Dead Celebrity Alert

August 21, 2006 — Creighton Brown, a wellknown racing entrepreneur and a man who helped Ron Dennis win control of McLaren, has died of cancer. … Read full obituary

Alexander C. Cushing, the founder and chairman of Squaw Valley Ski Resort, died of pneumonia this weekend at his summer home in Newport, Rhode Island.

Cushing was 92. … Read full obituary

Robert H. Brooks, who, as the self-styled “Worldwide Wing Commander” of Hooters restaurants, known for spicy chicken wings and spicier waitresses, took the company to 46 states and 20 countries, died on Sunday at his home in Myrtle Beach, S.C. He was 69. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Kenneth Lay, the former chairman of Enron as well as a founder of the company, is dead, according to a report on CNBC. Lay was convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges by a federal jury in Houston on May 25 for his part in the high-profile collapse of Enron. CNBC said Lay died at his home in Aspen, Colo., of a heart attack. Jeffery Skilling, the ex-CEO of Enron, was also convicted in late May. The pair had yet to be sentenced for the charges, and each man was facing at least 20 years in prison. … Read full obituary

Related:

Ex-Enron exec J. Clifford Baxter suicides out

El Paso Corp. exec Charles Dana Rice, apparent suicide

Dallas, TX (AHN) — E. Pierce Marshall, who battled former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith for his father’s oil fortune for years, died unexpectedly Tuesday.

Marshall, 67 died of an aggressive infection on Tuesday but the family spokesperson would not release any further details, asking that the family receive the privacy they deserve. … Read full obituary

James Conway Sr., an entrepreneur whose company has been delighting the taste buds, if not always the ears, at this season for the past half-century, died on Sunday at his home in Ocean City, N.J. Mr. Conway, a founder of the Mister Softee ice cream company, was 78. … Read full obituary

HARTFORD, Conn. — Louis Rukeyser, a best-selling author, columnist, lecturer and television host who delivered pun-filled, commonsense commentary on complicated business and economic news, died Tuesday. He was 73. … Read full obituary

COVELO — Robert “Bobby” Fetzer, a well-known Mendocino County winemaker and cattle rancher, died Sunday in a rafting accident on the Middle Fork of the Eel River. … Read full obituary

Australia’s wealthiest man, Kerry Packer, has died at the age of 68.

Mr Packer, who was head of the Nine Network and PBL, died peacefully at home last night with his family by his bedside. …

Mr Packer’s personal wealth was recently estimated at $7 billion. … Read full obituary

Ruth M. Siems, a retired home economist whose best-known innovation will make its appearance, welcome or otherwise, in millions of homes tomorrow, died on Nov. 13 at her home in Newburgh, Ind. Ms. Siems, an inventor of Stove Top stuffing, was 74. … Read full obituary

Preston Robert Tisch, who with his older brother built a multibillion-dollar business empire and who himself was postmaster general, half-owner of the New York Giants football team and leader of many of the city’s top business groups, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79 and also had a home in Harrison, N.Y. … Read full obituary

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NFL Patriarch Wellington Mara, 89

JACKSON — John Walton was one of the world’s richest men, an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune. But on Thursday, three days after he was killed in an aircraft accident, Walton’s friends and family remembered him for his giving and his kindness, describing him as the “ultimate hero” to his wife and son. … Read full obituary

FONTANA, Calif. — Two San Diego County men were killed when their Porsche crashed and burned at the California Speedway, authorities said. …

The passenger, Corey Nicholas Rudl, 34, died at the scene. The driver, Benjamin Miles Keaton, 39, was airlifted to Loma Linda University Hospital, where he died about an hour later, according to the county coroner’s office. … Read full story

SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — Frank Perdue, who transformed a backyard egg business into one of the nation’s largest poultry processors using the folksy slogan, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” has died. He was 84. … Read full obituary

John Z. DeLorean, 80, the brilliant but troubled automaker who arguably was as flamboyant as his car designs, died March 19 at a hospital in Summit, N.J., after a stroke. … Read full obituary

Obit to come.

