Jerome Farris, 90, the first Black judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died on July 23, according to the court’s San Francisco headquarters and acquaintances in Seattle. Farris was appointed to the federal appellate court by President Jimmy Carter and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 1979. Before his appointment to the federal bench, Farris had served as a judge of the Washington state Court of Appeals since 1969. Farris “set an example for every one of us who continue to aspire to resolve disputes in a civil and noncontentious fashion,” said chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez in Seattle.
Alan Parker, 76, one of Britain’s most successful directors, died July 31 in London after a long illness, his family said in a statement. Parker’s diverse body of work includes “Bugsy Malone,” “Midnight Express,” “Evita,” “Fame,” “Mississippi Burning,” “The Commitments” and “Angela’s Ashes.” Together his movies won 10 Academy Awards and 19 British Academy Film Awards. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
Pete Hamill, 85, self-taught, street-wise newspaper columnist whose love affair with New York City inspired a colorful and uniquely influential journalistic career and who produced several books of fiction and nonfiction, died Wednesday of heart and kidney at a Brooklyn hospital. Well-read, well-rounded and very well connected, Hamill was at ease quoting poetry and Ernest Hemingway, dating Jacqueline Onassis or enjoying a drink and a cigarette at the old Lion’s Head tavern in Greenwich Village.
Brent Scowcroft, 95, who played a prominent role in U.S. foreign policy as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and was a Republican voice against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, died Thursday of natural causes at home in Falls Church, Virginia. He was the only person to serve as national-security adviser to two different administrations. His appointment by Ford in 1975 came as Scowcroft retired from the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant general. He advised Bush, by then a close friend, during the four years of the Bush administration, 1989-93.
Wilford Brimley, 85, portly actor with a walrus mustache who found his niche playing cantankerous coots in “Absence of Malice,” “The Natural,” “Cocoon,” “The Firm” and other films, died Aug. 1 in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments. For years he also was pitchman for Quaker Oats and in recent years appeared in a series of diabetes ads that turned him at one point into a social media sensation.
Doris Buffett, 92, self-styled retail philanthropist who once declared that her billionaire younger brother, Warren Buffett, “loves to make money and I love to give it away,” died Tuesday at home in Rockport, Maine. She had been a benefactor in her own right when her brother announced his intention in 2006 to donate nearly his entire fortune before he died, opening the gates to a flood of supplicants. At the time, his worth was estimated at $44 billion. He entrusted his sister and a group of women she had recruited to sift the requests for financial help, assess their merits and monitor the impact of those that were granted. Doris Buffett shunned what she called “the SOB’s” — symphonies, operas and ballets — as recipients of largesse and instead concentrated on the underprivileged.
John Hume, 83, visionary politician who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fashioning the agreement that ended violence in his native Northern Ireland, died Monday morning after suffering from ill health for several years, his family said. The Catholic leader of the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume was seen as the principal architect of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace agreement. He shared the prize later that year with the Protestant leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, for their efforts to end the sectarian violence that plagued the region for three decades and left more than 3,500 people dead.
Connie Culp, 57, first patient in the United States to receive a face transplant, died July 29 at the Cleveland Clinic, which had performed her procedure in 2008. She died of complications from an infection that was unrelated to her transplant, a hospital spokesperson said. Culp was the longest-living face transplant patient in the world, the spokesperson said.
James Silberman, 93, revered book editor whose meticulousness, intuition and patience helped propel the publishing careers of a distinguished roster of authors, including James Baldwin, Marilyn French, Hunter S. Thompson and Alvin Toffler, died July 26 of complications from a stroke at home in Manhattan.
Diana E.H. Russell, 81, feminist activist and scholar who popularized the term “femicide” to refer to the misogynist killing of women and to distinguish these killings from other forms of homicide, died July 28 of respiratory failure at a medical facility in Oakland, California. She studied and explored all kinds of violence against women, including rape, incest, child abuse, battering, pornography and sexual harassment, and she was among the first to illuminate the connections between and among these acts. As a daughter of white privilege growing up in South Africa, her rebellious instincts found an outlet in the anti-apartheid movement. Later, as a graduate student in the United States in the 1960s, she gravitated to the feminist movement.
Hawa Abdi, 73, doctor and human rights activist who safeguarded the lives of tens of thousands of Somalis during years of war, famine and displacement, died Wednesday at home in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. The cause was not specified.
Enrico Navarra, 67, gallerist, collector and art-book publisher with a visionary instinct who promoted artists, especially Jean-Michel Basquiat, before the rest of the art world had fully appreciated the importance of their work, died July 21 of emphysema in Le Muy, France.
Adam Max, 62, investment manager who became a leading patron of Brooklyn cultural institutions, notably the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where he had been board chairman since 2017, died July 27 of bile duct cancer at home in East Hampton, New York. Adam Max was captivated by the Brooklyn Academy after he and Diane Max were given a gift subscription as a wedding present in 1985. The couple’s gifts to BAM would become the largest by individual donors in its history, according to the academy, though it declined to divulge the amount.