Dead, Not Forgotten

The three-man, deep-sea diving submarine, Alvin, took us all on adventures that have fascinated people around the world since its maiden voyage in 1964. Harold (Bud) Froehlich was the vessel’s chief designer.

Harold E. Froehlich was already thinking deep after helping to build a mechanical arm for the Navy-owned bathyscaph Trieste, when in 1962 he became project manager at General Mills for the Navy/ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute project to build the small, deep-diving submarine.

Alvin’s assignments have taken it as deep as 15,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, where it has helped find a hydrogen bomb, explored the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, discovered unimagined deep-sea animals and plants, and vicariously peered in the depths for armchair explorers everywhere.

Over Alvin’s 45 years every single piece of it has been replaced. A new generation submarine is due to replace it in the next year or so.

Always driven to “figure things out,” Harold E. Froehlich worked on diverse projects throughout his career such as high-altitude balloons and surgical equipment. He retired in Minneapolis, MN after working at 3M. He died there of cancer May 19, 2007 at age 84.

For more information:
Read about Alvin’s history and accomplishments

Popularity: 32%

Justice is sometimes a long time coming but Fannie Lee Chaney got at least a taste of it when Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005. One count was for her son, James Chaney, who was killed on June 21, 1964, in central Mississippi’s Neshoba County. Killen is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence.

The last day Fannie Lee Chaney saw her 21-year-old son James Chaney, she cooked breakfast for him and his friends Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner both Jewish civil rights workers from New York City. The three of them left together that day to deliver books and never returned.

Early that evening the trio was stopped by Neshoba County deputy Cecil Price; Chaney was arrested for allegedly driving 35 miles per hour over the speed limit and Goodman and Schwerner were booked “for investigation.” All were denied calls and concerned friends and colleagues were lied to when they called the Neshoba County jail to find out if the three were being held there.

Later that evening James Chaney was fined $20 and all were released and escorted to the edge of town. Shortly after, and far from where Price said he last saw them, the three were ambushed by Ku Klux Klan members who beat Chaney severely and shot him three times. Goodman and Schwerner were both shot once in the heart.

Their killings were recounted in the well known movie, Mississippi Burning , a 1988 production starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe.

Fannie Lee Chaney died May 23, 2007 at age 84.

For more information:
Read more about the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
Read the DeadNotForgotten.com obituary of Carolyn Goodman, Andrew Goodman’s mother

Popularity: 52%

The perfection of recorded sound is the pursuit of many audio engineers and revered among them was John Eargle, an award winning engineer that produced or recorded more than 275 compact disks and contributed importantly to the development of multi-channel surround sound.

John Eargle was educated in music at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He also received degrees in engineering from the University of Texas and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

John Eargle was also a well know author of audio books and articles including, The Handbook of Recording Engineering, The Microphone Handbook, The Handbook of Sound System Design and The Loudspeaker Handbook. He had recently completed The JBL Story: 60 Years of Audio Innovation.

In 2002 Eargle and two other engineers were given a scientific and technical award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for development of cinema loudspeaker systems.

After a long career with the loud speaker giant, JBL, Eargle was most recently the Director of Recording for Delios, an independent recording label for whom he recorded Dvorak: Requiem and Symphony No. 9,” with Czech conductor Zdenek Macal leading the New Jersey Symphony and the Westminster Symphonic Choir. For the effort he received a Grammy Award in 2001.

John Eargle died May 9, 2007 at his home in the Hollywood Hills at age 76. He appears to have died peacefully but the cause of death has not been announced at the time of this writing.

For more information:
Read John Eargle’s bio on the Lansing Heritage web site
Read a review of a talk John Eargle gave on surround microphone techniques
Read tributes to John Eargle

Popularity: 33%

Yolanda King, the eldest daughter of Martin Luther King, died May 15, 2007 after delivering a speech to the American Heart Association in Santa Monica, CA. She was 51 years old. No official cause of death has been announced at the time of this writing. Family members think that her death may be related to heart disease.

Yolanda King followed in her father’s footsteps and worked to support the goals of racial equality, social harmony and nonviolence through her motivational speaking and her film and television work. Among her roles, she played civil rights hero Rosa Parks in the 1978 NBC-TV miniseries King. She also played Dr. Betty Shabazz in the Death of a Prophet with Morgan Freeman, and Medgar Ever’s daughter, Reena, in Ghosts of Mississippi directed by Rob Reiner.

Her production company, Higher Ground Productions, states as its mission to “To Educate, Empower and Entertain; inspiring individuals to passionately create peace in their own lives thereby encouraging the same within their families, communities and across the globe.” The company supports Yolanda King’s efforts in areas from teleseminar training courses and speaking engagements to theatrical productions. The theatrical premiere of Dancing on Higher Ground, to star Yolanda King, was scheduled for September, 2007. The play was written by Tanya White.

Yolanda King’s passing will not get the attention it deserves because of its timing; Jerry Falwell died on the same day. When I think about Yolanda King and the legacy of peace, inclusion, social harmony and nonviolence that she cared for, I am struck by the sharp contrast to Rev. Jerry Falwell’s legacy of hate, exclusion, calls for assassination and his persistent social rabble-rousing against segments of our society. They both represent philosophies based on religious beliefs, but, they represent polar concepts of humanity. I will miss Yolanda King.

Update! Cause of death information

For more information:
Yolanda King’s Higher Ground Productions website
Read Yolanda King’s filmography
Read an article about Yolanda King’s personal spiritual path
Listen to an NPR interview with Yolanda King

Popularity: 55%

You may not recognize her face as readily as the talking head reporters on TV, but for 35 years Kate Webb rode the waves of strife, disaster, revolution, and invasion throughout Asia.

Never shying away from the front lines of any action, Webb was taken prisoner by North Vietnamese soldiers along with five others in April 1971 while covering a battle in Cambodia. She was held for nearly a month before being released and making her way out of the jungle. Long before then a body found at the site of the original battle was misidentified as Kate Webb’s and by the time she made it out her obituary had been published in the New York Times and she had been eulogized and buried by her friends, family and colleagues.

In addition to Cambodia she covered Vietnam, Afghanistan, South Korea, Iraq, Indonesia, India and many more hot spots throughout the region.

At a time when few women had yet had the opportunity to prove themselves as foreign correspondents, Kate Webb earned the respect and admiration of her male colleagues for her reverence for the facts and her fearless pursuit when finding them. For a long time to come she will also have the thanks and appreciation of female journalists who have benefited from her groundbreaking work and from the common people caught up in the stories that she covered, whose voices she made sure were heard.

Kate Webb retired in 2001. Sharp-witted until the end, when found by a nurse who scolded her for hurting her health by sneaking a smoke outside of her hospital, she is said to have replied, “Too late!”

Kate Webb, age 64, died from bowel cancer in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday May 14, 2007.

For more information:
Read this great interview with Kate Webb in The Correspondent (Dec. 2002)

Popularity: 40%