The Memorial Wall

Actress Morgan Fairchild made the sad announcement that her partner of almost 40 years, Mark Seiler, has died.

Fairchild took to her popular Twitter account late Thursday to break the news, writing, "I’m so sorry to let you know that my life partner (36 years together) & fiancé, Mark Seiler, passed away last Friday night [July 7]."

She went on, "He’d had Parkinson’s for several years, but it seems to be Long Covid that took his life after his 3rd infection. Hold your loved ones close."

She adorned the post with a glamorous photo of the couple taken around 1990.

Fairchild had just recently voiced support for comic Richard Lewis, who told fans he was battling Parkinson's in an April post. On June 28, Fairchild commented, “My fiancé also has Parkinson’s, and we are all on this journey together! Sending you love.”

Seiler's condition was so fragile that he was in a nursing home while COVID-19 first raged, leading Fairchild to write at the time, “They’re taking very good care of him there. I’m very grateful that they haven’t had any cases there… I’m just here. I get up every day, I do my housework, I do my chores and I just do my exercises. I go for a walk… I try to eat right… I watch the news.”

Fairchild, 73, is known for her work on the soaps "Search for Tomorrow," "General Hospital," "Flamingo Road," and "Falcon Crest." She has displayed her comedic side on "Murphy Brown," "Roseanne," and "Friends," and is a SAG-AFTRA board member.

Born on an unspecified date in 1950, in the United States of America, Mark Seiler is a 68/69-year-old movie producer, executive, technician, CEO and entrepreneur. He is best known as the producer of the 1997 Danish movie “The Island on Bird Street”, which won a total of nine awards in the year of its release. Mark has also gained some publicity for his relationship with Morgan Fairchild, a renowned actress and activist, but notably, he was the CEO of Capella Films, an important movie production venture during the 1990s.

Mark Seiler may be one of the most influential men in the movie industry, but he’s what people like to call – “the man hiding in the shadows”. He isn’t a movie star nor a high-profile socialite, so he’s able to keep his private life hidden from the media. Production doesn’t involve a lot of fanfare, so he doesn’t have much need to expose himself to the public. Little is known about his early life or family, and it’s also unclear whether Mark got acquainted with the world of cinematography through formal education, or if he’s a self-taught virtuoso. There is no record of him for pretty much the first 35 years of his life.

The first records of Mark’s involvement in the movie industry is his work on the 1985 American drama “Plenty”. Highly rated by both critics and fans, the movie has Meryl Streep playing the role of Susan Traherne, a woman who is struggling to find her way in life, in the tumultuous era of post-World War II England. She fought in the French Resistance, and in the heat of battle, there was a man who caught her eye. They made love and the evening forever stayed engraved in Susan’s mind. The story revolves around a loss of faith in oneself, after living an intense life for more than two decades. Seiler was the executive producer of the movie and working with director Fred Schepisi gave him an excellent starting point on which to build his career. The movie was nominated for two British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards and additionally won two more minor awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics; both went to John Gielgud as Best Supporting Actor.

After the success of “Plenty”, Seiler didn’t need to wait much longer for his next work. The same year the movie “Mesmerized” was released, featuring a star-studded cast of Jodie Foster, Michael Murphy and John Lithgow. In a rather shocking manner, the movie has Jodie playing the role of a young woman who has to deal with the strange sexual fetishes of her older husband. She needed a way to get out of an orphanage, so she faked her love towards an aging businessman. When push came to shove, she had to kill him to save herself from the hell she was living in. Much of the movie revolves around her trial and the emotional toxicity surrounding all the characters. Despite the daring nature of the whole script, the movie was slammed by critics and viewers alike, mostly because of a multitude of plot holes and inconsistencies. Nevertheless, Mark was praised for his production, and so added another achievement to his growing resume.

