Ernest Herman Boullioun
SEATTLE (AP)–Ernest Herman “Tex” Boullioun, a longtime Boeing Co. executive, died Sunday, said his daughter, Sue Cooper. He was 87.
Boullioun was born in 1918 and grew up in Little Rock, Ark. He joined Boeing in 1940, initially working on the B-17 and B-29 bomber programs.
In 1967, he became vice president and general manager of the commercial airplanes division, and in 1972 was promoted to president. He held that position until he retired from Boeing in 1984.
Boullioun traveled the globe selling airplanes, often meeting with heads of state, royalty and celebrities as he worked to secure deals for planes, including the company’s trademark 747 widebody jet.
He also was a top manager during the “Boeing Bust,” a sharp downturn that began in 1969 and resulted in the company cutting 86,000 jobs over three years.
Boullioun earned the nickname Tex when, soon after joining Boeing, he bet a month’s salary that Texas would beat Oregon in a college football game. He won.
Boullioun started an aircraft leasing company, Boullioun Aviation Services, after he retired from Boeing. He sold the company in 1994.
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Olivia Robello Breitha
HONOLULU (AP)–Olivia Robello Breitha, who shared her story of exile as a leprosy patient on a remote peninsula of Molokai island and strove to dispel myths about the disease, died Thursday. She was 90.
Her death was confirmed Friday by Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health.
Breitha was brought to the Kalaupapa settlement on Molokai in 1937, three years after she contracted Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy.
Her 1998 autobiography, “Olivia: My Life in Exile in Kalaupapa,” enlightened generations of readers about the disfiguring condition that was feared for centuries.
More than 8,000 people were banished to Molokai after the disease became epidemic in the 1850s. Forced quarantine did not end until 1969 after sulfone drugs were developed to control it.
Breitha continued to live in Kalaupapa even after the quarantine was lifted. Her death brought the number of patients remaining at Kalaupapa to 33.
She was one of three women to be given the first “Voices of Humanity” award by IDEA, the largest international advocacy group for leprosy survivors.
In 1997, Breitha and other Kalaupapa residents were honored at the United Nations at the opening of a World Health Organization photography exhibit about the accomplishments of leprosy patients.
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Lucille DeView
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)–Lucille DeView, an award-winning playwright and a former columnist and writing coach for The Orange County Register, died Thursday. She was 85.
DeView, who also worked at The Detroit News, The Christian Science Monitor and Florida Today, died of heart failure in Palm Bay, Fla., the Register reported Friday.
DeView started writing weekly columns for the Register in the 1990s. She was also among the first news-writing coaches in the nation as newsrooms worked to improve their prose in the late 1970s.
Early in her career, DeView wrote a series called “Dialing Detroit,” in which she would dial a random phone number and write a story about the person who answered. Register reporters later repeated the idea with a series called “Everyone Has a Story.”
In her late 70s, she wrote her first play, “A Summer with Hemingway’s Twin,” which won the 1997 National Play Award of the National Repertory Theatre Foundation.
It was based on a summer DeView spent as a maid at the cottage of Ernest Hemingway’s sister, hoping to meet the great writer. She never did meet Hemingway, but the play was a success.
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John W. Peterson
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP)–John W. Peterson, who wrote more than 1,000 gospel hymns in a musical career that began before World War II, died Wednesday. He was 84.
Peterson died of cancer at his home in Scottsdale, said Derek Beach, a funeral director with Messinger Indian School Mortuary in Scottsdale.
Peterson’s compositions included “It Took a Miracle,” “Over the Sunset Mountains,” “So I Send You,” and “Surely Goodness and Mercy.”
Peterson headed his own music publishing businesses in Scottsdale since moving to Arizona in the 1970s. Earlier, he served for more than 10 years as president of Singspiration, a sacred-music publishing company in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Born Nov. 1, 1921 in Lindsborg, Kan., Peterson served as an Army Air Forces transport pilot in the war, flying a route between India and China over the Himalayas known as “The Hump.”
After leaving the service, he graduated from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and moved to Montrose, Pa., for a job as music director for Singspiration. He later led the organization before moving to Scottsdale and co-founding Good Life Productions and later his own John W. Peterson Music Co.
He was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1986.
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Clayton Scott
SEATTLE (AP)–Clayton Scott, who served as Bill Boeing’s personal pilot and later become a top Boeing Co. test pilot, died Thursday. He was 101.
Scott’s death was confirmed by Eden Hopkins, a spokeswoman for The Museum of Flight.
Scott was born July 15, 1905, in Coudersport, Pa., and later moved to the Pacific Northwest. An early aviation buff, Scott owned his own airplane by 1928.
He is on the record books as making the first landing at Boeing Field, after an emergency forced him to touch down on the then-uncompleted airfield. After the emergency was resolved, he made the first takeoff.
In the 1930s, Scott had a chance encounter with Bill Boeing, founder of Boeing Co., when Scott was refueling his airplane at a marina in Alert Bay, British Columbia, where Boeing was refueling his yacht.
Boeing hired Scott to be his personal pilot. Scott also served as chief production test pilot for Boeing’s company from 1940 to 1966, flying both military and commercial planes. Boeing is now based in Chicago.
The municipal airfield in Renton, south of Seattle, was renamed Clayton Scott Field last year, to celebrate Scott’s 100th birthday.
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