December 3, 2006

ROSE MATTUS, 90: With her husband, Reuben, she launched Haagen-Dazs ice cream, peddling the super-premium treat in grocery stores. Mrs. Mattus, who lived in Cresskill, N.J., and had been the controller of Haagen-Dazs Inc., died Tuesday. Reuben Mattus died in 1994. Their company morphed around 1960 from her husband's family's decades-old business in New York City's Bronx borough. Reuben Mattus concocted the nonsensical name Haagen-Dazs, which means nothing in any language, for the brand that became famous for its super-rich recipes. During the company's early years, Rose Mattus would offer samples in grocery stores. “Rose and Reuben were pioneers and legends in the ice cream field,” said Jerry Greenfield, who co-founded Ben & Jerry's. Pillsbury Co. acquired Haagen-Dazs in 1983; a profile of Reuben Mattus a few years later said he received about $70 million in the deal. Haagen-Dazs is now owned by Nestle SA.

WILLIAM DIEHL, 81: The best-selling author of “Primal Fear” and other novels died of an aortal embolism Nov. 24 in Atlanta. He started on his first novel, “Sharky's Machine,” while serving as a juror in a Fulton County courtroom. Mr. Diehl, then 50, was bored by the trial and started writing fiction on a notepad. The book, published in 1978, became a best seller and later a movie starring Burt Reynolds. Mr. Diehl was unemployed when he got the news that the book was going to e published, his longtime friend Michael Parver said. When his agent first called to tell him, the phone line went dead. Mr. Diehl hadn't paid the bill, Parver told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mr. Diehl's friends and relatives were turned into characters in his later works. Parver became a dirty cop in the novel “Hooligans.” “Primal Fear,” a 1993 thriller about a lawyer defending a young man accused of slaying an archbishop, was turned into the 1996 film starring Richard Gere and Edward Norton. Mr. Diehl formerly was a writer for the Journal-Constitution, a freelance photographer and a magazine editor. He served as a ball turret gunner aboard a B-24 bomber during World War II.

ROBERT FERGUSON, 77: Known as “H-Bomb” because of his booming voice, the pioneer blues shouter died last Sunday. He had been in ill health the past year and died of complications from emphysema and cardiopulmonary disease after a short stay at Hospice of Cincinnati. Mr. Ferguson, whose recording of “Good Lovin'” was awarded a gold record in 1952, quit music in the 1970s but resumed performing in the mid-1980s. He sang and played piano in a flamboyant style, wearing colorful wigs. His early works were featured in the recent reissue “H-Bomb Ferguson: Big City Blues, 1951-54.” It includes the hit “Good Lovin'” and “Rock H-Bomb Rock,” both from 1952. “Rock H-Bomb Rock” also was included last year in the elaborate box set called “Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security.”

ROBERT McFERRIN Sr., 85: The first black male to sing solo at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the father of Grammy Award-winning conductor and vocalist Bobby McFerrin Jr., died Nov. 24 of a heart attack in St. Louis. One of eight children of a strict Baptist minister, he was forbidden to sing anything but gospel music. That changed when he moved to St. Louis in 1936 and his high school music teacher discovered and encouraged his talent. In the late 1940s and early '50s, Mr. McFerrin sang on Broadway, performed with the National Negro Opera Company and the New York City Opera Company. In 1953, he won the Metropolitan Opera national auditions. His 1955 debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Amonasro in Aida made him the first black male member of the company. He performed in 10 operas over three seasons. He appeared just three weeks after contralto Marian Anderson made her historic debut Jan. 7, 1955, as the first black to sing a principal role at the Met. Mr. McFerrin is also known for providing the vocals for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 movie “Porgy and Bess.” He moved back to St. Louis in 1973. By the time he was honored in June 2003 by Opera America, doctors suspected he had Alzheimer's disease. He also suffered a stroke in 1989 that impaired his ability to put his thoughts into words. But his singing voice remained with him and he continued to perform for many years after the stroke.

BETTY COMDEN, 89: Her more-than-60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical “On the Town,” as well as “Singin' in the Rain.” The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen Broadway shows, many of them built around such stars as Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett and Lauren Bacall, and music composed by the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. Ms. Comden, who had been ill for a few months, died Nov. 23 of heart failure at a hospital in New York. She and Green won five Tony Awards, with three of their shows – “Wonderful Town,” “Hallelujah, Baby!” and “Applause” – winning the top prize for best musical. The duo received the Kennedy Center honors in 1991. The two were never married to each other, although many thought they were, considering the longevity of their working relationship. Green died in October 2002 at age 87.

ANITA O'DAY, 87: Her sassy renditions of “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and other song standards made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and '50s. Ms. O'Day, who left home at age 12 and often bragged about being “self-made” and never having a singing lesson, died Nov. 23 at a convalescent hospital in Los Angeles where she was recovering from a bout with pneumonia. She began her career in her teens and later recorded hits with Stan Kenton and Gene Krupa. Her highly stylized performance of songs like “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine,” “Let Me Off Uptown,” “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” made her famous the world over. She suffered from a 16-year heroin addiction and an even longer alcohol problem. Wild, drug-related behavior and occasional stints in jail on drug charges earned her the nickname “Jezebel of Jazz,” a term she hated. Her 1981 memoir “High Times Hard Times” tells of her long struggle with drug addiction and her romance with drummer John Poole. She received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1997.