Following the debacle of “Mesmerized”, Seiler seemingly dropped off the grid. It is suspected that he worked as a ghost-producer on several critically acclaimed Hollywood titles; in the movie world, a ghost producer is a person who produces a movie, while the credits go to someone else. Eventually, he resurfaced with a smash hit, the 1997 Danish drama – “The Island on Bird Street”. The story is based on the touching semi-autobiographical novel by Uri Orlev, an Israeli author who witnesses the horrors of war and Nazi crimes firsthand. In the movie, Patrick Bergin assumes the role of Stefan, while Jordan Kiziuk delivered a masterful performance while playing Alex. Unlike his previous two works, Seiler had a more “hands on” approach here, as he was producer, not executive producer.

In 1990, Capella Films was founded by Rolf Deyhle and Will Baer, with the idea of running an independent film production company which would control and occupy all the sites in the production chain of a movie. This would allow everyone involved with the film to co-operate with one another with greater ease, without the usual problems in communication and finances. Baer and Deyhle chose Mark Seiler to be the CEO, overseeing all processes and essentially controlling the entire company. Due to his efforts, Capella Films became a staple in the movie world, producing and financing movies such as Carlito’s Way (1993), The Mask (1994) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). In 1997, the company was acquired by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer for a whopping $1.3 billion.

Mark Seiler is currently in a relationship with the controversial actress Morgan Fairchild. She is 69-years-old and rose to fame through her role in “Mr. Peppermint” on WFAA-TV. Interestingly, she was kidnapped and held for ransom not once, but twice, in the mid-1970s. She is also an AIDS and HIV activist, educating people and raising awareness about this dangerous condition. Morgan and Mark have been together for over 35 years. Even though they are both celebrities, there haven’t been any rumors or controversies surrounding their relationship.

James Dobbins, a veteran diplomat called “one of the leading practitioners of the art” of nation-building by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and who directed RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center for more than a decade, died July 3. He was 81.

“Ambassador Dobbins had decades of experience as a diplomatic troubleshooter that greatly benefited RAND and the institutions we serve,” said Jason Matheny, president and CEO of nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND. “He was a scholar of foreign affairs who wrote cogently about some of the most critical situations the world has faced in modern times. And he was tireless: Just last month he coauthored a new analysis of how to rebuild a post-war Ukraine.”

Indeed, Dobbins saw that Ukraine's post-war reform and reconstruction was part of the 75-year story of Europe's recovery and reintegration starting in western Europe after World War II, then central and eastern Europe after the Cold War, then the western Balkans after the Yugoslavia wars. “His was a life spent working to make the world a safer, more peaceful place,” his son Christian Dobbins said.

Dobbins took on difficult assignments managing international crises for four presidents.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he became the Bush administration's envoy to the Afghan opposition, played a key role at the 2001 Bonn conference from which Hamid Karzai emerged as the consensus candidate for Afghanistan's first president, and reopened the American embassy in Kabul on December 16, 2001.

Dobbins directed RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center from 2002 to 2013, when he became President Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He spent a challenging year in the post, holding negotiations over such issues as whether to keep American troops in Afghanistan after 2014 and the controversial swap of five Taliban detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Dobbins returned to RAND as a senior fellow and Distinguished Chair in Diplomacy and Security. His RAND books included 2007's The Beginner's Guide to Nation-Building, a handbook based on 24 case studies on rebuilding a nation after a conflict, coauthored with Seth G. Jones, Keith Crane and Beth Cole DeGrasse. In 2017 he published a memoir, Foreign Service: Five Decades on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy.

“Jim's role as a policymaker—and as a senior U.S. representative in societies in conflict—is worth special note,” Robert B. Zoellick, a former deputy secretary of state, wrote in the foreword to the memoir. “When Jim helped solve problems, he offered breadth and insight by analyzing and presenting issues within the context of history and wider considerations. A discussion with Jim was also seasoned with his sharp wit.”

Dobbins was born in New York City on May 31, 1942. He was 10 when his family moved to the Philippines for the work of his father, a lawyer with the Veterans Administration. They returned to the United States, and the Maryland suburbs, in time for Dobbins' senior year in high school.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1963 and spent the next three years as a lieutenant in the Navy.

