World War II Navy veteran Ira “Ike” Schab, one of the dwindling number of survivors of the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 105.
Daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs told The Associated Press that Schab died at home early Saturday in the presence of her and her husband.
With his passing, there remain only about a dozen survivors of the surprise attack, which killed just over 2,400 troops and propelled the United States into the war.
Schab was a sailor of just 21 at the time of the attack, and for decades he rarely spoke about the experience.
But in recent years, aware that the corps of survivors was dwindling, the centenarian made a point of traveling from his home in Beaverton, Oregon, to the annual observance at the Hawaii military base.
“To pay honor to the guys that didn’t make it,” he said in 2023.
For last year’s commemoration, Schab spent weeks building up the strength to be able to stand and salute.
But this year he did not feel well enough to attend, and less than three weeks later, he passed away.
He joined the Navy at 18, following in the footsteps of his father, he said in a February interview for Pacific Historic Parks.
On what began as a peaceful Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Schab, who played the tuba in the USS Dobbin’s band, was expecting a visit from his brother, a fellow service member assigned to a nearby naval radio station. Schab had just showered and donned a clean uniform when he heard a call for fire rescue.
He went topside and saw another ship, the USS Utah, capsizing. Japanese planes roared through the air.
“We were pretty startled. Startled and scared to death,” Schab recalled in 2023. “We didn’t know what to expect, and we knew that if anything happened to us, that would be it.”
He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun above.
His ship lost three sailors, according to Navy records. One was killed in action, and two died later of fragment wounds from a bomb that struck the stern. All had been manning an anti-aircraft gun.
Schab spent most of the war with the Navy in the Pacific, going to the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, and then the Mariana Islands and Okinawa, Japan.
After the war he studied aerospace engineering and worked on the Apollo spaceflight program as an electrical engineer for General Dynamics, helping send astronauts to the moon.
Schab’s son also joined the Navy and is a retired commander.
Speaking at a 2022 ceremony, Schab asked people to honor those who served at Pearl Harbor.
“Remember what they’re here for. Remember and honor those that are left. They did a hell of a job,” he said. “Those who are still here, dead or alive.”
State Sen. Faith Winter was a fierce and relentless advocate for Colorado’s families, climate and transportation who forever altered the state’s political landscape by fighting to make it a better place to live, her friends and colleagues said Thursday.
Winter’s death was confirmed late Wednesday by Gov. Jared Polis and legislative leaders, and Polis ordered flags be lowered to half-staff in her honor on the day of her memorial service, which has not been announced.
“Our state is shaken by the loss of Senator Faith Winter, and I send my deepest condolences to her children, loved ones, friends, and colleagues across our state,” Polis said in a statement.
“I have had the honor of working with her on many issues to improve the lives of every person and family in our great state and tackling climate change. I am deeply saddened for her family, her friends and colleagues and her community. Faith’s work and advocacy made Colorado a better state.”
The Arapahoe County coroner’s office on Thursday confirmed Winter was killed in the crash, which also injured three others and closed northbound I-25 for more than five hours Wednesday night.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, and additional information likely will not be released until next week, Arapahoe County sheriff’s Deputy John Bartmann said Thursday. No one has been cited or arrested in connection with the crash.
Winter’s 10-year career in the statehouse exemplified her deep passion for making the lives of everyday Coloradans better as well as her remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, friends and colleagues told The Denver Post.
A Democrat from Broomfield, Winter served in the House from 2015 to 2019, moving over to the Senate after she won a seat in 2018. She also served on the Westminster City Council earlier in her career.
Winter was a driving force behind bringing paid family leave to Colorado; passing a massive 2021 transportation bill to improve the state’s roadways and expand transit options; and strengthening protections against workplace harassment, among many other initiatives.
“Faith was a deeply complex person, and she moved through multiple challenges with grace and remained dedicated to the work she was doing,” state Sen. Lisa Cutter said in an interview Thursday. “She believed in the work she was doing, believed in the power of friendship and connection and will always live on that way and certainly live on in my heart.”
Winter led the way in addressing sexual harassment in Colorado workplaces as well as her own workplace — the halls and chambers of the Capitol.
Her allegations against former state Rep. Steve Lebsock were followed by similar sexual harassment complaints from other women, leading to his expulsion from the House in 2018.
“I was always proud to stand by her side in moments when she was trying to change the culture of the Capitol,” Garnett said. “She was a leader in that space.”
Garnett met Winter as the two ran and won seats in the House of Representatives and described her as a leader among their class of state lawmakers.
“She understood the Capitol better than most,” Garnett said. “When we started, the legislature was very different: We were in split chambers with a small majority, and she knew how to work across the aisle to get some of her stuff through.”
Winter also knew when to take a stand, Garnett said, including running a paid family leave bill she knew would not pass the Republican-controlled state Senate to get legislators, the media and public talking about the issue.
Garnett was so inspired by Winter’s passion for paid family leave that he accidentally announced that his wife, Emily, was pregnant while speaking on the issue from the floor of the House.
“Somebody tweeted it and my wife texted me and asked, ‘Did you just announce I was pregnant on the floor of the House?’” Garnett said, laughing. “I told her I was so moved by Faith, I had to do it.”
Winter also cared deeply for those around her, from her family, including children Sienna and Tobin, to her friends and colleagues at the statehouse. The Capitol could be a lonely place, and Winter was intentional about connecting with people, whether through soup-making parties or field trips to pick sunflowers, Cutter said.