DALLAS — Dale Paschal Jones, a former Baylor University regent and president of Halliburton Corp. who was known as much for his devotion to Christian ministry as his business skills, has died of complications from a head injury. He was 68. … Read full obituary

Laurance Rockefeller, a leading businessman famous for his efforts to preserve nature in the United States, has died at 94 years of age. He died Sunday at his home in New York City. A family spokesman says the cause was pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. …

One of his children, Jay Rockefeller, is a U.S. senator. … Read full obituary

A 23-year-old San Diego man was killed Tuesday night as he raced his Porsche on an Orange County freeway at 100 mph, then soared off at an overpass, landing on the freeway below, where he was ejected and run over by several cars, authorities said.

Michael Hanson was killed instantly in the Costa Mesa crash… Read full obituary

The patriarch of Italian auto manufacturer Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, has died, the ANSA news agency announced today. … Read full obituary

Allen Parkinson, a star-struck entrepreneur who developed an over-the-counter sleep aid and built a wax museum dedicated to Hollywood legends, died on Aug. 19 at his home in Warwick, R.I. He was 83. … Read full obituary

Ed Headrick, who designed and patented the modern Frisbee, died Monday at his home in La Selva Beach, Calif. He was 78.

The cause was a stroke, said Scott Keasey, national sales manager for the Disc Golf Association. The association governs and supplies equipment for disc golf, a variation of golf invented by Mr. Headrick. …

Mr. Headrick asked that his ashes be molded into a limited number of memorial flying discs, which will be distributed to his family and friends, his son Ken told The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

“We used to say that Frisbee is really a religion — ‘Frisbyterians,’ we’d call ourselves,” Mr. Headrick said in an interview with the newspaper in October.

“When we die, we don’t go to purgatory,” he continued. “We just land up on the roof and lay there.” … Read full obituary

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gene Kan, one of the pioneers of the file-sharing technology called Gnutella that took music swapping beyond the realm of Napster, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, a coroner’s spokeswoman said Tuesday. He was 25.

Sue Turner of the San Mateo County medical examiner’s office said Kan’s body was found July 2 at his Belmont home. …

A statement released Monday by his employer, Sun Microsystems Inc., said Kan died as the result of an accident and that no further details of his death were being released at the request of his family. …

Gnutella came along as Shawn Fanning’s Napster program became mired in lawsuits by the recording industry. Kan and a small clutch of developers honed the Gnutella protocol so that programmers around the world could make their own home-brewed computer applications — each speaking the same language and capable of pointing users to shared music, video and software files. … Read full obituary

Lew R. Wasserman, the former chairman and chief executive of the Music Corporation of America, who was arguably the most powerful and influential Hollywood titan in the four decades after World War II, died yesterday in Beverly Hills. He was 89.

The man considered the last of the legendary movie moguls, Mr. Wasserman began as a theater usher, became an MCA agent for entertainers and eventually changed the face of the movie business.

Working on behalf of his film-star clients in the late 1940’s, he put an end to the ironclad long-term contracts that turned even big-name actors into high-paid serfs of the major studios. … Read full obituary

The treasurer of El Paso Corp., one of several energy trading companies facing questions about accounting practices, was found with a fatal gunshot wound to his head in an apparent suicide at his Houston townhome, police said Monday.

There was no immediate indication the death Sunday of Charles Dana Rice was directly related to the company’s troubles. According to industry executives, he was known to suffer from some health problems. …

Another energy executive, J. Clifford Baxter, a former vice chairman at Enron Corp., shot himself in his car not far from his home in a southwest Houston suburb Jan. 25, after that company, also based in Houston, collapsed in an accounting scandal.

Rice, 47, was a senior vice president at El Paso, where he worked for 25 years. … Read full obituary

Related:
Ex-Enron exec J. Clifford Baxter suicides out