Dobbins then entered diplomatic work, including serving as a U.S. staff delegate at the Paris peace talks that opened in 1968. He worked in Paris, London, Bonn, and Brussels, and twice headed the State Department's European bureau.

His career took a different trajectory in 1993 with an assignment to manage the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia. He was then given important roles as American troops went to Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. “I became associated with each of these enterprises as the Washington-based troubleshooter responsible for overseeing these interventions' stabilization and reconstruction phases,” he wrote. By the end of the Clinton administration, Dobbins was assistant secretary of state for Europe.

Under the Bush administration, Dobbins became special envoy to the Afghan opposition and later wrote After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan (2008), a book about helping the Afghans form a new government. Other RAND publications include America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, Ending Afghanistan's Civil War and Choices for America in a Turbulent World.

After joining RAND, “I was occupied with an agreeable mix of thinking, reading, writing, and helping guide others' work on national security policy,” Dobbins wrote in his memoir. “RAND provided the opportunity for reflection and dozens of super smart colleagues to help.”

His wife, Toril, whom he married in 1969, died in 2012. Besides Christian Dobbins, he is survived by his sisters Victoria Dobbins and Elizabeth Fuller; his brothers Andrew Dobbins and Peter Dobbins; and his son Colin Dobbins, Colin's wife Elizabeth Dobbins, and their daughters Catherine and Evelyn.

Dundurn Press founder Kirk Howard has died. He was 80.

Howard died in Newmarket, Ont. Canada, on June 30 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, his family said in a death notice.

He was born in Hamilton in 1942 and started his professional life teaching before founding Dundurn Press in 1972, the start of a 50-year career in Canadian publishing. Named after Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle, the focus of the press was to publish books on Canadian history. Under Howard’s leadership, Dundurn began to grow in the mid-1990s, when it acquired three small imprints, Simon & Pierre, Hounslow Press, and Boardwalk Press. In the early 2000s, that growth continued with the acquisition of Beach Holme Publishing, National Heritage Books, the Canadian Book Review Annual, Thomas Allen Publishers and others. Howard retired in 2019 after selling Dundurn to a group of tech entrepreneurs.

In 2017, he was awarded the president’s award by the Association of Canadian Publishers. Howard had previously served as the organization’s president, and also served on numerous industry boards over his career, including a stint as president of the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO). He also established the Commonwealth Book Publishers’ Association.

He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2018 for his commitment to Canadian authors and Canadian publishing.

David Richards, a theater critic whose lively and accessible prose style made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist at The Washington Post and who had a brief stint as the New York Times’s chief drama critic, died June 24 at a hospital in Warrenton, Va. He was 82.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his husband, theater director Leonard Foglia.

As a child growing up in a stoic New England family in the postwar years, Mr. Richards often said the rule at home was to cloak all emotion and “never make a scene.” His eventual introduction to community theater in his teens was a revelation — people making scenes for a living, eight times a week. “I was hooked,” he liked to say. “I learned about life from the theater.”

After a varied early career, including a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, as a French instructor at Howard University and as a writer for the Voice of America, Mr. Richards worked as drama critic at the Washington Star for a decade until the newspaper folded in 1981.

Mr. Richards spent the next nine years at The Post and was disinclined to stay within strict boundaries as a theater critic. He covered cultural news stories and profiled stage luminaries such as director Jose Quintero, playwright Edward Albee and actors Julie Harris and Carol Channing. Some of them may not have relished his revealing dive into their off-the-clock personalities.

“Channing does not indulge in introspection eagerly,” he observed in a 1984 article. “She would clearly prefer to dwell in the shallows of her show business anecdotes. … If you try to get behind them, you encounter stiff resistance. She has always given every bit of herself on a stage, and any implication that there is, perhaps, another Channing, a private Channing, under the feathery eyelashes and extravagant wigs and generous dollops of rouge, makes her profoundly uneasy.”

