Tulsa World: Deaths

TULSA WORLD HOMEPAGE | Wednesday, February 10, 2010 | WIRELESS

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Deaths

By Staff Reports
Published: 11/27/2009 2:19 AM
Last Modified: 11/27/2009 5:56 AM

TULSA

Alvarez, Isaac Ruben, 9, died Wednesday. Service noon Friday, Evangelistic Temple. Floral Haven, Broken Arrow.

Bethel, Jerry, 76, antiques and classic car dealer, died Thursday. Services pending. Moore's Southlawn.

Brooke, Joan Louise, 97, retired Pan American Oil secretary, died Wednesday. No services planned. Moore's Eastlawn.

Brown, Kimberley Dawn, 42, died Sunday. Services pending. Keith D. Biglow.

Cato, Brandee D., 34, Tulsa Public Schools food service worker, died Saturday. Memorial service 11 a.m. Monday, Add'Vantage Funeral Service Chapel.

Cyrus, Robert Jr., 86, died Wednesday. Services pending. Jack's.

Eades, Naomie, 97, retired registered nurse, died Wednesday. Services pending. Moore's Southlawn.

Emery, Edith L., 100, businesswoman, died Sunday. Memorial service 1 p.m. Friday, Asbury United Methodist Church. Add'Vantage.

Friday, Frank Vernon Jr., 59, laborer, died Saturday. Service 11 a.m. Friday, St. John AME Church. Keith D. Biglow.

Gomes, Raul, 75, home builder, died Wednesday. Services pending. Add'Vantage.

Goodwin, Dona Dee, 77, homemaker, died Wednesday. Visitation 3-6 p.m. Sunday and service 10 a.m. Monday, both at Fitzgerald Southwood Colonial Funeral Home.

Jackson, Eugene Howard, 66, mechanic, died Tuesday. Services pending. Jack's.

Jenkins, Esther Belle Lewis, 87, homemaker, died Sunday. Service 11 a.m. Monday, Metropolitan Baptist Church. Jack's.

Leipold, Judith Thomas, 70, homemaker, died Wednesday. Services pending. Add'Vantage.

Mayberry, Carolyn Ann Jones, 59, analyst programmer, died Nov. 21. Service 11 a.m. Saturday, New Heights Christian Center. Jack's.

Murphy, Talesa, 39, died Wednesday. Services pending. Keith D. Biglow.

Parks, Robert H., 85, retired Arco Oil Co. petroleum engineer, died Tuesday. Memorial service 11 a.m. Saturday, Freeman Harris Funeral Home Chapel.

Wilson, Janet A., age unavailable, physician, died Wednesday. Services pending. Hayhurst, Broken Arrow.

STATE/AREA

Funeral home, church and cemetery locations are in the city under which the death notice is listed unless otherwise noted.

Adair — Wanda Jordan, 82, homemaker, died Thursday. Services pending. Shipman's, Pryor.

Barnsdall — Orlo Everet Andrews, 83, retired from Bareco Refinery, died Wednesday. Services pending. Stumpff.

Bixby — Norman Bartlett, 79, radiologist, died Wednesday. Services pending. Leonard & Marker.

— Rhonda Kay Manley, 37, homemaker, died Saturday. Service 10 a.m. Friday, First United Methodist Church. Green Hill, Sapulpa.

Catoosa — James S. Streetly Jr., age unavailable, electrical manufacturing quality assurance employee, died Sunday. Memorial service 11 a.m. Friday, Rock House Church. Add'Vantage, Tulsa.

Claremore — Wanda Faye Heath, 57, accountant, died Monday. Service 11 a.m. Saturday, Free Will Baptist Church, Collinsville. Mowery, Owasso.

Copan — Clyde Marion Ruble, 84, died Thursday. Services pending. Stumpff, Bartlesville.

Coweta — J.B. Massey Jr., 84, American Airlines maintenance painter, died Wednesday. Service 10 a.m. Saturday, First Baptist Church. Wright.

Grove — Wanda Faye Dominguez, 83, died Thursday. Services pending. Stumpff, Bartlesville.

Inola — Delores M. Lee, 79, died Tuesday. Service 2 p.m. Monday, Key Funeral Home Chapel, Pryor.

