Early female Major League Baseball scout dies at 100
BY Wire Reports
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
2/12/13 at 6:22 AM
Edith Houghton, one of the first female scouts in Major League Baseball, died Feb. 2, in Sarasota, Fla., eight days before her 101st birthday.
After a playing career that included a stint with the Philadelphia Bobbies, Houghton worked for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1946 to 1952 and also had a decorated career in the military. She retired and moved to Sarasota in 1964.
There are several remembrances of Houghton at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. In an exhibit labeled "Diamond Dreams," Houghton's Bobbies cap and her jersey from a Japanese baseball tour are on display. She donated the items to the Hall.
Jazz Master, trumpeter Donald Byrd, dies at 80
Jazz musician Donald Byrd, a leading hard-bop trumpeter of the 1950s who collaborated on dozens of albums with top artists of his time and later enjoyed commercial success with hit jazz-funk fusion records such as "Black Byrd," died Feb. 4 in Dover, Del. He was 80.
Byrd, who was also a pioneer in jazz education, attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, played in military bands in the Air Force and moved to New York in 1955. The trumpeter rose to national prominence when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers later that year, filling the seat in the bebop group held by his idol Clifford Brown.
He soon became one of the most in-demand trumpeters on the New York scene, playing with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.
In 1958, he signed an exclusive recording contract with the Blue Note label and formed a band with a fellow Detroit native, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, making their debut with the 1959 album "Off to the Races." The band became one of the leading exponents of the hard-bop style, which blended elements of bebop, R&B, soul and gospel music.
In 2000, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Byrd as a Jazz Master, the highest jazz honor.
Guard member who fought for benefits dies at age 48
Charlie Morgan, a chief warrant officer in the New Hampshire Army National Guard who fought to repeal the federal law barring her wife from receiving benefits to help care for their daughter, died Sunday in Dover, N.H., of breast cancer. She was 48.
Morgan, of New Durham, was a nationally recognized advocate in the effort to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.
Under the federal act, the Pentagon is required to ignore same-sex marriages, which are legal in several states including New Hampshire. Morgan, after finding out she had cancer, was worried that her spouse and their daughter would be unable to receive military, Social Security and other benefits if she died.
On Monday, a Department of Defense memo detailed a number of benefits that will be extended to same-sex partners of service members, including identification cards that will provide access to commissaries and other services but not some housing benefits. It appears the additional benefits don't apply in Morgan's case because they would not be retroactive.
Morgan's breast cancer was diagnosed in 2008, and she underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. She was declared cancer-free in 2010 and was deployed to Kuwait for one year. She returned home to her wife, Karen Morgan, and then-4-year-old daughter. But she also learned that the cancer had returned and was incurable.
