Marian McQuade, who persuaded governors, Congress and then-President Jimmy Carter to set aside a special day to honor grandparents, has died. She was 91. McQuade died Friday morning in West Virginia of heart failure, her granddaughter Erin McQuade Kennedy said. McQuade started working on senior issues in 1956 when she helped organize an event honoring West Virginia's octogenarians. McQuade, a mother of 15, grandmother of 43 and great-grandmother to 15, launched her campaign to honor grandparents in 1970. In 1978, Carter signed legislation proclaiming the first Sunday after Labor Day as Grandparents Day.
Big-band singer Connie Haines, who performed with Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the 1940s, died Monday in Clearwater, Fla. She was 87. Haines started singing when she was 5. As a teenager, she teamed with Sinatra with the Dorsey band. She also performed for presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Marpessa Dawn, who played the beautiful, melancholic and doomed Eurydice in the classic 1959 Brazilian movie "Black Orpheus," died Aug. 25 at her home in Paris. She was 74. Dawn's death followed by 41 days that of her "Black Orpheus" co-star, Bruno Melo, who played the title role.
Charlotte Kohler, who as a longtime editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review was a quiet influence on the course of 20th-century writing, died Sept. 15 at her home in Charlottesville, Va. She was 99, and died a day before her 100th birthday, a friend said. The Virginia Quarterly Review was first published in 1925.
