Henrietta Bell Wells, 96, the first female and last surviving member of the debate team of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, that rose to national prominence in the 1930s and inspired the movie “The Great Debaters,” died Feb. 27.
When Wells was a freshman at the school in 1930, her English professor, Melvin B. Tolson, invited her to join the debate team. Tolson was a noted poet and a keen debater who set the team on a 10-year winning streak.
The Wiley Debate Team won contests against far more prominent black colleges, including Tuskegee and Howard universities. The team broke new ground in 1930 when it took on law students from the University of Michigan in what is said to be the first interracial college debate.
Wiley scored its most famous victory in 1935 when the team beat the University of Southern California, the national debate champion. Last year Tolson and the Wiley team were the subject of “The Great Debaters,” with Denzel Washington as the inspirational coach. In the movie, the only woman on the team was based partly on Wells and played by actress Jurnee Smollett.
Samuel Hamrick Jr., 78, a retired Foreign Service officer who wrote thoughtful and engaging spy thrillers that critics occasionally ranked alongside the best of Graham Greene and John Le Carre, died Feb. 29 of colon cancer at his farm near Boston, Va.
Hamrick, who wrote under the name W.T. Tyler, drew on 20 years of experience as a State Department analyst in Africa and the Middle East. The pen name alluded to Wat Tyler, leader of a bloody peasant rebellion in 14th-century England.
He published his first novel, “The Man Who Lost the War,” in 1980, the year he retired from the State Department.
Alun Hoddinott, 78, a composer who wrote music for the British royal family and was an influential promoter of modern music in his native Wales, died Wednesday at a hospital in Swansea, his family said. They did not release the cause of his death.
Hoddinott composed more than 300 operas, symphonies and songs, including music for Prince Charles’ 16th birthday and a fanfare for the prince’s marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.
Huw Tregelles Williams, the first director of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, credited Hoddinott with developing “an entirely new musical language in the history of musical Wales. . . . He had a highly original, colorful style.”
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