Luther Blount
WARREN, R.I. (AP)–Luther Blount, philanthropist and founder of a small ship cruise line, has died. He was 90.
Blount, who died Sunday, had been battling colon cancer for a year and a half, said cruise company spokeswoman Betty Galligan.
Blount founded American Canadian Caribbean Line in 1966. The family-owned business with 70 employees offers no-frills cruises to offbeat places and caters to a niche market of travelers who want a casual, down-to-earth real-life experience of the regions they visit.
Blount, an avid sailor with a shipbuilding background, also designed and built most of his ships. Galligan said he was a pioneer in designing a vessel with a retractable pilothouse that lowers into the second deck and allows ships to pass through shallow waters and low-lying bridges.
He invented a gentle bow ramp that allowed passengers, especially elderly ones, to embark and disembark from the ship easily. He also invented a ship that could dock right up to the beach.
In April, Blount donated one of his cruise ships, worth $6.5 million, to Rhode Island College, Roger Williams University and Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. Blount graduated from Wentworth in 1937 with a degree in mechanical design.
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Yutaka Egashira
TOKYO (AP)–Yutaka Egashira, Japanese Crown Princess Masako’s grandfather, died over the weekend, the Imperial Household Agency said Monday. He was 98.
Egashira died at a hospital in the city of Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture, where he had been treated for an unspecified illness. The agency did not disclose the cause of his death.
Egashira was a former chairman of Japanese chemical company Chisso Corp., which caused Minamata disease, one of Japan’s worst industrial pollution cases. More than 2,000 people are officially recognized by the government as Minamata victims.
Egashira’s link to Chisso was initially considered a sticking point for Masako’s marriage to Naruhito, but top palace officials eventually approved it after concluding Egashira was sent to Chisso from a now-defunct Industrial Bank of Japan to reconstruct the financially strapped chemical firm in the 1960s. They said Egashira was not responsible for the pollution scandal.
Minamata disease–which causes spasms, blurred vision and can lead to birth defects in the children of infected parents–was linked to the consumption of fish from Minamata Bay, where Chisso had been dumping tons of mercury until 1970 despite the terrifying effects of the poisoning.
Masako, 42, wife of Crown Prince Naruhito, withdrew from official duties in December, and palace officials later announced she had a stress-related disorder and was receiving counseling and medication.
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John Ed Pearce
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)–John Ed Pearce, who spent 25 years guiding readers of The Courier-Journal’s editorial page, has died. He was 87.
Pearce died Monday, a family member said.
Pearce, originally from Norton, Va., shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1967 as part of the paper’s efforts to urge mining companies to adopt stronger strip-mining controls. He also won the Governor’s Medallion for public service in conservation and served as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1958.
At times a feature writer and columnist during his nearly half-century in journalism, Pearce established the Kentucky Oral History Museum along with former Gov. Julian Carroll, served four years in the Navy during World War II and spent 27 years in the Naval Reserve.
Yet it was on the editorial page where Pearce left his biggest mark. Known for his eloquent writing style and dapper attire, he was called one of journalism’s “superstars” during a 1982 profile in Louisville Magazine.
In his 1997 book “Memoirs: 50 years at the Courier-Journal and Other Places,” Pearce wrote that he had probably not gotten to the “top of the hill I intended to climb.”
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Henry Townsend
ST. LOUIS (AP)–Blues guitarist Henry Townsend, who fled to St. Louis as a boy then stayed for a prolific career that spanned eight decades, has died. He was 96.
Townsend died Sunday, said John May, chairman of the St. Louis Blues Society.
Townsend, living in the same brick bungalow he shared for 40 years with his late wife, Vernell, who performed with him, was in Grafton, Wis., to be honored as the last surviving artist with the old Paramount Records. The label recorded one-fourth of all the blues material produced from 1929 to 1932, including “race records” by black artists for black audiences.
Townsend was born in Shelby, Miss., grew up in Cairo, Ill., and left for St. Louis as a 9-year-old to avoid a whipping from his father, after he had “blown some snuff,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in June.
He decided on a career in blues guitar after hearing budding bluesman Lonnie Johnson, the Jimi Hendrix of the 1920s, perform in the old Booker T. Washington Theater in St. Louis.
Townsend and other blues musicians deemed worthy of studios’ investment survived the Depression. But they fell into near oblivion when the juke box replaced live music, and the materials needed for the war effort slowed down the record industry.
Townsend, who won a National Heritage Award in 1985 that recognized his being a master artist, never stopped performing.
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