The Blog of Death

James Dougherty

James Edward Dougherty, a retired Los Angeles police detective who was once married to Marilyn Monroe, died on Aug. 15 from complications of pneumonia. He was 84.

Norma Jeane Baker was only 16 years old when she wed Dougherty, 21, in 1942. At the time, her only goals in life were to become a homemaker and mother. During World War II, Dougherty joined the Merchant Marines and was sent to the South Pacific. While he was overseas, however, Baker began rethinking her future plans.

Although her husband didn't approve, Baker decided to pursue a career in acting and modeling, and change her name to Marilyn Monroe. When 20th Century Fox offered her a film contract, it included a stipulation that she be a single woman, so Monroe decided to ask for a separation. Dougherty was on a ship in the Yangtze River getting ready to go into Shanghai when he was served with divorce papers in 1946. He contested the separation, at first, but eventually gave in to her demands.

Upon his permanent return to the states, Dougherty worked as an electrical contractor and ran a gas station in southern California. Several police officers who were regular customers encouraged him to consider a career in law enforcement. Dougherty easily passed the entrance exam, completed his academy training and went to work for the Los Angeles Police Department. As a patrolman, he once handled crowd control for the premiere of his ex-wife's film, "The Asphalt Jungle." Dougherty later worked his way up the ranks, serving as a detective and an instructor for the department's first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team.

After 25 years on the force, Dougherty retired in 1974. He spent the remainder of his life residing in Arizona and Maine. Dougherty was elected to a county commission in Maine, and taught at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. In 1986, he lost a congressional bid to Republican Rep. Albert G. Stevens.

For years, Dougherty refused to talk about his marriage to the legendary sex symbol. But he broke his silence in 1976 with the publication of the book, "The Secret Happiness of Marilyn Monroe." Its sequel, "To Norma Jeane With Love, Jimmie," was released in 1997. Dougherty's second marriage to Patricia Scoman ended in divorce; his third marriage to Rita Lambert lasted for 32 years, until her death in 2003.

• Listen to a Tribute From NPR

Ambrogio Fogar

Ambrogio Fogar, an Italian adventurer who circumnavigated the globe and walked to the North Pole, died on Aug. 23 of heart failure. He was 64.

Born in Milan, Fogar first achieved international fame in 1973 when he sailed around the world. He increased the difficulty of his solo trek by traveling east to west -- against the currents and the direction of the wind. Four years later, Fogar attempted to sail to Antarctica, but the trip was a disaster.

During the expedition, a school of killer whales sunk his sail boat. For the next 74 days, he and journalist Mauro Mancini bobbed in open water on a life raft. They were saved when a freighter picked them up 1,300 miles from where their boat went down. Mancini died of pneumonia a few days after being rescued.

Fogar then switched to land-based adventures. In 1983, he completed a seven-week walk to the North Pole with only a dog for company. But tragedy struck again in 1992 when Fogar was severely injured in an auto accident. He was competing in a Paris-Moscow-Beijing car rally when his jeep flipped over in the desert of Turkmenistan. The accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Undaunted, Fogar became an advocate for the handicapped. From a wheelchair, he wrote numerous books ("Solo: The Strength to Live," "Fighting Currents: My Greatest Adventure") and newspaper articles, and participated in the 1997 "Operation Hope" sailing expedition to promote awareness for the disabled. The trip involved sailing the entire length of the Italian coastline on a boat that had been specially adapted to his needs.

Fogar believed the latest stem cell experiments being tested in China would give him the ability to walk again. Two months ago, he announced his plans to travel to Asia and offer himself up as a human guinea pig to neurosurgeon Huang Hongyun.

"I won't let go," Fogar once said. "I hope one day to walk again with my legs. I won't accept that those whose lives are on hold give up, and I don't want to believe that I will die like this, immobile."

Joe Ranft

Joe Ranft, an Oscar-nominated writer and a founding member of the Pixar Animation Studios creative team, was killed on Aug. 16 in a car accident. He was 45.

Born in Pasadena and raised in Whittier, Calif., Ranft attended the California Institute of Arts with director John Lasseter. He joined the story department at Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1980, where he worked on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and co-wrote the films "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King."

