RIP

[Kobi]

BALTIMORE (AP)

Art Modell was among the most important figures in the NFL as owner of the Cleveland Browns, who became the Ravens after he took the team to Baltimore in 1996. The Ravens replaced the Baltimore Colts, who moved to Indianapolis in 1984.

During his four decades as an NFL owner, Modell helped negotiate the league's lucrative contracts with television networks, served as president of the NFL from 1967 to 1969, and chaired the negotiations for the first the collective bargaining agreement with the players in 1968.

He also was the driving force behind the 1970 contract between the NFL and ABC to televise games on Monday night.

Few people did more to help the NFL become what it is today.

Modell's Browns were among the best teams of the 1960s, led during his first few years as owner by legendary running back Jim Brown. Cleveland won the NFL championship in 1964 - Modell's only title with the Browns - and played in the title game in 1965, 1968 and 1969.

Modell wasn't the kind of owner who operated his team from an office. He mingled with the players and often watched every minute of practice.

"Art talked with me every day when I played in Baltimore," former Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe said. "He knew everything about what was going on in my life. He showed real concern. But, it wasn't just me. He knew the practice squad players' names. He treated them the same. He was out at practice when it was 100 degrees and when the December snows came. I loved playing for him."

Born June 23, 1925, in Brooklyn, N.Y., Modell dropped out of high school at age 15 and worked in the Broo klyn Navy Yard cleaning out the hulls of ships to help out his financially strapped family after the death of his father.

He completed high school in night class, joined the Air Force in 1943, and then enrolled in a television school after World War II. He used that education to produce one of the first regular daytime television programs before moving into the advertising business in 1954.

A group of friends led by Modell purchased the Browns in 1961 for $4 million - a figure he called "totally excessive."

Aside from his work with the Browns, Modell became a leader in the Cleveland community. He served on the board of directors of a number of large companies, including the Ohio Bell Telephone Co., the Higbee Co. and the 20th Century-Fox Film Corp.

Modell and his wife, Patricia, continued their charitable ways in Baltimore, donating millions of dollars to The Seed School of Maryland, a boarding school in Maryland for disadvantaged youths; Johns Hopkins Hospital; and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. The couple also gave $3.5 million to the Lyric, which was renamed the Patricia & Art Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric.

http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as...&pid=159689056

[Kobi]

PHOENIX (AP) - Dorothy McGuire Williamson, who teamed with sisters Christine and Phyllis for a string of hits in the 50s and 60s as the popular McGuire Sisters singing group, has died.

The McGuire Sisters earned six gold records for hits including 1954's "Sincerely" and 1957's "Sugartime." The sisters were known for their sweet harmonies and identical hairdos and outfits.

They began singing together as children at their mother's Ohio church and then performed at weddings and church revivals. They got their big break on the show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" in 1952 where they continued to perform for seven years.

The group made numerous appearances on television and toured into the late 1960s, making a last performance together on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1968. Dorothy stepped back to raise her two sons. Christine also raised a family while Phyllis pursued a solo career, according to a 1986 profile in People Magazine after the trio reunited and began doing nightclub and Las Vegas performances again.

The sisters last performed together in the mid-2000s, and are featured on a 2004 PBS show called "Magic Moments - Best of 50s Pop."

The group performed for five presidents and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. They were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.

[Kätzchen]

New Yorkers and people who volunteered during the WTC attacks are dying with cancer linked to exposure to the scene of the crime that happened that day. I share in their grief that still today, people can hardly move on with life due to extensive factors linked to that day.



By NBC News and wire services
September 11, 2012, 6:44 am
NBCNews.com


Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET: The federal government on Monday added 14 categories of cancer to the list of illnesses linked to the 9/11 terror attacks, which brings added coverage to rescue workers and people living near ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health approved the additions to the list of illnesses covered in the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which were proposed in June. The updated regulations take effect 30 days after the ruling is published in the Federal Register.

The decision "marks an important step in the effort to provide needed treatment and care to 9/11 responders and survivors," said Dr. John Howard, administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program established by the Zadroga law.