Flowers brought Winter deep joy, and she was known for keeping a tiny vase of flowers on her desk that she would arrange on Monday mornings and leaving single buds or tiny flower arrangements on the desks of her colleagues.
“She had a tremendous heart,” Cutter said. “I don’t know where she found the energy to do all that. I really don’t.”
Winter also faced several personal challenges, including an ethics complaint for appearing intoxicated at a Northglenn community meeting in 2024, which caused her to seek treatment for a substance use disorder.
Winter’s death caused an outpouring of grief from Colorado’s local, state and federal elected officials on Wednesday night and Thursday.
In a statement Wednesday night, Senate President James Coleman and Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez said they were “devastated” by her passing.
“Whether fighting for legislation to support mothers and families, championing groundbreaking transit policy, or simply supporting constituents in moments of need, she brought thoughtfulness, innovation, and humility to every aspect of her work,” they said in a joint statement.
Sen. Cleave Simpson, the Republican caucus leader in the chamber, said in a statement posted to X that Winter’s legacy was “one of courage, kindness and unity.”
“Senator Winter was not only a dedicated public servant but also a bridge builder,” Simpson said. “She worked tirelessly with colleagues across the aisle, forging strong partnerships with her Republican counterparts. Her ability to listen, collaborate and find common ground reflected her deep commitment to the people she served and to the integrity of the legislative process.”
House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran, both Democrats, said in a statement that Winter “always fought for Colorado’s most vulnerable. Her bravery brought necessary reforms to the Capitol, and her kindness filled the building. We will all miss her dearly.”
They extended condolences to Winter’s family, including her children, as well as to former state Rep. Matt Gray, a fellow Democrat to whom she was engaged.
OAKLAND — The Raiders may have departed Oakland years ago for Las Vegas, but Carol Davis had remained nearby in Piedmont, at a longtime home of the family that reigned over one of sports’ most memorable teams.
Indeed, the storied NFL franchise’s “First Lady” kept a residence on Mountain Avenue up until her death Friday at 93. It was the culmination of a life linked intrinsically to the East Bay and football alike, the kind that her son, Mark Davis, described Sunday as “wrapped in a cloak of immortality.”
“I love you mom; you will be missed,” said Mark, who shared a “controlling interest” in the now-Las Vegas Raiders with Carol, a stake inherited from the family patriarch, Al Davis, one of the iconic figures in the history of American sports.
Carol Davis was omniscient in the owners’ suite at games; she gave the team’s star players and executives a hug “hello,” they remembered, and would demonstrate a watchful eye about everything happening in the organization — even, for instance, a team employee’s divorce that Davis would not be expected to know about.
Her passing was the latest notable death among memorable Raiders figures from the team’s history. George Atkinson, the last member of the team’s beloved defense in the 1970s known for its unprecedented physicality, died Monday at 78.
Al Davis, a swashbuckling head coach with an unmistakable Brooklyn accent, simply “adored” his wife, the legendary Raiders quarterback and head coach Tom Flores remembered. Al and Carol ran in a tight inner circle of team officials and Bay Area businessmen, even amid the Raiders’ 13-year stint in Los Angeles.
Al Davis ended his long streak of joining the Raiders on road trips to work out of the Oakland hospital while Carol recovered from a massive heart attack and stroke in 1979 that kept her in a coma for 23 days. Carol miraculously recovered, earning a reputation for toughness that the Raiders themselves rallied behind on the football turf, winning the Super Bowl the very next season.
“She was a very intelligent and very dedicated woman,” recalled former Raiders executive John Herrera, an Oakland native who began working for the franchise as a teen in the 1960’s and finally departed in 2012. “She was a very interesting person to be around — and she kept up with everything that was going on, not just in sports but in the world.”
Through it all, Carol Davis remained committed to the idea of the Raiders as a model of teamwork, the kind of ideal that made the football team a storied fixture of NFL history, but an ambition that slumped in the 21st century before the team limped to a sleek new stadium in Las Vegas.
“She was a strong behind-the-scenes figure,” said Ignacio De La Fuente, the former Oakland City Council president who in 1995 recruited the Raiders back for their second stint in Oakland. “My perception was that she would keep Al realistic about things in our negotiations.”
Born Carol Sagal in New York City, she had been a buyer for retail stores even after Al finished military service and before his start as a pro football coach. The couple married in a Brooklyn synagogue but quickly formed roots in the East Bay once Al began with the Raiders ahead of the 1963 season.
During the team’s most storied years — an AFL championship in 1967 and a pair of Super Bowl victories in 1976 and 1980 — Carol stayed mostly behind the scenes, those who knew her recalled, though she always demonstrated an awareness of what was happening on the field.
“There were so many instances where she would say something that would cause me to giggle, at times where I should not have been,” said Amy Trask, a longtime former Raiders executive and the first former woman to serve as an NFL team’s CEO.
“They tended to be at Raiders business dinners,” Trask added about these occasions, “and usually involved a wise, keen observation about someone in attendance.”
Carol read newspapers every morning, always offering fresh insight about the country’s politics or society at large, friends remembered — a fitting description of a woman who led a team that broke new ground in diverse hiring.
Flores, the league’s first Mexican-American quarterback and head coach, recalled the warmth that Carol showed the team’s players, despite her and Al’s penchant for keeping their business private.
