Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Jim Irsay, Colts Owner and CEO, Dies at 65

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      He took over the business from his father in 1997 and turned the team into one of the best in the league, with a Super Bowl win during the 2006 season.Jim Irsay, the straight-shooting, hard-living, football-loving owner and chief executive of the Indianapolis Colts who spent his entire adult life around the team that his father bought more than a half-century ago, died on Wednesday. He was 65.His death was announced in a statement by Pete Ward, the Colts’ chief operating officer, noting that he died in his sleep that afternoon. No cause was given.Mr. Irsay had health issues in recent years, including hip surgery, which left him reliant on walking poles. He was also battling an addiction to alcohol.But through it all, Mr. Irsay remained an active and forceful presence in N.F.L. circles. He was on the powerful finance committee and, unlike his fellow owners, rarely shied away from offering his opinions to reporters, commenting even on sensitive topics, like contract disputes, fellow owners and their worthiness to own their teams.He was also an active and visible cheerleader for the Colts, sending inspirational messages on social media to fire up fans before games.By his own proclamation, Mr. Irsay considered himself one of the standard-bearers for the N.F.L. He would often point out that George Halas Sr., the founding owner of the Chicago Bears and a co-founder of the N.F.L., attended his wedding in 1980. Mr. Irsay also did not hide from one of the most controversial episodes in N.F.L. history: his father’s decision to move the Colts team from Baltimore to Indianapolis on a snowy night in 1984. The move was derided as an example of the N.F.L.’s bottomless greed and willingness to abandon fans and their city in search of more money.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Greg Cannom, Who Made Brad Pitt Old and Marlon Wayans White, Dies at 73

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      He won five Oscars as a makeup artist on movies in which characters transformed, like “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “White Chicks” and many more.Greg Cannom, an Oscar-winning movie makeup artist responsible for some of the most striking acts of movie magic in recent decades — including the transformation of Christian Bale into Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the creation of a giant expressive green head for Jim Carrey in “The Mask,” and the reverse aging of Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — died on May 3. He was 73.His death was announced by Rick Baker, a frequent collaborator and another of Hollywood’s most admired movie makeup artists, as well as by the IATSE Local 706 Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild. Neither source provided further details.An online fund-raising drive for Mr. Cannom posted two years ago listed a series of health challenges, including severe shingles, a staph infection, sepsis and heart failure.Mr. Cannom won Oscars for best makeup for his work on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008) and “Vice” (2018).In 2005, he won a “technical achievement” Oscar for the development of a modified silicone that could be used to apply fantastical changes to an actor’s face while retaining the appearance of skin and flesh.Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Mr. Cannom won an Oscar for his work on the film.Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christopher Bond, Former Missouri Governor and U.S. Senator, Dies at 86

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      A Republican known as Kit, he was the state’s youngest governor. When he retired from Congress after four terms, he said he didn’t want to be the state’s oldest senator.Christopher S. Bond, who was Missouri’s youngest governor and the state’s first Republican governor since 1945 when he was elected in 1972, and who went on to serve four terms in the U.S. Senate, died on Tuesday in St. Louis. He was 86.His death was announced by Gov. Mike Kehoe, a fellow Republican. The announcement did not say where in St. Louis he died.Mr. Bond, known as Kit, was 31 in 1970 when he was elected state auditor, defeating a 17-year incumbent. He served from 1971 to 1973, when he became governor, having been elected in November 1972 at age 33. He was the first Republican to hold that position since Forrest C. Donnell left office in 1945.Mr. Bond was defeated for re-election, but he staged a comeback in 1980 by ousting Joseph P. Teasdale, the Democrat who had replaced him. He succeeded Thomas F. Eagleton, a Democrat, in the Senate in 1987 after Mr. Eagleton retired.His election to a fourth term in 2004 was the seventh time that Mr. Bond won statewide office — more than any other candidate in Missouri’s history.In 2009, he announced that he would not seek a fifth term in 2010.Mr. Bond during his second term as governor of Missouri. He served from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1981 to 1985.UPI/Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert Shapiro, Who Made NutraSweet a Household Name, Dies at 86

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      His promotion of the sugar substitute was a success. But later, as head of Monsanto, he faced blowback after the company rushed into genetically altered products.Robert B. Shapiro, a brash former law professor turned corporate executive who performed a marketing miracle by branding aspartame as the sugar substitute NutraSweet and making it a household name that consumers demanded in thousands of products, died on May 2 at his home in Chicago. He was 86.The cause was pancreatic cancer, his son James Shapiro said.Aspartame was invented by chemists at the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle in Illinois in 1965 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in soft drinks in 1983, a year after Mr. Shapiro became chief executive and chairman of what the company was already calling its NutraSweet subsidiary.Unlike its chief rival, saccharin, which had dominated the market in the 25 years since it was approved, aspartame leaves no bitter aftertaste and wasn’t suspected of being linked to cancer. (In 2023, however, the World Health Organization identified aspartame, on the basis of “limited evidence,” as “possibly carcinogenic.”) It has virtually no calories and, despite its brand name, virtually no essential nutritional value.In 1985, Searle sold $700 million worth of aspartame, identified as NutraSweet by the tiny but distinctive red-and-white swirl logo that appeared on the packaging of food and drink products that appealed to dieters and other consumers who wanted to avoid sugar.As the chief executive of the division of G.D. Searle that made the sugar substitute NutraSweet, one commentator wrote, Mr. Shapiro “built a marketing campaign around that trademark, convincing consumers that NutraSweet (and no other company’s version of the very same sweetener) was the key to losing weight.”The NutraSweet Company“Shapiro built a marketing campaign around that trademark, convincing consumers that NutraSweet (and no other company’s version of the very same sweetener) was the key to losing weight,” Daniel Charles wrote in “Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food” (2001).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Johnny Rodriguez, Country Music Star, Dies at 73

