Obituaries in the news

John Brandl

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — John Brandl, a former federal health official and state legislator and a public policy expert, has died. He was 70.

Brandl died Monday at his son's home in Minnetrista after battling gastric cancer, his wife said.

Brandl joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1968. He was still a professor at the university's Humphrey Institute and a distinguished professor of public policy at St. John's University at the time of his death. He was dean of the Humphrey Institute from 1997 to 2002.

Brandl, a Democrat known for bucking the prevailing orthodoxy, served in the Minnesota House from 1977-78 and 1981-86, and in the Minnesota Senate from 1987-90, representing parts of south Minneapolis.

He also served in the federal government as deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1968-69, and in positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Economic Development Administration.

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Thomas K. Hearn Jr.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Thomas K. Hearn Jr., president of Wake Forest University from 1983 until 2005, has died. He was 71.

Hearn died Monday, the school announced. He had brain cancer while serving as president in 2003 but was eventually declared cancer-free. He returned to the job a few months later but announced that he planned to retire in June 2005.

During his presidency, Wake Forest saw college applications double, hired significantly more faculty and hosted presidential debates in 1988 and 2000. The college also launched an extensive construction and renovation initiative on campus.

Hearn's first major decision at the school was to sever ties with the Baptist State Convention, paving the way for a self-governing structure at the university.

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Maudie White Hopkins

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Maudie White Hopkins, who grew up during the Depression in the hardscrabble Ozarks and married a Confederate army veteran 67 years her senior, has died. She was 93.

Hopkins died Sunday at a hospital in Helena-West Helena, said Rodger Hooker of the Roller-Citizens Funeral Home.

Hopkins grew up in a family of 10 children, did laundry and cleaned house for William M. Cantrell, an elderly Confederate veteran in Baxter County whose wife had died years earlier.

When he offered to leave his land and home to her if she would marry him and care for him in his later years, she said yes. She was 19; he was 86.

Hopkins later married Winfred White and started a family. In all, she was married four times.

For decades, she didn't speak about her marriage to Cantrell, concerned that people would think less of her. Four years ago, she came around after a Confederate widow in Alabama died amid claims that she was the last widow from that war.

Military records show Cantrell served in Company A, French's Battalion, of the Virginia Infantry. He enlisted in the Confederate army at age 16 in Pikeville, Ky., and was captured the same year and sent to a prison camp in Ohio. He was exchanged for a Northern prisoner, and after the war moved to Arkansas to live with relatives.

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Levy Mwanawasa

LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who broke the African tradition of silence and solidarity among leaders to denounce neighboring Zimbabwe's economic ruin, has died. He was 59.

Mwanawasa died Tuesday in a French military hospital, said Vice President Rupiah Banda. He had suffered a stroke and collapsed at an African Union summit in Egypt in June.

Widely regarded as a man of integrity, he won praise for breaking the traditional silence of African leaders to criticize his autocratic neighbor, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, which encouraged a few other African presidents to show their displeasure.

Mwanawasa was equally outspoken about Western criticism of the unconditional aid that China is pouring into Africa, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars China has invested in mining Zambian copper.

Born in 1948, in the northern town of Mufulira, Mwanawasa graduated from the University of Zambia and practiced law before going into government service. After a stint as solicitor general in 1986, under Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, Mwanawasa became a key figure in the push for multiparty democracy.

Mwanawasa won the presidency in 2001 in an election marred by allegations of fraud, and was re-elected with 43 percent of votes in a 2006 poll generally regarded as fair.

Critics accused him of turning a blind eye to the plight of the poor in the country and pandered to the whims of Western donors. Mwanawasa countered that it was thanks to the debt relief that he was able to increase spending on education and health.

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