, Russian dancer who joined the Maryinsky theatre in Leningrad in 1928, transferred to the Bolshoi in 1944 from where she captivated Moscow and international audiences for 16 years, before going on to teach her successors, 88.

Ferdinand (Ferry) Porsche, designer of the German sports car that carries the family name and son of the creator of the Volkswagen Beetle, 88.

Daniel Massey, British actor who began his career as a song-and-dance man, gathered a limited number of film credits, including Star!, in which he played his godfather, Noel Coward, but his most effective work was done on the stage, 64.

Bella Abzug, American labour and civil rights lawyer, peace activist and battler for women's rights who campaigned for Congress in 1970 on the slogan "This woman's place is in the House" and was described by Gloria Steinman as "a feminist before any of us knew what the word was," 77.

APRIL

Wynette Pugh, who dropped her last name in favour of a first name Tammy as she sang her way into American country and western recording history with more than 50 albums, sales of more than 30 million recordings, recognition as the queen of country music and a signature tune Stand By Your Man, of a blood clot, 55.

Nguyen Thach, Vietnamese diplomat who played a leading role in the Paris peace negotiations that led to the American withdrawal from South Vietnam, before as Foreign Minister in the 1980s trying to improve relations with the West, 75.

Archbishop Seraphin, head of the Greek Orthodox Church since 1974 who used the Church's power in battles with Greek governments, 84.

Sir Ian McGregor, as head of the National Coal Board the Scottish industrialist, at Margaret Thatcher's bidding, broke the year-long 1984-85 British miners strike, 85.

Alex Ritchie, British adventurer who the previous year climbed on to a balloon gondola to jettison fuel tanks during a crash-dive on one of Richard Branson's round-the-world attempts, from injuries sustained in a January sky-diving accident, 52.

Francis Durbridge, creator of the Paul Temple detective series, which ran for three decades on BBC radio from 1938 and first appeared on television in 1968, 85.

Maurice Stans, the Republican Party fundraiser who became tainted by the use the money was put to in the efforts to re-elect Richard Nixon that became forever known as Watergate, 90.

Fred Davis, for eight times from 1948 the world snooker champion as well as in 1980 the world billiards champion, 84.

Marie Louise Meilleur, Canadian who was recognised by Guinness as the world's oldest person and whose progeny include four great-great-great-grandchildren, 117, and Felicie Young Cormier, Louisiana resident who traced her age through family records, 118.

Denis Howell, twice Minister of Sport in British Labour Governments of the 1960s and 70s whose appointment as Minister for Drought in 1976 had an almost immediate effect with heavy rain falling 10 days into his tenure, 74.

Pol Pot, his Cambodian genocide ranks him alongside Hitler and Stalin as one of the beasts of the century, 70s.

Linda McCartney, photographer, singer, vegetarian businesswoman and wife of Beatle Paul McCartney, of breast cancer, 51.

Octavio Paz, Mexican poet and essayist who was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, 84.

Archbishop Sir Trevor Huddlestone, London Anglican whose experiences in South Africa, from which he was banned in 1956, led to his co-founding and leading from 1981 to 1994 the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 84.

James Earl Ray, convicted killer of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King in 1968 whose subsequent recanting of his guilty plea and bid for a trial gained support within the King family, seeking to shed light on conspiracy theories, 70.

Constantine Karamanlis, Greek Prime Minister for a total of 14 years and President for 10 whose return from exile in 1974 set Greece on the road to democracy and membership of the European Community, 91.

Joshua Gordon Lippincott, American engineer and logo designer whose diverse creations included the Campbell soup label and the 1947 Preston Tucker dream car, 89.

MAY

Eldridge Cleaver, rapist, revolutionary and, later, a Republican whose challenge, "You're either part of the problem or part of the solution," became a slogan of the sixties, 62.

Chatichai Choonhavan, as the first Thai Prime Minister to hold office (1988-91) as the result of an election he presided over the early days of the economic boom before it turned to bust, 76.

