Alec Guinness, 86, versatile film and stage performer who was part of a generation of outstanding British actors that included John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson; he played a variety of characters with subtlety and intelligence in films including “The Man in the White Suit,” “The Lady Killers,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “Star Wars” and “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” in which he portrayed several characters; he had a long association with director David Lean, which included roles in the films “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia”; he excelled in many of William Shakespeare’s plays, including “Hamlet” and “King Lear”; Aug. 5, in a hospital near Petersfield, England, of liver cancer.
John M. Smyth, 85, the third Smyth to carry that name and head the famous Chicago furniture company; he was a cool head as the company weathered recessions in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s; he presided over the company’s first foray into the Homemakers chain and was at its helm when the firm was sold in 1994 to a Boca Raton, Fla., furniture company; Aug. 7, in Evanston.
Thomas A. Foran, 76, a former U.S. attorney who waged war against organized crime and racism but perhaps was best known as one of the prosecutors in the Chicago 7 trial; although Foran was a staunch Democrat, President Richard Nixon, a Republican, was so impressed with his zealous prosecution in the Chicago 7 trial that he allowed him to remain in the U.S. attorney job after Nixon was sworn in; hesuccessfully prosecuted more than 150 people in the fight against organized crime; Aug. 6, in Lake Forest.
Donald R. Mussay Sr., 70, craftsman who supervised the installation of glass in the Sears Tower, the John Hancock building, and many other landmark Chicago skyscrapers; his earlier jobs included working as a busboy, a gas station attendant, and as a shipyard repairman; Tuesday, July 18, in Minocqua, Wis.
Sister M. Isolina Ferre, 85, a Roman Catholic nun who received the U.S. Medal of Freedom and used her wealthy family’s influence to create charities; she was awarded the medal in August 1999 for founding centers for delinquent youth as well as clinics and empowerment centers in Puerto Rico, New York City and Appalachia; she gained international recognition in the late 1950s and ’60s for her mediation efforts with Puerto Rican youth gangs in Brooklyn; Aug. 3, in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Thomas Ottenstein, 70, developer whose 307-foot observation tower overlooking historic Gettysburg National Military Park drew thousands of tourists but also the wrath of townspeople and historians who deemed the structure an eyesore and intrusion of commercialism; the tower opened in 1974 on a private plot of land near the battlefield that was incorporated into the park in 1990; last month it was felled by government fiat; Aug. 3, in Washington, of prostate cancer.
Josias Cunningham, 66, a leader in Northern Ireland’s top Protestant party; he played an important role in resolving the Ulster Unionist Party’s debate on whether to join a regional power-sharing government with Sinn Fein; Aug. 9, outside Belfast, in a car accident.
Miki Denhof, 88, one of the first women to be the art director of a magazine and a noted mentor of fashion photographers; she joined Conde Nast in 1945 as promotion art director of Vogue and was later named the editorial art director for House and Garden and Glamour; Aug. 2, in East Hampton, N.Y.
Jimmy Biggs, 24, resident of and tireless advocate for Cabrini-Green; he drew attention to the housing project’s peacemakers, godmothers and latent hopes, and was a key consultant on David T. Witaker’s recent book “Cabrini-Green in Words and Pictures”; Aug. 6, on the streets of Cabrini-Green.
Jerome Smith, 47, founding guitarist of KC & The Sunshine Band; he had left the band in 1979 because of drug problems and was recently working toward rejoining them by staying sober; he founded the group in 1974 with Harry Wayne Casey, bass player Richard Finch, drummer Robert Johnson and conga player Fermin Goytisolo; the group reached the top of Billboard charts in 1975 with “Get Down Tonight”; before Smith left, the group had five No. 1 songs, including “Boogie Shoes” and “That’s the Way (I Like It),” and three Grammys; Aug. 4, after being crushed by a bulldozer in a construction accident in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Max K. Horwitt, 92, internationally recognized nutritionist; his groundbreaking research in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s built up much of our knowledge of vitamins C, B, and E; he directed research at Elgin State Hospital during one of the last nutritional studies on human subjects; Aug. 1, in Missouri.
