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Last April four of Iris Bouchard's children stood bunched together in a spare bedroom in their mother's Bethesda home staring at stacks of it: loose pages on the desk and bookshelves, manila folders poking out of an overstuffed filing cabinet, rows of letters in wooden clementine boxes in the closet. Bouchard had died just days ago, and her sons, Stephen and Ed, and daughters, Charlie and Ellie, had come to sort through the remains of her business, the Inter-American Employment Agency. For 35 years, until Bouchard stopped working around 2004, the company placed chauffeurs, maids, butlers and other household help in the homes of the Washington elite.
Bouchard had a thing for flamboyance -- furs, jewelry, one hat that closely resembled a strawberry shortcake -- but the walls of her home office were bare. She had died of emphysema, and though she had quit smoking several years before, the smell of cigarettes still hung in the air.
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A judge in Erie County has temporarily barred the state from enforcing a new law requiring the collection of taxes on cigarettes sold on Indian reservations.
State Supreme Court Justice Rose H. Sconiers signed the temporary restraining order Wednesday. It orders state officials to appear in her court Jan. 27 to show why Sconiers shouldn't issue an injunction against the tax collection.
Margaret A. Murphy, a lawyer representing Day Wholesalers of Tupper Lake and Scott Maybee, a Seneca Nation tobacco distributor, asked the court for the restraining order. . . .
Murphy said state tax law exempts Native Americans from paying taxes on cigarettes but the state has never set up a mechanism to rebate any cigarette taxes paid by Native Americans. State courts have ruled that the state cannot enforce its cigarette tax law until it sets up the rebate process, she said.
"We went before Judge Sconiers to say .¤.¤. the tax department and the state have to do more before it can put this one law into effect," Murphy said.Morgan Hook, spokesman for Paterson, said the state will comply with the judge's order while it reviews the decision.
Cayuga County District Attorney Jon E. Budelmann said the judge's ruling will not affect tax evasion cases against the Cayuga Indian Nation filed by Cayuga and Seneca counties.
Julius Fast, who won the first Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America and went on to publish popular books on body language, the Beatles and human relationships, died on Tuesday in Kingston, N.Y. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Jennifer Fast Gelfand. He had lived in Manhattan until suffering a stroke a year and a half ago. . . .
He also wrote books on how to quit smoking, how men and women can overcome their incompatibilities and the meaning of new research on Omega-3 fatty acids.
Former Michigan State Medical Society Executive Director Kevin Kelly died Monday following a lengthy illness.
Kelly, 52, was the society's executive director from 2005 until mid-2008. He had served the 16,000-member, East Lansing-based organization his entire career, beginning shortly after graduating from Michigan State University in 1978 in economics. He started as the society's legislative coordinator in 1979 and became managing director in 1987, prior to being named executive director. . . .
Kelly was also dedicated to banning smoking in the workplace, improving childhood immunization rates and patient safety education, among many health care issues. He was involved in numerous state and community organizations.
León Febres Cordero, a pistol-wielding, chain-smoking, horse-breeding businessman who served a tumultuous term as Ecuador’s president in the 1980s and later exerted broad influence over the country’s political life for nearly two decades, died Monday in Guayaquil, his hometown. He was 77.
The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Pascual del Cioppo, an official in Mr. Febres Cordero’s Social Christian Party. Newspapers in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and Guayaquil noted that Mr. Febres Cordero also had emphysema and had survived five heart bypass operations and three bullet wounds over the years. . . .
“My best friends are my cigarettes and my pistols,” he once told The Associated Press. “They don’t ask for anything, and they’re always ready.”
Former President Leon Febres Cordero, the colorful, right-wing leader who dominated Ecuadorean politics for almost two decades and was dubbed the "owner" of the nation by his opponents, died on Monday. He was 77.
Close friend and political confidant Alfonso Harb said Febres Cordero - who survived five heart bypass operations, two bouts with cancer and three bullet wounds - died of complications from pulmonary emphysema caused by a lifetime of chain-smoking.
