Milton Wolff, 92, commander of the volunteer Lincoln-Washington Battalion in the Spanish Civil War, and a friend to writer Ernest Hemingway, died Monday of heart failure at a Berkeley, Calif., nursing home.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1915, Wolff was a high school dropout. During the Depression, he enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the New Deal experiments. He later joined the Young Communist League, he recounted in his writings.
He volunteered for the Spanish Civil War so he could provide the soldiers with first aid, which he learned in the Conservation Corps.
He was named battalion commander at 22 and a major at age 23, the result of the entire leadership being killed or wounded, said Peter Carroll, who chairs the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives board of directors.
After World War II, Wolff was under constant surveillance by the FBI, Carroll said. In 1947, the Department of Justice declared the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade a subversive organization.
“He was famous for his personal courage. He was famous for his leadership and morality,” said Carroll, who accompanied Wolff in 2004 to Spain, where he is a beloved figure.
Ugo Pirro, 87, who wrote the screenplays for two Oscar-winning movies, including “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” died Friday in Rome, city officials said.
Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said the city was mourning the loss of “one of the greatest screenwriters in the history of cinema.”
Pirro co-wrote the screenplays for “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” directed by Elio Petri, and Vittorio De Sica’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.” Both films, released in the early 1970s, went on to win Oscars for best foreign-language movie. Pirro was nominated for the screenplays, but did not win. Over his career, Pirro adapted the Mafia novels of Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia and worked with directors, including Lina Wertmuller, and actors, including Gian Maria Volonte.
Harold “Hal” Light, 86, a retired FBI special agent who oversaw construction of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., died Dec. 18 of complications from cancer surgery and a stroke at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del.
A former Fairfax, Va., resident, he also was the agent tapped by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to manage the extradition of James Earl Ray to the United States from London, where he had been arrested as the alleged assassin of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