Frank (The Voice) Sinatra, Ol' Blue Eyes, singer, actor (1955 best supporting Oscar for From Here to Eternity) whose moving with the generational and social flow made him an American icon, 82.

Lord Cudlipp, English journalist, publisher and Mirror Group chief, described by a colleague as "a walking, talking tabloid newspaper from his teens," 84.

Telford Taylor, American Army officer who succeeded his boss, Attorney-General Robert Jackson, in 1946 as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and later became an early opponent of the communist-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy, 90.

Wolf Mankowitz, English novelist, poet, screenwriter (The Millionairess, Casino Royale, Black Beauty) and porcelain expert whose earliest memories, including his Russian emigre father's East End street stall, were of "a battle for your pitch, against the police, the customer, life, everything," 73.

Phil Hartman, Canadian-born actor and comedian (Saturday Night Live, NewsRadio and voices for The Simpsons), shot by his wife before she turned the gun on herself, 49.

Barry Goldwater, conservative American senator who, despite suffering a resounding defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats in the 1964 presidential election, laid the groundwork for the conservative revolution within the Republican Party that took Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980, 89.

JUNE

Lorne Welch, an English aeronautical engineer linked to two of the Second World War's most ambitious escape plans, the film-immortalised Great Escape from Stalagluft III and the Colditz glider, 81.

Sani Abacha, Nigerian general believed instrumental in maintaining military rule in the country even before he took over the leadership in 1993, of a heart attack, 54.

Dieter Roth, German-born sculptor, poet, video and graphic artist and musician who used such material for his works as sausage, waste paper. stained tablecloths and howling dogs, 82.

Sir David English, British journalist who turned the Daily Mail into a paper for the Middle England he identified with and whose strong support of Margaret Thatcher earned him a knighthood in 1982, 67.

Dame Catherine Cookson, English author (Kate Hannigan. Bill Bailey, the Mallen trilogy) whose 100 novels sold more than 100 million copies in 18 languages, 91.
Hammond Innes, English writer (The Wreck of the Mary Deare) of 35 thriller and adventure novels, 83.

Patrick Dunn, Auckland doctor and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, 81.

Reg Smythe, English cartoonist whose creation Andy Capp was syndicated to 1700 newspapers in 48 countries, 81.

Maureen O'Sullivan, Irish-born American stage and screen actor (The Barretts of Wimpole St, David Copperfield, Hannah and Her Sisters) but best known for her role as Jane opposite Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, 87.

Lounes Matoub, Algerian protest singer described by French President Jacques Chirac as the "voice of Algeria, loud and clear," in an ambush by a radical Muslim guerrilla group, 42.

Peter Mander, his success with Jack Cropp in yachting's Sharpie class at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics made him a member of the elite of New Zealand sport who have won Olympic gold, 69.

Horst Jankowski, German jazz pianist who made the international pop charts with Walk in the Black Forest, 62.

JULY

Leonard Franklin Sly, otherwise Roy Rogers, singer, actor, businessman and philanthropist who joined the select few who laid claim to the title King of the Cowboys, 86.

Maurice Holmes, master New Zealand reinsman whose 1666 winning drives brought him the national drivers championship 18 times, the first when he was 21, 89.

Moshood Abiola, jailed figurehead of the Nigerian opposition after the aborted 1993 presidential elections, which he was believed to have won, 60.

Wayne Gilbert, Australian chief executive of Mercury Energy who took personal responsibility for the Auckland power blackout just four months before, 60.

Richard McDonald, who created with his brother a self-service, drive-in restaurant in the late 1940s in San Bernadino, California. Hamburgers were 15c, cheeseburgers 19c, malts 20c and french fries 10c. Now there are 23,000 McDonalds restaurants in 111 countries, 89.

Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese general made infamous by the 1968 photograph that showed him about to execute a bound prisoner, 67.

Miroslav Holub, Czech with a double life, immunologist by day and, in the decade after the 1968 uprising, banned but celebrated poet by night, 74.

