Obituaries

Sister Adele de St. Eugene, 96, Little Sister of the PoorSister Adele de St. Eugene, L.S.P., a former caregiver for the elderly, died of heart failure Saturday at St. Martin's Home, the provincial residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Southwest Baltimore. She was 96.Until retiring in 1994, Sister Adele had cared for the elderly and infirm at a nursing home operated by the order in Newark, Del.Born Adrienne Verriest in Courtrai, Belgium, she emigrated with her family to Detroit in 1906.

Jennifer Paterson,71, a television cook and one of the "Two Fat Ladies" who joyfully salted their recipes with political incorrectness, died Tuesday of lung cancer in London.Happy to be plump, the women toured the country on Miss Paterson's old Triumph motorcycle -- she in the driver's seat and Clarissa Dickson Wright, in Red Baron-style helmet, squeezed into the sidecar. Miss Dickson Wright once called the program "a cookery show with anarchy and a motorbike."Bob Herbert, 57, the man who concocted the Spice Girls, was killed in a car accident near London Monday.

Oseola McCarty,91, a one-time washerwoman who earned widespread recognition after she donated her life savings to the University of Southern Mississippi, died Sunday in Hattiesburg, Miss., of complications of liver cancer.In donating the $150,000 in July 1995, she said she wanted to give others the chance to get an education she never had. She said she had dreamed of becoming a nurse, but had to drop out of elementary school to care for sick relatives.Earnest Hoberecht,81, an American who became a major literary figure in Japan just after World War II on the strength of romance novels he wrote in a matter of weeks, died Wednesday at an Oklahoma City hospital.

Gertrude R. Schuman, a retired hospital seamstress, died Friday of cancer at Harbor Hospital Center. She was 90 and a resident of Christ Church Harbor Apartments.Known as "Miss Gert," Mrs. Schuman, with her carefully coiffed hair, was a familiar figure in southern Baltimore, where she had lived all her life.She had worked as a seamstress in the laundry room of the old South Baltimore General Hospital, now Harbor Hospital, where she repaired sheets, pillowcases, towels and interns' uniforms from 1967 until retiring in 1975.

Manuel Chavez,73, a United Farm Workers activist, died in San Diego Sunday of pancreatic cancer. He was a farm worker who went on to become a key organizer for the union, which successfully sought to represent tens of thousands of farm workers across the nation during the 1960s and 1970s.He was a cousin and confidant of labor leader Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993.Mary Allen Rowlands,94, artist-actress and mother of actress Gena Rowlands, died Friday in Los Angeles.Ed Peterson,78, inventor of the alarm that beeps to warn people when trucks and heavy machinery are backing up, died May 26 in Boise, Idaho.

James Mueller, who came out of a rough Southeast Baltimore neighborhood to become the head of a prominent furniture company, died Wednesday of brain cancer at his home in Pembroke Pines, Fla. He was 60.Born a cab driver's son in O'Donnell Heights, Mr. Mueller graduated from Patterson High School before volunteering for military service with a number of his friends."

Oseola McCarty, 91, a one-time washerwoman who earned widespread recognition after she donated her life savings to the University of Southern Mississippi, died Sunday in Hattiesburg, Miss., of complications of liver cancer.In donating the $150,000 in July 1995, she said she wanted to give others the chance to get an education she never had.ObituariesBecause of limited space and the large number of requests for obituaries, The Sun regrets that it cannot publish all the obituaries it receives.

John F. White Sr.,75, considered the dean of African-American politics in Philadelphia and a strategist in the former mayoral campaign of his son, John F. White Jr., died Wednesday in Philadelphia. He played a key role in the Philadelphia political scene for more than three decades and founded the Black Political Forum in 1968.Frederick P. Rose,75, a second-generation builder and philanthropist, died Tuesday at his home in Rye, N.Y. His company, Rose Associates, owns or manages 12,000 apartments in New York and 4 million square feet of commercial space.

Ken Clawson, 63, one of President Richard M. Nixon's staunch defenders as director of White House communications during the Watergate era, died Dec. 17 at a hospital in New Orleans after suffering a heart attack.A former newspaper reporter, Mr. Clawson joined the White House in February 1972 as deputy director of communications for the executive branch. He became White House communications director on Jan. 30, 1974, as the Watergate scandals were consuming the Nixon presidency.Mr. Clawson's name was associated with the "Canuck letter" that was sent to the Manchester Union-Leader in New Hampshire early in 1972 and claimed that Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine had spoken disparagingly of French-Canadians.

Hillary Brooke,84, the elegant blond actress who played the "other woman" in dozens of movies and had a recurring role in the 1950s television situation comedy "My Little Margie," died May 25 in Bonsall, Calif., said a friend, Helen Lovass.Although Miss Brooke was often tagged a "blonde bombshell," she once publicly challenged a psychology professor's claim that "intelligence can repel a man" and that smart actresses would frighten male fans. "Vacuity will never substitute for a glint of intelligence," she said.

