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PASSINGS: Robert W. Edgar, Chrissy Amphlett, Robert Earl Holding

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Robert W. Edgar

Six-term Pennsylvania congressman

Robert W. Edgar, 69, who represented Pennsylvania for six terms in the House of Representatives, served as president of the Claremont School of Theology and went on to lead the public interest group Common Cause, died Tuesday after collapsing while exercising on a treadmill at his home in Burke, Va., according to his wife, Merle.

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Edgar, a liberal Democrat, was elected in 1974 in a large class of newcomers that went to Washington after the Watergate scandal. His political career ended after he lost a U.S. Senate campaign in 1986 to Arlen Specter.

Edgar had maintained an active travel schedule with Common Cause, advocating for open government. He was the group’s president and chief executive from 2007 until his death.

He was president of the Claremont School of Theology from 1990 to 2000. The campus’ Edgar Community Center is named for him.

From 2000 to 2007, he served as secretary general of the National Council of Churches, a Christian unity organization.

Born May 29, 1943, Edgar was raised in Springfield, Pa. He received a bachelor’s degree from Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa., and a master of divinity degree from the Theological School of Drew University in Madison, N.J. He was an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.

Edgar represented Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District outside of Philadelphia, a seat held mostly by Republicans since before the Civil War.

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Chrissy Amphlett

Lead singer of Divinyls

Chrissy Amphlett, 53, lead singer of the Australian rock band Divinyls who had an international hit in the early 1990s with the single “I Touch Myself,” died Sunday at her New York City home from the effects of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, announced her husband, Charley Drayton.

The Divinyls hit big at home in the 1980s and ‘90s with four top 10 albums that included “Divinyls,” which reached No. 15 in the United States on the strength of “I Touch Myself.” The breakout single went to No. 4 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1991.

She was born Oct. 25, 1959, in Australia and by 1971 was a featured singer in One Ton Gypsy, a country rock band. At 17, she traveled Europe alone and upon returning to Sydney joined a church choir.

While performing with the choir at a 1980 concert at the Sydney Opera House, Amphlett met musician Mark McEntee and they formed the Divinyls. The band released six albums between 1982 and 1996, and briefly re-formed in 2006. Her husband was a drummer with the group.

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As an actress, Amphlett debuted in the movies in the 1982 Australian film “Monkey Grip,” which featured several Divinyls tracks. She later played Russell Crowe’s mother in an Australian stage production of the musical “Blood Brothers.”

In 2010 Amphlett revealed that she had breast cancer and said that because she also had multiple sclerosis, she would be unable to undergo the radiation treatment normally used to treat breast cancer.

“It’s unfair, but life is not fair,” she said at the time. “I’ve got songs to sing. I’ve got stages to perform on. I’m a keep-on-going sort of girl.”

Robert Earl Holding

Owner of Sinclair Oil, ski resorts

Robert Earl Holding, 86, an entrepreneur who from one Wyoming truck stop built a business empire that came to include ownership of Sinclair Oil as well as ski meccas Sun Valley Resort in Idaho and Snowbasin Resort in Utah, died Friday in Utah.

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He died of complications of a 2002 stroke, according to Clint Ensign, senior vice president of the Sinclair Cos.

Holding’s estimated net worth of $3.2 billion made him the 423rd wealthiest person in the world at the time of his death, according to Forbes.

Not bad for a man who would not invest in stocks after his parents lost everything in the 1929 stock market crash when he was 3.

Born Nov. 29, 1926, Holding grew up in Salt Lake City. A civil engineer by training, he and his wife, Carol, started managing a service station on what is now Interstate 80 in southwestern Wyoming in 1952. They turned it into the Little America motel chain and with the profits began investing in other businesses.

Holding’s boldest moves came when he acquired a Mobil refinery in Wyoming in 1968 and Sinclair Oil in 1976. Holding later purchased and overhauled the ski resorts.

“I think his timing [for acquisitions] was very good,” Ensign said. “He saw value when others didn’t.”

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Holding also was a member of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee board that lured the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. But he was removed from the organizing committee board in the wake of the Olympic bribery scandal of the 1990s. He drew attention after his private jets were used to fly some International Olympic Committee members who took excessive gifts from Salt Lake’s bid committee before the Games were awarded in 1995.

— Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports

news.obits@latimes.com

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