Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Raymond Mhlaba, 85, an African National Congress veteran who was sentenced with Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment in 1964 for trying to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid regime, died of cancer Sunday at a hospital in Port Elizabeth.

Born in a village in the Eastern Cape, Mhlaba dropped out of school for lack of money. He became a committed trade unionist after working in a factory in Port Elizabeth. He joined the Communist Party in 1943 and the ANC in 1944.

In 1963, Mhlaba was arrested with Mandela and six others. In June 1964, they were sentenced to life in prison and sent to Robben Island, the notorious prison on a remote island near Cape Town. Mhlaba was released in 1989.

He became premier of the newly created province of the Eastern Cape in the first democratic multiracial elections in 1994.

Mhlaba resigned in 1997 for health reasons, but later served as ambassador to Rwanda and Burundi.
Raymond Mhlaba’s Personal Memoirs: Reminiscing from Rwanda and Uganda (Falk Symposium)

NY Times
Robert R. Merhige Jr., a retired federal district judge whose decision ordering school desegregation in Virginia in the early 1970’s meant he lived for a time under round-the-clock guard, died last Friday in Richmond. He was 86.

His death was announced by the international law firm Hunton & Williams in Richmond, to which he was of special counsel since leaving the bench in 1998.

Named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to Federal District Court in Richmond in 1967, Judge Merhige (pronounced like marriage) ordered the desegregation of dozens of Virginia school districts in 1972. The ruling merged largely black urban districts with largely white suburban ones and touched off years of furor and legal jousting.
May It Please the Court
The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond, Virginia, 1954-89 (Carter G Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies)
The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia

Two important players in Civil Rights and Racial Equity appear on today’s list.

Revisiting yesterday, reports that Hunter Thompson drilled himself in the heart were apparently erroneous. He swallowed his gun. Yesterday the ODDfellows received the following message concerning Thompson’s death, ‘My only question is…if you were 67 and married to a 32 year old, what possible reason could you imagine for offing yourself?….I think the wife did it.’ Well, in Vail a while back, Claudine Longet ‘accidentally’ shot boyfriend Spyder Savich, but it doesn’t look like Hunter’s was a hunting accident or foul play. Anyway, the ODDfellows have dispatched an ace reporter to Aspen, and when he gets back, we’ll fill you in with any ODD findings. Keep the safety on.

LA Times
Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture literary figure who rode with the Hells Angels, famously chronicled the Nixon-McGovern presidential race and coined the term “gonzo journalism,” committed suicide Sunday night at his secluded home outside Aspen, Colo., his son said. Thompson was 67.

“Hunter Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek,” Juan Thompson said in a statement. “Hunter prized his privacy and we ask his friends and admirers to respect that privacy as well as that of his family.”

Pitkin County sheriff’s officials confirmed Sunday that Thompson died of a gunshot wound, saying they received a call from his home about 6 p.m.

Friends and neighbors said late Sunday that they were shocked by Thompson’s suicide, but knew he had his demons.

“We don’t know anything about the circumstances surrounding his death, but he was a volatile person,” said Troy Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News and a longtime friend of the writer. “I was at his house last week and there was nothing in his behavior that was different. He was no more distraught than usual; he was often either up or down.”
Hunter S. Thompson (Twayne’s United States Authors Series)
More Hunter S. Thompson books
Hunter S. Thompson memorabilia at eBay.com

LA Times
Sandra Dee, the blond all-American girl next door whose star turns as “Gidget” and “Tammy” made her a teen idol in the 1960s, a status reinforced by her Hollywood marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday. She was 62.

Dee died at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, said nursing supervisor Cynthia Mead. The actress had been hospitalized for the last two weeks for treatment of kidney disease, and had developed pneumonia, said Steve Blauner, a spokesman for Dee’s son, Dodd Mitchell Darin.

The demure yet sensual Dee tugged America’s heartstrings as the girl plus midget — Gidget — in the seminal film of that name in 1959. Teens and their parents alike hoped that she would make the right coming-of-age decisions between the rough-cut surfer played by Cliff Robertson and Moondoggie, played by James Darren. Somehow they knew the boys would always treat her with proper respect. She simply inspired that.

Unlike Darren, Dee never made the “Gidget” sequels. And when the charming teens-meet-surf, sand and each other story was translated to television in 1965, it was Sally Field in the title role. Nevertheless, when members of a certain generation remember Gidget and her innocent beach bonfires, to this day, they think of Dee.

Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee
Sandra Dee memorabilia at eBay.com

LA Times
John Raitt, the ruggedly handsome musical theater leading man who launched his Broadway career in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1945 hit “Carousel” and later co-starred in “The Pajama Game” on Broadway and in the film version, died Sunday. He was 88.