With some “raw-nerve” touched by his line of questions, Mr. Richards reported, Channing began a sour but telling soliloquy: “Nobody likes to take himself dead-on seriously, like we’re doing now, laboring over my innermost thoughts. I can be as funny as a crutch, and we could laugh and have a good time. But if you don’t want me to be lighthearted and amusing, fine!”

Mr. Richards was a Pulitzer finalist in 1989 and was lured the next year to the Times as Sunday drama critic. He relished the position, which allowed him the freedom to write at length about whatever play appealed to him. The Sunday job was also considered a rejoinder at times to views expressed by the show-making/show-breaking chief theater critic Frank Rich, especially when the latter was displeased with a production.

Where Rich torpedoed “The Will Rogers Follies” in 1991 as “the most disjointed musical of this or any other season,” Mr. Richards praised the “sumptuous production numbers, exquisite chorus girls, phosphorescent rope tricks in black light, a dog act, songs you actually want to hum, a stairway to paradise (or somewhere thereabouts), close harmony, shapely legs in kaleidoscopic patterns, and a thoroughly engaging star performance by Keith Carradine, as the laconic cowboy-philosopher from Oklahoma.”

“The Will Rogers Follies,” an audience hit, ran for two years. In 1993, Mr. Richards replaced Rich, who left his longtime perch covering theater to become an op-ed columnist at the Times. Foglia said his husband felt he could not refuse the offer to take over the main position, but it was an ill-suited fit almost from the start.

Mr. Richards quit after a year. There were varying reports about the circumstances of his leaving, all of which amounted to his general unhappiness in the job in which he suddenly was the most influential theater critic in the country and had significantly less autonomy in the shows he could choose to spotlight.

“It struck me as a very isolating job,” he told The Post at the time. “It’s one of those jobs that look enviable from the outside, less enviable from the inside. People resent the Times’ theatrical power and therefore resent the person who wields it.”

He noted that he had seen 5,000 plays during his career and was tired of the overwhelming amount of mediocrity. “You end up having to write about nebulous, gray, shapeless, formless plays,” he said, “and it’s a hard thing to do and be interesting about it.”

Of solitary disposition to start with, he found himself increasingly wary of invitations from boldfaced figures in New York journalism and society. As Foglia recalled, “He used to say, ‘They don't want me. They want the critic of the New York Times to fill up the spot on the table.’”

Friends in Washington encouraged him to return to The Post, which he did for two years as a national cultural affairs writer before leaving journalism.

David Bryant Richards was born in Concord, Mass., on Oct. 1, 1940, and spent his early years in Lexington, Mass. He was 9 years old when his father, a home builder, died. His mother, an interior decorator and real estate agent, remarried and settled with David and his younger brother in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In Arizona, his mother took him every week to the local playhouse, and Mr. Richards soon found himself entranced. “Good theater stretches our notions of people and events,” he once observed. “And a stretched mind never returns exactly to its original shape.”

He graduated in 1962 from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in French, followed by a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1963.

In addition to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, he spent two years in the Ivory Coast with the Peace Corps, where he taught French. He completed a master’s degree in speech and drama from Catholic University in 1969 and acted with the university’s touring theater group.

Mr. Richards had published articles in Arizona newspapers starting at 17 and had long considered a career in journalism before his interest in drama led him to the critic’s seat at the Star.

In 1981, he published “Played Out,” a biography about the troubled movie star Jean Seberg, who had been targeted by the FBI for her support of the Black Panther Party and died by suicide two years earlier.

Mr. Richards and Foglia became a couple soon after meeting in 1993. They married in 2014, when same-sex marriage became legal in Virginia. They co-wrote suspense novels and lived many years in Mexico, where Mr. Richards received a master’s degree in art history from the Universidad Autónoma de Queretaro.

