Paula Hawkins, 82, who in 1980 became the first woman elected to a full U.S. Senate term without a family political connection, died Friday at Florida Hospital in Orlando. Hawkins had been in poor health recently, having suffered a stroke and a fall. During her single six-year term in the Senate, the Republican positioned herself as a media-savvy champion of children and working mothers and as an enemy of drug dealers. She lost her bid for a second term in 1986 to then-Gov. Bob Graham. Hawkins entered public office at a time when doors that previously had been closed to women were being opened. She never considered herself a feminist, but she championed equal opportunities for women. But there were slights. At one of her first news conferences in Washington as a senator, a TV reporter asked who was going to do her laundry if she was busy working in the Senate. "I kept saying [to myself], 'This is 1980 and I can't believe that anybody is asking me this, especially a grown man from a national network,' " Hawkins said in a 1997 interview.

William A. Wilson, 95, the first American to serve as ambassador to the Vatican and a member of President Ronald Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" of advisers, has died. Wilson was among a group of about a dozen conservative, wealthy Los Angeles businessmen who became confidantes and advisers to Reagan, first as he sought to become governor of California, and later, as president. A rancher and horse lover by nature, Wilson grew up in Los Angeles and studied the family business, oil, at Stanford University in Palo Alto, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth. After graduation, he joined his father's company, Web Wilson Oil Tools. Wilson died at his home in Carmel, Calif.

Richard Todd, 90, who reenacted his wartime exploits in the 1962 film "The Longest Day" and was Ian Fleming's choice to play James Bond, died of cancer at his home in Little Humby, Lincolnshire, in central England. Nominated for an Oscar for 1949's "A Hasty Heart," Todd was best known in Britain for playing Royal Air Force pilot Guy Gibson in "The Dam Busters."

Liam Clancy, 74, an Irish troubadour and the last surviving member of the singing Clancy Brothers -- who found fame in the United States and helped spread the popularity of Irish folk music around the world -- died in Cork, Ireland. He had been treated for pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. Wearing white Aran sweaters, the Clancy Brothers, joined by fellow Irishman Tommy Makem, won fans with musicality, sentimentality and irreverence, not unlike the Smothers Brothers a few years later, though without their penchant for patter.

Robert Degen, who in 1944 copyrighted "The Hokey Pokey Dance," died in Lexington, Ky., on his 104th birthday. He claimed for decades that his song was stolen by Larry LaPrise, who recorded the song, "The Hokey Pokey," in the late 1940s. The song's authorship has long been in dispute, with credit usually going to LaPrise. Working as a full-time musician before World War II, Degen played guitar and banjo in clubs and at parties around Scranton, Pa. He was not a full-time composer, and did not copyright any other songs.

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