Deaths elsewhere

R.B. Greaves, 68, R&B singer whose 1969 hit "Take a Letter, Maria" reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart, died Sept. 27 in Los Angeles.

The song, which was recorded at the hitmaking Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, went gold, selling more than a million copies.

Greaves was a nephew of the gospel and soul singer Sam Cooke.

Greaves' 1970 version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "Always Something There to Remind Me" reached No. 27 on the Billboard chart. Among his other recordings were covers of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" and Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale."

Ronald Bertram Aloysius Greaves was born on Nov. 28, 1943, at an Air Force base in Georgetown in what was then British Guyana. In 1963, Greaves moved to England to perform and record as the frontman for Sonny Childe and the TNT's.

Robert J. Manning, 92, who covered the White House as a cub reporter during the final term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, worked for the State Department under President John F. Kennedy and later became editor of the Atlantic Monthly, where he broadened the magazine's scope and readership, died Sept. 29 in Boston.

The cause was lymphoma.

In April 1945, Manning was working for United Press in Washington when the White House summoned reporters to announce Roosevelt's death in Warm Springs, Ga. By 1949, he had become a writer for Time magazine. In 1954, he wrote a cover story on Ernest Hemingway after interviewing and fishing with him in Cuba. He spent his final years with Time, from 1958 to 1960, as its London bureau chief.

Frank Wilson, 71, a Motown producer and songwriter who wrote or co-wrote some of the label's biggest hits, including "Love Child," performed by the Supremes, "All I Need" by the Temptations and "Castles in the Sand" by Stevie Wonder, died Sept. 27 in Duarte, Calif.

The cause was complications of a lung infection.

Wilson, who later became a born-again preacher, started his career as a performer and had one single, "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)," which became an underground hit long after he recorded it.

After joining Motown in the mid-1960s at its newly opened Los Angeles office, he was involved in composing numerous other pop hits, among them "Chained," for Marvin Gaye, and "You've Made Me So Very Happy," for Brenda Holloway. She recorded the song in 1967, and it went on to become an even bigger hit for Blood, Sweat and Tears two years later.

He died of complications from Parkinson's disease.

Horwitz was a professor emeritus of neurological surgery at George Washington University Medical Center, where his father had once served on the surgical staff. In a career spanning five decades, Horwitz trained generations of neurosurgical residents through his affiliations with GWU and MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

He drew the most public recognition as part of a team that removed an explosive bullet from the neck of officer Thomas Delahanty, who was shot while escorting Reagan from the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981.