Raitt, the father of Grammy-winning singer Bonnie Raitt, died at his Pacific Palisades home of complications from pneumonia, his manager, James Fitzgerald, told The Times.

Raitt played Curly in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” in 1944, before he was cast as carnival carousel operator Billy Bigelow in “Carousel,” in which he sang “If I Loved You” with Jan Clayton, and “Soliloquy,” the show-stopping solo number that displayed his considerable vocal range and virtuosity.

“Overnight, he became very, very celebrated,” said musical theater historian Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, who saw Raitt perform in “Carousel” in 1945.

John Raitt memorabilia at eBay.com

The Independant
Kenneth Robinson was a leading historian and analyst of the British and French colonial empires and their successor states, and Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at London University before being appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong.

Born in London in 1914 and graduating in both Modern History and Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford, he joined the Colonial Office as an official in 1936. To start with, he worked in the West Indian Department (”riots everywhere”), moving on to the CO’s general department just before the Second World War, where he dealt with a very wide range of subjects, from passports and aliens to obscene publications.

During the war, he was posted to West Africa to work with Lord Swinton. Swinton was British minister in West Africa and Robinson was to be a member of his security executive. This proved a brief posting, when illness caused recall to Britain. There, he dealt increasingly with issues associated with the international accountability and control of British and other countries’ colonies, mandates and protectorates, subjects of enormous importance in developing relations with Britain’s leading wartime ally, the United States.

In essence, the wartime team of Hilton Poynton and Kenneth Robinson was concerned to limit the international control of colonial questions pressed by US interests at this time, while conceding the necessity of promoting “good colonial administration and the material well-being of dependent peoples”. As Robinson wrote subsequently in an article in International Organization (”World Opinion and Colonial Status”, 1954):

One of the more extraordinary illusions which surround this whole area of international relations is the conviction that the malpractices deemed inherent in “imperialism” can only be prevented by the intervention of “disinterested” states. These latter states, having no general national interest at stake, can afford only too easily to barter the misgovernance of these territories in return for some quid pro quo in the form of a vote on some matter of greater real interest to themselves.

Granted his wartime concerns, it is not surprising that Robinson should have written important essays on “The Dilemmas of Trusteeship” before the Second World War, published in book form in 1965, and devoted other essays to decolonisation and the international community after it.
Imperialism and the State in the Third World : Essays in Honour of Professor Kenneth Robinson

Today brings news of the death of 60’s teen idol Sanda Dee, Broadway performer and father of Bonnie Raitt, and a noted British historian’but hold on, there’s dark news out of Woody Creek, Hunter Thompson put a bullet through his heart. The Rocky Mountain News quotes an anonymous source re. Thompson’s suicide, ‘I knew this call was coming…He was a raging addict and an abusive man. He had so many guns and they were always loaded.’ Check you later Hunter, but we must share with you the words from our ODD Wyoming correspondent who first broke the news to the ODDfellows, ‘What a pathetic exit. With all the troubles he had got himself into he could have at least made it a little more glamorous,,, like say blowing himself up in front of the Pitkin county Jail.’ Keep your head down, it’s a very dodgy world.

NY Times
Warren Vaché Sr., a bassist, author and historian who was long a mainstay of jazz in New Jersey, died on Feb. 4 in Rahway, N.J. He was 90.

The cause was complications of pneumonia and prostate cancer, said his son, the jazz cornetist Warren Vaché Jr.

Mr. Vaché, the father of two jazz musicians (his other son, Allan, plays clarinet), was an accomplished musician himself and an indefatigable advocate of traditional jazz.

Early in his career he was a frequent participant in jam sessions at Nick’s, a Greenwich Village nightclub that was home base to the guitarist Eddie Condon, the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell and other traditionalists.

He later worked throughout New Jersey as a sideman, with the trumpet player Doc Cheatham among many others, and as the leader of his own group, the Syncopatin’ Seven. He continued to perform until his early 80’s.
Other books by Warren Vachez
Celebrate the Music of Isham J
Swingin’ & Singin’
More music from the Vache’s
Warren Vache memorabilia

ODDly slow day for notable deaths, although news of Warren Vache Sr.’s death reminds us the cross-cultural impact of Jazz music. Of course, Jazz is only one musical form directly traceable to African Americans. Add in Gospel, Rhythm-and-Blues (and its off-spring rock ‘n roll), Blues, and Hip Hop. Elivs Presley learned his singing style from Black performers. And speaking of White singers doing black music, check out Buddy Miller’s Universal House of Prayer. Listening to this, we feel a little less ODDly irreverent’but only a little.

‘A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies rather than oranges.’ Buddy Green.