H.A. “Red” Boucher, 88, Alaska’s first elected lieutenant governor, died Friday at his Anchorage home.
He arrived in Fairbanks in 1958 — a year before Alaska became a state — after serving 20 years in the Navy. He entered politics by way of the Fairbanks City Council, then served as mayor in 1966. He served as lieutenant governor under Gov. William Egan, from 1970 to 1974. He later was elected to the state House of Representatives, then served on the Anchorage Assembly.
A member of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame and National Baseball Congress Hall of Fame, Boucher founded and managed the Fairbanks Goldpanners baseball team in 1960 under the sponsorship of the sporting goods store he owned in Fairbanks. The college-level team sent about 170 of its players on to play Major League baseball.
John Houghtaling, 92, the inventor of the “Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed,” a coin-operated fixture in American motel rooms in the 1960s and ’70s, has died.
His son Paul said the inventor died Wednesday at his home in Fort Pierce, Fla.
Tinkering in the basement of his New Jersey home, Houghtaling invented the “Magic Fingers” machine in 1958. The device was mounted onto beds, and a quarter bought 15 minutes of “tingling relaxation and ease,” according to its label.
He moved the company to Miami in 1968 and remained its president until he retired in the 1980s, when the rights to the device were sold.
The Associated Press
