Categotry Archives: Extraordinary People

Sek Yi, who may have been the oldest person in the world, died in his sleep on Oct. 19. He was 122.
A tiger hunter and martial arts expert, Sek Yi was unable to provide world record officials with proof of his birth. During the 1970s, he survived the “Killing Fields,” but his identification papers were destroyed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
Sek Yi, who was buried Monday by his bamboo hut in the tiny village of Tuk Young near the border with Vietnam, is survived by his 108-year-old wife, Long Ouk. He attributed his longevity to Buddhist convictions, tobacco and a vegetarian diet.

Edward Charles Albright Jr., a veteran and American Red Cross volunteer, died on Sept. 24 from cancer. He was 52.
Albright graduated from Masuk High School in Connecticut. He joined the Army and served with the 18th Military Police Brigade in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971. When he returned to the states after the war, he joined the Connecticut Army National Guard.
In the 1980s, Albright moved to Escondido, Calif., where he worked for Advanced Safety Products, a company that distributes durable medical and access equipment. For the past eight years, however, he dedicated his off-hours to volunteering with the American Red Cross. His efforts included aiding the victims of forest fires and accidents, and serving the organization as a disaster action team leader and instructor.
Even when he was diagnosed with cancer and weakened by chemotherapy, Albright continued to respond to disasters. His efforts were rewarded in 2002 when he received the Red Cross Spirit of Volunteerism Award.

Bert Nakano, an airline worker who fought for the rights of Japanese Americans, died on Sept. 27 from respiratory failure related to Parkinson’s disease. He was 75.
Nakano was 14 and living in Hawaii when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after the assault, Nakano’s father and hundreds of other Japanese Americans were arrested and shipped off to an internment camp. The family reunited briefly, then were moved by the federal government to different segregation centers in Northern California and Texas. His pregnant mother gave birth while living at a center, and when she contracted pneumonia, Nakano took care of his infant sister.
After the war, Nakano’s brother was so disgusted by the government’s actions that he renounced his citizenship and moved to Japan. The rest of the family returned to Hawaii, but his mother died within the year. His father couldn’t rebuild his once successful carpentry business and also moved to Japan where he died an alcoholic.
Nakano was bitter and angry about what happened to his family. He studied Zen Buddhism in Japan, but eventually returned to America to marry and spend 20 years working for Pan Am airlines. In 1980, Nakano and other activists founded the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations. As the organization’s top spokesman, Nakano demanded that the government pay reparations for the way Japanese Americans were treated during the war.
“To people who would oppose reparations, I’d say, ‘Give me back my three years, my mother’s health, my father’s business, my brother’s ambition to become a doctor and they can keep their money. Can anyone return those things to us?” Nakano once said.
His efforts were rewarded in 1988 when President Reagan signed a bill offering a formal apology and giving $20,000 payments to each of the 65,000 surviving internees.

Elena Rodenbaugh Proctor Slough, the oldest person in the U.S., died on Oct. 5. Cause of death was not released. She was either 114 or 115.
Slough was born in a log cabin in Horsham, Pa. Two forms of identification showed her date of birth as either 1888 or 1889. Despite this discrepancy, she was still the third-oldest living person in the world, The Gerontology Research Group reported.
Slough died in her sleep at the Victoria Manor Nursing Home, where she and her daughter, Wanda Allen, lived. Wanda died three days ago at 90.

Yukichi Chuganji, the world’s oldest man, died on Sept. 28 of natural causes. He was 114.
Chuganji was born on March 23, 1889, on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu. After graduating from technical school, he worked as a silkworm breeder, a bank employee and a community welfare officer. He attributed his longevity to healthy eating and an optimistic personality.
The world’s oldest woman, 116-year-old Kamato Hongo, also lives on Kyushu.

Cecilia “CC” Brown spent her life on a one-woman crusade against child abuse.
Brown studied psychology at Beaver College, Hahnemann Medical College and Temple University, then launched into a career of fighting child abuse and neglect. She spoke to parent groups, organized hundreds of workshops, appeared on local TV and radio programs and spent 28 years volunteering as a counselor and lecturer with the Child Abuse Prevention Effort in Philadelphia.
Brown died on Sept. 1 from breast cancer. She was 60.

Marie Foster, a civil rights activist, died on Sept. 6. Cause of death was not released. She was 85.
Foster was one of the “Courageous Eight,” a group of black Americans who sat on the steering committee of the Dallas County Voters League and convinced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to lead voter registration drives in Alabama. At the time, blacks had to prove “fitness” to cast a vote in an election. Foster, who was rejected eight times before she was successfully registered, also taught citizenship classes to help others gain permission to vote.
On March 7, 1965, Foster was marching for voting rights in Montgomery, Ala., when she was brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers and local police officers. The incident was called “Bloody Sunday” by the national press, and inspired Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that removed the obstacles set up by white segregationists to deny the ballot to blacks.
The vest Foster wore during the march was autographed by many leaders of the civil rights movement and put on display at the National Voting Rights Institute and Museum in Selma, Ala. The street where Foster lived as a child was renamed in her honor.

Jason Robertson, an AIDS activist who fought his school district for the right to attend classes, died of the disease on Sept. 4. He was 23.
Robertson was diagnosed with HIV when he was 5 years old. He contracted the virus in 1986 through blood products used to treat his hemophilia. The Granite City School District in Illinois segregated the boy into a trailer classroom, but Robertson wanted to attend regular classes with the other children. The district refused, however, because parents who were ignorant and fearful of HIV refused to let their kids sit in the same room as Robertson.
In 1988, a federal judge ordered the district to allow Robertson to attend regular classes. On his first day of school, the parents protested and shouted at him to get “back to the trailer!”
When Robertson’s family moved to South Roxana, Ill., three years later, he faced the same kind of cruelty at his new school. Despite these obstacles, Robertson became a symbol of hope in the fight against AIDS discrimination.