In addition to his husband, survivors include a brother. In 2010, Mr. Richards and Foglia settled on a 21-acre property in rural Washington, Va., near Shenandoah National Park, and he grew tomatoes. His visits to the theater became infrequent as his physical condition worsened.

“The theater allows us to encounter a far greater tangle of human behavior than we ever do in the course of daily living,” he once wrote of his driving motivation as a critic. “It is a celebration of our multiple possibilities as human beings. At its best, theater leaves us with one sure thought: There but for the whimsies of fate, go I.”

By Adam Bernstein

Two-time Olympian and former British record holder dies after battle with Parkinson’s Disease

FORMER British Olympic sprinter Della Pascoe has died aged 74.

The star competed at the Games in 1968 and 1972 and held the 100m British record, making her one of the country's finest athletes of her era.

According to Athletics Weekly, she passed away yesterday after suffering from Parkinson's Disease for a few years.

Born in Southsea in 1949, Pascoe - initially Della James - excelled at youth level winning various English schools titles.

She went to Mexico 1968 aged just 19 and reached the 100m semi-finals.

However, it was in the quarters that she made history by equalling Dorothy Hyman's British record with a time of 11.3 seconds.

Pascoe also formed one leg of the 4x200m team that broke the world record in 1968.

Four years later at the Munich 1972 Olympics, she was knocked out of the 200m in the quarter-finals and finished seventh in the 4x100m final.

She won a further 12 medals at the Women's AAA national championships.

However, Pascoe was controversially snubbed for the 1974 Commonwealth Games - despite finishing on the podium in the 100m and 200m trials.

Some suggested it was due to her marrying outspoken fellow athlete Alan Pascoe, whom she met as a teenager.

Pascoe said in 2017: "Alan and I met at the running track in Portsmouth.

"I had to slow down for him to catch me.”

Following the Commonwealth heartache, Pascoe subsequently retired and spent time as an art teacher and did lots of charity work, specifically raising money through popular garden parties.

Della and Alan had two children together, daughter Lucy and son Daniel.

Dr. Daniel M. Viccione died peacefully June 17 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Carol, and his three children and their spouses, Darrin and Melissa Viccione, Dr. Todd and Kristen Viccione, and Kerilynn Viccione and Robert Gaglione. In addition, his legacy and spirit survive through his beloved grandchildren: Ariana, Seth, Bryce, Ethan, Morgan, Spencer, Ben, and Cole. His love for his family – his treasures – guided him through all things. He was a source of inspiration, comfort, laughter, and joy for his entire family, including his nieces and nephews, whom he adored. 

A resident of East Greenwich, RI, Dan grew up in Providence, RI, where he was one of seven siblings. He graduated from Classical High School, received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from New York University, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island. 

Dan was a decorated war veteran who served in Vietnam. He began his distinguished career in engineering and scientific research upon his return home from the war. Dan commenced his career at Raytheon where he created several scientific patents in the field of underwater acoustics and sonar. For most of his career, however, Dan worked for the Department of Defense where he served as part of the Senior Executive Service in the Pentagon, as well as technical director of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Keyport, WA, and the Naval Surface Warfare Centers (NSWC) in Indian Head, Maryland and Dahlgren, Virginia. His research promoted travel throughout the world including the Ice Camp in the Arctic, a collaborative exploration to measure sonar performance under the ice. Additionally, in his pursuit of scientific advancement, Dan conducted research through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and collaborations with Johns Hopkins University. 

While working for the Department of Defense, he received numerous awards including the Rank of Meritorious Executive by the President of the United States, the prestigious Navy Decibel Award for research in underwater acoustics, and the Martell-Bunshell award for exceptional contributions of scientific achievement in Undersea Warfare Systems.

Dan will be remembered as a scientist, an educator, an innovator, but even more so for his kindness, compassion, and love. His patience was unparalleled; his sense of humor brought light to the darkest moments. He had an endless enthusiasm for life. Dan was a talented pianist, runner, tennis player, watercolor artist, and windsurfer. On windy days he was often seen sailing along the waters of Narragansett Bay. Above all, he constructed the foundation upon which this family safely and proudly rests. His spirit, his laughter, and his love will be missed every day. 