Sporting a mane of white hair and a cigarette hanging from his lip, the leader known simply as "Leon" or "Lion," was an old-fashioned, bare-knuckled Latin American strongman who towered over Ecuador's right for half a century.
Patriarch Aleksy II, who as leader of the sprawling Russian Orthodox Church presided over its restoration as a powerful influence in Russian society after decades of Soviet persecution, died on Friday at his country residence in Peredelkino, outside Moscow. He was 79.
Doctors were still trying to determine the cause of death, the Moscow Patriarchate said Friday in announcing his death. Aleksy II was said to have been treated for years for myocardial ischemia, which is a shortage of oxygen to the heart muscle because of narrowed arteries.
Aleksy II oversaw the largest Orthodox church in the world as the spiritual leader of more than 140 million people. . . .
In the 1990s, as the tenets of Communism crumbled and Russia lunged into the free market, the church came under criticism when it was granted concessions for oil, tobacco and alcohol trading. The patriarchate said the money was needed to restore a ravaged church infrastructure, but its critics said the church should not have been involved in such businesses.
Before Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz, there was Johnny Weissmuller, also known as Hollywood's Tarzan, who in the 1920s set dozens of world marks, including 51 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle, a record that stood for 16 years.
The man who broke it was Alan Ford, a 19-year-old Yale student. He bettered his record three more times in the next 13 months, until he became the first swimmer to break 50 seconds for 100 yards, a barrier that some likened to the four-minute mile. No one else accomplished the feat for another eight years.
Mr. Ford became known as the human fish, an unofficial title he took over from Weissmuller. Mr. Ford was, simply, the fastest swimmer in the world.
He died Nov. 3 at age 84 in Sarasota, Fla., where he lived. The cause was emphysema, his son Robert said, a result of a smoking habit that began in the Navy after Mr. Ford graduated from Yale.
Pete Newell, one of the most influential coaches in the history of basketball, who won a national championship at the University of California in 1959, an Olympic championship in 1960, and whose camp for basketball's "big men" became a required seminar in low-post play for generations of professional stars, died Monday in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., near San Diego. He was 93.
Earl Schultz, a friend and caretaker who had been one of Newell's former players at Cal, confirmed the death to The Associated Press, saying Newell had had smoking-related lung problems. . . .
Always an intense man who relied on coffee and cigarettes, Newell retired from coaching after his Olympic victory in 1960, when doctors warned that further stress would kill him.
decades before Spitz, there was Johnny Weissmuller, a k a Tarzan, who in the 1920s set dozens of world marks, including 51 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle, a record that stood for 16 years.
Ford became known as the human fish, an unofficial title he took over from Weissmuller. He was, simply put, the fastest swimmer in the world.
He died Nov. 3 at age 84 in Sarasota, Fla., where he lived. The cause was emphysema, his son Robert said, a result of a smoking habit that began in the Navy after Ford graduated from Yale. . . .
But after six months of training, he made the United States Olympic team and won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle. (His wife prevailed upon him to quit smoking for the duration of his training. "But he told me he couldn't wait to get back to it," she said.)
Dr. I. Bernard Weinstein, a researcher and top administrator at Columbia University who advanced the study of how pollutants and other environmental factors can cause cancer, died on Nov. 3 in Manhattan, where he lived. He was 78.
The cause was kidney disease, his family said.
At Columbia, where he headed the Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1985 to 1996, Dr. Weinstein investigated chemical sources of cancer and how cancers can progress in stages and over time at the molecular and cellular levels.
A former student, Richard Axel, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004, said that as early as the 1970s, Dr. Weinstein had made an important connection in recognizing that carcinogens in the environment would most likely have molecular targets in the body.
Dr. Weinstein and others investigated the cancer-causing properties of a common chemical, benzo(a)pyrene, which is found in tobacco smoke, car exhaust and charbroiled foods. He later studied cancers related to the class of compounds called nitrosamines
Janet B. Hardy, a Johns Hopkins University pediatrics professor who led a pioneering study of mothers and children that provided a wealth of information on teen pregnancy, medical concerns and social issues, died Oct. 23 at the Glen Meadows retirement community in Glen Arm, Md. She was 92 and had had a stroke.