“To them, people were Raiders — it didn’t matter which color you were, what ethnic group you belonged to,” recalled Flores, who is 88 and lives in Palm Springs. “She was just very proud of you when you finished your journey.”
Al’s passing in 2011, seen as a pivotal moment in the franchise’s history, had Carol lined up in the succession plan as controlling owner. Trask, though, found herself notifying the league that Carol’s son, Mark, would take over operations instead, the outcome of discussions between mother and son that altered how the torch would be passed.
Trask departed from the franchise not long afterward, and the Raiders — fed up after stalled talks with Oakland for a new stadium — departed for Vegas.
Carol, though, stuck around in the house in Piedmont that Herrera had helped the family secure.
“I never tried to impose any of my beliefs on Carol — it wouldn’t have done any good either way,” Herrera said. “She was very strong in her opinions and she did exactly what she thought was right.”
Still, until her passing last Friday, those who knew her remembered her the way they do the Oakland Raiders: a football team with tall aspirations and a swagger.
“As the originals, we all had the same dream, but we didn’t know how to get there,” Flores said. “Al and Carol had that dream — and they knew how to do it. They brought us where we wanted to go.”
Sam Rivers, the bass player in the nu metal band Limp Bizkit, died on Saturday, according to social media posts by his band mates.
The band did not disclose where Rivers died or the circumstances, but praised him as “pure magic” and “the soul in the sound.”
“From the first note we ever played together, Sam brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced,” they wrote in a group Instagram post. “His talent was effortless, his presence unforgettable, his heart enormous.”
Fred Durst, the band’s front man and lead vocalist, posted a video Sunday morning that recounted how they met at a club in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, and went on to music stardom and performances around the globe. Durst said he has shed “gallons and gallons of tears since yesterday.”
“He really did have an impact on the world and his music and his gift is the one that’s going to keep on giving,” Durst said. “I just love him so much.”
Rivers, 48, had spoken of heavy drinking that had caused liver disease. He left the band in 2015 and received a liver transplant before reuniting with Limp Bizkit three years later.
Limp Bizkit has scheduled a tour of Central and South America to begin in Mexico City in late November.
Durst said he and Rivers shared a love of grunge music, naming the bands Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots.
“He had this kind of ability to pull this beautiful sadness out of the bass that I’d never heard,” Durst said, calling Rivers “so talented I can’t explain.”
Limp Bizkit, with roots in Jacksonville, Florida, emerged in the late 1990s with a sound that melds altenative rock, heavy metal and rap.
Their off-the-wall sense of humor is reflected in the titles of their mega-selling 2000 album, “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water,” and a single released last month, “Making Love to Morgan Wallen.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sara Jane Moore, who was imprisoned for more than 30 years after she made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, has died. She was 95.
Moore died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tennessee, according to Demetria Kalodimos, a longtime acquaintance who said she was informed by the executor of Moore’s estate. Kalodimos is an executive producer at the Nashville Banner newspaper, which was first to report the death.
Moore seemed an unlikely candidate to gain national notoriety as a violent political radical who nearly killed a president. When she shot at Ford in San Francisco, she was a middle-aged woman who had begun dabbling in leftist groups and sometimes served as an FBI informant.
Sentenced to life, Moore was serving her time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, when she was unexpectedly paroled Dec. 31, 2007. Federal officials gave no details on why she was set free.
She lived largely anonymously in an undisclosed location after that, but in broadcast interviews she expressed regret for what she had done. She said she had been caught up in the radical political movements that were common in California in the mid-1970s.
“I had put blinders on, I really had, and I was listening to only … what I thought I believed,”” she told San Francisco television station KGO in April 2009. “We thought that doing that would actually trigger a new revolution.”
Two would-be assassins
Moore was often confused with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of cult murderer Charles Manson who aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 5, 1975. A Secret Service agent grabbed the gun before any shots could be fired, and the president was unharmed.
Just 17 days later, on Sept. 22, Moore shot at Ford as he waved to a crowd outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square. Oliver Sipple, a 33-year-old former Marine, knocked the .38-caliber pistol out of her hand as she fired, causing the shot to go astray and hit a building.
“I’m sorry I missed,” Moore said during an interview with the San Jose Mercury News seven years later. “Yes, I’m sorry I missed. I don’t like to be a failure.”
But in later interviews, before and after her release, she repeatedly said that she regretted her actions, saying she was convinced that the government had declared war on the left.
Asked by KGO in 2009 what she would say to Ford if that had been possible, she replied that she would tell him, “I’m very sorry that it happened. … I’m very happy that I did not succeed.” Ford died in 2006, about a year before her release.
Her family did not publicly comment on her death. Geri Spieler, who wrote a biography of Moore titled “Housewife Assassin,” said she had abandoned her children and was estranged from all her living relatives.
Multiples marriages, name changes, unclear motives
Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn on Feb. 15, 1930, in Charleston, West Virginia. Her confusing background, which included multiple failed marriages, name changes and involvement with both leftist political groups and the FBI, baffled the public and even her own defense attorney during her trial.
“I never got a satisfactory answer from her as to why she did it,” retired federal public defender James F. Hewitt once said. “There was just bizarre stuff, and she would never tell anyone anything about her background.”