Mannford — John "Jack" Studebaker, 82, retired welder, died Tuesday. Visitation 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday and service 1 p.m. Monday, both at Mannford Funeral Home.

Mounds — Melinda Tewell, 71, homemaker, died Tuesday. Service 10 a.m. Saturday, Smith Funeral Home Chapel, Sapulpa.

Muskogee — Harrel E. Tollett Jr., 85, dentist, died Nov. 19. Visitation 1-7 p.m. Friday, Ragsdale Funeral Center, and service 11 a.m. Saturday, Ward Chapel AME Church.

Okmulgee — James William Stokely Jr., 45, died Wednesday. Services pending. Shurden.

Pryor — Wanda L. Taber, 75, homemaker, died Thursday. Services pending. Shipman's.

Sallisaw — Lonnie Orbit Claborn, 85, retired Sequoyah County sheriff and People Inc. bus driver, died Tuesday in Vian. Visitation 6-8 p.m. Friday, Agent Funeral Home, and graveside service 1 p.m. Saturday, White Dove Cemetery, Sparks.

Sand Springs — Sue Spittler, 60, Sam's Club accounting supervisor, died Monday. Memorial service 10 a.m. Friday, Add'Vantage Funeral Service Chapel, Tulsa.

Sapulpa — Fayetta Lee Chalk, 75, nurse's aide, died Sunday. Visitation 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday and service 2 p.m. Friday, both at Green Hill Funeral Home.

Stroud — Kyle Wayne Kirk Jr., infant son of Grace and Kyle Kirk, died Monday in Oklahoma City. Services pending. Add'Vantage, Tulsa.

U.S.-WORLD

E. Laurence Chalmers , who led the University of Kansas during a turbulent period from 1969 to 1972, died Tuesday in Durango, Colo. He was 81.

Chalmers, a psychologist, became chancellor of the Lawrence, Kan., university during a period of student protests nationwide. At Kansas, he was credited with keeping the peace after an arsonist struck the student union in 1970.

Chalmers also averted a student strike by agreeing to let students leave for the semester with the grades they had already earned — a move that angered some faculty members.

Chalmers eventually resigned as chancellor under pressure from regents. He later went on to serve as director of the Chicago Art Institute.

Albert Crewe , a University of Chicago physicist whose ingenious contributions to electron microscope development made it possible to see the previously unseen and yielded photographs of individual atoms, died Nov. 20 of Parkinson's disease at his home near Chicago. He was 82.

In 1970, Crewe was hailed for his striking and unusual photos of atoms. In 1976, he was praised as a pioneer when he made motion pictures of atoms. Such achievements aided progress in areas of science including computers, catalysis and cell biology.

Crewe was born into poverty Feb. 18, 1927, in Yorkshire, England, and rose by ability through the academic ranks, obtaining a physics doctorate at the University of Liverpool in 1951. Offered a post at the University of Chicago, he joined the physics faculty in 1956 and retired 40 years later as professor emeritus.

Named to a top post at the government-supported lab before attaining citizenship, he received expedited processing, took a one-question test — Who presides over the Senate? — and became an American, his son David Crewe said.

Nancy Bellavia Mangione , the mother of jazz musician Chuck Mangione and jazz pianist Gap Mangione, died Wednesday in Rochester, N.Y. She was 95.

Chuck Mangione, a flugelhorn player, achieved international success in 1977 with his jazz-pop single, "Feels So Good." He has released more than 30 albums since 1960. He won his first Grammy Award in 1977 for the album "Bellavia," which was named after his mother.

Her maiden name means "beautiful way."

Mike Meese , the lead investigator in the 1993 Polly Klaas kidnapping and murder case, died Monday in Kelseyville, Calif., of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 55.

Meese was a sergeant with the Petaluma Police Department when he and an FBI agent obtained a videotaped statement from Richard Allen Davis confessing that he had abducted and strangled the 12-year-old Polly.

Davis later led Meese and other officers to a field outside Cloverdale, where he revealed the location of the girl's body.

Meese had worked for more than 30 years in law enforcement, 15 with the Petaluma Police Department.

Davis has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since being convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances and other charges in the case in 1996.

Alejandro R. Ruiz Sr. , an Army infantryman in World War II who received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly storming a Japanese machine gun bunker — twice — during the Battle of Okinawa, died Nov. 23 at a hospital in Napa, Calif. He was 85.

