Frank Dolson
PHILADELPHIA (AP)–Frank Dolson, the longtime Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist who later was a New York Yankees special assistant, died Sunday. He was 73.
Former Penn basketball player Decker Uhlhorn, a close friend, told the Inquirer that Dolson died in his sleep at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dolson, a native New Yorker, attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and was hired by Sports Illustrated after he graduated in 1954. A year later, the Inquirer made him the city’s youngest columnist.
In his columns, Dolson advocated keeping the simplicity and purity of sports, campaigned against any move toward professionalism in the Olympics, and expressed disdain for the designated hitter and exploding scoreboards.
After he retired from the Inquirer in 1995, he was hired by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as a special assistant.
In April, he established a $1.25 million endowment at the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Relays’ director position was named in his honor. Dolson covered the Penn Relays for nearly 50 years.
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Jack Martin Fleischer
MORRILTON, Ark. (AP)–Jack Martin Fleischer, who as a journalist covered Europe in World War II and watched the continent flourish again after he became a diplomat, died Thursday, said his daughter, Josie Cote. He was 91.
Fleischer grew up in Green Bay, Wis., where he learned German from his grandfather. He worked for United Press during the war. Fleischer was living in Berlin at the start of the war, and the Nazis held him and other journalists and diplomats in a hotel for five months.
Fleischer returned to United Press headquarters in Stockholm, where he continued to cover the war, traveling across Europe by Jeep.
After the war, Fleischer joined the U.S. State Department and spent the next 20 years living in various parts of Europe. In Munich, Fleischer was the editor in chief of Die Neue Zeitung, an American-sponsored newspaper.
Fleischer and his wife, Ann-Charlotte, lived on a farm in Italy for 22 years before moving to Arkansas.
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Heinz Sielmann
BERLIN (AP)–Heinz Sielmann, a German zoologist and internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose works included “Vanishing Wilderness” and “Masters of the Congo Jungle,” died Friday. He was 89.
Sielmann died in his sleep, surrounded by his family in Munich. He will be buried in the western German town of Duderstadt, his foundation said Sunday.
Sielmann was best known in Germany for a 30-year television series called “Expeditions into the Animal Kingdom” that made him a household name.
He also collaborated with National Geographic to produce several documentaries in the 1960s and 1970s that were shown around the globe.
Sielmann completed his first film, a documentary on birds, in 1938.
In 1994, he established a foundation in Germany to promote wildlife preservation and teach children the importance of respecting nature.
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