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1960s Legacies

James Harff (BSJ64, MSJ65)

James “Jim” Warren Harff, age 83, passed away peacefully at his condominium in Elkhart Lake, WI, on November 25, 2024.

Jim was born in Sheboygan, WI, on December 5, 1940, to Benjamin and Helen Harff. Jim attended Jefferson School and graduated from Sheboygan Central High School in 1959.

Jim went on to earn his Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Jim was also in the National Army Reserves.

Jim had an extensive and impressive career in journalism, public relations, and communications. He began working for WHBL and Kohler, prior to becoming more involved in politics and campaign public relations. Jim established permanent residency in Arlington, Virginia, while working for Ruder Finn, Inc, and several other international public relations firms in the Washington, D.C., area. Ultimately, he became the Chief Executer Officer of Global Communicators. Jim was extremely passionate about his career and continued working full-time until the age of 82.

Jim had an active lifestyle and enjoyed traveling, skiing, horseback riding, biking, and spending time with friends and family.

Jim was an intelligent, compassionate, and giving person. He maintained many close friendships, some dating back to his childhood. He enjoyed socializing with his friends and family, especially during the summer months while working from his condominium in Elkhart Lake, WI.

Jim will be dearly missed by family and many close friends. Jim is survived by his two nieces, Rebecca (Tim) Thompson of Sheboygan, WI, and Deborah (Chris Yankee) Pope, of Boulder, Colorado. He also has five great-niece/nephews: Cora and Owen Thompson, Bella and Aiden Pope, and Ria Yankee.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents Ben and Helen Harff and his sister Luanne Harff-Burchinal.

Visitation will be held on Saturday, December 7th, from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM, prior to the funeral at 11:00 AM, at Zimmer Westview Funeral and Cremation Care Center, Sheboygan, WI. Burial will occur at Wildwood Cemetery.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/james-jim-harff-obituary?id=56910741

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1960s Featured Legacies Legacies

Marcia Smith (BSJ63)

Once in a lifetime. One of a kind. There was no one like her. Marcia Hill Smith of Santa Fe, NM, 83, passed away July 3, 2024 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She is survived by her husband Herb, son Greg (Lauren McMahon), daughter Ashley Baptiste (Gus Calabrese) and her four loving grandchildren Coleston, Cameron, Elaine, and Brett.

Marcia was born in Saint Louis, MO in 1941 to Irma and Homer Hill of Normandy, MO. She graduated from high school there and attended Northwestern University where she earned a degree in journalism and met her husband of 59 years, Herb Smith.

Marcia and Herb lived on Chicago’s Gold Coast until settling a short time later in Saint Louis area, where Marcia opened her interior design firm, Marcia Smith Designs, Inc., had her children, and moved the family to suburban Clayton, MO. A few years later she moved her design firm to Laclede’s Landing, and later to Ladue, MO where she started Virtuoso, a table-top shop of one-of-a-kind décor for the dining table. She was active for many years in the National Association of Women Business Owners at both the local and national level.
In the mid-1980’s she and Herb built a unique contemporary Bauhaus-inspired home on Lindell Boulevard where they lived until 2003, then enjoyed apartment living in the city’s Central West End before moving permanently to their vacation residence in Santa Fe.

Marcia was inspired by the natural beauty and art scene of Santa Fe.
She dressed to the nines and wore wonderful hats almost every day.
When music, art, design, and dance touched her soul, she shared them with the people in her world. She dedicated herself to bring inspiring design into peoples’ lives every day. Her home and commercial designs focused on being true to yourself and focusing on today. She loved to dance, visit art galleries and museums, and listen to jazz and classical music.

She wrote her own rules and stuck by them with conviction. Manners mattered to her. She was gracious and treated you the way she wanted to be treated. She was bold, and she challenged people around her to be bold, and her lifelong friends were her biggest cheerleaders.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/santafenewmexican/name/marcia-smith-obituary?id=55636357

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B.F. Helman (BSJ69)

BF (Bernard Frederick) Helman died peacefully Friday, Mar. 29, in suburban St. Louis, after a long illness. He was 76.