Ranft reunited with Lasseter in 1992 to help transform Pixar into a powerhouse animation studio. For the last 13 years, he worked in story development and provided the voices of Heimlich the caterpillar in "A Bug's Life," Wheezy the asthmatic penguin in "Toy Story 2" and Jacques the cleaner fish in "Finding Nemo." For co-writing the 1995 film "Toy Story," Ranft earned an Academy Award nomination.

Ranft also supervised the story for "Cars," a Pixar film scheduled for release next summer, and served as an executive producer on Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride," which comes out in September. He previously worked with Burton as a storyboard supervisor on "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Last week, Ranft and his friends, Elegba Earl, 32, and Eric Frierson, 39, were driving northbound on Highway 1 in Mendocino County, Calif., en route to take part in a retreat for a mentoring program. Earl, who was driving, lost control of their 2004 Honda Element, veered off the road and over a cliff. The car plunged 130 feet and crashed into the ocean.

Ranft and Earl died from injuries sustained in the accident. Frierson, who was riding in the back seat, survived by climbing through the car's sun roof. He was hospitalized with moderate injuries.

• Listen to a Tribute From NPR

John H. Ostrom

John Harold Ostrom, a paleontologist who championed the theory that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs, died on July 16 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77.

Born in New York City and raised in Schenectady, N.Y., Ostrom originally planned to become a doctor, like his father. While doing undergraduate work at Union College, however, he took an elective course in geology that changed his life. Lectures on dinosaurs and books discussing evolution soon inspired him to become a paleontologist instead.

After earning a doctorate in geology and paleontology at Columbia University in 1960, Ostrom joined the faculty at Yale. He remained there for the next three decades and sparked a renaissance in the study of dinosaurs. Upon his retirement in 1992, Ostrom was named an emeritus professor of geology and geophysics.

Whenever he wasn't teaching in the classroom, Ostrom led fossil-hunting expeditions in the American West. In 1964, he and his assistant Grant E. Meyer were trekking through central Montana when they stumbled upon the sight of three large claws sticking out of an eroded mound of dirt. With barely contained excitement, the pair uncovered the fossilized remains of a small dinosaur.

Ostrom examined the bones of the two-legged creature and hypothesized they belonged to a predatory animal that lived 125 million years ago. A carnivorous dinosaur, it killed its prey by leaping at it and slashing with sharp, sickle-shaped claws. Ostrom named the raptor Deinonychus (meaning "terrible claw"), and declared that it was once a warm-blooded animal with a high metabolism rate. Once Ostrom published his theories in 1969, fierce debate erupted among paleontologists, many of whom dismissed him as a maverick.

A year later, Ostrom made his second significant contribution in the field of paleontology. While visiting a museum in the Netherlands, he noticed the anatomical similarities between a pterosaur, a gliding reptile, and the Archaeopteryx, a creature that was generally accepted as the earliest known bird. This realization prompted Ostrom to reintroduce the idea that birds had an ancestral link to dinosaurs.

When he presented his theory in 1973, the information caused an uproar among both paleontologists and ornithologists. Despite the fact that Ostrom showed more than 200 anatomical features that birds shared with meat-eating dinosaurs -- including a wishbone, swiveling wrists and three forward-pointing toes -- many in the scientific community continued to believe that dinosaurs evolved into reptiles, not warm-blooded flying mammals.

The opposition eventually accepted Ostrom's ideas when a number of small, apparently feathered dinosaurs were found in fossil beds in China. The general public was a bit more accepting of his theory after it was loosely presented in the 1990 book "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton, and its 1993 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg.

"If there are any people left who don't believe birds came from dinosaurs, I'd put them in the same group as the flat-earth society," said John R. Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies.

Ostrom was the longtime editor of The American Journal of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the emeritus curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. He published the books "The Strange World of Dinosaurs," "A Study of Dinosaur Evolution," and "Marsh's Dinosaurs: The Collections From Como Bluff," among others. The Cretaceous period bird/dinosaur Rahonavis ostromi was named in his honor.

Matthew McGrory

Matthew McGrory, an actor who starred in nearly a dozen Hollywood pictures, died on Aug. 9 of natural causes. He was 32.

A native of West Chester, Pa., McGrory weighed 15 pounds and was 24 inches long at his birth. By the time he reached the first grade, he was over 5 feet tall. From that point on, all of his clothes and shoes had to be handmade at great expense to accommodate his growing dimensions.