Ford insisted that the two attempts on his life should not prevent him from having contact with the people, saying, “If we can’t have the opportunity of talking with one another, seeing one another, shaking hands with one another, something has gone wrong in our society.”
His other attacker, Fromme, also was freed from prison eventually. She had no comment as she left a federal lockup in Texas in August 2009 at age 60.
Working with leftist groups but also the FBI
It was in 1974 that Moore began working for People in Need, a free food program for poor people established by millionaire Randolph Hearst as ransom after his daughter Patty was kidnapped by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.
Moore soon became involved with leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco’s counterculture. At this time, she became an FBI informant.
Moore said she shot at Ford because she thought she would be killed once it was disclosed that she was an FBI informant. The agency ended its relationship with her about four months before the shooting.
“I was going to go down anyway,” she said in the 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “And if I was going to go down, I was going to do it my way. If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement.”
A failed prison escape
Moore was sent to a West Virginia women’s prison in 1977. Two years later she escaped but was captured several hours later.
She was later transferred to a prison in Pleasanton, California, before going to Dublin.
In 2000 she sued the warden of her federal prison to prevent him from taking keys given to inmates to lock themselves in as a security measure.
In an interview after the July 2024 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, Moore told the Nashville Banner that part of what motivated her was that Ford, who became president after Richard Nixon resigned, was not elected president.
“He wasn’t elected to anything. He was appointed,” Moore said. “It wasn’t a belief, it was a fact. It was a fact that he was appointed.”
Virginia Culver, who in her 44 years at the Denver Post covered religion and reported news obituaries, yet on the matter of her own mortality remained intensely private, died Sunday in Denver.
She was 84, if you must know.
The irreverent journalist, nicknamed “the Rev” by some colleagues and “God” by others, forged a career out of explaining the intersection of religion and rapidly changing social values, and later memorializing the lives of Coloradans who otherwise would never have made headlines.
“This was Virginia’s gift — helping readers understand the world around them and the people whose names they’d never heard,” Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo said. “She wasn’t in this business to do big news investigations. She wanted to tell stories and she did it with unfailing energy for four decades, trailblazing a presence in the newsroom and setting a standard, especially for young women, on how to be tough, generous and fair.”
Culver was born in 1941 to parents who’d lived in a railcar during the Depression-era Dust Bowl before moving to Eads near the Kansas state line. Her father owned a service station, and her mother worked as a teacher and caterer. Both nurtured her lifelong love of classical music.
Fascinated by the intrigues in her small town, she reported for her high school newspaper and studied journalism at the University of Colorado before going to work for the Lamar Daily News.
In 1967, she landed a job at the big-city Denver Post, where she met John Snyder, her editor, whom she married the next year. He died four years later, leaving her widowed in her early 30s. She didn’t remarry, and kept the name Virginia Snyder in her private life.
His death and that of her sister, Margaret, when both were young girls, were conversation stoppers for Culver. Too hard, don’t go there, she’d signal. Period. Full stop.
Culver briefly covered women’s clubs until becoming the paper’s religion editor, a role that largely entailed culling wire copy and posting notices about church meetings. The Post didn’t give women bylines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But, within a decade, she had turned her job into a hard news beat vital to helping readers understand the role of faith in changing times.
She reported on how various faiths responded to abortion rights and feminism in the 1970s. She wrote about cultists and faith healers, the rise of megachurches and downfalls of televangelists mired in money and sex scandals in the 1980s. She broke the news of Pope John Paul II’s 1993 visit to Colorado for World Youth Day, which she closely covered, even flying here from Rome with the pontiff.
For decades, she chronicled the emergence of female and openly LGBTQ clergy members in various denominations, and debates over whether to embrace civil unions between same-sex couples. She covered anti-semitism in Colorado in the aftermath of Jewish radio host Alan Berg’s killing in Denver in 1984, and wrote about Islamophobia following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when some readers criticized her for giving Muslims a voice.
Culver cultivated long relationships with clergy members, lay leaders and spiritual followers throughout Colorado — sources she affectionately called “my people,” even though, as an atheist, she didn’t share their faith.
After being moved off the religion beat in 2002, she worked for nine years writing obituaries, turning what felt like a professional slight into an act of creativity. Rather than memorializing business and big-monied bigwigs, she made a point of writing about lives led by strong women, rebels and makers of art, music and wonder.
One of her obituaries celebrated the life of a Bureau of Reclamation photographer who transitioned from a man to a woman and built miniature circuses. Another told the story of a Colorado Springs magician who made a living by suspending his wife in midair.
“She didn’t bend, she didn’t kowtow after being put on obituaries, which she considered a slap. She just stepped up and wrote those pieces beautifully,” said Cindy Parmenter, a college classmate and fellow Post reporter with whom Culver stayed close for 65 years.
Both professionally and personally, Culver relished little more than juicy stories about colorful characters. She liked her food bland, yet her gossip spicy and language salty, rarely mincing words, faking smiles or suffering fools, chauvinists or mansplainers. The winner of dozens of journalism awards elbowed into the all-male Denver Press Club to become its first female member in 1970. She came up with biting nicknames for Post editors and colleagues who annoyed her.
Former Denver Post reporter Virginia Culver in Denver on Feb. 23, 1971. (Photo by Millard Smith/The Denver Post, file)
For her friends at the paper — and there were many — she kept a stash of chocolates in her desk drawer. She brought fresh fruit every day through two pregnancies for this reporter who sat across from her, one of several generations of women in the newsroom whose work she championed and with whom she stayed close long after they moved on from the paper.
