Roebuck “Pops” Staples, 84, legendary patriarch of the Staple Singers, the gospel and rhythm-and-blues group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year; he and his group gained fame in the 1960s with music that urged tolerance, respect and social change; the Mississippi native was known for his songwriting and his guitar playing, in which he fused gospel with the blues; he formed the group in 1948, originally with son Pervis and daughters Mavis and Cleo; it began as a gospel group that performed in Chicago churches; in 1994, he won a Grammy for his final solo album, “Father, Father”; Dec. 19, in his Dolton home.
Michael E. Shabat, 53, a leading Chicago litigator and former top prosecutor under four Cook County state’s attorneys; he helped successfully prosecute the 1980 case against eight Puerto Rican FALN terrorists and last year represented Cook County in its multimillion-dollar civil settlement with the plaintiffs in the Ford Heights Four case; he briefly served as acting state’s attorney when Richard M. Daley left the post in 1989 to become Chicago mayor; Dec. 16, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, of complications after a heart attack.
John V. Lindsay, 79, debonair political irregular who represented New York City’s “silk stocking district” in Congress (1958-65) and was a two-term mayor of New York (1965-73) during racial unrest, anti-war protests, municipal strikes and other upheavals; his mayoralty was a tumultuous ride marked by strikes, racial divisions, fiscal problems and alienation of the city’s white working and middle classes; but it also was an era in which many New Yorkers took pride in the city’s matinee-idol mayor, who hobnobbed with movie stars and battled the bureaucracy; Dec. 19, in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Cook County Judge Stephen R. Yates, 60, son of the late Democratic U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates; he issued a decision this year forbidding termination of parental rights due to mental illness or impairment, striking down part of the Illinois Adoption Act and, in the process, sparking an appeal before the state Supreme Court; he was the first Illinois judge, in 1994, to rule that same-sex couples could adopt children; Dec. 15, in his Streeterville home, of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Randolph A. Hearst, 85, the last surviving son of the five sons of William Randolph Hearst, who shook American journalism and politics early in the 20th Century; in the 1970s, he ran his father’s flagship, The San Francisco Examiner, as it covered the kidnapping of his own daughter, Patricia, by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army and her brief criminal career as an SLA captive; he was a former chairman of the Hearst Corp. (1965-73) and chairman of the board of the Hearst media empire (1973-96); Dec. 18, in a New York hospital.
Milt Hinton, 90, one of the most recorded musicians of all time and the dean of American bass players; he began his career when the string bass was just replacing the tuba in jazz bands, remained as one of the most sought-after jazz musicians more than seven decades later and one of the first great bass jazz soloists; his high standards, superb intonation and impeccable timing made him a favorite accompanist for some of the biggest names in jazz and for a wide range of performers outside jazz; Dec. 19, in a New York City hospital.
James H. Shumaker, 77, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina since 1973 and a newspaperman for 50 years who was the model for the crusty editor in the syndicated comic strip “Shoe,” drawn for years by Jeff MacNelly, who died this year, one of his staffers in the 1970s; for more than 20 years, he wrote a Sunday column for The Observer of Charlotte; in 1989, he published the book “Shu,” an anthology of those columns; Dec. 19, in Charlotte, of cancer.
Norman Becker, 94, one of the top divorce lawyers ever to practice in Chicago; in a career that began in 1929, he developed a roster of glamorous clients over seven decades that included heiresses, spouses of prominent physicians and movie producers and the former wife of a chewing gum magnate; Dec. 12, in his Near North Side apartment.
Kirsty MacColl, 41, British singer and songwriter best known for her 1980 Top 40 hit, “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chipshop Swears He’s Elvis,” and for accompanying Shane MacGowan on The Pogues’ 1987 hit, “A Fairytale of New York”; she was the daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl and dancer-choreographer Jean Newlove; Dec. 18, in Cozumel, Mexico. She reportedly was killed by a speedboat that entered a beach area reserved for swimmers.
Rob Buck, 42, lead guitarist for the rock band 10,000 Maniacs; he wrote the music for some of the band’s best-known hits, including “Hey Jack Kerouac” and “What’s The Matter Here?”; he formed the band with Dennis Drew, Steven Gustafson, John Lombardo and Natalie Merchant in 1981, taking their name from the 1964 horror film “2,000 Maniacs”; the band last performed Nov. 6 at a Buffalo rally for then-Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton; Dec. 19, in a Pittsburgh hospital, of complications of liver failure.
Peggy McMartin Buckey, 74, who was acquitted in the nation’s most protracted criminal molestation case, targeting her family’s preschool in Manhattan Beach, Calif.; she, her mother and son were charged, along with four others, with more than 100 counts of child molestation in 1983; the case lasted seven years and cost Los Angeles County $13 million; in 1986, prosecutors dropped most of the charges, and she was acquitted of the remainder in 1990 after a three-year trial; Dec. 15, in Torrance, Calif.
Diodoros I, 77, who led the largest and oldest of the Christian churches in the Holy Land for two decades as the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem; a native of Greece’s Aegean islands, he moved to Palestine during the British mandate in 1938 and joined a monastery in 1944; he was named an archbishop in 1962 and elected patriarch in 1981; with its historic control over some of the most sacred sites in Christianity, the patriarchate is one of the most important posts in the Orthodox Christian world; Dec. 19, in Jerusalem, of diabetes-related ailments.
Seamus “Jimmy” McLaughlin, 62, president of the influential Ironworkers Union Local 1 in Chicago who had a hand in constructing the city’s two largest buildings, the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center; Dec. 15, in his Northwest Side home, of a heart attack.
Frank DeBartolo Sr., 70, Loop couturier known as “Frankie the Tailor” to his customers who dressed such prominent local figures as the late Mayor Harold Washington and actor James Farentino; Dec. 16, in Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Gerard Blain, 70, French actor and filmmaker whose good looks and rebellious style drew comparisons to James Dean; as an actor, he worked with France’s New Wave filmmakers, including Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol; he got his start at age 13 in the French classic, “Les Enfants du Paradis,” but it was not until the 1950s, when he was cast in films by Julien Duvivier and Chabrol, that his career was launched; in 1958, he appeared in Chabrol’s “Le Beau Serge” and in “Les Cousins” in 1959; Dec. 17, in Paris.
Mickey Mantle Jr., 47, former minor league baseball player and the oldest of the four sons of the Hall of Fame Yankee slugger who died five years ago of liver cancer; like his father, he had been a switch-hitting centerfielder but never made it to the majors; in recent years, he worked in Dallas with brothers Danny and David at the Mickey Mantle Foundation, which promotes organ donation; Dec. 20, in Dallas, of cancer.
Donald G. Austin, 74, retired Northwestern University mathematics professor who spent decades in obscurity after turning the world of probability research on end in the 1950s; he discovered unexpected mathematical elegance in Markov chains and Martingale theories–two ways of modeling probability–which became standard citations for mathematicians and economists; Dec. 16, in Kankakee.
John Mayer, 89, career postal employee from Chicago who developed guidelines in 1961 for hiring temporary postal employees over the holidays and, in 1970, a way to label forwarded mail that still is in use; his system of forwarding mail has since been adopted across the U.S. and in Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Canada; Dec. 14, in New Port Richey, Fla.