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      He was best known for the 1970s hits “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind” and “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico,” and as the first popular Mexican American country artist.Johnny Rodriguez, who became the first Mexican American country music star with a string of hits, died on Friday. He was 73.His daughter, Aubry Rodriguez, announced his death on social media on Saturday. The post did not cite a cause of death.Mr. Rodriguez rose to fame in the 1970s and was best known for the hits “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” and “You Always Come Back (to Hurting Me).” He released six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and nine others reached the Top 10.In 2007, Mr. Rodriguez was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, which described him as the “greatest and most memorable Chicano Country singer of all time.”Juan Raoul Davis Rodriguez was born to Andres Rodriguez and Isabel Davis on Dec. 10, 1951, in Sabinal, Texas, around 65 miles west of San Antonio. Mr. Rodriguez, the second youngest of 10 children, started playing guitar at the age of 7 when his older brother, Andres, bought him one.Their father died of cancer when Mr. Rodriguez was 16, around the time Mr. Rodriguez formed a band, and the younger Andres died the next year in a car crash. The losses sent Mr. Rodriguez “spiraling,” according to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Koyo Kouoh, Prominent Art World Figure, Is Dead at 57

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      She had recently been named to oversee next year’s Venice Biennale. She died just days before she was scheduled to announce its theme and title.Koyo Kouoh in 2023. As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, she had built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color.Tsele Nthane for The New York TimesKoyo Kouoh, one of the global art world’s most prominent figures, who had been slated to become the first African woman to curate the Venice Biennale, died on Saturday in Switzerland. She was 57.Her death was confirmed by the biennale’s organizers. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where in Switzerland she had died.The biennale said that Ms. Kouoh’s “sudden and untimely” death came just days before she was scheduled to announce the title and theme of next year’s event. The statement added that her death “leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art.”The Venice Biennale is arguably the art world’s most important event. Staged every two years since 1895, it always includes a large-scale group show, organized by the curator, alongside dozens of national pavilions, organized independently.A spokeswoman for the biennale did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what Ms. Kouoh’s death would mean for next year’s exhibition, which is scheduled to run from May 9 through Nov. 22.As the curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, one of Africa’s largest contemporary art museums, Ms. Kouoh built a global reputation as a torchbearer for artists of color from Africa and elsewhere, although her interests were global in reach. “I’m an international curator,” she said last December in an interview with the The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Margot Friedländer, Holocaust Survivor Who Found Her Voice, Dies at 103

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      She never spoke of her experience until after her husband’s death, when she returned to Berlin with a mission to tell her story, and to teach tolerance.Margot Friedländer, a Holocaust survivor who spent more than 60 years in exile (as she saw it) in New York City before returning to Germany in 2010 and finding her voice as a champion of Holocaust remembrance — work that made her a celebrity to young Germans and landed her on the cover of German Vogue last year — died on Friday in Berlin. She was 103.Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation, an organization promoting tolerance and democracy.“It helps me to talk about what happened,” she told the members of a UNICEF Club in 2023. “You young people help me because you listen. I don’t bottle it up anymore. I share my story for all of you.”Ms. Friedländer and her husband, Adolf — known in America as Eddie, for obvious reasons — arrived in New York in the summer of 1946. They settled into a small apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. He found work as comptroller of the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she became a travel agent.The couple had married at the camp where they were both interned; once in America, they never spoke of their shared experience. Mr. Friedländer was adamant about never returning to the country that had murdered their families. But when he died in 1997, Ms. Friedländer began to wonder what had been left behind.She had found a community at the Y, and, at the urging of Jo Frances Brown, who was then the program director there, she signed up for a memoir-writing class. It was weeks before she participated, however. The other students, all American-born, were writing about their families, their children, their pets. One night, unable to sleep, she began to write, and the first stories she told were her earliest childhood memories.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      William L. Porter, Designer of Classic American Cars, Dies at 93

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      As a senior designer at G.M., he helped create the exuberant, elongated shape of 1960s and ’70s cars like the Pontiac GTO, the Bonneville and the Trans Am.William L. Porter, a car designer who helped create the shapes of some of the most celebrated American vehicles of the late 1960s and early ’70s, died on April 25 at his home in Whitmore Lake, Mich. He was 93.His death was confirmed by his son, Adam, who did not specify a cause.As a senior designer at General Motors for more than three decades, Mr. Porter was intimately involved in determining the appearance of numerous cars that were uniquely American in their exuberant, elongated design and curvaceous forms. These were big, sleek cars for long, empty American roads, and for cities filled with the parking lots that could accommodate them, light years from the compact boxes made for Europe’s narrow streets.Mr. Porter made this sketch of the Pontiac GTO body in 1962, when he was just beginning to conceive of the car that would become the 1968 GTO.via Porter familyA 1969 iteration of the Pontiac GTO design.iStock Editorial/Getty Images PlusThe Pontiac GTO model produced in 1968 and 1969, with its endless hood and smooth, tapering back — its “monocoque shell form with elliptical pressure bulges over the wheels,” as Mr. Porter put it in an interview in 2000 — was one of his signature creations.G.M. made him chief designer at what it called the Pontiac 1 Studio in 1968, and he held that position until 1972, before going on to other senior design positions. In the early 1970s, he directed the design of the company’s LeMans, Catalina and Bonneville cars, which had tapering forms with jutting trunks, in keeping with his aesthetic.“I was taken with a plainer, curvaceous look featuring long, muscular shapes based on elliptical vocabulary,” Mr. Porter, a connoisseur and collector of American design, including Tiffany glass and Arts and Crafts furniture, said in an interview with Hot Rod magazine in 2007.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More