Marc Hunter, whose band Dragon in the 1970s was among the first of a new wave of New Zealand rock bands but proved through regular revivals to be of notable durability, of throat cancer, 44.

Robert Young, American actor best known for his television series Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, MD, 91.

Tazio Secchiaroli, the member of the Italian paparazzi whose photographs of irate celebrities inspired the 1960 Federico Fellini classic La Dolce Vita, 73.

Alan Shepard, in 1961 the first American in space and 10 years later the fifth person to walk on the moon, 74.

Roland (Tiny) Rowland, newspaper-owning India-born Briton of Dutch and German parents who turned his London & Rhodesian Mining & Land Co into the multibillion dollar international conglomerate Lonrho, but was perhaps best known for his unsuccessful battle with Mohammed al Fayed for that quintessential English symbol, Harrods department store, 80.

Jerome Robbins, American choreographer and director whose talents took him comfortably between the New York Ballet Company and Broadway (Gypsy, The King and I, West Side Story), 79.

AUGUST

Shari Lewis, whose Shari Lewis Show, which starred her best-known creation, Lamb Chop, was described as a kind of situation comedy for puppets, 65.

Todor Zhirkov, communist ruler of Bulgaria from 1954 until his overthrow as the East European dominoes fell in 1989, 86.

Julian Green, French-born novelist (Moira, Each Man in His Darkness) and playwright of American parents whose works led to his being regarded as one of the pre-eminent stylists in the French language, 97.

Otto Wichterle, Czech chemist whose experiments in 1961 produced the first soft contact lenses, 84.

Wanda Horowitz, daughter of one musical genius, Arturo Toscanini, and wife of another, Vladimir Horowitz, who once said of her life with the two: "My father made me neurotic, and my husband made me crazy." 90.

Elena Garro, Mexican writer who rose above her country's gender barrier to become one of its most important literary figures alongside her husband, the Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, who died in April, 78.

E.G. Marshall, American actor who specialised in legal and statesman-like characters on stage, screen (The Caine Mutiny) and television (The Defenders), 84.

Sir Tosswill Woollaston, Nelson artist whose legacy of works ensures that he will be forever one of New Zealand's greatest painters, 88.

Tommy (T.J.) Smith, one of the great Australian racing trainers and identities, of Tulloch and Kingston Town fame, with more than 7000 wins to his name, 79.

Frederick Reines, American physicist whose work on neutrinos, virtually massless subatomic particles thought to be beyond detection, was rewarded with the 1995 Nobel Prize for physics, 80.

SEPTEMBER

Viscount Rothermere, one of the last of the great British newspaper barons whose transformation of the Daily Mail from a listless broadsheet to lively tabloid earned him the reputation for having inspired the revolution in Britain's mid-market papers, 73.

Jonathan Mann, pioneer in the fight against Aids, head of the United Nations global Aids programme from 1986 to 1990; with his wife, Mary Lou Clements-Mann, head of centre for immunisation research at John Hopkins University, in the Swissair crash off Nova Scotia that claimed 229 lives, both aged 51.

Allen Drury, American writer whose 19 novels included Advise and Consent and six sequels, 80.

Akira Kurosawa, perfectionist Japanese director among whose films, which included Seven Samurai, Ikiru and Ran, are some considered the finest ever made, 88.

Sir Francis Renouf, Wellington business innovator linked to the establishment of a national share index in 1957 whose contributions to tennis were recorded with the naming of the Renouf Tennis Centre in the capital, 80.

George Corley Wallace, four-time governor of Alabama, four-time candidate for United States President injured in an assassination attempt in 1972 who went from rabid segregationist to what former President Jimmy Carter described as "one of the most dedicated and effective Southern leaders in bringing about reconciliation among our people," 79.

Yang Shangkun, Chinese general-turned-politician, President from 1988 to 1992 who sent the Army he had modernised against the student-led 1989 protest in Tiananmen Square, 91.