The Zadroga Act — named after NYPD Detective James Zadroga, who died at age 34 after working at ground zero — was signed into law nearly two years ago. Despite the hundreds of sick responders, the act did not cover cancer because of a supposed lack of scientific evidence linking cancer to ground zero toxins.

"We are getting sick in record numbers," said Ray Pfeiffer, a first responder who was diagnosed three years ago with kidney cancer. He said it has been a struggle to pay for expensive medications not fully covered by his insurance.

"It's fantastic news," he said of the expanded list of covered illnesses.
About 400 residents and rescue workers have died from cancer since 9/11, according to the New York Post.

With cancer included in the program more victims are likely to seek compensation, which could cause individual awards to be reduced as officials divide up the $2.77 billion fund.

"They’re going to add cancers, but are they going to add more money to the fund?" Thomas "T.J." Gilmartin, who suffers from lung disease and sleep apnea, said to the Post. "It’s crazy. Every time, we gotta fight. It’s two years since Obama signed that bill, and nobody’s got 10 cents."
"We fought long and hard to make sure that our 9/11 heroes suffering from cancers obtained from their work at ground zero get the help they deserve," U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer, both of New York, said in a statement. "Today's announcement is a huge step forward that will provide justice and support to so many who are now suffering from cancer and other illnesses. We will press on - with advocates, the community, and our partners in government - to ensure that all those who suffered harm from 9/11 and its aftermath get the access to the program they so desperately need."
Family photo via NY Daily News / AP File In this undated file photo, New York City Police Det. James Zadroga, left, holds his daughter Tylerann. Fifty cancers will be added to the Zadroga Act, which was named after the detective--who died of respiratory failure in Jan. 2006 after working at ground zero.



Last week, the New York City Fire Department added nine names to the 55 already etched on a wall honoring members who have died of illnesses related to ground zero rescue and recovery work, Reuters reported.
Some estimates put the overall death toll from 9/11-related illness at more than 1,000, according to Reuters. At least 20,000 ground zero workers are being treated across the country and 40,000 are being monitored by the World Trade Center Health Program, Reuters reported.

Tuesday marks the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Last fall, the September 11 Memorial at ground zero finally opened in the footprints of the original towers. Since then, more than 4 million people have visited.

Financial, security and design setbacks have delayed the redevelopment of the World Trade Center in the past decade. A recent project audit indicates that overall site redevelopment costs have grown to nearly $15 billion.

One World Trade Center is nearing completion and is expected to open in 2014.

NBCNewYork.com's Brynn Gingras and Reuters contributed to this report.

[Scorp]

To those who innocently lost their lives. Rest In Peace.

[Kobi]

J. Christopher Stevens was the American ambassador to Libya when he was killed on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when an armed mob attacked and burned the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Three of his staff members were also killed.

The violence appeared to be part of riots that had broken out in Benghazi and Cairo that day over a short American-made video mocking Islam’s founding prophet.

But the next day, American officials said they suspected the Benghazi attack may have been planned rather than a spontaneous mob getting out of control.

Mr. Stevens, a career diplomat, previously served in Iraq, Canada and the Netherlands. A veteran of American diplomatic missions in Libya, he had served in Benghazi during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, and he was widely admired by the Libyan rebels for his support of their struggle.

Mr. Stevens, a fluent Arabic speaker, knew better than most diplomats in the American Foreign Service the opportunities and travails facing Libya after the fall of Colonel Qaddafi.

Having served as the deputy ambassador during Colonel Qaddafi’s rule, he acted as the Obama administration’s main interlocutor to the rebels based in Benghazi who ultimately overthrew him while NATO conducted airstrike missions. Mr. Obama rewarded him with the nomination to become the first ambassador in a post-Qaddafi Libya, and he arrived in May with indefatigable enthusiasm for the country’s prospects as a free, Western-friendly democracy.

For those who knew him, Mr. Stevens was an easygoing, accessible, candid and at times irreverent diplomat, with a deep understanding of Arab culture and politics that began when he was a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Mr. Stevens, a native of California and graduate of Berkeley, joined the Foreign Service in 1991 after working as a trade lawyer. He spent much of his career in the Middle East, serving in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, where he focused on the Palestinian territories, and in State Department offices overseeing policy in the region. He served as the deputy chief of mission in the capital, Tripoli, from 2007 to 2009 during the relatively brief easing of tensions with Colonel Qaddafi’s government.