Actor, poet, writer, film expert and enthusiastic observer of politics, BF was truly a Renaissance man, with sharp wit and endless curiosity.

He was born in Granite City, IL, where his parents owned and operated a popular women’s clothing store, Helman’s.

He graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a concentration in advertising followed by an advanced degree in Communications at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

BF held several positions in Chicago but his passion was the theater. He had numerous stage roles, and extensive on camera and voice over work, locally and nationally. He appeared in commercials and high profile corporate projects. A long time specialty was dramatic and comedic roles in syndicated radio dramas and programs.

BF’s passion project above all others was the Defiant Theatre Company in Chicago, where he acted and supported the group in countless other ways.

After more than 40 years, BF grew tired of the cruel Chicago winters and endless urban chaos. He relocated to St. Louis where he spent his last 10 years. He acted in Community Theater and actively participated in ROMEO groups, “really old guys eating out.”

His extended family in St. Louis, including his closest friend the late Barry Freedman, made sure BF was on the guest list for holidays and important occasions.

His friend group, locally and around the country, supported him during his illness: Johnny Heller, Don Rubin, Barbara Weiner, Allen Levin, Marshall Dyer, Barry Murov, Hedy Ehrlich, Ava Ehrlich and a close group of cousins.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Morris and Reeva Helman. He is survived by his brother Howard Helman (Phyllis), of Redondo Beach, CA, numerous cousins and theater friends all over the country.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/st-louis-mo/bf-helman-11748492

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Hank DeZutter (MSJ65)

He had the street-smarts of a newsman, the whimsey of a jazz-loving poet, and a reformer’s distaste for all things unjust. Hank DeZutter, 80, died July 14, 2023, of a brain bleed after a fall days earlier in the Lincoln Park apartment he shared with wife Barbara. Hank covered protests and political unrest during the late 60s for the Chicago Daily News, winning awards including one for exposing FBI spying on activists at the U. of Illinois.

DeZutter head shot.

He helped launch the Chicago Journalism Review in response to the overly pro-police slant editors gave to violence during the ’68 Democratic Convention. Hank went on to teach writing and journalism at city colleges and Columbia in the South Loop. There he helped found Community Media Workshop, a program to help neighborhood groups get better press. Meantime, he wrote for the Chicago Reader on neighborhood issues, including a 1995 front-pager on a then-unknown Barack Obama. In spare time, he wrote books, spun poetry for the Chicago Journal, played boogie piano, and made impossibly long golf putts.

Surviving are wife Barbara Belletini Fields; her daughters Jayne Mattson and Ana Boyer Davis; sons Max (Sarah), Chris, and daughter Amanda Kotlyar (Simon); stepson Agward “Eddie” Turner; sisters Joyce (Ronnie) Mooneyham and Wendy (Steve) Callahan; and five grandchildren. Predeceased by mother Evelyn (née Dammer) and father Henri DeZutter. Gifts to Courage to Fight Gun Violence, Box 51196, Wash., DC 20091, or https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/

Featured image courtesy of Block Club Chicago.

Block Club Chicago article about the legacy of Hank DeZutter.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/chicagotribune/name/henry-dezutter-obituary?id=35954608

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1960s Legacies

Victoria J. Snoy (BSJ68)

Victoria (Vickie) J. Snoy of Keyport, New Jersey passed away on Saturday, March 25, 2023, at home.

She was born on July 14, 1946, in Indianapolis, Indiana to Joseph B. Snoy and Betty (Carr) Snoy. Vickie attended school in Rockford, Illinois, graduating in the ’64 class of Guilford High School. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and worked for Prudential Insurance for a large part of her professional career.

She married Niko Popovic in Cape May, New Jersey, in August 1997. He predeceased her in December 2022. Vickie felt it was very important to contribute to the community and was always involved in many charities and civic organizations.

