November 10, 2007

Luis Herrera Campins, 82; former lawmaker, president of Venezuela

Former Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins, 82, part of a generation of political leaders who helped end a decade of dictatorship and usher in democracy in the country in the 1950s, died Friday in Caracas. He had been in poor health since surgery two years ago for an abdominal aneurysm led to a kidney infection and other complications.

A lawyer and a journalist, Herrera was jailed for four months in 1952 for pro-democracy political activism during the dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez, then expelled from the country.

From exile in Spain, he and other leaders of COPEI, the Christian Democratic Party, founded the newspaper Tiela, which was distributed secretly in Venezuela. Herrera returned after the dictatorship fell in 1958 and went on to serve several terms as a lawmaker and as president from 1979 to 1984.

Bradford Kelleher, 87; steered growth of Met museum merchandising

Bradford Kelleher, 87, whose marketing ideas for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first full-blown gift shop became a model for nonprofit institutions around the world, died Oct. 31 in Riverhead, N.Y., the museum said. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Under his supervision, the museum's business grew from "little more than a rack of postcards" to include a large selection of decorative art objects based on the museum's collection. Today, the merchandising business nets the museum more than $1 million a year, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

As a nonprofit institution, the Met is not required to pay taxes on the sale of merchandise that has educational and cultural significance.

A native of Worchester, Mass., Kelleher served in Army intelligence during World War II and graduated from Yale University in 1948 with an emphasis in Far Eastern Studies, the New York Times reported.

He was hired by the museum in 1949. During his tenure, he helped expand the museum's mail-order catalog, satellite sales shops around the world and its publication of scholarly and general-interest books on art.

Kelleher was named the museum's publisher in 1972 and vice president in 1978. He retired in 1986 but served as a consultant until his death.

Leo Shapiro, 102; led senior learning effort at Cal State Fullerton

Leo Shapiro, 102, founding president of the Continuing Learning Experience at Cal State Fullerton, where he also spearheaded the fundraising drive to build the university's Ruby Gerontology Center, died Oct. 31 at Emerald Court, a retirement community in Anaheim, after a short illness.

A native of Chicago, Shapiro was born Jan. 4, 1905, one of four children of Russian immigrants.

He earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago in 1925 and began a career in retail merchandising with Sears, Roebuck and Co., where he eventually became national sales manager.

Shapiro left Sears in 1944 and held upper-management positions at Raisin Markets Inc. and Alpha Beta, retiring in 1970.

Working as an independent consultant, he was asked by Cal State Fullerton's Office of Extended Education to organize a self-supporting educational programming unit on campus to serve the region's older adults.

The unit began operating in the late 1970s and Shapiro was elected its first president. Classes in the program included foreign languages and world affairs, as well as strategies in the game of bridge. Now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, it has more than 800 members.

In the early 1980s, he co-chaired the fund-raising drive for a university gerontology center that would serve as the headquarters for the Continuing Learning Experience and also serve as a site for gerontology research. The Ruby Gerontology Center opened in 1988 and the Lifespan Wellness Clinic followed in 1995.

A founding member of the Orange County chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Shapiro was the first of two individuals to receive the President's Medallion, the university's highest honor awarded to community members.

Enzo Biagi, 87; veteran Italian journalist was a 'great voice of freedom'

Enzo Biagi, 87, a veteran Italian newspaper and TV journalist and prolific author whose straightforward writing style stood out in a country where journalistic prose is often dense and convoluted, died Tuesday in Milan.

For years, Biagi -- with his white hair, thick-framed eyeglasses and calm voice -- was a dinner-hour staple on Italian TV, offering his commentary on the top stories of the day. With his death, "a great voice of freedom" vanishes, President Giorgio Napolitano said.

Born in Lizzano in Belvedere, an Apennine town near Bologna, Biagi started working as a reporter when he was 18 and covered the Allied forces' liberation of Italy several years later.

Later, in Milan, he directed a news weekly, Epoca, and began working in television.

Biagi alternated TV work with writing books -- several of them bestsellers -- and articles for newspapers including La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa.

One of his most popular state TV programs ended in 2002 after heavy criticism from then-Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi accused Biagi and two other journalists critical of his conservative leadership of making "criminal use" of publicly funded television to push a left-leaning agenda.

From Times Staff and Wire Reports