Tough tactics help stop attacks I imagine liberal Democrats and terrorists are sleeping more easily now that the new commander in chief has banned the use of waterboarding during interrogation of captured terrorists. Never mind that some at the CIA have said using "enhanced techniques" of interrogation, including waterboarding, on al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to his revealing information that helped thwart a planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles. But according to President Barack Obama's way of thinking, it's more important to reach out to our Islamic enemies than to protect our own citizens.

Obituaries play a vital role in the lives of newspaper readers and are consistently among the best-read articles in The Sun. These chronicles of the lives of the famous and infamous, the extraordinary and ordinary, the well-known and little-known tell readers things about people they would otherwise never have known. Whether the obituaries appear on the front page, the Maryland section front or in the obituary pages themselves, The Sun always treats them as news articles. During a week in late April, obituaries of four remarkably different individuals were played on The Sun's front page: Boris N. Yeltsin, David Halberstam, Mary Carter Smith and Mstislav Rostropovich.

With membership of the popular social networking site MySpace.com hovering around 100 million people, a morbid certainty has arisen: As with any population that large, a fair number of those members are likely to die each month. Their MySpace profiles, however, live on. And some people have started to notice. Since January, a site called MyDeathSpace.com has highlighted the profiles of recently deceased MySpace members and linked those profiles to news articles, obituaries and tributes from friends and family members.

Betty Beale, 94, a former society columnist whose writing appeared in the Washington Star for four decades, died Wednesday at a Washington hospice. In addition to her column, which appeared four times a week in the Star, which went out of business in 1981, she had a Sunday syndicated column that was carried in as many as 90 newspapers across the country. She said that keeping her readers informed meant attending five to 10 parties a week. She covered the official dinners and receptions of eight U.S. presidents starting with Harry S. Truman.

WHENEVER the weatherman sets the odds for a white Christmas at zero, as he has done again for most of the Eastern seaboard, I always try to remember if I ever saw one, and the only one that ever comes to mind with sufficient clarity is the one I spent as a writer of obituaries. This was Christmas Day 1974, up in Massachusetts. Being a college student home for the holidays - and working again as a newsroom intern for an evening daily in suburban Boston - I drew the unpleasant-sounding duty of Christmas Day crime reporter and chronicler of death.

Etta K. Hornstein, 92 homemaker, volunteer Etta K. Hornstein, a homemaker and longtime volunteer, died Monday in her sleep at Catered Living of Pikesville. She was 92. The former resident of Ashburton and Wynnewood Towers had returned to Baltimore in 1998 from Longboat Key, Fla., where she had lived for 25 years. Locally, she had been president of the Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital Auxiliary and division chairman of the Women's Division of the Associated Jewish Charities.

Mary Kathryn Unfried, 51, state public safety employee Mary Kathryn Unfried, a state of Maryland employee, died of cardiovascular disease May 13 at a hospice in Alexandria, Va. The Delta, Pa., resident was 51. For the past 15 years, she had been grants manager with the Maryland Department of Public Safety. Mary Kathryn Holmes was born in Ponca City, Okla., and was a graduate of Knox College in Gailsburg, Ill. In 1991, she earned her master's degree in adult education from Coppin State College.

Audrey Blackburn Schell, a self-made businesswoman and avid figure skater who graced the off-Broadway stages of New York when she was young, died of lung cancer at her Baltimore County home Friday. She was 73. Born Audrey Blackburn and raised in the Hamilton section of Baltimore, she graduated from Friends School and earned her bachelor's degree in theater at the Women's College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, N.C., in 1949. After moving to New York, she joined several theater groups, performed in off-Broadway and summer stock productions, and once appeared in a television show with the young Frank Sinatra before taking a job as an advertising copywriter.

Dr. Sylvan D. Goldberg, a Baltimore physician who mentored young doctors as chief of medicine and residency at Church Hospital, died Friday at his Northwest Baltimore home of heart disease. He was 84. A native of Baltimore, he graduated from Forest Park High School and the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. In 1939, he earned a medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. After completing his residency in 1944 at Church Home and Hospital, Dr. Goldberg served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps in England, France and Germany during World War II. After returning to Baltimore, he opened a private practice in internal medicine at the Medical Arts Building at Cathedral and Read streets in Mount Vernon.

Theodore E. Thormann Sr., 77, Maryland Cup manager Theodore E. Thormann Sr., a retired Maryland Cup manager, died Sunday of cancer at his Fullerton home. He was 77. A quality control manager for Maryland Cup Corp., he had also worked part time at his contracting business, Firethorn Electric. Born in Baltimore, he grew up in Highlandtown and was a 1940 graduate of City College. Mr. Thormann served in the Army infantry during World War II in Europe. He later joined the Army Reserve and retired as a captain.