Vickie is survived by Becky Snoy Laible (David Deem) of Machesney Park, Illinois, Sara Snoy (Don Scare) of Glenview, Illinois, nieces Leslie Laible of Chicago and Julia Snoy of Texas and sister-in-law Francie Daughtery of Charleston, South Carolina.

Obituary

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George Owen Yost (MSJ68)

Owen Yost, 77, passed away at his home in Denton, Texas on July 17th.

Born January 1945 he spent his childhood near Chicago, in Kenilworth Illinois. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois and attended college at University of Missouri (Bachelor of Journalism ’67), Northwestern University (Master of Journalism ’68), and University of Texas Arlington (Master of Landscape Architecture ’82) and served in the U.S. Army.

The son of Llyod Morgan Yost and Winogene Springer, and brother to Elyn Mulder, Karyl Thorsen, Chari Binstadt. Owen leaves behind his beloved partner Nancy Collins, his son Creighton Yost, and grandchildren Carson Yost, Asher Yost, Collin Whisenhunt, Lauren Whisenhunt, and their families.

A lifelong athlete, he played baseball and football as a child and was well known for his swimming, setting records in high school and winning medals at the Texas Senior Games. He was a regular at the Texas Woman’s University pool and gym and deeply enjoyed the kindness and comradery of his TWU swimming friends and the University staff.  

He enjoyed nature in its natural wild state throughout his life. A favorite memory was his canoe trips with friends in college to boundary lakes in Canada for fishing and exploring. Always interested in geography and vocabulary he was quick to share what he learned about scientific names of trees and birds and worked throughout his life to conserve natural spaces to ensure their future.

An accomplished writer, writing advertising copy in Chicago in his early years, and later an accomplished landscape architect, guest lecturing at University of North Texas, writing a landscaping column for the Denton Record-Chronical newspaper, and working for Denton as a city planner. He designed the landscape for many Denton street plantings, and the Benny Simpson Garden on the TWU campus, leaving his lasting mark on his community.

To plant Memorial Trees in memory of George Owen Yost, please click here to visit our Sympathy Store.

billdeberry.com

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1960s Featured Legacies

Henry DeZutter (MSJ65)

He had the street-smarts of a newsman, the whimsey of a jazz-loving poet, and a reformer’s distaste for all things unjust. Hank DeZutter, 80, died July 14 of a brain bleed after a fall days earlier in the Lincoln Park apartment he shared with wife Barbara.

Hank covered protests and political unrest during the late 60s for the Chicago Daily News, winning awards including one for exposing FBI spying on activists at the U. of Illinois. He helped launch the Chicago Journalism Review in response to the overly pro-police slant editors gave to violence during the ’68 Democratic Convention.

Hank went on to teach writing and journalism at city colleges and Columbia in the South Loop. There he helped found Community Media Workshop, a program to help neighborhood groups get better press. Meantime, he wrote for the Chicago Reader on neighborhood issues, including a 1995 front-pager on a then-unknown Barack Obama. In spare time, he wrote books, spun poetry for the Chicago Journal, played boogie piano, and made impossibly long golf putts.

Surviving are wife Barbara Belletini Fields; her daughters Jayne Mattson and Ana Boyer Davis; sons Max (Sarah), Chris, and daughter Amanda Kotlyar (Simon); stepson Agward “Eddie” Turner; sisters Joyce (Ronnie) Mooneyham and Wendy (Steve) Callahan; and five grandchildren. Predeceased by mother Evelyn (née Dammer) and father Henri DeZutter. Memorial gathering in planning. Gifts to Courage to Fight Gun Violence, Box 51196, Wash., DC 20091, or https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/

Published in Chicago Tribune.

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Gail Harwell (BSJ62)

Gail Petersen Harwell, 81, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, April 26, 2022, at RiverView Care Center in Crookston, where she had been a resident since October of 2021.