McGrory played the drums and attended law school at Widener University, then broke into show business on Howard Stern's radio show in the 1990s. His deep voice was a hit with listeners -- and with people in the industry who hired him to appear in music videos for Iron Maiden and Marilyn Manson.

Acting offers followed as well. McGrory played a human Sasquatch in "Bubble Boy," Tiny Firefly in "House of 1000 Corpses" and its sequel "The Devil's Rejects," an alien in "Men in Black II" and Karl the Giant in the box office hit "Big Fish." He also did guest appearances on the TV shows "The Pretender," "The Drew Carey Show," "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Charmed."

McGrory was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world's largest feet (size 29 ½) and for being the world's tallest actor (7 feet, 6 inches). At the time of his death, he was working on a biopic of wrestler-turned-actor Andre the Giant.

"Like André, sometimes he just wanted to be able to walk around and be a regular guy and not have people ask him how tall he is or how much he weighs. He wanted to ride in a sports car, and he loved making movies, but it made him sad that he couldn't even go to theaters to watch them because he was too big for the seats," director Drew Sky said.

Butch Voris

Roy Marlin "Butch" Voris, a decorated World War II flying ace and one of the original Blue Angels, died on Aug. 9. Cause of death was not released. He was 86.

Raised in Santa Cruz, Calif., Voris graduated from Salinas Junior College and was considering a career as a mortician when he saw a recruiting poster for the Navy. He enlisted in 1941 and was commissioned as an ensign and naval aviator a year later. Voris spent World War II fighting in the Pacific theater, where he earned the status of "ace" for shooting down at least eight Japanese fighter planes. He was also one of four fighter pilots selected to conduct experimental night fighter operations to intercept and destroy enemy bombers at Tarawa.

After the war ended, Adm. Chester Nimitz handpicked the 6-foot, 5-inch pilot to organize a flight team that would demonstrate precision fighter maneuvers at Navy air shows. As Officer-in-Charge and Flight Leader of "The Blue Angels," Voris trained the team in secret in preparation for its first public performance in 1946 at the Southeastern Air Exposition in Jacksonville, Fla. He restarted the team in the 1950s after his pilots returned from combat duty in the Korean War.

Voris survived several accidents during his 33-year Navy career, including a midair collision during a Blue Angels show in Corpus Christi, Texas. A colleague was killed in the 1952 crash, but Voris managed to land his badly damaged plane. After retiring from the service as a captain in 1963, Voris became an executive at Grumman Aircraft and developed the F-14 Tomcat fighter and NASA's Lunar Explorer Module.

Voris was inducted into the Navy Aviation Hall of Fame and the International Air Show Hall of Fame. He received three Distinguished Flying Crosses, 11 Air Medals, three Presidential Unit Citations and a Purple Heart. His life story was chronicled in the 2004 biography, "First Blue: The Story of World War II Ace Butch Voris and the Creation of the Blue Angels" by Robert K. Wilcox.

In 1993, Voris was honored by the Air Force as one of 20 people who made significant contributions to the world of aviation. An aircraft displayed outside Jacksonville Naval Air Station, and the passenger terminal there, are both named in his honor.

• View Voris' Flight Logs

Peter Jennings

Each night for more than 20 years, millions of people turned on their television sets to watch Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings deliver the news. With a thoughtful expression on his handsome face, he shared world events in a dignified manner that inspired unwavering respect and trust from his audience.

A native of Toronto, Canada, Jennings was born to Charles Jennings, the first voice of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and his wife, Elizabeth Jennings, an ardent Canadian nationalist. Even as a child, it was clear Peter was destined to end up on television. At nine, he was already hosting "Peter's Program," a Saturday morning children's show on CBC radio. Although he was a voracious reader, Jennings dropped out of high school and worked as a bank teller for several years.

In the early 1960s, Jennings conducted interviews for CFJR radio, and hosted two shows on the CBC. He moved on to co-anchor CTV National News and was the first Canadian journalist in Dallas after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Jennings was covering the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J., when the president of ABC News offered him a job at the network. He was only 25 years old when he accepted the position three months later. Within a year, Jennings became the anchorman of a news program that aired in direct competition with the CBS News show anchored by Walter Cronkite.

