University Of Pittsburgh

For more than a decade, Dr. Brack Hattler has labored on a tiny device with big potential - an artificial lung to breathe for people when their organs fail. The lung showed promise in cows. But Hattler was nervous about the risky next step - testing it in people. "We didn't want to be making corrections in a live patient," said the University of Pittsburgh transplant surgeon. So he turned to a group that scientists have mostly shied away from: the living dead. Hattler is one of a small but growing number of researchers conducting studies in people just declared brain-dead or who are "nearly dead" - terminally ill patients being kept alive only by machines.

Clyde Henry "Pete" Graf, a teacher, travel agent and research biologist, died Tuesday of prostate cancer at his home in Abingdon, Harford County. He was 84. The Pittsburgh native was awarded a track scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education. He and three other members of the Pitt relay team ran a record 3:14.8 mile in the Penn Relays in Philadelphia in 1939. The tournament record stood until 1950. Mr. Graf entered the Army Air Corps in 1942.

Alta E. Schrock, 90, artisan village founder Alta E. Schrock, a former educator and founder of Penn Alps Craft Shop and Spruce Forest Artisan Village in Western Maryland, died Wednesday of circulatory illness at Memorial Hospital in Cumberland. She was 90. The Grantsville resident was a community organizer in Garrett County and nearby areas in Pennsylvania. She established 16 groups, including the Springs Historical Society in Pennsylvania, Springs Museum of Casselman Valley, Council of the Alleghenies, the annual Springs Folk Festival, Christian Outreach of Maryland, and Penn Alps Summerfest.

Around Lewisburg, Pa., where they produce no-nonsense, tough-as-nails football players, they are still talking about a thunderous hit Bucknell senior fullback Jason Marrow put on a Towson linebacker earlier this month in a 51-10 Bison victory. Marrow, a former Calvert Hall standout, pancaked the linebacker en route to the end zone on a quick dive play. No one seemed to care that the touchdown was called back by a holding penalty. Marrow, 6 feet 3, 215 pounds, had shown that he could hand out punishment that would make any coal-mining Pennsylvanian or anybody else proud.

Louie de Rochemont, 70, a filmmaker who directed the 1958 wide-screen production Windjammer, died of diabetes at his home outside Oslo, Norway, his wife said Saturday. Mr. Rochemont was born in New York in 1930 and died July 11. He was educated at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and during the 1960s and 1970s taught film at the University of Toronto. Windjammer was about a six-month Atlantic Ocean expedition with the Norwegian full-rigged training ship Christian Radich, crewed by teen-age Norwegian sailor students.

Here and there a Marylander's identity derives from his or her area of expertness. What Tom is to quilts or Dick to fishing or Harry to race tracks, Barbara Wells Sarudy is to old gardens. During office hours, Sarudy happens to be executive director of the Maryland Humanities Council; her passion, however, is shallots and snapdragons, turfed falls and geometric parterres. She has previously published on the gardens of long ago, but now that her comprehensive book is out -- "Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake Country, 1700-1805" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 207 pages, $29.95)

Elrey B. Jeppesen,89, a night mail pilot who turned his sketches into a multimillion-dollar air navigation chart business, died Tuesday in Denver.His motivation in starting the charts was simple -- survival. At the time, navigational problems were causing frequent accidents. He collected information for his charts by driving the routes by car, -- climbing mountains and smokestacks with altimeters strapped on his back, and gathering information from city and county engineers.His first book was published in 1933 and sold for $10. Now, Jeppesen Airway Manuals are standard equipment in the airline industry.

Robert Bernat, 63, a university administrator and professor who founded the River City Brass Band in 1981, died Saturday of cancer in Pittsburgh. He taught, conducted and held administrative posts at Bethany College, Brandeis University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University and the University of Pittsburgh. His compositions include "In Memoriam: John F. Kennedy," commissioned for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the brass band fantasy, "Dunlap's Creek."Arthur Frank Shore, 70, part of an international team that rescued ancient Egyptian archaeological treasures threatenedby the rising waters of the Aswan dam in the 1960s, died Nov. 27 in London.

Dr. Barry S. Tatar, a partner in the Ear, Nose and Throat Specialty Group, has been named chief of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at Greater Laurel Beltsville Hospital.Dr. Tatar is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He completed his general surgery internship at the University of Pittsburgh and his residency at the University of Iowa Hospitals and clinics.The Ear, Nose and Throat Specialty Group has offices in Laurel, Columbia and Glen Burnie.

A 62-year-old man became the world's second recipient of a baboon liver at the University of Pittsburgh yesterday in a transplant that was part of an effort to overcome the species barrier and alleviate the growing shortage of organs from human donors.The patient was dying from hepatitis B, a virus that destroyed his liver, building up bile in his blood and giving his skin a deep yellow hue.But his chronic active hepatitis B infection would most likely infect a donated human liver, making him ineligible to receive a donated human organ at most transplant centers, including the University of Pittsburgh, officials said.