PASSINGS: Tom Martinez, Katie Hall

Tom Martinez

Quarterbacks coach in the Bay Area

Tom Martinez, 67, a quarterbacks coach in the Bay Area who had worked with Tom Brady from his time as a high school player through his NFL career with the New England Patriots, has died.

Martinez died Tuesday in Redwood City after suffering a heart attack while receiving dialysis treatment, said his wife, Olivia.

He coached at the College of San Mateo for 32 years and worked with Brady when he was a teenager growing up in San Mateo.

Brady told reporters before the Patriots’ Super Bowl matchup against the New York Giants this year that Martinez taught him how to throw a football, and he was “forever indebted” to him.

“Tom’s a key reason why I’ve been fortunate to have success in college and the NFL,” Brady told The Times in 2006. “I think the world of him professionally and personally. I still consult with him, and he tunes me up when I need him.”

Martinez, who grew up in San Francisco, was hired at the College of San Mateo to coach football and teach physical education but later added softball and women’s basketball to his coaching load.

He had been awaiting a kidney transplant.

Katie Hall

Indiana’s first black member of the House

Katie Hall, 73, Indiana’s first black member of the House of Representatives and a key sponsor of the 1983 legislation that established a national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died Monday at a hospital in Gary, Ind., her family announced. The cause was not given.

Hall was proudest of her work on the bill to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, said her husband, John Henry Hall.

“She was there with President Reagan, as well as Coretta Scott King and others, when the president signed it,” he said. “It was one of the highlights of her career, tremendously so.”

Katie Hall grew up on her grandfather’s cotton farm in Mound Bayou, Miss., and became a schoolteacher. She got her start in politics working for the election of Richard Hatcher as mayor of Gary in 1967, when he became one of the first black mayors of a big U.S. city.

She served in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1974-76 and in the Indiana Senate from 1976-82. After Rep. Adam Benjamin of northwestern Indiana’s 1st District died suddenly in 1982, she was nominated to the November ballot to fill out his term and won election to a full two-year term in Congress.

Hall was defeated in the 1984 Democratic primary by Peter Visclosky, who has held the seat since then after defeating another challenge from Hall two years later.

She then served as Gary’s city clerk from 1988 until 2003, when she pleaded guilty to mail fraud as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors on 20 felony public corruption charges.

Hall and others had been accused of making workers in the city clerk’s office raise money for Hall’s re-election campaigns to keep their jobs. Hall was sentenced to house arrest and probation but her daughter, Junifer Hall, served a 16-month prison term.

— Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports

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