Florence Griffith-Joyner, American runner who brought style to the track through her running (three gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics) and her bright outfits, of a brain seizure, 38.

Tom Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 93, during which period he presided over the transformation of a collection of suburbs into "a world-class city," the 1984 Olympic Games and the 1992 Rodney King riots, 80.

OCTOBER

Gene Autry, American actor and singer (Back in the Saddle Again) who made the heyday of the western his own, ranked top star of westerns at the box office from 1937 to 1943, 91.

Roddy McDowall, English actor who appeared first as a child star in the 1940s (How Green Was My Valley, Lassie Come Home) in a career that spanned more than 60 years, included 130 films (The Longest Day, Planet of the Apes) and expanded into film preservation, 70.

Jerome Weidman, American novelist and playwright who portrayed New York life in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which as a musical in 1962 gave Barbra Streisand her Broadway debut, 85.

Clark Clifford, adviser to American Presidents from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter Ñincluding warning Lyndon Johnson about the folly of the Vietnam War - but the last years of his life were clouded by connections with the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, 91.

Ian Johnson, Australian cricket all-rounder who played 45 tests and captained the team from 1954 to 57, 80.

Raniera Te Aohou Ratana, influential Maori leader and last surviving son of the prophet Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, founder of the Church that bears his name, who in 1996 brought an end to the pact his father had made with the Labour Party in 1939, 60.

Joan Hickson, English actress who began acting in 1927 but who is best remembered for her television portrayal from 1978 of the Agatha Christie-created Miss Marple, 92.

Karl Prindle, American industrial chemist who moisture-proofed cellophane, originally developed in France in the early 1900s, turning it from a luxury to mass-market wrapper, 95.

Eric Ambler, British thriller writer (Epitaph for a Spy, Journey into Fear, State of Siege) who introduced the idea of ordinary people as heroes, 89.

James Sanders, wartime bomber commander, painter, illustrator, Auckland Star cartoonist, Herald supplements editor and author of 17 books, 87.

Lord Sainsbury, who with his brother Robert took over the family's chain of grocery stores in 1938 and turned them into Britain's first self-service supermarkets, beginning an empire, 96.

Ted Hughes, British poet laureate known in some quarters as much for his ill-fated marriage to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide soon after they separated in 1963, as for his poetry, 68.

NOVEMBER

Bob Kane, creator of Batman, the caped crusader who made his first appearance in Detective Comics in May 1939 and went on to be the subject of hit television series and films, 83.

Tommy Flowers, British electronics engineer who developed Colossus, the pioneer computer that cracked German military communications during the Second World War, 92.

John Hunt, the British Army officer who led the 1953 Everest expedition that put Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay on top of world for the first time, 88.

Neil Roberts, innovator in New Zealand's television development who climbed to the top of TVNZ, of cancer, 50.

Kwane Ture, civil rights leader better known to Americans as Stokely Carmichael credited with introducing the "black power" phrase, of prostate cancer, 57.

Patrick Clancy, a founding member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, an America group of Irish expatriates whose role in the Greenwich Village folk revival of the 1950s and 60s encouraged a rediscovery of folk styles back in Ireland, 76.

Alan Pakula, American film director (To Kill a Mockingbird, Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men) whose more than 20 films won many Oscars for others but never for himself, 70.

Galina Starovoitova, liberal Russian politician who was among the country's democracy pioneers, shot outside her home in St Petersburg, 52.

Sir Charles Moihi Bennett, soldier, scholar, diplomat, public servant, political leader, the former Maori Battalion commander, Ambassador to Malaya and Labour Party president, 85.

DECEMBER

Freddie Young, English cinematographer who won three Oscars for his work on Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter, 96.

Mikio Oda, the first Japanese to win an Olympic gold medal, in the triple jump at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, 93.

Aaron Hopa, identified as a coming All Black, while diving, 27.
-Compiled by Chris Rosie

Pictured: Frank Sinatra