“Fair winds and following seas”

Warren McGraw, a former West Virginia Supreme Court justice who spent five decades in public service, has died at age 84, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Thursday.

Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy said McGraw died Wednesday. Blue Ridge Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens in Beckley said it was in charge of funeral arrangements, which were incomplete.

McGraw had retired as a county circuit judge in 2021, citing the physical impairments due to Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic Party chairman and a member of the House of Delegates, said Warren was “a tireless advocate for working people and those who are too often left behind.”

”Warren McGraw never forgot that a society is measured by how it treats its weakest members. From the school board to the legislature, to the halls of the supreme court, he fought with every ounce of his ability to improve the lives of the poor and those struggling to make a better life for themselves and for their families,” Pushkin said.

McGraw earned a bachelor’s degree from Morris Harvey College and a law degree from Wake Forest University. He served five terms in the Legislature as a Democrat, including four years as Senate president.

After losing in the 1984 primary for governor, McGraw later was elected to the Wyoming County school board. He also was the prosecutor in Wyoming County from 1996 to 1998 before being elected to fill an unexpired six-year term on the state Supreme Court in 1998.

McGraw lost his bid for a full 12-year term to Republican Brent Benjamin in a hotly contested election in 2004. Advertisements financed largely by then-Massey Energy President and CEO Don Blankenship targeted McGraw.

During an annual Labor Day picnic and rally that year, McGraw warned the largely union crowd that corporate interests were focused on him because of his lifelong support of “the working man.” McGraw said he believed the attacks stemmed not so much from his six years on the Supreme Court, but on his push as a legislator to tax coal in the 1970s.

“It’s been this underlying factor,” he said. “I was the sponsor of the coal severance tax in West Virginia. Millions and millions of dollars have been paid on that tax, and I’m sure the coal industry has never forgotten.”

Benjamin become the first non-incumbent Republican to win a state Supreme Court seat since the 1920s. Judicial elections in West Virginia became nonpartisan in 2016.

“As the son of a disabled coal miner, McGraw knew the struggles that faced coal mining families in West Virginia, and he dedicated his life to fighting for miners and their families,” United Mine Workers of America President Cecil E. Roberts said in a statement. “We have lost a warrior. We have lost a friend.”

After his defeat, McGraw was elected as a circuit judge in Wyoming County in 2008 and reelected in 2016 before retiring in 2021. His brother, Darrell V. McGraw Jr., also served in the Supreme Court and was a five-term state attorney general.

Barbara Windsor's cockney crook Ronnie Knight ex died on Monday (Jun 12) in a nursing home in Cambridgeshire after a years-long battle with Parkinson's disease, a family friend has revealed

Gangland criminal Ronnie Knight has died aged 89.

One family friend told the Sun: "His condition had deteriorated over the last few weeks. He got pneumonia and never recovered."

The gang member, who was married and divorced three times over the course of his life, was supported by his third ex-wife, Sue Haylock, as his condition worsened.

The friend continued: "Sue was a tower of strength for Ronnie.

"A lot of people are going to be a upset to hear the news about his death. He was a rogue – but a very loveable one.

Aside from his marriage to his EastEnders actress ex, Knight was perhaps best-known for his involvement in a gang that carried out the £6 million Security Express heist in 1983.

At the time this broke a record for the largest amount of cash stolen in a robbery.

The cockney crook went on the run to the Costa del Sol and earned the title of one of the Famous Five crooks at large for the robbery.

Knight eventually jetted back to UK shores on a private plane and was handed a seven-year jail sentence for handling robbery proceeds, but was not convicted in connection with the heist itself.

And this isn't the isn't the only criminal charge Knight faced over the course of his life.

