Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics History Roundtable The Passing Parade: Obituaries: 2017

Gilbert Baker, a self-described “gay Betsy Ross” who in 1978 hand-dyed and stitched together eight strips of vibrantly colored fabric into a rainbow flag, instantly creating an enduring international symbol of gay pride, was found dead on Friday at his home in New York City. He was 65...

Before a gay pride parade in 1978 in San Francisco, Harvey Milk, a city supervisor and gay rights leader who was assassinated that year, joined others in asking Mr. Baker to create an emblem to represent the movement...

Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84...

Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with "Babi Yar," the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union...

Until "Babi Yar" was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War...

Richard N. Bolles, a former Harvard physics major, Episcopal minister and career counselor whose own twisting vocational path led to his writing “What Color Is Your Parachute?” — the most popular job-hunter’s manual of the 1970s and beyond — died on Friday in San Ramon, Calif. He was 90...

Mr. Bolles (pronounced bowls) originally self-published his manual in 1970 as a photocopied how-to booklet for unemployed Protestant ministers.

In 1972, he recast it to appeal to a wider audience and found an independent publisher in Berkeley, Calif., willing to print small batches so that it could be frequently updated. Since then, “Parachute” has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and has never been out of print...

Richard Nelson Bolles was born on March 19, 1927, in Milwaukee, the first of three children of Donald Clinton Bolles, an editor for The Associated Press, and the former Frances Fifield, a homemaker.

His brother, Donald Jr., who followed his father into journalism, was killed in 1976 in Phoenix when a bomb detonated under his car. Don Bolles was then working as an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, and the killing was widely believed to be linked to a series of exposés he had been writing about corporate and organized crime in the state. The assassination resulted in the prosecution of one person but remained largely unsolved...

Roy Sievers, who won the American League’s first Rookie of the Year Award playing for the 1949 St. Louis Browns and became one of baseball’s leading power hitters of the 1950s with the original Washington Senators, died on Monday at his home in Spanish Lake, Mo. He was 90...

Playing in the outfield and at first base for 17 major league seasons, Sievers hit 318 home runs. His best season came in 1957, when he had a league-leading 42 homers and 114 runs batted in while hitting .301 for the last-place Senators. The right-handed-batting Sievers also hit home runs in six consecutive games at the Senators’ Griffith Stadium that summer, conquering its cavernous left field in matching an American League record that has since been broken...

Abrasive comic Don Rickles, the honorary Rat Pack member and celebrity roast guest whose career spanned six decades, has died. He was 90.

Rickles died Thursday morning at his home in Los Angeles from kidney failure, his longtime publicist Paul Shefrin confirmed. He would have turned 91 on May 8.

Though he appeared in films and on television, Rickles’ mainstay was always nightclub performances, appearing in Las Vegas and elsewhere into his late 80s. He also found late success as the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the “Toy Story” films, which were exceptional box office performers, and popped up frequently on latenight talkshows.

Bob Cerv, who holds the single-season record for home runs by a Major League Baseball player in Kansas City history, died Thursday in Blair, Neb. He was 91.

Cerv, who served during World War II, was friends with former President Harry Truman, played basketball and baseball at Nebraska and, as a member of the Yankees, roomed with Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they dueled for the home-run title in 1961...

In six seasons with the Yankees, Cerv was mostly a part-time outfielder/pinch hitter, but he played in two World Series (1955 and 1956), and the Yankees won the 1956 Series. Cerv was sold to the Kansas City A’s after that season.

“I was tickled to death because I could play every day,” Cerv told the Omaha World-Herald in 2015. “And I proved to them that I could play every day.”

Although he was 33, Cerv had his finest season in the majors in 1958 and was named to his only All-Star team during a season in which he hit .305 with 38 homers and 104 RBIs...

Clifton James, a veteran actor who appeared as Sheriff J.W. Pepper in two James Bond films, died Saturday morning at age 96...

James most famous role came on film. He appeared in two James Bond films opposite Roger Moore: “Live and Let Die” (1973) and “The Man with the Golden Gun” (1974). He portrayed the crowing Louisiana sheriff, J.W. Pepper (pictured). James would play similar Southern lawman in numerous other roles during his career, including “Silver Streak” and “Superman II”

Among his other film credits included “Cool Hand Luke,” “Eight Men Out” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” ...

Jonathan Demme, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who observed emphatically American characters with a discerning eye, a social conscience and a rock ’n’ roll heart, achieving especially wide acclaim with “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia,” died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan.

He was 73.

His publicist, Leslee Dart, confirmed the death. Mr. Demme disclosed that he had cancer in 2015.

Mob wives, CB radio buffs and AIDS victims; Hannibal Lecter, Howard Hughes and Jimmy Carter: Mr. Demme (pronounced DEM-ee) plucked his subjects and stories largely from the stew of contemporary American subcultures and iconography. He created a body of work — including fiction films and documentaries, dramas and comedies, original scripts, adaptations and remakes — that resists easy characterization.