Palm Beach

On Monday, June 9, 2003, NATHAN ALPERSTEIN, age 89, of West Palm Beach, FL. and formerly of Chevy Chase, MD. Devoted husband of 64 years of Jeannette Hanover Alperstein. Beloved father of Byron Alperstein of Los Angeles, CA., Judith Levinson (Robert Warsaw) of Rockville, MD and Richard Alperstein (Lenny Seliger) of Silver Spring, MD. Adored grandfather of Sandra Levinson of Chevy Chase, MD. Also survived by brothers Benny and Hotsy Alperstein. He was predeceased by brothers Samuel, Reuben, Albert and Morris Alperstein and sister Betty Epstein.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The world's largest cemetery chain, stained by allegations that it defiled the dead and exploited loved ones, agreed yesterday to pay penalties that could reach nearly $14 million. And the corporation, its top Florida executive, and the former manager of two South Florida cemeteries were charged with felonies. Yesterday's developments are the most drastic and ominous for Service Corporation International since attorneys announced in December 2001 that they were suing Houston-based SCI and its Menorah Gardens cemeteries in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

In a posthumous family feud that has gossip columnists from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., abuzz, a Monkton man of prominent and notorious lineage wants his father's body exhumed and autopsied, seeking evidence for what he considers a suspicious death and his stepmother's odd behavior in its aftermath. F. Warrington Gillet III, 40, a descendant of the Tydings family whose own colorful background includes an acting role in a classic slasher movie and a part in a Wall Street scandal, says his father was in perfect health when he died in May. His father, F. Warrington Gillet Jr., 71, was a Realtor and a former liquor distributor in Maryland who had moved to Palm Beach about 35 years ago. "I just want justice done," Gillet said yesterday.

Hershey Felder is a concert pianist, composer, actor and playwright, as well as a volunteer for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, gourmet cook, visiting scholar at Harvard University and the husband of former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell. He's also the first performer whom the George Gershwin estate has permitted to impersonate the late great American composer on the professional stage. Felder's one-man show, George Gershwin Alone, opens a monthlong run at Ford's Theatre in Washington tomorrow, after engagements in Boston, Palm Beach (twice)

Francis Warrington Gillet Jr., a Realtor and former Maryland liquor distributor, died Monday from complications of heart disease at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 71 and had lived at Oakington in Havre de Grace and at Fox Den Farm in Glyndon. He sold real estate for Sotheby's in Palm Beach, where he moved about 35 years ago. He was formerly a wholesale liquor salesman for Gillet-Wright Inc., a family-owned South Fulton Avenue business in Baltimore that distributed the Hiram Walker beverage line.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - It has been more than a decade since the Orioles began their quest for a new all-purpose spring training facility, and the end of that search still is not in sight. The number of possible future locations has increased with the proposal to contract the Montreal Expos and the chain-reaction change in ownership of the Boston Red Sox and the Florida Marlins, but the Orioles remain focused on a proposed complex in West Palm Beach that won't be on the drawing board until the Florida legislature approves a new sales tax law that would free up public money for the project.

Brunilda Jimenez was making coffee yesterday morning when she got a frantic call from family in the Dominican Republic - her sister, Carmen Medina, was flying to Santo Domingo and no one was certain if her plane was the one that crashed minutes after take-off from New York. As she watched the news on television, she got the call confirming her worst fears - her sister was on American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, that had departed John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Federal officials widened their probe yesterday into the death of a Florida man from anthrax, acknowledging that they are considering bioterrorism after anthrax spores were found on the victim's computer keyboard and in a colleague. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the findings raise concerns that a terrorist might have released anthrax. "We don't have enough information to know whether this could be related to terrorism or not," Ashcroft said at a news conference in Washington. He said the probe "could become a clear criminal investigation."

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - George W. Bush has been running the United States since January; his rival, former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who won the nation's popular vote but couldn't capture the White House, has been teaching journalism part time. But the vote counting isn't done. To be sure, Bush officially won Florida's 25 electoral votes, and thus the presidency, by a tiny, 537-vote margin after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount. That hasn't stopped a collection of media organizations from all over the country from focusing on Florida's ballots.

BOCA RATON, Fla. - The sand at sunrise tells the story: The footprints, 60 to 70 sets made by sea turtle hatchlings, are headed in the wrong direction. Not toward a new home in the Atlantic Ocean, but in the direction of the motel and condominiums to the south that left their lights on again. Fooled by the false light, thinking they were following moonlight glinting off water, many of the turtles will die, confused, without ever escaping the coast. "We've picked them out of storm drains," said Kirt W. Rusenko, marine conservationist at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center here.