Jennings was a natural at the desk, but he yearned to gain more experience in the field. He became a foreign correspondent for the network, established the first American television news bureau in the Arab world and covered both the hostage situation at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games and South Africa's struggle for equality in the 1970s and 1980s. He watched the Berlin Wall go up and was there 30 years later when it came down. Jennings also interviewed dozens of world leaders, such as Yasir Arafat, Anwar Sadat and the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1983, he began anchoring "World News Tonight," a job he held for more than two decades. When terrorists attacked the U.S. on Sept 11, 2001, he remained on the air for more than 12 consecutive hours.

In addition to his anchoring, Jennings covered a wide variety of issues in the prime-time specials "Peter Jennings Reporting." He co-wrote "The Century" and "In Search of America" with Todd Brewster, and won numerous awards, including 16 Emmys, two George Foster Peabody Awards, a National Headliner Award, the Goldsmith Career Award and several Overseas Press Club Awards.

Jennings became a U.S. citizen in 2003 and was named a member of the Order of Canada earlier this month. When he announced he had lung cancer at the end of a broadcast last April, thousands of people flooded the ABC message board with expressions of support.

"He fought like a tiger, the way he fought for every story. I don't think until the very end he was without hope. He really thought he was going to beat this," Jennings' ex-wife Kati Marton said.

The veteran newsman died on Aug. 7 of the disease. He was 67.

• Full Coverage From ABC

• Watch a Video Retrospective of Jennings' Career

• Watch a Tribute From USA Today

Hunter Kelly

Hunter James Kelly, an eight-year-old boy who battled a fatal nervous system disease and inspired his parents to create the Hunter's Hope Foundation, died on Aug. 5 of respiratory failure.

The son of Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly and his wife Jill, Hunter was born on Feb. 14, 1997 (his father's birthday). Four months later, doctors diagnosed him with Globoid-Cell Leukodystrophy, also known as Krabbe Disease, a degenerative disorder of the central and peripheral nervous systems. Krabbe Disease, which has no cure, hinders development of the myelin sheath, a fatty covering that protects the brain's nerve fibers. One in 100,000 live U.S. births are afflicted with the disease, and approximately 2 million Americans are carriers of the genetic deficiency that causes it.

The prognosis was grim. Medical professionals gave Hunter less than three years to live.

The Kellys responded to this news by establishing the Hunter's Hope Foundation, an organization dedicated to funding research to identify treatments, therapies and a cure for Krabbe Disease. To date, the foundation has raised more than $6 million, and awarded more than $3.8 million to leukodystrophy and other neurological disease-related research.

Hunter spent most of his life confined to a wheelchair and hooked up to a respirator and feeding tube. With the help of family and specialists, he was eventually able to lift his arms and head. Hunter learned to communicate through a series of facial expressions, including blinking once for "yes" and three times for "I love you." His favorite pastimes included bowling, swimming, painting, board games and music. According to a statement released by his parents, Hunter was the longest living survivor of infantile Krabbe Disease.

When Jim Kelly was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002, he ended his acceptance speech with a special acknowledgment to his son: "It has been written throughout my career that toughness is my trademark. Well, the toughest person I've ever met in my life is my hero, my soldier, my son, Hunter. I love you, buddy."

• Watch a Video Tribute from WGRZ

Steven Vincent

Steven C. Vincent, a freelance journalist and blogger, was murdered on Aug. 3. He was 49.

Born in Sunnyvale, Calif., Vincent earned a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley. After hitchhiking to New York City, he spent the next 25 years working a variety of odd jobs – waiter, actor, stagehand on a soap opera, cab driver – and writing articles about contemporary art for a variety of publications.

Vincent watched the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center from the roof of his apartment building in Lower Manhattan. Too old to enlist in the service, as many men and women did, he decided to put his "writing talents to use." When the U.S. turned its attentions from Afghanistan to Iraq, Vincent strongly supported President George W. Bush's decision to invade. He hoped that democracy would bring peace to the Middle East.