She was born October 7, 1940, to Norma and Jerry Petersen at Minette’s Maternity Home in Fertile, where she also attended school, first grade through 12th. From early years, she had a curiosity for the world and would stand on the front porch and say, “Just wait for me world, I’ll get there.”

To achieve that goal, Gail was a determined high achiever in high school, which led to a full scholarship at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. After earning her Bachelor of Science in 1962, she launched a career as an advertising writer in Chicago. She was named a Vice President of J. Walter Thompson Company-Chicago in 1969, where she worked primarily in television, writing for such accounts as Sears dishwashers, Kraft Foods, Sunbeam, and Jovan fragrances. In 1977, she moved to Boston and Arnold & Company; in 1979 to Manhattan and JWT New York; in 1983 to Los Angeles and Evans Advertising; and in 1993 to Marin County in the Bay Area.

Gail met her husband Richard Sterling Harwell in 1971 at Great Lakes, IL, at the end of a sailing race. They were separated by geography and circumstances, but fate brought them together again 20 years later, and they were married in 1993 at Concordia Lutheran Church in Fertile.

In 1995, Gail changed careers, becoming an independent editorial consultant in the engineering-construction field. She often worked alongside Sterling; writing, editing, formatting, and producing proposals, feasibility studies, and marketing materials for multibillion-dollar construction projects. She worked in Asia, Europe, Australia, and Central America, as well as across the U.S., continuing until her final retirement at the age of 73. From that time, Gail and Sterling enjoyed a life of tennis, travel, volunteering, and relaxation overlooking San Francisco Bay. They were members of the Belvedere Tennis Club and the San Francisco Yacht Club. Gail was an avid reader, and she belonged to a local book club for 10 years.

Friends will remember her for her meticulous planning and orchestration of many wonderful birthday parties, club gatherings and class reunions.

Both Gail and Sterling will be remembered by family for initiating and maintaining the “Petersen-Harwell Perpetual Ping Pong Tournament,” complete with engraved trophy. Gail made sure the results with photos were posted in the Fertile Journal.

Family and friends recall her kindness, generosity, acute sense of humor, infectious laugh, courage, and fierce determination. She had a certain “twinkle in her eyes,” and she will be dearly missed by all who knew and loved her.

Gail was preceded in death by her husband, R. Sterling Harwell, by her older sister, and best friend, Marlys Ozga, and by an infant nephew. She is survived by brothers, Harold (Candy) of Brookline, MA, and Michael (Carol) of Fertile, and brother-in-law, Edward Ozga of Plymouth, MN, nine nieces and nephews, a host of grandnieces and grandnephews, and one great-grandniece.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Parkinson’s disease research or Hospice of the Red River Valley.

Source: Eriksen-Vik-Ganje Funeral Homes

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1960s Featured Legacies Legacies

David Searl (BSJ62)

David Searl, the author of expat Bible ‘You & The Law in Spain’ which provides a step-by-step guide to all aspects of legal matters in Spain, has died at the age of 82.

Born in Ashtabula, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, he studied at the Medill School of Journalism at the prestigious Northwestern University, which is where he met his wife Janet Mendel.

They both worked in Chicago’s newspapers before deciding in 1966 to take a year off to live in Spain. It was a chance encounter in a Chicago bar that led them to decide on Mijas, then a quiet hillside village above the Costa del Sol.

“We were thinking about Spain, and then one night in a bar, we heard some people speaking Spanish on the table next to us. It was an American man chatting to some visiting flamenco performers and he raved about this place Mijas where he had spent some time in Spain,” Janet recalls.

“Based on that conversation, the very next day we decided that Mijas was our destination,” she told the Olive Press by telephone.

The pair took a freighter across the Atlantic to Casablanca, then a rickety bus to Tangiers before crossing over the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco to Spain’s Algeciras. “We arrived in Mijas by taxi where we lived pretty well on our savings. We had intended on only staying for a year, but well, things didn’t turn out like that.”