“To have succeeded in the newspaper business, we had to support each other. That’s how you got by. Neither the world nor journalism were open to us. We had to fight our way,” Parmenter said.
Culver also had a playful side, including weak spots for puns, pinwheels and Cracker Jack prizes. Well into her 60s, she kept a scooter in the downtown Denver newsroom. The giant workspace was like a small town for her. Scooting from desk to desk, she was the authority on its intrigues.
Despite her criticisms of The Post as it changed in the online era, the paper gave Culver her most prized identity and community. She loved news, the company of people who gather it and the honor of telling stories about her native state. “Tis a Privilege to Live in Colorado,” read an inscription on a wall of the newsroom that, long after her retirement in 2011, she remained deeply grateful to be a part of.
As Colacioppo tells it, “There’s a reason the staff stood and cheered and applauded and cried a bit as she left for the last time.”
“We knew we were saying farewell to a giant in our newsroom.”
Culver had respiratory and heart diseases caused in part by her decades-long smoking habit — the only upside of which were the hours she spent schmoozing with Post colleagues on cigarette breaks. In recent years, she hid her health challenges from family and friends and pushed away those trying to care for her and otherwise help with end-of-life planning.
“Virginia had no plans of going anywhere,” said her nephew, Kyle Culver.
“More than anybody I’ve known, she didn’t want to be told what to do,” Parmenter added.
Shifting in and out of consciousness over the last week, the lifelong Democrat surprised friends on Thursday as they discussed politics at her bedside.
“(Expletive) Trump” she blurted out.
Those were among her last coherent words before she let go Sunday morning at the Intermountain Health Hospice in Wheat Ridge.
Culver might have tried micromanaging this obituary from the afterlife were it not for the fact that she didn’t believe in an afterlife. She winced at the verb “passed on” instead of “died.” Once it’s over, it’s over, she insisted, although had recently sought other views about what happens after.
“She seemed curious toward the end,” said Bonnie Gilbert, a former Post staffer and dear friend.
“I think she knew the situation with her health and was afraid,” Parmenter added. “All of us, especially as we get older, worry about where we’re going from here.”
Culver was preceded in death not only by her husband John and sister Margaret, but also her parents Bill and Hilda Culver and brother Gene Culver. Along with her nephew Kyle and his daughter, Lauren, who were at her side Sunday, she is survived by nieces Kyna and Keri Culver. She is also mourned by a wide circle of friends with whom she spent years travelling, attending theater and concert performances, meeting for dinners each Friday and brunch each Sunday and discussing everything from authoritarianism to the afterlife.
Her family and friends will gather at the Press Club later this fall to celebrate her life and legacy over dark chocolate and red wine with ice cubes, her favorites.
Susan Greene is a former Denver Post reporter and columnist.
Bruce DuMont, the longtime Chicago radio and TV broadcaster who founded the Museum of Broadcast Communications in 1987, died on Sept. 10 in Chicago of complications from cancer. He was 81.
His daughter, Jennifre, said her father had long had cancer, and he had announced the end of his longtime political talk show, “Beyond the Beltway,” in January of this year after 44 years on the air.
“He was a walking encyclopedia of TV and radio,” said Chicago broadcaster Bob Sirott, currently the morning host on WGN-AM. “He knew I was fascinated with broadcasting history, so he was kind enough over the years to ask me to emcee events at the museum that he knew I’d be interested in. He was a no-nonsense producer and organizer and a tireless worker on behalf of his ‘baby’ — the museum — but always smiling, joking, and with a permanently happy disposition.”
Bruce Barton DuMont was born in Connecticut in 1944 and moved to Chicago’s Northwest Side as a child, living with his parents at 3912 W. Diversey Ave. On his 10th birthday, DuMont went to New York to visit his uncle, Allen B. DuMont, who founded the DuMont Television Network and was one of the co-inventors of the cathode ray tube.
“I have never wanted to do anything else but be in television or on television since that moment,” DuMont told the Tribune in 1993.
While at Schurz High School, DuMont received a gold achievement key for his entry in a regional scholastic art contest. DuMont then studied radio and television at Columbia College Chicago, and during college in 1965, he was a fill-in weekend host at WEEF-AM in Highland Park, and was named the producer and host of a daily hour-long closed-circuit television program that debuted in February 1965. The show was exclusively for residents of the Hollywood House senior citizens home at Hollywood Avenue and Sheridan Road, becoming one of the first high-rises in the country to offer daily closed-circuit TV programming.
After college, DuMont worked as a producer on Jim Conway’s morning TV show on WLS-Channel 7 and then took a job as a producer-director for WGN-Channel 9. In 1969, he was selected as a Republican candidate for State Senate in the 11th senatorial district on the North Side. He left broadcasting for a time as he made his ultimately unsuccessful challenge to incumbent state Sen. Robert Cherry, D-Chicago.
DuMont returned to broadcasting, producing an afternoon radio show on WGN-AM. Then in 1973, DuMont got in front of the mic, teaming up with Chicago Today columnist Kenan Heise to co-host a Saturday show on WLTD-AM in Evanston. The following year, he began hosting a public affairs show on WLTD called “Montage,” which he syndicated to other stations, including in St. Charles and Lansing.