In 1980 he was acquitted of the 1974 murder of Alfredo "Italian Tony" Zomparelli at the Old Bailey alongside hitman Nicky Gerard.

But despite being released following trial, Knight later revealed in a book that he had in fact paid his co-defendant to carry out the murder in a revenge plot after for Zomparelli killed his younger brother.

Hoxton-born Knight started his career running Tin Pan Alley and nearby gangland boozers Artistes and Repertoire Club on Charing Cross Road.

Among his clientele were a number of showbiz stars, and after he met a young Windsor, he left his then-wife June to marry her.

Knight said when he first met her, he "fancied her so much my front teeth ached".

Knight was released from prison on parole three years into his sentence and swapped the gang life for a more tranquil existence in Cambridge.

Call me a convicted receiver of purloined goods, a baddie, a charmer or what you like," he said.

"But armed robbery, real villainy, is not my scene."

Dr. Howard Hessan, a Baltimore otolaryngologist who practiced for nearly 40 years and was an inveterate sports enthusiast, died from complications of Parkinson’s disease June 8 at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in Florida at the age of 66. The former Clarksville and Columbia resident was 66.

“He was a wonderful surgeon, a caring doc whose patients were his priority over everything except his family,” said Dr. Thomas M. Silber, who knew Dr. Hessan for 37 years. Dr. Silber is an allergist and shared an office with Dr. Hessan.

Beloved husband of Jeri (nee Fox); loving father of Lauren (David) Horowitz and Joshua Hessan; cherished grandfather of Ava and Melanie; devoted brother of Diane (Robert Stringer) Hessan. 

He was an accomplished otolaryngologist, an avid golfer, and a huge supporter of Penn State, the Baltimore Ravens, and optimistically the Washington Wizards.

After living with the impacts of Parkinson’s for the past two years of his life, Harry died peacefully at home on June 6th. He is survived by his wife Christine Sutcliffe, children Darren and Lisa, stepdaughter Julie, grandson Wyatt, and great-granddaughter Katherine.

“He was the nicest man anybody could wish to meet,” said Christine. “He was a family man and he absolutely loved his job. He was a funny man as well and we had many an evening out with friends where he’d tell many a tale. He always turned everything into a laugh and, going to bed at night, he always had to watch something funny on television so he could go to bed happy.”

Born and bred in Blackpool, Harry was a prolific sportsman as a youngster, gaining a reputation as a stellar amateur footballer alongside his brother David and even attending trials with Aston Villa in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, he started his career as an estate agent, working with Oystons and quickly rising through the ranks.

Eventually, he moved into training, tutoring countless other budding estate agents at Oystons during a 22-year stint in management during which he earned a reputation for kindness and an unflinching willingness to help anyone, regardless of whether they were competitors or not. He also met Christine whilst working at Oystons.

“My boss said ‘this is Mr Sutcliffe’ and I turned around to shake his hand and I just fell in love with him,” said Christine, then a typist in the legal department, of the first time she met Harry. “We moved in together in 1990 and got married in 2011 - Harry took a long time to make decisions!

“We didn’t tell anybody about the wedding either, we just had our two friends as witnesses and swore them to secrecy before going off to Blackpool Registry Office,” added Christine. “We took the children out for a meal and put photographs of us getting married under their plates.”

Harry left Oystons to set up his own estate agency and auctioneering business, Harry Sutcliffe Limited, in 1992 alongside his eventual wife and business partner Christine, going on to sell houses all across the North West, from the Fylde Coast to Chorley. He retired in 2007 after more than four decades in the industry and having valued at least 20,000 properties by his own estimations.

So popular was he that he was named Personality of the Year at the Blackpool Gazette’s Homes Alternative Property Awards 2002 after receiving a unanimity of votes from his fellow estate agents.

“You couldn’t walk down the street without someone stopping and saying ‘hello, Harry’,” said Christine. “It’s wonderful to receive so many kind words from former clients, it’s really keeping me going. He was the best dad and granddad anybody could have.”