Obituary Page
2006 - 2012
The Sheehan World obit writer was on a leave of absence from 2009-2012, but the newspaper wishes to acknowledge the departure of the following dear friends and relatives.
May they rest in everlasting peace.
- Jeff Komenda, 71, Aug. 31, 2012
- George Renault, 84, on Dec. 6, 2011
- Annelise Pysanky, 59, Nov. 13, 2011
- Gil Spencer, 85, June 24, 2011
- Ruth Harvey, 69, May 31, 2011
- Shearlean Duke, 64, Feb. 2, 2011
- June Wark, 90, Jan. 3, 2011
- Pamela Champagne, 60, Nov. 16, 2010
- Nina Hodgson, 58, July 22, 2010
- Joan Curtin, 79, June 15, 2010
- Lawrence Pinkham, 83, Feb. 28, 2010
- Lee-Anne Clark, 88, Oct. 8, 2009
- Joe Paquin, 61, June 30, 2009
- ROSEMARY HARRIS, 93, a peacemaker who started Bellingham's Friday Afternoon Peace Vigil in 1966 with her husband Howard Harris, died on Jan. 1, 2009. The vigil is the longest running weekly peace demonstration in the nation. Rosemary was a Quaker.
- CAPT. PENNY BRITTON, 67, an inspiring sailboat captain, airline pilot, and university instructor, died Dec. 30, 2008 after a courageous battle with cancer. Penny had tremendous amounts of both enthusiasm for life and patience for her employees, students, and family. She and her husband Dick were the former owners of Penmar Marine in Anacortes, where I worked as a checkout skipper for a couple of summers after I got my captain’s license in 1997. She hired me at the marina after I met her at WWU. I was teaching journalism, part-time, in the same building as her. Besides being a great leader, Penny won the Ronald Kleinknecht Excellence in Teaching Award at WWU in 2008.
- RICK SELVIN, 63, a witty Philadelphia Daily News editor and features writer who amused staffers and readers with his offbeat headlines, died Feb. 12, 2008 of multiple organ failure. Rick worked at the Daily News from 1980 until 1997 when he received a heart transplant. He authored one of the paper's most famous headline in 1981 after the body of Lee Harvey Oswald was exhumed in Texas: Oswald Still Dead. Rick was also a talented musician (who almost played music at our wedding reception). He is survived by his wife of 18 years, Florence; a son, David; a daughter, Emily; a sister, Rene Gold; and three grandchildren. Donations in his memory may be made to the St. Francis de Sales Organ Restoration Fund, c/o Charles Haub, treasurer, 47th Street and Springfield Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19104.
- LISA RICHETTE, 77, a flamboyant, chain-smoking feminist and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge, died Oct. 26, 2007 of lung cancer. The socially active judge was an advocate for prisoners and those with mental illness, the homeless, battered women and abused children. Known to wear bikinis and mules well into her 70s at a Center City pool that I belonged to, she almost officiated at our 1994 wedding (I had written a news story about how she sprung a lifer from jail for a few hours, bought flowers for his fiance and married the couple in her courtroom. Chuck didn't trust her not to smoke during our ceremony.). Philadelphia Daily News reporter Kitty Caparella, a close friend, gave a eulogy and wrote Richette's obituary.
- JOAN BEARDSLEY, 64, a Massachusetts native
and high school science teacher who served on the Bellingham
City Council, died March 12, 2007. Joan was the widow of Dick
Beardsley, former editorial page editor at The Bellingham Herald.
- CATHY
LOGG, an award-winning police reporter
in Washington state, died Feb. 7, 2007 in Bellingham. Logg
covered crime in the Pacific Northwest for some two decades.
Her passion
for uncovering truth in municipal and tribal
government, domestic violence, law enforcement, fires and other
subjects earned her numerous journalism awards. Known for never
being far from a police scanner, she covered the police beat
for
The
Bellingham
Herald from
1989 to 2000 and for the Everett Herald from 2000
to January 2006. Sheehan World publisher Kathy
Sheehan shared a corner
office with Cathy at The Bellingham Herald in 1994
and 1995.
- TONY BERSANI, 47, a veteran New Jersey newspaper
reporter and editor known for his self-deprecatory wit and his
generosity, died April 17, 2006, after a four-year battle with
cancer. He worked
at The Press of Atlantic City with Sheehan
World publisher Kathy Sheehan in the 1970s, a time he referred
to as "back in Reagan's America,
when debt wasn't bad and disco wasn't old." He also worked
at papers in Asbury Park and East Brunswick and for the Dow Jones
and Associated Press
news services. He was working
for Dow Jones at a building across from
the World Trade Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. "I took
the PATH in and got off at the south tower," he wrote
in an e-mail. "I still have my last
Blackberry e-mail to my wife: "Can't write. lotta
smoke. gotta go," Six weeks later, he faced something
much larger than jetliners flying into the World Trade Center,
a diagnosis of a rare type of cancer. He endured several surgeries
and an experimental chemo regimen in typical Bersani style. He
worked for the AP from home when he wasn't
feeling
well from the chemo: "Puking on the bus is so freshman-year," he
said. On days he did go to the AP's New York bureau, Bersani
made a sport out of walking through Time Square on his way to work,
positioning
himself in the background of home movies and still photos taken
by tourists. His personal best was 10 in one day. Bersani also
was a volunteer EMT with the East Brunswick Rescue Squad, a position
he sought after
he was diagnosed with cancer. Bersani was at least
the third journalist from the small Atlantic City Press news
staff in the 1970s to die of
cancer contracted in their 40s.
- BETTY FRIEDAN, whose 1963 best seller, The
Feminine Mystique, helped launch the modern-day
feminist movement, died on her 85th birthday, Feb.
4, 2006. She
inspired several generations of women to be strong, independent and
seek out lives of their own. "A woman ... mustn't feel selfish
and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and
children," Friedan
said of "the problem with no name." She became the first president
of NOW in 1966 and was a founder in 1968 of the National Conference
for Repeal of Abortion Laws (now the National Abortion Rights
Action
League) and of the National Women's Political Caucus, in 1971. Friedan
worked as a labor reporter, teacher, women's right activist and mother.
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