Our Daily Dead

LA Times
The Rev. Billy James Hargis, a colorful and controversial evangelist and anti-communist crusader who launched the “Bible balloon barrage” to float Scripture behind the Iron Curtain and tangled with the IRS, the church that ordained him and the college he founded, has died. He was 79. Hargis, who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and a series of heart attacks, died Saturday at a nursing home in Tulsa, Okla., of unspecified causes.

LA Times
Tom Haller, an All-Star catcher who was the centerpiece in a rare trade between the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants, has died. He was 67. Haller, who had been hospitalized in Los Angeles since August with a viral infection, died Friday.

LA Times
Leroy Aarons, a former editor of the Oakland Tribune who also was the pioneering founder and first president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn., has died. He was 70. Aarons, who had been battling bladder cancer, died of heart failure Sunday at a hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif.

NY Times
Ronald L. Plesser, a privacy lawyer who helped ease access to government records and shape policy on access to personal e-mail messages, customer databases and other innovations of the electronic age, died on Nov. 18 at Washington Dulles International Airport. He was 59 and lived in Washington.His death, apparently caused by a heart attack, was announced by the law firm of Piper Rudnick, where Mr. Plesser was a partner and chairman of the electronic commerce and privacy practice group.

NY Times
Ivan Veit, a former executive vice president of The New York Times Company who helped usher the newspaper’s circulation and promotion departments into the modern era, died on Saturday in Beacon, N.Y. He was 96 and lived in Millbrook, N.Y. Mr. Veit’s daughter, Lenore Gale, reported the death.Associated with The Times for more than half a century, Mr. Veit was, from 1970 to 1973, executive vice president in charge of development and planning. From 1973 until his retirement in 1974, he was special assistant to the president and publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Mr. Veit served on the board of The New York Times Company from 1974 to 1979.

LA Times
Joel Edward Short, an innovator in computer networking and co-founder of a company that assists wireless service providers, died Nov. 21 in Los Angeles of undisclosed causes. He was 34. Fascinated by technology since childhood, Short earned a bachelor’s degree at Cal State Chico and began his career in Silicon Valley working for Apple computers.

LA Times
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Emil Eschenburg, one of the few remaining members of an elite World War II force that inspired the 1968 film “The Devil’s Brigade,” died Friday in Helena, Mont., of an undisclosed illness. He was 88. A farm boy from Michigan, Eschenburg was selected to join the U.S.-Canadian First Special Service Force when it was activated in 1942. The 1,800-man commando-style secret force is best known for capturing German forces in the mountains of Italy.

NY Times
John Parr Miller, an early animator for Walt Disney whose later art adorned best-selling children’s books, including those in the popular Little Golden Books series, died on Oct. 29 on Long Island. He was 91 and lived in Manhasset, N.Y.His death was announced by his family.

NY Times
The Rev. Billy James Hargis, a fiery evangelist and anticommunist preacher who founded the Christian Crusade and reached millions in an international ministry that used radio, television, books, pamphlets and personal appearances, died on Saturday at a nursing home in Tulsa, Okla. He was 79.Mr. Hargis, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died at St. Simeon’s Episcopal Home, where he had lived since last July, said his daughter, Becky Jean Frank. No cause of death was listed, Ms. Frank said.

LA Times
Fred Diament, a retired Los Angeles clothing manufacturer whose lifelong dedication to Holocaust education was forged during five hellish years as a prisoner in World War II concentration camps, died of complications of pneumonia Nov. 13 at UCLA Medical Center. He was 81. A German Jew of Polish descent, Diament was 15 when he was arrested by the Nazis at the outset of the war in 1939.

LA Times
James P. Blecksmith was only 24 when he died. But by age 16, he already was displaying the quiet altruism that made him a natural as a Marine Corps officer, family members said. “He led by example. He lived his life the way he talked about his life,” his sister, Christina, 27, said at the family home in San Marino.

LA Times
Hal Sitowitz, 71, a television writer, producer and director who wrote a memorable “Gunsmoke” episode starring Bette Davis and tackled social issues in TV movies such as “In the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan,” died of lung cancer Oct. 31 at his home in Beverly Hills. Sitowitz wrote “The Jailer,” the 1966 “Gunsmoke” episode in which film icon Davis made a rare TV appearance as a revengeful Old West matriarch who kidnaps Matt Dillon’s love interest, Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake). A 1973 “Gunsmoke” episode written by Sitowitz, about an immigrant Russian Jewish family, won him the National Media Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

NY Times
NY Times Advertisement

NY Times
Frederica de Laguna, an anthropologist whose work on the history and culture of little-known Arctic civilizations was groundbreaking in the most literal sense of the word, died on Oct. 6 at her home in Haverford, Pa. She was 98.Her death was announced by Bryn Mawr College, where Dr. de Laguna was the William R. Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of anthropology. She founded the college’s anthropology department and taught there from 1938 until her retirement in 1975.