Rick Weaver, 74, a former Miami Dolphins radio announcer and Florida’s sportscaster of the year 10 times; before becoming the Dolphins’ broadcaster in 1971, he announced games for the Bears, Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers; he retired in 1993; Aug. 5, in Miami, of colon cancer.
Robin Day, 76, a BBC broadcaster widely known as the “grand inquisitor” for a relentless and searching interviewing technique that revolutionized British television news; government ministers complained of being mauled by him on the air; he combined a prosecutorial method learned from his Oxford legal education with a theatrical flair uncharacteristic of a British news reader; Aug. 6, in London.
Pietro Bertuccelli, 91, Tuscany-born poet of Chicago’s Italian community; a shoemaker until moving to America, he published five books in Italian and more than 1,000 poems that captured intense human emotion and feeling; he worked as a laborer at Radio Steel Corp. until 1973; Aug. 5, in Niles.
William Rossa Cole, 80, the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of more than 75 books, including more than 50 anthologies; “I Went to the Animal Fair: A Book of Animal Poems” (1958), a children’s anthology he edited, was on the American Library Association List of Notable Children’s Books of 1940-59 and was also named a notable book of 1958 by the association; Aug. 2, in Manhattan.
Arnold N. Wennerberg, 80, senior research scientist with Amoco Oil Co.; he held 85 U.S. patents, including the ones for the polymer chemistry behind the Apollo spacecraft’s heat shield and the potassium chloride coating used in Kingsford charcoal briquettes; Aug. 5, in his Chicago home.
Edgardo Sogno, 85, World War II resistance fighter; after fighting in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco, he returned to Italy as a World War II resistance fighter who helped transport hundreds of Jews to Switzerland; he began a diplomatic career after the war and was a fierce anti-communist and pro-monarchist; posted in Budapest in 1956, he helped many Hungarians flee the Soviet crackdown; Aug. 5, in Rome, of heart failure.
Jaap Marais, 77, a far-right South African politician who stubbornly supported racist apartheid policies; he helped found the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party in 1969 and became party leader in 1977; in the early 1990s, he accused President F.W. de Klerk of behaving like a dictator for proposing compromises that would likely bring a black head of state to power; Aug. 8, in Pretoria.
Anthony F. Kozak, 67, civil engineer from Crystal Lake who helped develop the technology behind the self-service gasoline pump; a village trustee in Orland Park in the early 1960s, he designed and constructed a small town in the Saudi Arabian desert for American oil workers in 1977; Aug. 4, in Crystal Lake.
Afranio Coutinho, 89, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and a promoter of Brazilian literature overseas; he was named to the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1962 after teaching the country’s literature to generations of students; his study, “Literature in Brazil,” has been translated into several languages; he was a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York in 1977 where he also studied in the 1940s; Aug. 5, in Rio de Janeiro.
Mary M. Avara, 90, who as head of the Maryland Board of Censors determined what was appropriate for moviegoers in her state; she once boasted that she had “looked at more nude bodies than 80 or 100 or 50,000 doctors”; once called “America’s Mother Superior of Censors,” she appeared on television explaining her job to Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas; appointed to the film censor board by Gov. J. Millard Tawes in 1960, she stayed for 21 years; she was paid $2,000 a year to watch every film planned for a Maryland screening; she could ban a film or compel producers to remove offending scenes; Aug. 9, in Clermont, Fla., of congestive heart failure.
Aurele “Al” Couture, 77, former welterweight fighter who holds the record for the fastest knockout in boxing history; he fought 296 professional fights and was once ranked sixth in the world in his division, ahead of Jake LaMotta; he was immortalized in the 101/2 seconds he spent in the ring Sept. 24, 1946, with boxer Ralph Walton; Aug. 6, in Glastonbury, Conn.
Barbara Logan Wilson, 75, a pioneering female journalist and longtime entertainment editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer; she is credited with breaking barriers for women in journalism when newsrooms were mostly male; Aug. 2, in Philadelphia, of cancer.