WILLIE PEP, 84: The hall-of-fame boxer who arguably was one of the best fighters of the 20th century, died Nov. 23 at a nursing home in Connecticut, where he had been confined to an Alzheimer's unit since 2001. The 5-foot-6-inch Mr. Pep was 229-11 during a career that spanned 26 years. In 1999, he was listed fifth among the best fighters of the 20th century as chosen by a five-member panel for The Associated Press. He was inducted to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Mr. Pep dropped out of high school at age 16 to fight. He won 53 consecutive fights before trumping Chalky Wright in 1942 for the world featherweight title. With the 15-round decision, Mr. Pep was the youngest boxer to earn the title in four decades. The following year brought 63 undefeated bouts for Mr. Pep before he lost a non-title fight to Sammy Angott. Undeterred, Mr. Pep went on to win an additional 73 straight.

JACOB “JACK” WERBER, 92: A Holocaust survivor who helped save more than 700 children at the Buchenwald slave labor camp in the last months of World War II, then prospered after arriving in the United States by manufacturing coonskin caps during the Davy Crockett craze of the mid-1950s, Mr. Werber died Nov. 18 in Great Neck, N.Y. A son of a Jewish furrier from the Polish town of Radom, Mr. Werber was the barracks clerk at Buchenwald in August 1944 when a train carrying 2,000 prisoners arrived, many of them young boys. By then, with the Russians advancing into Germany, the number of Nazi guards at the camp had been reduced. Working with the camp's underground – and with the acquiescence of some guards fearful of their fate after the war – Mr. Werber helped save most of the boys from transport to death camps by hiding them throughout the barracks. “Suffering a great personal loss drove me in my obsession to save children,” he later wrote. That loss was the knowledge that his wife, Rachel, and 3-year-old daughter, Emma, had been killed by the Nazis. Soon after arriving in the United States in 1946, Mr. Werber and a cousin started a company that made novelty items like fur coats for dolls and pompoms for ice skates. When Walt Disney brought Davy Crockett to television, Mr. Werber's company manufactured coonskin caps for young fans of the show.

DON BUTTERFIELD, 83: A tuba player who performed with such stars as Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra and whose work can be heard on the “Godfather: Part II,” Mr. Butterfield died Monday of an illness related to a stroke he suffered about a year ago, his wife, Alice Butterfield, said Wednesday. He wanted to play the trumpet for his high school band but was handed a tuba by the band's director because there were no more trumpets. He went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. During a five-decade career, Mr. Butterfield performed as a studio musician, recording with notable artists, and for television commercials and movie soundtracks. His wife said he played in just about every music club of note in New York. He was a member of the American Symphony and the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra and toured the country. David Demsey, a professor of music and coordinator of jazz studies at William Paterson University, said Mr. Butterfield “brought back the tuba and took the oompa out and added a melodic tone.”

ROBERT KUPPERMAN, 71: A government scientist who started warning of terrorist attacks against the United States more than 30 years ago, Mr. Kupperman died Nov. 24 of complications from Parkinson's disease. “Unless governments take basic precautions, we will continue to stand at the edge of an awful abyss,” Kupperman, chief scientist for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, wrote in a 1977 report that summarized nearly five years of work by the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism. President Nixon created the high-level government panel in September 1972 after Palestinian commandos slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. It involved members as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush and Rudolph Giuliani. After leaving the government in 1979, Mr. Kupperman was associated with the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

RAUL VELASCO, 73: The host of one of Mexico's most popular and enduring television programs, “Siempre en Domingo,” died last Sunday in his home in Acapulco. Mr. Velasco, whose variety show has been compared to “The Ed Sullivan Show,” was credited with launching many of Mexico's biggest pop stars to fame by having them appear on his show, whose name means “Always on Sunday.” Last month, Velasco's son Arturo told local media that stomach problems had prevented Velasco from appearing at a ceremony in his honor sponsored by an entertainers' union.

JOHN R. PEPPER II, 91: The co-founder of the first nationwide radio station with programming targeting a black audience, Mr. Pepper died Nov. 20 in a Memphis hospital after an extended illness. Still one of Memphis' top stations, WDIA-AM was the first in the South with an all-black on-air staff. Clear Channel Broadcasting Inc. now owns the station, which reaches five states. WDIA, which Mr. Pepper founded with Bert Ferguson in the 1940s, helped launch the careers of B.B. King and Isaac Hayes, among others, and eased the way for blacks throughout the country to break into broadcasting. Hayes was a member of the station's “teen-town singers,” and King, whose real name is Riley King, picked up his stage name while working as a WDIA disc jockey from 1949 to 1955. He was known then as the “Beale Street Blues Boy” and later as simply “B.B.” Mr. Pepper also founded what later became Pepper Tanner Advertising Agency.

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