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Jack Kevorkian, 'Dr. Death', Assisted Suicide Advocate, Died 83

Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011) was an Armenian-American pathologist, right-to-die activist, painter, composer, and instrumentalist. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he claimed to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He famously said that "dying is not a crime".

Between 1990 and 1998, Kevorkian assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people.

Beginning in 1999 Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition that he would not offer suicide advice to any other person.

An oil painter and a jazz musician, Kevorkian marketed limited quantities of his visual and musical artwork to the public.

Jack Kevorkian Cause of Death
Jack Kevorkian was hospitalized for pneumonia and a kidney-related ailment.  He died when a blood clot broke from his leg and became lodged in his heart.

Jack Kevorkian : Dr. Death - "I Am Honest And Is There A God ?"

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Elmer Lynn Hauldren, 'Empire Carpet Man', dead 89

Elmer Lynn Hauldren (April 1, 1922 in Missouri - April 26, 2011) was a former advertising copywriter based out of Chicago who was best known for originating the television character The Empire Man, the spokesman for Empire Today. He resided in Evanston, Illinois.

Hauldren was working on the Empire Carpet account in 1977 and could not find an actor the company approved of for the role of The Empire Man in a commercial scheduled to be shot. Instead, then company owner Seymour Cohen asked Hauldren to play the role of The Empire Man himself.

Elmer Lynn Hauldren Cause of Death
Elmer Hauldren died at the age of 89.
A cause of death wasn't given but the spokeswoman said he had been sick.

Empire Carpet Commercial 1986

 Empire Today 588.2300 animated carpet clip 

Empire Today Website

Geraldine Doyle, WWII Poster 'We Can Do It!' Inspiration, Dies 86

Geraldine Hoff Doyle (July 31, 1924 — December 26, 2010) was the real-life model for the World War II era We Can Do It posters, an embodiment of the iconic World War II character Rosie the Riveter.

Because the We Can Do It poster was created for an internal Westinghouse project, it did not become widely known until the 1980s, when it began to be used by advocates of women's equality in the workplace.

In 1942 Geraldine found work as a metal presser in a Michigan factory. (As men started enlisting and being drafted into military service for World War II, women began to support the war effort by taking on roles, including factory work, that were formerly considered "male only.")

Because she was a cello player, Geraldine feared a hand injury from the metal pressing machines and soon left the factory. During the brief time she worked there a wire photographer took a picture of her. That image - re-imagined by graphic artist J. Howard Miller while working for the Westinghouse Company's War Production Coordinating Committee -- became the basis for the poster Miller created during a Westinghouse anti-absenteeism and anti-strike campaign.

Doyle didn't know she was the model for We Can Do It until 1984, when she came across the original photograph in a 1940's back issue of Modern Maturity Magazine.

Death of Geraldine Doyle
Geraldine Doyle died in Lansing, Michigan, due to complications from arthritis.
Geraldine Hoff Doyle was 86 years old at the time of her death.

Casey Johnson, Johnson & Johnson heiress, dies 30

Casey Johnson (September 24, 1979 – January 4, 2010) was an American socialite. She was also one of the great-great-granddaughters of Robert Wood Johnson I, co-founder of Johnson & Johnson.

Death of Casey Johnson
On January 4, 2010, Johnson was found dead in her Los Angeles home. The cause of death is yet to be determined (pending coroner's toxicology report), however authorities reported "no evidence of foul play" and that she might have been dead a few days. Tequila said Johnson had not answered her phone since December 29, 2009. Tequila later posted to her Twitter that Johnson was not dead, but in a coma. Later she backtracked stating that Johnson was, in fact, dead

At the age of 14, Johnson co-wrote a book with her father entitled Managing Your Child's Diets. She has appeared as herself on the television shows The Fabulous Life of... and E! True Hollywood Story. In addition she was a popular Hollywood socialite known for making outrageous headlines.

Johnson openly declared her sexuality as a lesbian.

Kim Peek - 'Rain Man' inspiration dies 58

Kim Peek (11 November 1951 – 19 December 2009) was an American prodigious savant known as a megasavant. He had a photographic or eidetic memory, but also social developmental disabilities, possibly resulting from congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman, in the movie Rain Man. He was not autistic and likely had FG syndrome.

Kim Peek was born with macrocephaly, damage to the cerebellum, and, perhaps most important, agenesis of the corpus callosum, a condition in which the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is missing; in Peek's case, secondary connectors such as the anterior commissure were also missing. There is speculation that his neurons made other connections in the absence of a corpus callosum, which results in an increased memory capacity.

Death of Kim Peek
Peek died on 19 December 2009, of a heart attack. He is survived by his father.  He was 58 years old at the time of his death

Millvina Dean, Last Titanic survivor dies at 97

Related Story - Barbara West second last survivor of Titanic, dies 95

Last Titanic SurvivorMillvina Dean (February 2, 1912 - May 31, 2009) was the last living survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic which occurred on 15 April 1912. At nine weeks of age, she was the youngest passenger on board

Ill health and death of Millvina Dean
In December 2008, at the age of 96, Millvina Dean was forced to sell several of her family's possessions to pay for her private medical care following a broken hip.

In response, the Millvina Fund was set up in May 2009 by the director and stars of the film Titanic, James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who donated over £20,000 to support Dean with her bills. This fund was set up through a challenge by photographer Don Mullan, and matches one he set up through selling prints.

Dean died on 31 May 2009 at the age of 97, 98 years to the day after the Titanic was launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Millvina Dean's biography continutes next page

Family
Elizabeth Gladys Millvina Dean was born in London to Bertram Frank Dean and Georgette Eva Light. She had a brother, Bertram Vere Dean (1910–1992), and a great great great niece Khara Barnard who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dean never married and had no children.


Titanic voyage
Millvina's parents decided to leave England and emigrate to Wichita, Kansas where her father had family living and where he hoped to open a tobacco shop. The Deans were not supposed to be aboard the Titanic, but owing to a coal strike, they were transferred to the ship and boarded it as third-class passengers at Southampton, England. Millvina was barely two months old when she boarded the ship. Her father felt the ship's collision with the iceberg on the night of 14 April 1912, and after investigating, returned to his cabin telling his wife to dress the children and go up on deck. Millvina, her mother, and brother were placed in Lifeboat 10 and were among the first steerage passengers to escape the sinking liner. Her father, however, did not survive, and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

Return to England
At first, Millvina's mother wanted to continue on to Kansas to fulfil her husband's wish of a new life in the United States. However, after losing her husband and being left with two small children for whom to care, they returned to England aboard the RMS Adriatic. While aboard the ship, Millvina understandably attracted considerable attention. An article in the Daily Mirror newspaper dated 12 May 1912 described the ordeal:

She was the pet of the liner during the voyage, and so keen was the rivalry between women to nurse this lovable mite of humanity that one of the officers decreed that first and second class passengers might hold her in turn for no more than ten minutes.

Family deaths
Dean's mother died on 16 September 1975, aged 96, and her brother, Bertram, died, aged 81, on 14 April 1992, 80 years to the day after the Titanic struck the iceberg.

Later years
It was not until Millvina was in her seventies that she became involved in Titanic-related events. Over the years, she participated in numerous conventions, exhibitions, documentaries, television and radio interviews, and personal correspondence. In 1998, Millvina traveled to the United States to participate in a Titanic convention in Springfield, Massachusetts, and another in 1999 in Montreal. She had also been scheduled to appear at a commemoration of the Titanic's 94th anniversary in 2006, but a broken hip prevented her appearance.

In October 2007, she became the last-living Titanic survivor following the death of Barbara West Dainton, who died at the age of 96 in England.

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