York University

WHEN MY reporter, Kate O'Brien Ahlers, started grinding her teeth about her HMO, Aetna U.S. Healthcare, I asked her to document what she was going through. Here's her report (concealing individual identities):June 9. I decide to quit the medical group that I'd picked from U.S. Healthcare's list. Among other things, it lost my appointments, shuffled doctors on me and kept so few telephone lines that I had a hard time getting through. I send a letter, asking that my records be shipped to another office.

WASHINGTON -- A group of prominent constitutional scholars has begun a campaign to get the Supreme Court to overturn a 20-year-old landmark decision that has allowed unlimited amounts of money to flow into political races.The group is seeking to overturn Buckley vs. Valeo, a 1976 decision that struck down some of the Watergate-era campaign finance changes that Congress had enacted in 1974.By its ruling, the court removed any limits on campaign spending.In Buckley, the court said that any infringement on campaign spending was an infringement on free speech.

William Carr,95, an educator who brought an international outlook to his 15 years as executive secretary of the National Education Association, died March 1 at a hospice in Denver.A native of England who saw the world as his classroom and the body politic as his class, he spent most of his career with the National Education Association, the group representing teachers, administrators and other school personnel. He was its executive secretary, the chief administrator, from 1952 to 1967.Jean Margaret Maxwell,81, who helped establish the New York School of Social Work at New York University in the 1950s and the San Diego State University School of Social Work in the 1960s, died Feb. 22 at the Casa de Manana retirement community in San Diego.

Lyle Talbot, 94, a versatile actor whose roles in more than 150 movies ranged from natty leading men to rebellious convicts to Ozzie and Harriet's television neighbor, died Sunday at his home in San Francisco. His death was of natural causes, the coroner's office said yesterday.Mr. Talbot began his career in the early days of talkies and ended in the television era during which he played Joe Randolph, the neighbor in the 1952-1966 series "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."He shared billing with luminaries of the '30s and '40s, such as Carole Lombard, Spencer Tracy and Pat O'Brien.

Arnold R. Holt, 67, an industrial designer, died Oct. 26 at a hospital in Greenwich, Conn., after a heart attack. The New York native with homes in Cos Cob, Conn., and North Haven, Maine, grew up in Baltimore, where he graduated from Gilman School and attended the Johns Hopkins University. He also attended New York University before obtaining a degree in industrial design from the Pratt Institute. He is survived by his wife, the former Eleanor Oliver Rutledge; three daughters, Olivia Cauldwell Holt of Cos Cob, Susan Middleton Holt of Rockland, Maine, and Eliza Rutledge Holt of Santa Ana, Calif; a sister, Linda M. Holz of Camden, Maine; and two granddaughters.

It is one of Baltimore's untold stories, one laden with irony in this time of debate over the use of affirmative action to attract bright young university prospects.For more than two decades spanning the midpoint of this century, hundreds of black Baltimore teachers traveled to the finest graduate schools in the land, their tuition, travel and living expenses paid by a Maryland government intent on keeping them out of the segregated state university.A half-century later, these educators are in their 70s and 80s, retired, many still living in Baltimore.

NEW YORK -- New York University (5-0, 2-0) broke a halftime tie by shooting 53 percent from the field and defeated Johns Hopkins, 68-55, in a University Athletic Association Conference game yesterday.Johns Hopkins (1-5, 0-2) committed 28 turnovers and shot 39.1 percent in the second half.The Blue Jays' Greg Roehrig led all scorers with 24 and added a team-leading 11 rebounds.Chris Murray led NYU with 17 points.

No man moved with, and no actor projected, more sheer animal grace than Burt Lancaster, who died late Thursday night in Los Angeles at the age of 80.His agent, Jack Gilardi, said Lancaster's wife, Suzie, and six of his children, were at his bedside in the couple's luxurious Century Towers condominium when he died of a heart attack."

Wilfred WagnerFood service firm managerWilfred Wagner, retired regional operations manager for a food service firm, died Sunday at Union Memorial Hospital of complications of a ruptured aneurysm. He was 79 and lived in Guilford.He retired nearly 15 years ago from ARA Services for which he had worked for 25 years. He had lived in the Baltimore area since 1959.He brought experience in European and hotel restaurants to the food service company.Born in Hamburg, Germany, he began his career as a waiter in that country before moving to England in 1936 and then to New York City two years later.

New York -- When E. L. Doctorow writes about the past, sometimes he uses his memory -- flawed though it may be. "I have a terrible memory," he told an interviewer once, though it served him well enough to write such evocative novels as "World's Fair" and "Billy Bathgate," both set in the 1930s in his native New York.Other times, it's images he uses. For instance, his rambling old house in New Rochelle, N.Y., got Mr. Doctorow thinking about the history of the place and then beginning a novel set in the early 1900s.