Since then, Vincent traveled to Iraq several times. Without the security of a military escort or paid bodyguards, the freelance journalist observed the war firsthand and published articles and op-ed pieces in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper's magazine, The Christian Science Monitor and National Review Online. In 2004, Vincent's overseas activities were chronicled in the book, "In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq." He dedicated it to the thousands of people who lost their lives on Sept. 11th. Vincent returned to Iraq earlier this year to write a book on post-liberation life in the port city of Basra. He also maintained a Weblog about his adventures.

Vincent sometimes disagreed with how the U.S.-led coalition handled the country's reconstruction. He criticized the British for providing poor security to Iraqi citizens and for failing to confront the growing influence of religious sects in politics and law enforcement. Vincent published complaints from Basra residents on the Internet about corruption among the city's political and business leaders, and openly expressed his disgust over how Iraqi women were treated under the conservative brand of Islam he believed was taking hold in the region.

Did Vincent's words lead to his death? No one knows for sure, but they certainly restricted his ability to freely meet with locals and report on their experiences.

"I can no longer wander the streets, take a cab or dine in restaurants for fear of being spotted as a foreigner. Kidnapping, by criminal gangs or terrorists, remains a lucrative business," Vincent wrote. On Tuesday, Aug. 2, his caution was overcome by circumstance.

Vincent and his 31-year-old female interpreter, Nooriya Tuaiz, were standing in front of a currency exchange office in Basra when at least two men wearing police uniforms forced them into a car. Nooriya dropped her ID, which is how British authorities learned her identity. Hours later, Vincent's bullet-ridden body was found. Nooriya also suffered at least three gunshot wounds to the chest, but survived the attack.

A Short Respite

I'll be out of town for several days this week, but new obits will be posted upon my return. Feel free to post tributes and e-mail submission requests in my absence. --Jade Walker

Arthur Zankel

Financier and philanthropist Arthur Zankel committed suicide on July 28. He was 73.

The native New Yorker earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He started working for the First Manhattan Co. in 1965, and spent the next three decades amassing a fortune as an investment manager.

In 2000, Zankel founded the real estate investment firm, High Rise Capital Management, where he was the co-managing partner. He sat on the board of directors at Citigroup Inc. until 2004, when he reached the mandatory age of retirement.

Zankel lived well, but he also believed in helping people follow their dreams through education. A trustee at Skidmore College and Columbia University's Teachers College, he underwrote Reading Buddies, a tutoring program for Harlem youths.

In the late 1990s, Zankel and his wife donated $10 million to fund a new $100 million venue at Carnegie Hall. Named in their honor, Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall fulfilled Andrew Carnegie's original plans to create three performance spaces in one location. The 600-seat underground recital space, which offers a wide variety of performing and educational events, opened in 2003.

In his spare time, Zankel took music appreciation classes and often attended events at Carnegie Hall. He also managed the hall's endowment fund. Under his guidance, it grew nearly sevenfold to $124 million.

Zankel, who was being treated for depression, jumped from the ninth floor of his Fifth Avenue apartment and later died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He did not leave a note.

Ray Oldham

Ray "Bob" Oldham, a former NFL cornerback who won a Super Bowl ring with the Pittsburgh Steelers, died on July 23. Cause of death was not released. He was 54.

Although he was short and rail thin, Oldham played on his high school football team for four years and earned a scholarship to Middle Tennessee State University. There he set the regional record for longest interception by making a 100-yard return in a game against Chattanooga. That 1970 record still stands. Two years later, Oldham was named a runner-up to Jim Youngblood for Ohio Valley Conference defensive player of the year.

An eighth round draft pick, Oldham played for the Baltimore Colts from 1973 to 1977. He spent the 1978 season with Pittsburgh as a member of the "Steel Curtain Defense," and won a Super Bowl ring when the Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys 35-31.

Oldham was traded to the New York Giants for one season, then finished his 10-year professional football career playing three seasons with the Detroit Lions. The 6-foot, 193-pound defensive back started 62 games and made 14 interceptions in the NFL, including two returned for touchdowns.

Since his retirement, Oldham has run a stock brokerage firm and an upscale dry cleaning/laundry franchise, and worked as a motivational speaker. He was inducted into the Middle Tennessee State University Blue Raider Hall of Fame in 1983 and into the Pittsburg Hall of Fame in 2004. Oldham was training for a 40-mile bicycle marathon when he died.

• Watch Oldham (#23) Make an Interception, Touchdown