Obituaries
Sunday, March 25, 2007; Page C07
Robert E. PetersenMagazine Publisher
Robert E. Petersen, 80, a publishing magnate whose Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines helped shape the U.S. car culture and who gave millions to a museum dedicated to his passion, died March 23 of complications from neuroendocrine cancer at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.
Mr. Petersen, the son of an auto mechanic, founded Hot Rod magazine in 1948 while promoting a custom-designed car show at the Los Angeles Armory. The next year, he launched Motor Trend for automobile enthusiasts. A dozen other specialty consumer magazines followed, including Guns & Ammo, Sport, Motorcyclist, Hunting, Mountain Biker, Photographic, Teen and Sassy.
When Petersen Publishing was sold in 1996, its annual revenue was about $275 million. Mr. Petersen later donated $25 million to pay off the debt of the Petersen Automotive Museum he opened in 1994.
Herman SteinHollywood Composer
Herman Stein, 91, a composer whose music for "It Came From Outer Space," "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "The Incredible Shrinking Man" helped define the soundtrack of 1950s science fiction and horror movies, died of congestive heart failure March 15 at his Los Angeles home.
As a staff composer at Universal Studios, Mr. Stein collaborated with Henry Mancini and others to create music for nearly 200 movies and shorts, but he didn't get credit for all of his work because of the studio's tendency to give solo credit to a project's music supervisor.
"It was an unwritten rule at Universal that if he wrote less than 80 percent of the score, then his name would not be credited in the picture," his producer David Schecter said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Stein has been recognized for writing or co-writing music for an array of movies, including westerns, comedies and dramas. They include Roger Corman's civil rights drama "The Intruder" and Douglas Sirk's comedy "Has Anybody Seen My Gal?"
His other notable horror film compositions include "Tarantula" and "King Kong vs. Godzilla." He also composed music for TV shows such as "Gunsmoke," "Lost in Space" and "Daniel Boone."
Richard Conway CaseyBlind Federal Judge
Richard Conway Casey, 74, who was the nation's first blind federal trial judge and presided over high-profile cases including an abortion-law challenge and the Peter Gotti trial, died March 22 of an apparent heart attack in New York.
Mr. Casey was nominated for a federal judgeship by President Bill Clinton in 1997, 10 years after he became blind from an inherited degenerative eye disease. He was a fixture in U.S. District Court in lower Manhattan, arriving each morning with his guide dog, Barney.
Mr. Casey was born in Ithaca, N.Y., and played football at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center, he worked as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 1960 to 1963, winning convictions of three Russian spies.
Some questioned whether a blind judge could accurately assess the credibility of a witness he could not see. Mr. Casey said truth could be found by following the facts to see whether they link in a coherent, logical way. He occasionally swapped trademark cases with a colleague if they depended on visual observation.
Walter TurnbullChoir Founder
Walter Turnbull, 62, who founded the Boys Choir of Harlem and led the organization to international acclaim and performances at the White House and the Vatican, died of complications from a stroke March 23 at a New York City hospital.
His death marked the latest in a sad string of events for the famed choir, which has been reeling since a choirboy accused a counselor six years ago of sexually abusing him. City investigators chided Mr. Turnbull for his handling of the allegations.
The renowned institution has fallen into debt, and the 50-boy choir was evicted last year and now has a reduced, mostly volunteer staff.
Born in Greenville, Miss., Mr. Turnbull studied music at Tougaloo College in Mississippi and moved to New York to become an opera singer, eventually performing with the New York Philharmonic. He founded the choir at Ephesus Church in 1968 and built the after-school program into the 600-student Choir Academy of Harlem, which opened in 1993. The choir has released albums and has been heard on the soundtracks of films such as "Jungle Fever," "Malcolm X" and "Glory."
-- From News Services