Dr. Hardy helped design the Collaborative Perinatal Project, a wide-reaching federal study of 60,000 expectant mothers and their children, that began in 1957. She was the lead researcher for the Baltimore portion of the 12-city project . . .
Dr. Hardy also discovered that childhood smoking was strongly correlated with later problems in life.
"I have no real explanation for it, but I think smoking is what we call a 'marker' for some other behaviors," she said in 1997. "It's a very persistent finding in our data."
The Board of Directors and staff of the American Legacy Foundation extend their condolences and heartfelt sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues across the nation and around the world who worked with Dr. Ron Davis, who passed away yesterday. His contributions to our collective efforts to decrease the deadly toll of tobacco were countless and his spirit and drive were motivators for all those fortunate enough to know him.
Dr. Davis's involvement in public health dates to his years as a young medical student. Over the years, Dr. Davis served the tobacco control community in numerous ways, including as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health; as chief medical officer of the Michigan Department of Public Health; most recently in the private sector at the Henry Ford Health System and as a public health advocate through his work as President of the American Medical Association. He was an expert witness in litigation against the tobacco industry and a National Cancer Institute-funded researcher. He was also the founding editor of the world's very first scientific journal dedicated to the field of tobacco control. First and foremost, he was a wonderful husband, father and friend.
The field of tobacco control and prevention is far richer today for Dr. Davis's involvement and we celebrate his significant contributions to the larger public health community. His courage, grace and good humor were and remain an inspiration to all of us who knew him.
At the American Legacy Foundation, we believe a legacy isn't something you leave behind when you die, but something you build every day you live. Dr. Davis's legacy is one devoted to saving lives. The foundation will honor Dr. Davis posthumously with our Lifetime Achievement Award at our Legacy Honors Gala in March 2009, where we will celebrate his enormous contributions to the field of tobacco control with his ardent admirers and loved ones.
Dr. Ronald M. Davis, a former president of the American Medical Association who campaigned against tobacco, alcohol, obesity, illicit drugs and unhealthy lifestyles in his career as a public health official, died Thursday at his home in East Lansing, Mich. He was 52.
The cause was pancreatic cancer . . .
In 1988, when the United States surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, released the most devastating of his reports on smoking -- calling it as addictive as heroin and saying it was responsible for 300,000 American deaths annually -- Dr. Davis was a young crusader in the antismoking wars, a rising official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite years of warnings on cigarette packs, millions of people were still lighting up, and American cigarette exports were earning $2.5 billion a year and rising relentlessly.
To Dr. Davis, the struggle seemed hopeless. "I don't know how to deal with it," he said. "My life's work has been devoted to reducing global morbidity figures, yet in this case we are exporting an obviously hazardous agent. This kind of thing perplexes me as a government official and frustrates me as a doctor."
In the generation since, millions have given up smoking, though 400,000 still die from the habit every year. But colleagues said Dr. Davis stayed in the Sisyphean fight against smoking and other health hazards . . .
Dr. Davis wrote many articles for medical journals and was a founding editor of Tobacco Control, published by the British Medical Association.
Ronald M. Davis, M.D., immediate past president of the American Medical Association and a relentless anti-tobacco advocate, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 52.
"The healthcare community has lost an extraordinary leader," said AMA President Nancy Nielsen, M.D. "To his fellow physicians and the patients they serve, Ron's legacy as a public health advocate will not be forgotten."
Dr. Davis, a preventive medicine specialist, served as the 162nd president of the AMA from June 2007-2008, leading the organization in its historic apology for racial inequality to African-Americans.
His career was marked by a passionate crusade against tobacco.
Dr. Davis helped change AMA policy toward the tobacco industry, said Alan Blum, M.D., director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society at the University of Alabama and an anti-tobacco activist.
"Ron is really like the Barack Obama of the AMA because he brought a breath of fresh air to an organization I didn't think could change," Dr. Blum said.