DuMont’s time on WLTD was short-lived. The station changed formats in May 1975 and DuMont and other personalities were relieved of their duties. After that, DuMont hosted an interview show on NBC’s all-news WNIS-FM for a time before leaving to take a job as director of public relations for the Henry Regnery publishing house.
In 1978, DuMont was named the producer of WBBM-Channel 2’s show “Noon Break,” anchored by Lee Phillip and Bob Wallace. He held that role for four years.
“He was one of the first people to put me on TV. When I was still at WLS in the late 1970s, he was the … producer for Lee Phillip’s ‘Noon Break’ on CBS 2,” Sirott said. “He had me do weekly live reports on media, music and lifestyle trends. So he helped open the door for me at Channel 2 news. I started there full-time in 1980.”
DuMont frequently held several gigs at the same time. In the mid-1970s, he began hosting a 90-minute weekly program, “Chicago Show,” on WBEZ-FM. He also hosted a news and public affairs show, “Straight Talk,” on WFYR-FM.
Then in 1980, DuMont began hosting “Inside Politics,” a political talk show on WBEZ. He also worked for nine years, from 1982 until 1991, as a producer, field correspondent and substitute host for John Callaway on WTTW-Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight,” and he later hosted the station’s “Illinois Lawmakers” program.
However, DuMont’s “Inside Politics” was what propelled him to national prominence. Placing a Midwest spin on politics, he broadcasted the show live before a studio audience. The program changed its affiliation in 1992 to WLS-AM and FM, and around that time entered national syndication. He changed its name to “Beyond the Beltway” at the start of 1995.
“When we began on WBEZ-FM 91.5 in 1980, it was a 13-week experiment,” DuMont told the Tribune in 1995. “It was a show by, for and about political junkies. What we started 15 years ago has become the staple of talk television — and to some extent talk radio — in the country. There’s a core group of political junkies who, 15 years ago, were not being served at all. We were one of the first shows in the country to have a raucous discussion of passionate issues. Politics, when played best, are played by people who are passionate.”
DuMont continued hosting “Beyond the Beltway” on other outlets such as WCGO-AM and then WIND-AM and also videotaped it live for a time, airing it on WYCC-Channel 20, until he stepped back from it in January.
DuMont was a champion of broadcast history, and starting in the early 1980s, he worked to make Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications a reality. It opened in the River City condominium complex at 800 S. Wells Street in 1987, and then moved in 1992 to the Chicago Cultural Center, where it was based until 2003. DuMont served as the museum’s president, and he worked both on museum exhibits and on digitizing and preserving an archive of radio and television programming.
DuMont resigned in 1991 as Channel 11’s political analyst and substitute host of “Chicago Tonight” to devote all his time running the museum, although he continued hosting “Inside Politics” and continued to host “Illinois Lawmakers” specials on Channel 11.
“I can’t think of a better place than Chicago for the Museum of Broadcast Communications,” he told the Tribune in 1993. “The museum represents the historical significance of Chicago as a broadcast center.’
After eight and a half years with no physical location, the museum reopened in 2012 at a new location at 360 N. State St. It closed its doors at that spot in 2023 and will be reopening this fall in a pop-up location in the West Loop.
DuMont retired as the museum’s president in 2017.
A first marriage ended in divorce. DuMont’s second wife, former Chicago Ald. Kathy Osterman, died in 1992. In addition to his daughter, DuMont is survived by his husband, Kevin Fuller, three granddaughters and a grandson.
NEW YORK — When the winning run scored in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the New York Mets melted into a white-and-blue swirl near the plate, celebrating their implausible comeback from the brink of defeat.
Right in the middle of all that humanity was Davey Johnson, who had arrived at the mob scene before many of his players.
Those ’86 Mets — with all their brashness, belligerence and unapologetic brilliance — would not have been the same without their 43-year-old manager.
Johnson died Friday at age 82. Longtime Mets public relations representative Jay Horwitz said Johnson’s wife Susan informed him of his death after a long illness. Johnson was at a hospital in Sarasota, Fla.
“His ability to empower players to express themselves while maintaining a strong commitment to excellence was truly inspiring,” Darryl Strawberry posted on Instagram with a photo of him, Johnson and Dwight Gooden. “Davey’s legacy will forever be etched in the hearts of fans and players alike.”
Strawberry and Gooden were the young stars of that 1986 team, and their talent and off-field troubles came to symbolize an era of Mets baseball. It was Johnson’s third World Series title after he won two as a player with the Baltimore Orioles.
A four-time All-Star, Johnson played 13 major-league seasons with the Orioles, Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs from 1965-78 and won three Gold Gloves at second base. He managed the Mets, Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Nationals during a span from 1984-2013.
“Davey was a good man, close friend and a mentor,” former Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said in a text message. “A Hall of Fame caliber manager with a baseball mind ahead of his time.”
Born Jan. 30, 1943, in Orlando, Fla., Johnson won World Series titles with the Orioles in 1966 and 1970 and also made the final out of the 1969 Fall Classic against the Mets — an irony given his future role with them. In 1973, Johnson hit a career-high 43 home runs with the Braves, joining Darrell Evans (41) and Henry Aaron (40) as part of the first trio of teammates in major league history to reach 40 in the same year.
Johnson’s first managerial job was with the Mets when he was in his early 40s. In steering that famously rowdy group to a title in 1986, he earned a reputation for giving his players their freedom. When that team began to decline, he was fired in 1990, but his days as a manager were far from over.
