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

Ken Sears, an All-America basketball player for Santa Clara in the 1950s who later played eight seasons in the NBA, died Sunday in his hometown of Watsonville, the university announced Monday. He was 83.

Mr. Sears played from 1951 through ’55 for the Broncos under head coach Bob Feerick and started as a freshman on their Final Four team of 1952.

He was twice named the WCC Player of the Year, beating out USF’s Bill Russell for the honor in 1955.

R.I.P., DON GORDON (November 13, 1926 – April 24, 2017), movie and TV character actor. He had recurring roles on THE BLUE ANGELS (1960-61), PEYTON PLACE (1966), and LUCAN (1977-78). He appeared with his friend Steve McQueen in BULLITT (1968), PAPILLON (1973) and THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) and two episodes of WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE.

Growing up in Queens, where he played high school baseball, Sam Mele had no shortage of advice on the fine points of the game. His uncles Tony and Al Cuccinello were major league infielders, and Tony’s Brooklyn Dodgers teammate Al Lopez, who was their catcher and a future Hall of Fame manager, dropped by to give him a tip or two.

Mele became an outstanding baseball and basketball player at New York University, played for 10 seasons in the major leagues, mostly in the outfield, then managed the Minnesota Twins to the 1965 American League pennant.

He died on Monday at his home in Quincy, Mass., at 95, remembered for a baseball career spanning nearly half a century. His death was announced by his first major league team, the Boston Red Sox, with whom he had a long association.

Mele (pronounced MEE-lee) had been a coach for the original Washington Senators and their successors, the Twins, when he was named their manager in June 1961, the Twins’ first season in Minneapolis, succeeding Cookie Lavagetto.

Pro Football Hall of Fame safety Yale Lary passed away in the early hours on Friday at the age of 86. The Texas A&M product was a fixture in the Detroit Lions secondary during an 11-year career (1952-53, 1956-1964) that was interrupted by his service in the U.S. Army.

One day in 1964, Nicholas Sand, a Brooklyn-born son of a spy for the Soviet Union, took his first acid trip. He had been fascinated by psychedelic drugs since reading about them as a student at Brooklyn College and had experimented with mescaline and peyote. Now, at a retreat run by friends in Putnam County, N.Y., he took his first dose of LSD, still legal at the time.

Roger Ailes, who built Fox News into a cable powerhouse before leaving the company last year, died Thursday morning at the age of 77.

The Ohio-born television pioneer was a confidante of presidents and an acknowledged master of communications. He founded Fox News in 1996 and built it into the nation's long-running No. 1 cable news network. Ailes resigned from Fox in July amid charges of sexual harassment.