After a year-long stint teaching at an American school in Switzerland, the pair returned to Mijas and made it their permanent home, buying a plot of land and building their home, where Janet still lives.

It was here that they raised their two boys, Daniel and Benjamin, and forged writing careers, with Janet focusing on Spanish food and David on legal issues affecting the expat community as well as freelancing as a foreign correspondent.

He was sent down the coast to Palomares to report on an incident that saw American nuclear bombs dropped accidentally from a B-52 in 1966 as well as by a Canadian newspaper to follow up on a rumour that then Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau was holidaying with a mistress in Spain.

David and Janet separated in the mid-1980s but both stayed in Mijas where David met artist Mary Eisman, who became his partner for the rest of his life.

He also went on to write 24 editions of what became the expat must-read on all legal matters, a book that appears on the bookcases of expats across Spain.

“He was an impish character with a whimsical sense of humour,” recalls former colleague and Costa del Sol journalist David Baird. “As I understand it, he began contributing to Lookout, which at that time was required reading for expats here in the 70s.”

“The editor, Ken Brown, asked him to answer some of the queries received relating to Spanish law that affected expats. Thanks to his investigations and consultations with lawyers, gestores and tax advisors on the Costa, his knowledge grew until he was something of an expert. He began writing a regular column in Lookout answering readers’ queries about everything from residence requirements to driving licenses.”

“In 1985 with his accumulated knowledge, he compiled the book ‘You & the Law in Spain,’ published by Santana Books. This became what the Times declared was ‘the Bible for foreigners in Spain,'” said Baird.

Another former colleague and foreign correspondent Edward Owen remembered: “David happily advised foreign journalists in Spain who were often covering gruesome stories involving their own countrymen who were caught up in property scams, home seizures and expensive legal tangles.”

“David was a charming and amiable colleague who did not seek to hugely profit from his valuable work. He enjoyed helping others and beating the oft-changing system. At Lookout’s famous lunches in Fuengirola, he would often regale the throng with tales of woe – and how he had helped yet another Brit get out of jail or regain ownership of his villa.”

Searl had the ability to write about complex Spanish legal matters in plain English that was easy to understand, and his work was also translated into French, German and Russian.

Up until his death, Searl was working on the 25th edition, which was to be published later this year.

He was also an active member of his community and regular guest on local radio as well as advising the Foreign Residents’ Department at Mijas Town Hall and other local community groups.

He died on March 18 at the age of 82 and leaves behind Mary, his two sons and three grandchildren.

Source: Olive Press

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Linda Bennett (MA64)

Linda J. Bennett of Saddle Brook NJ and formerly of Ringwood NJ passed away peacefully on September 12th, 2021.

She is preceded in death by her parents William and Claire (nee Friedman) Reichenfeld and husband Alan J. Bennett, and survived by her sister Marilyn (Larry) Owens. She was a loving mother to children Joshua (Susan) Bennett, Samantha (Mark) Stankiewicz, and Matthew Bennett. She was a proud and doting grandmother to Carolyn Bennett, Cayla Stankiewicz and Anya Stankiewicz. 

Linda was born in New York City in 1942 and moved to Plainfield, NJ where in high school she met her future husband, Alan Bennett. She went on to earn a BA at Montclair State College and MA at Northwestern University with degrees in Journalism. 

She worked for the Bergen Record as a reporter, then as a technical editor for publisher Prentice Hall and later for the American Management Association, among others. After retirement, she enjoyed working at the Bergen Ethical Culture Society for 11 years where she developed wonderful friendships and camaraderie. Visitation with the family will be held at the C.C. Van Emburgh Funeral Home, 306 E. Ridgewood Ave, Ridgewood NJ on Saturday, September 18th at 10:00 AM and at 2:00 PM. To celebrate Linda’s tireless advocacy for the disabled, please consider a small donation to Bancroft Neurohealth at www.Bancroft.org.

Source: Published by C.C. Van Emburgh – Ridgewood on Sep. 13, 2021.