Mets manager Davey Johnson, center, holds the World Series trophy on the podium after his team defeated the Red Sox in Game 7 for the title on Oct. 27, 1986, at Shea Stadium in New York. (Ray Stubblebine/AP)
Johnson’s tenure in Cincinnati ended unusually. He was a lame duck at the start of the 1995 season, with Reds owner Marge Schott prepared to give Ray Knight — the man who scored that winning run in Game 6 for the Mets in ’86 — the managing job once that season was over. After guiding the Reds to a division title in ’95, Johnson went back to Baltimore to manage the Orioles.
“Davey Johnson was one of the best managers I ever had the privilege of working with in my career,” Jim Bowden, Reds general manager that year, said on social media Saturday. “He taught me so much about baseball specifically how to build bullpens, develop young pitchers and put together elite coaching staffs. He was a brilliant, kind leader and teammate.”
When Johnson took over the Orioles, he had enough credibility to move Cal Ripken Jr. from shortstop to third base, and they made the playoffs each of his two seasons at the helm. It was the first time the Orioles had done so since 1983, and they wouldn’t qualify again until 2012.
Like in Cincinnati, Johnson won a division title in what turned out to be the last year of his tenure in Baltimore. Amid a feud with owner Peter Angelos, Johnson resigned after the 1997 season — hours after receiving his first Manager of the Year award.
He won it again in 2012, when he led the Nationals to baseball’s best regular-season record and the franchise’s first postseason spot since moving from Montreal to Washington.
“Davey was a world-class manager,” Nationals owner Mark Lerner said in a statement. “I’ll always cherish the memories we made together with the Nationals, and I know his legacy will live on in the heads and minds of our fans and those across baseball.”
Johnson studied math at Trinity University in Texas, and he had an innovative side. Even when he was a player, he was already using data to try to optimize the Orioles lineup, although Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver wasn’t turning that duty over to his infielder.
But when dealing with his players as a manager, Johnson had a blunt, old-school manner, according to Mike Bordick, the Orioles shortstop in 1997.
“He was so easy to play for,” Bordick said. “He just knew the right buttons to push.”
Ryan Zimmerman, who played for Johnson with the Nationals from 2011-13, said Johnson was an even better human than he was a baseball man.
“He knew how to get the best out of everyone — on and off the field,” Zimmerman said in a text message. “I learned so much from him, and my career would not have been the same without my years with him. He will be deeply missed by so many people.”
AP’s Howard Fendrich contributed. Noah Trister reported from Baltimore.
W. Jay Wood was a philosopher who, during a nearly 40-year career as a professor at Wheaton College in Wheaton, grappled with key questions regarding knowledge and understanding.
In his scholarship and teaching, Wood also focused on virtues, colleagues said, delighting in moral qualities like meekness, patience, prudence and charity.
“Jay was a connoisseur of the virtues,” said Richard Hughes Gibson, a Wheaton College English professor who co-taught a course with Wood. “A virtue was a treasure — something to be held up to the light and delicately turned to be viewed from multiple angles.”
Wood, 71, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on Aug. 9 at his home in West Chicago, said his son, Adam. Previously a longtime Wheaton resident, Wood had struggled to recover from a fall and a hip fracture in early July, his son said.
Born in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1954, William Jerome Wood grew up in a family that moved around a good bit. He graduated from Torrance High School in Torrance, California, and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1976 from Westmont College in California.
Wood picked up a master’s degree in philosophy in 1980 from the University of Notre Dame before earning a doctorate from Notre Dame in 1986.
In 1982, Wheaton College hired Wood as a philosophy professor, and he later also served as a department chair and as vice chair of the faculty. He quickly built a reputation as an educator who focused on developing students who were not afraid to ask questions. Wood also studied epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, and he examined existential concerns over what constitutes a well-lived, moral and intellectual life.
Sarah Borden, a philosophy professor at Wheaton, noted the wealth of illustrative stories that Wood shared with students in his classes as a way to enlighten them.
“For almost any complex idea, whether philosophical or theological, Jay could share a story or example that pinpointed what it was like to live that set of commitments,” she said.
Wood taught a variety of philosophy classes, including introduction to philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtues and vices.
“His passion was teaching, as anyone who was ever in class with him could tell you,” said Adam Wood, who is a professor of philosophy at Wheaton.
When Wood and Gibson co-taught a seminar on Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Wood exhibited one virtue — humility — that he valued, Gibson said.
“Jay did not lord his knowledge or imposing physique over the students or me, his junior colleague,” Gibson said. “He was the first of learners in the class, eagerly collecting pearls of wisdom from the old poet and the remarks of others in the room. Indeed, I was struck by Jay’s ability to coax insights out of the students — insights the students didn’t know that they were capable of until Jay started asking questions.”
Philosopher Robert C. Roberts, a former Wheaton College professor who later taught at Baylor University, called Wood both a “popular and lovable teacher” as well as a “deeply human scholar fixed on the most important questions.”
“He was an epistemologist — that is, a philosopher of topics like knowing and understanding,” Roberts said. “What is it to know something, to understand something? He was trained in traditional contemporary analytics epistemology, but became convinced in mid-career of the importance to knowing and understanding of such human virtues as loving knowledge, being truthful, generous, humble and charitable.”
