PASSINGS: Gerald H.F. Gardner, Nikolaos Makarezos, Lee Kurty

Gerald H.F. Gardner

Helped end sex bias in job ads

Gerald H.F. Gardner, 83, a geophysicist and mathematician whose statistical research and expert testimony led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that eliminated sex bias in newspaper want ads, died July 25 at a hospital in Pittsburgh. He had leukemia.

Gardner, a founding member of the Pittsburgh affiliate of the National Organization for Women in the late 1960s, joined the chapter’s battle against bias in help-wanted ads. At the time, many papers had separate job openings categories for men and for women.

He calculated the amount of money a woman would lose over a lifetime because she was barred from applying for jobs advertised as open only to men.

His research became the basis for the complaint against the Pittsburgh Press.

The Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations upheld the complaint, and the newspaper took the ruling to court, arguing that it violated 1st Amendment rights of the freedom of the press.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the newspaper’s practice was illegal. The decision changed employment advertisements throughout the nation.

Gerald Henry Frasier Gardner was born in Tullamore, Ireland, on March 2, 1926.

He graduated from Dublin’s Trinity College in 1948 and a doctorate in mathematical physics from Princeton University in 1953.

FOR THE RECORD:
Makarezos obituary: A photograph in Saturday’s Section A that accompanied the obituary of Nikolaos Makarezos, one of the leaders of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, was in fact the image of former Greek Deputy Prime Minister Stylianos Pattakos. Makarezos is shown above. —

FOR THE RECORD:
Nikolaos Makarezos: The brief obituary of Nikolaos Makarezos in Section A on Aug. 8 erroneously reported that Makarezos, a senior figure in the 1967-74 Greek dictatorship, was sentenced to death for treason after the fall of the military regime and that the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. According to the 1975 court ruling, Makarezos was sentenced to death for mutiny, and to life imprisonment for treason. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. —

Nikolaos Makarezos

Greek junta economic leader

Nikolaos Makarezos, 90, one of the leaders of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, died Monday, Greek media reported.

Makarezos, the junta’s chief economic policymaker, served as deputy prime minister and minister for coordination under dictator George Papadopoulos.

Makarezos was arrested after the fall of the right-wing dictatorship in 1974 and sentenced to death for treason -- a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1990 because of poor health.

With Papadopoulos and Stylianos Pattakos, Makarezos was a ringleader of the military coup that seized power in 1967. The dictators imposed martial law and cracked down heavily on political opponents, imprisoning or exiling thousands, many of whom were tortured.

After a student pro-democracy uprising that the army bloodily crushed in 1974, Papadopoulos tried to slowly introduce some democratic reforms, prompting a second coup by army hard-liners who toppled his government. Democracy was restored in 1974.

Makarezos served in the Greek artillery during World War II in the campaign against Italian forces that invaded the country in 1940. After the fall of Greece to the Nazis in early 1941, he followed the government in exile to Egypt.

Lee Kurty

Nurse on TV’s ‘Dr. Kildare’

Lee Kurty, 70, an actress who played nurse Zoe Lawton on the popular 1960s TV medical series “Dr. Kildare,” died July 23 of complications from dementia at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys.

Kurty joined the cast of “Dr. Kildare,” starring Richard Chamberlain, in the show’s final season, 1965-66. Described in The Times as resembling “a Swedish cover girl,” the blond Pittsburgh native was Chamberlain’s love interest.

Kurty, who also appeared on the soaps “Love of Life” and “Search for Tomorrow,” was born Oct. 17, 1938, and graduated from the drama department of what is now Carnegie Mellon University.

She made her Broadway debut in 1964 as Fred Clark’s daughter in “Absence of a Cello.”

-- from Times staff and wire reports

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