Elizabeth Allen
FISHKILL, N.Y. (AP)–Elizabeth Allen, a Tony Award-nominated actress known to early television fans as the “Away We Go” girl on “The Jackie Gleason Show,” died Sept. 19. She was 77.
Allen died of kidney failure at a nursing home, the Auchmoody Funeral Home in Fishkill said Monday.
In 1953, already a veteran fashion model, Allen had a role on the Gleason show introducing segments with “And away we go!”–which, like “How sweet it is,” was a popular Gleason catchphrase.
After several years as a member of the Helen Hayes Repertory Company in New York City, Allen’s break on Broadway came as Juliet in David Merrick’s 1957 production of “Romanoff and Juliet.”
She was nominated for a Tony in 1965 as best actress in a musical, for playing a spinster who briefly finds love in Venice in the Arthur Laurents-Richard Rodgers-Stephen Sondheim collaboration “Do I Hear a Waltz?”
Earlier, in 1962, she was nominated as best featured (supporting) actress in a musical for “The Gay Life.”
On television, she played Paul Lynde’s wife on the 1970s sitcom “The Paul Lynde Show” and was also in the casts of “Bracken’s World” and Don Rickles’ sitcom “C.P.O. Sharkey.” Her guest appearance credits included “Kojak,” “Dr. Kildare” and “The Twilight Zone,” appearing in a memorable 1960 segment about a department store in which the mannequins come to life.
She was also in a few feature films, including “Diamond Head” with Charlton Heston, “From the Terrace” with Paul Newman, and two John Ford films, “Donovan’s Reef” with John Wayne and “Cheyenne Autumn” with Richard Widmark.
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Ira B. Harkey Jr.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP)–Ira B. Harkey Jr., a retired journalist and editor in Pascagoula and New Orleans and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, died Sunday in Kerrville, Texas. He was 88.
Harkey’s eldest son, Ira III, said his father died of complications from Parkinson’s disease at Parsons House in Kerrville, where the former journalist had lived for the past two years.
When Harkey received the Pulitzer, he had been editor and publisher of The Chronicle Star, now The Mississippi Press, for 14 years. He had also worked at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.
The Pulitzer was awarded for Harkey’s editorial writing during the integration of the University of Mississippi. His editorials were recognized as courageous and devoted to the processes of law and reason during the integration crisis in Mississippi in 1962.
Harkey’s editorials called for the peaceful admittance of James Meredith to Ole Miss and evoked outspoken criticism across the state, as well as violence.
He was vilified for his editorials, his life was threatened, and the newspaper and its advertisers were boycotted. A cross was burned in front of the newspaper office. A rifle was fired into the front door, and a shotgun blast took out his office window before the FBI was called.
A cross already had burned in front of his home after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
Harkey detailed the events in his autobiography, “The Smell of Burning Crosses,” in 1967.
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George McElroy
HOUSTON (AP)–George McElroy, a pioneering black columnist and journalism teacher, died Saturday from acute respiratory distress syndrome at a Houston hospital, his daughter Kathleen McElroy said. He was 84.
During his journalism career, McElroy became the first black to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and the first black columnist to write for the former Houston Post.
After earning his masters’ degree, McElroy taught journalism in Houston high schools, and later at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University.
McElroy got his first newspaper job at 16, writing a youth column for the Informer, Houston’s oldest black newspaper.
He worked as a professor and continued to write for the Informer and the Post, where he covered sports and later became a columnist. In his column, he profiled all types of people, most of them black, ranging from barbers to beauty queens.
During his career, he interviewed Martin Luther King Jr. and Fidel Castro. He collected numerous honors, including a lifetime achievement award from the Houston Association of Black Journalists that he accepted last week.
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Glenn Myernick
THORNTON, Colo. (AP)–Glenn Myernick, an assistant coach for the U.S. soccer team and a former head coach of Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids, died Monday after suffering a heart attack last week. He was 51.
Myernick collapsed Thursday after his regular morning jog and never regained consciousness, said Rapids spokesman Jurgen Mainka.
Mainka said Myernick’s wife, Nancy, daughter, Kelly, and son, Travis, were with him when he died.
Myernick coached the Rapids from 1997-2001, taking them to the Major League Soccer title game in his first year, and coached the U.S. Olympic team from 2002-04, when it failed to qualify for the Athens Games.
A winner of the 1976 Hermann Trophy while at Hartwick College, Myernick made 10 appearances for the U.S. national team from 1975-79.
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Ray Noorda
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)–Ray Noorda, the Novell Inc. founder who battled Microsoft Corp. in the early years of network computers, died Monday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 82.
Noorda, the so-called Father of Network Computing, had suffered from Alzheimer’s for years and died at his home in Orem, 35 miles south of Salt Lake City, according to a statement from family members.
He became chief executive of Novell in 1983 and made it a software powerhouse, dominating the market for products that manage corporate networks and let individual computers share files and printers. But Microsoft caught up by the mid-1990s.
Noorda, whom Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once called the “grumpy grandfather” of technology, was bitter over Novell’s failure to check Microsoft’s power. He tried branching out in the early 1990s by investing in the Unix operating system, the WordPerfect word processor and other products to compete with dominant Microsoft products.
But those efforts failed, and Novell went into a decline from which it has yet to fully recover. Noorda retired from Novell in 1995 to open The Canopy Group, a capital venture firm.
More recently, Novell has turned to developing software for the Linux operating system, trimmed jobs and moved headquarters to Waltham, Mass., although it still keeps some operations in Provo, Utah.
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Kanshi Ram
NEW DELHI (AP)–Kanshi Ram, the founder of India’s most powerful lower caste party, died of a heart attack Monday. He was 72.
Ram, who had been receiving treatment for diabetes, hypertension and several other ailments for more than two years, died at his official residence in New Delhi, said the president of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mayawati, who uses only one name.
Ram founded the party in 1984 amid growing dissent among India’s low caste Hindus that their interests had been ignored by the country’s mainstream political parties.
“In his passing away, the nation has lost a public leader who always had the interests of the downtrodden close to his heart,” President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said.
Many low caste Hindus–also known as “dalits” or untouchables–often compared Ram with B.R. Ambedkar, who fought against caste discrimination and was the architect of the Indian Constitution that provides for affirmative action.
Although it has a presence across the country, the party’s stronghold is in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Ram as one of the greatest social reformers in recent times.
