Monday, Nov. 19, 2001
Milestones
By Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Nadia Mustafa, Jeffrey Ressner and Sora Song
ELECTED. JEFFREY DUNKEL, 18, high school graduate; to mayor of the tiny borough of Mount Carbon, Pa. (pop. 100). Dunkel, who will be paid $50 a month, said, "When I started asking questions [at town meetings], they told me I'm only 18 and there's a lot involved in local government, and if I think I can do a better job, then I should run for office."
DIED. KEN KESEY, 66, author and '60s counterculture superhero; following cancer surgery; in Eugene, Ore. Kesey was a rebel pundit and a comic scribe, a longtime advocate of hallucinogens and a lifelong champion of individualism. In 1962 he published his acclaimed first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which later became an Oscar-winning film. In 1964 he traveled cross-country in a psychedelic bus with a group of hippie pals called the Merry Pranksters. The trip, immortalized by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, helped establish the antiestablishment in the public imagination. "I like to stir things up," Kesey once said. "I'm the Minister of Misinformation."
DIED. WARREN LERUTH, 72, chef who created salad dressings, including Green Goddess, for Seven Seas, and French-style recipes, like oyster-artichoke soup, that became New Orleans staples; in New Orleans. His restaurant, LeRuth's, was the only one in that city to win a five-star Mobil rating five years in a row.
DIED. ANTHONY SHAFFER, 75, lawyer turned thriller writer; of a heart attack; in London. Shaffer, whose playwright brother Peter wrote Amadeus, was best known for Sleuth, a brilliant, twisted portrait of double crossing, manipulation and revenge that won a Tony in 1971 and was made into a film starring Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier.
DIED. EDWARD BOLAND, 90, influential Democratic Congressman whose amendments opposing the Reagan Administration's support for rebels in Nicaragua set the stage for the Iran-contra affair; in Springfield, Mass.
DIED. E.H. GOMBRICH, 92, erudite Viennese-born author of The Story of Art, which sold more than 6 million copies and was translated into 23 languages; in London. A no-nonsense observer of culture who could never bring himself to embrace modern art, he wrote a world-history book for children that inspired his publishers to suggest a similar book on art for adults. It began, "There really is no such thing as art...only artists."