Wood took a particular interest in intellectual virtues — those that should guide people’s thinking and knowing, Gibson said. He was fond of quoting the 12th-century theologian Hugh of Saint Victor, whose motto was that humility is “the beginning of discipline,” Gibson said.
“He taught me Hugh’s three great lessons on humility: hold no knowledge in contempt, be not ashamed to learn from anyone and, once you have acquired some learning, don’t look down on others,” Gibson said.
Popular with students and colleagues, Wood declined job offers elsewhere to become a dean, his son said, because he had a strong commitment to continuing to teach in the classroom. Wood also was “thoroughly committed to growing in virtue,” Borden said.
“He worked on being empathetic, compassionate, just, attentive and generous. He made it a point to habituate the virtues daily, hourly, that he wrote about,” she said. “Jay played a key role in bringing virtue conversations — both Aristotelian and Thomistic — into larger epistemological discussions, and (into) Christian philosophy generally. It was both a theoretical and a lived concern for him.”
Wood wrote or coauthored several books, including a widely used textbook on epistemology, “Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous,” which first was published in 1998. His 2011 book, “God,” tackled moral arguments for God’s existence along with ontological arguments and examined the debate over whether theism is rationally justifiable.
Wood also coauthored a 2007 book with Roberts, “Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology.”
Battling cognitive decline, Wood retired from Wheaton College in 2021.
Outside of work, Wood enjoyed singing in his church choir, reading literature, listening to classical music, running, traveling and hiking.
In addition to his son, Wood is survived by his wife of 49 years, Janice; another son, Samuel; two daughters, Diana Soerens and Gillian Conrad; 10 grandchildren; and two brothers, Michael and Chris.
A memorial service was held at the Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton.
Sally Johnston, mother of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and co-owner of the Christiania Lodge at Vail, passed away May 17, with the mayor joining her for a final goodbye.
The city leader announced his mom’s passing in a LinkedIn post on Saturday.
“Yesterday we said the final good bye to my mom,” Johnston wrote. He depicted her as selfless, joyful and “a tireless force for goodness.”
Sally Johnston grew up in Port Leyden, N.Y., alongside three sisters. Her father worked as a school principal, while her mother was an arts and music teacher, according to a 2010 article in the Vail Daily.
She followed in their footsteps — teaching music in Boston in the 1960s, her son Mike recalled in his social media post. There, she spearheaded a Head Start program, the Vail Daily reports.
She married her husband, Paul Ross Johnston, in 1970 — the former mayor of Vail, who passed away in 2015. The pair bought a boutique hotel in Vail in 1976.
With her experience in education and psychology, Sally Johnston served as a board member at Third Way Center, a nonprofit that helps youths resolve trauma. She also had a spot on the Vail Mountain School Board and was involved with the Vail Religious Foundation.
“She loved people for their beauty and their brokenness alike, which always had the power to make each of us feel unafraid, unashamed, perfect again — the way we were once before the world taught us to doubt,” Johnston wrote. “She changed my world, and she convinced me with a ferocity I will never surrender that we can all change the world, because I watched her do it every day.”
Colorado civil rights attorney Kevin Williams died this week after 26 years of fighting to improve the lives of people with disabilities. He was 57.
Williams died Tuesday after a short illness, according to colleagues at the Denver-based Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, where he launched the legal program in 1997 upon graduation from law school.
A quadriplegic paralyzed from his chest down following a car crash at age 19, Williams steadily increased access for disabled people by filing lawsuits — pressing for enforcement under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and the Fair Housing Act.
He began this work as a third-year law student at the University of Denver. Shortly before his graduation, he sued his law school. The issue was compliance with the ADA. He prevailed, leading to required improvements, including a wheelchair-accessible graduation venue.
Often serving as the plaintiff, Williams repeated that feat again and again, expanding access for Coloradans with disabilities in stores, restaurants, public transit systems, theaters, arenas and travel pathways around the state. For example, his litigation compelled the operators of Red Rocks Amphitheatre to provide accessible parking, seating and ticketing.
He also led other lawyers into disability rights work.
Williams grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland. He made Colorado his home in 1990, the year President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law. He enjoyed drives in the mountains, attending concerts and visiting local breweries and distilleries.
Friends this week remembered him as passionate in his pursuit of civil rights.
“Kevin was contemplative, thorough and certain not to leave any stone unturned, especially in litigation,” said Andrew Montoya, who worked in the coalition’s legal program as an assistant and then was inspired to attend law school.
“Even seemingly mundane legal issues could occupy hours of lively discussion ranging from interpretive case law to contemporary and historical politics to litigation strategy to the meaning of life, and back again,” Montoya said. “His passion for civil rights, both in general and specifically those of people with disabilities, clearly animated his work, both in the courtroom and in the rest of the world.”
He also had a knack for making light of difficulties. Friends recalled his adaptation of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” — a rendition that he titled “Let Us Pee.” (“When I find myself in times of trouble; The bathroom door is two-foot-three; Whisper words of wisdom; Let us pee, let us pee.”
“He was intense, passionate, focused and very analytical. What kept him motivated was seeing people with disabilities face discrimination and knowing that the laws that are supposed to protect us are being violated,” said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director of the coalition.
“What bothered him was the blatant violation of the law, especially by those who should know better, such as courts and lawyers that made excuses rather than working to fix the problem.”
