Ethel Stansfield Peck, 91, who believed in recycling everything and went to court in 1992 to dispute a garbage collection fee because she generated no waste, died Aug. 13 in Harrisburg, Pa.
Mrs. Peck, a tenant farmer, used tin cans as flower pots and reused string and plastic bags again and again. She crushed chicken bones and used them to fertilize her garden, and gave old newspapers to the Humane Society.
Friends said she recycled not because it was fashionable, but because that was how she lived.
In 1992, Swatara Township filed a criminal citation against her for refusing to pay her trash bill. Mrs. Peck said she generated no garbage, and District Justice Bob Yanich dismissed the complaint.
Sabina Wurmbrand, 87, an author and evangelist who worked to aid Christians in communist countries, died Aug. 12 in Los Angeles.
Mrs. Wurmbrand was born into a family of Orthodox Jews in Ukraine, and was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. She and her husband were introduced to Christianity as newlyweds, and converted to Anglicanism in 1937. They later became missionaries to Romanian Jews.
Once the communists took control of Romania, the Wurmbrands were frequently arrested because of their missionary work. Mrs. Wurmbrand was imprisoned from 1950 to 1953 and also was placed under house arrest for many years.
The Norwegian Lutheran Church helped the Wurmbrands relocate to the United States in 1967, and they settled in Los Angeles.
Val Dufour, 73, a television soap opera star who won an Emmy for his role as a lawyer on "Search for Tomorrow," died July 27 in New York.
Mr. Dufour made his daytime television debut in "First Love," a series aired live in the mid-1950s. He also acted in "The Edge of Night" and "Another World."
He won the Emmy for outstanding actor in a daytime drama series during the 1976-77 season for his role as John Wyatt.
Leslie M. Lipson, 87, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in political theory and comparative government, died of cancer Aug. 11 in San Francisco.