After the Arab Spring uprisings spread, first to Benghazi, then across Libya, he came back to the country in circumstances that would challenge any diplomat. Then, as he prepared to return this year as ambassador, he appeared in an introductory video, subtitled in Arabic, earnestly recalling the United States’ own Civil War as an example of overcoming internal strife.

“We know that Libya is still recovering from an intense period of conflict,” he said. “And there are many courageous Libyans who bear the scars of that battle.”

He developed a reputation as a keen observer of Libya’s politics, and, as Ms. Kwiram noted, a patient listener who eagerly sought out Libyan activists, diplomats and journalists to meet in his offices in a hotel and later in a rented villa on the edge of Tripoli. He also kept up his routine of daily runs through goat farms, olive groves and vineyards nearby. In his e-mail to family in friends, he joked about the Embassy’s Fourth of July party.

“Somehow our clever staff located a Libyan band that specializes in 1980s soft rock,” he wrote, “so I felt very much at home.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...tml?ref=topics

[CherylNYC]

Who knew? Miss Monitor was a lesbian. Last line in the obit: "She is survived by her longtime companion, Elke Schliwa."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/ar...ef=todayspaper


Tedi Thurman Dies at 89; Radio’s Miss Monitor
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: September 20, 2012

At 5-foot-7, with sea-blue eyes, flowing red hair, chiseled cheeks and a shapely figure, Tedi Thurman was a stunner. But it was her breathy, alluring voice that brought her fame.

Tedi Thurman, who, in one writer's estimation, very shortly had "the most recognizable female voice in the country."

The “weather girl” on the long-running NBC radio show “Monitor” in the late 1950s and early ’60s, Ms. Thurman would take over the mike and in soft, sultry tones — with lush music in the background — virtually drawl, “Cleveland, 34, snow; Boston, 41, cloudy; Phoenix, 62, fair; New York City, 43, sunny; Paris, 38, cloudy.”

But she would always lead with Atlanta, “because Georgia was her home state,” said Dennis Hart, the author of “Monitor: The Last Great Radio Show” (2002), a history of the program, which Pat Weaver, the president of NBC, created in 1955. Starting at 8 a.m. on Saturdays, it originally stayed on the air till midnight on Sundays.

Ms. Thurman, who died on Monday at 89, made the forecasts “sound like an irresistible invitation to an unforgettable evening,” Jack Gould wrote in The New York Times shortly after the show’s premiere.

In Mr. Hart’s estimation, Ms. Thurman “probably became the most recognizable female voice in the country within a few short months.”

With hosts like Dave Garroway, Hugh Downs, Frank Blair, Gene Rayburn, Henry Morgan and Bill Cullen, “Monitor” was a hit, offering an array of news, sports, comedy, variety, music and live remote pickups from around the nation and the world. It lasted 20 years, the first six of which featured Ms. Thurman as the so-called Miss Monitor, updating the weather hour after hour.

In 1957, while working virtually around the weekend clock on radio, Ms. Thurman was also a television regular, spoofing herself on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show.” In sleek dresses and high heels, she would saucily deliver lines like: “I know what you want. You want me to tell you about the weather. In New York it’s 74. And me, I’m 36-26-36.”

Dorothy Ruth Thurman (she later took the name Tedi) was born in Midville, Ga., on June 23, 1923, one of four children of Ben and Para Thurman. Her father was president of the local bank.

She wanted to be an artist and studied at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Design in Washington. But, she told Mr. Hart, “People were always painting me, telling me I should become a model.” Soon after moving to New York, she was on the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan and appearing on television shows like “Studio One.” That led to her audition for “Monitor.”

If Ms. Thurman’s fame was brief, it had a long afterlife. “Tedi told me,” Mr. Hart said, “that decades after she’d left the show, people at parties and gatherings would still ask her to do the weather in that sexy Miss Monitor voice.”

She died at her home in Palm Springs, Calif., after a brief illness, Mr. Hart said. She is survived by her longtime companion, Elke Schliwa.

[CharmingButch25]

I know this is totally for famous folk but I just wanted to say r.i.p grandma