On April 28, 1945, in the last months of the war, Ruiz deployed to Okinawa on a mission with his platoon, seeking remnants of a Japanese battalion hiding in fortified emplacements on steep ridges near the village of Gasukuma.

The soldiers were patrolling in a ravine when they were ambushed from a network of concealed pillboxes. Coming under heavy fire, every soldier except Ruiz and his squad leader was dead or injured.

Realizing that his standard- issue M1 Garand — with an eight round clip — would be insufficient against the more powerful Japanese machine guns, Ruiz picked up a Browning automatic rifle and began his solo assault. He calmly walked 35 yards to the bunker. He climbed on top and was prepared to fire into it, but a ruptured cartridge jammed the Browning, according to the Medal of Honor citation.

A Japanese soldier charged him, and Ruiz beat him down with the broken gun. Ruiz tossed the rifle aside and ran back through the grenade explosions and gunfire to where his platoon was pinned down. He retrieved a second weapon, tested it and grabbed some extra cans of ammo before he dashed back.

All of the Japanese guns were now trained on Ruiz as he raced back through a hail of gunfire. He was hit in the leg, but he managed to climb back on top of the pillboxes. He jumped from one bunker to the other, spraying bursts of gunfire into the apertures.

Ruiz's Medal of Honor citation says that "in the face of overwhelming odds," he single-handedly killed 12 Japanese soldiers and silenced the machine gun nest, saving his fellow soldiers.

Lester Shubin , the Justice Department researcher who turned a DuPont fabric intended for tires into the first truly effective bulletproof vests, saving the lives of more than 3,000 law enforcement officers, died has after a heart attack at his Virginia home. He was 84.

Shubin was working at the National Institute for Justice, the research and development branch of the Justice Department, in the early 1970s when DuPont came out with a fabric that was to replace steel-belting on high-speed tires.

Nicholas Montanarelli, who worked for the Army's Land Warfare Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, told about this new substance, Kevlar, which was said to be "stronger than steel, lighter than nylon." Montanarelli obtained a couple of samples of what Shubin called "this funny yellow fabric," and the men took it and some handguns to a firing range.

"We folded it over a couple of times and shot at it. The bullets didn't go through," Shubin later told a Justice Department report on the National Institute for Justice's accomplishments.

Shubin went back to the Justice Department to wrest $5 million in research money out of the bureaucracy, and Montanarelli began developing tests.

Shubin got what was then the National Bureau of Standards to come up with specifications that reassured manufacturers. Using federal money, 500 vests were made to be given away. But many police departments wouldn't take them, and those that did had trouble persuading street cops to use them — until 1975. That was the year a Seattle police officer wearing a Kevlar vest walked in on an armed robbery in a convenience store and was shot at point-blank range.

He survived to complain about doctors who kept him in the hospital over Christmas Eve because they found it hard to believe that he had only bruises.

Edward Stimpson , an aviation advocate who pushed to rejuvenate struggling small aircraft manufacturers in the 1990s by limiting lawsuits against them, died Wednesday in Boise, Idaho. He was 75.

He died from complications related to lung cancer, although he wasn't a smoker, said his sister, Catharine Stimpson.

Stimpson, president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association for 25 years, was a major proponent of legislation signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to prevent general aviation companies from being named as defendants in lawsuits in crashes of small planes 18 or more years old.

By 1994, a wave of lawsuits was blamed for a downturn at small aircraft manufacturers such as Beech Aircraft Co. and Cessna Aircraft Corp., costing 100,000 industry jobs.

He retired from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association in 1996 to become chairman of "Be A Pilot," an industrywide education and research program aimed at increasing the number of people learning to fly.

Death notice policy

The Tulsa World publishes free death notices. Funeral homes may submit death notices from 4 to 10:30 p.m. daily. For information about news obituaries, call 581-8325.

Circle of Life logo

Circle of Life

In an effort to honor those who have donated either organs, eyes or tissue, the Tulsa World is participating in the "Circle of Life" campaign sponsored by the Global Organization for Organ Donation (GOOD).

If your loved one was a donor, please inform the funeral director if you would like to have the "Circle of Life" logo placed in his or her listing.

By Staff Reports

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