PASSINGS

Carmelita Durio

Sister of O.J. Simpson

Carmelita Durio, O.J. Simpson’s sister, who collapsed in a Las Vegas courtroom when he was convicted of robbery and kidnapping last October, died Monday in a Sacramento hospital. She was believed to be in her early 60s.

Tom Scotto, a family friend, told the Associated Press that he did not know the exact cause of death but said her kidneys had failed in recent days.

“I think it was the stress. She just couldn’t take it,” Scotto said, noting that her health had declined since she saw her brother led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. She collapsed that day and paramedics were called to revive her.

Scotto said Durio had been taken to the hospital three weeks ago and was released to a rehabilitation facility, but later returned to the hospital and fell into a coma.

Prison officials in Nevada informed the former football star of his sister’s death. Suzanne Pardee, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Corrections, told The Times there were no plans to allow Simpson to attend the funeral. He is serving a sentence of nine to 33 years in a medium-security facility in Lovelock, Nev.

Edgar F. Callahan

Former overseer of credit unions

Edgar F. Callahan, 80, former chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, who was credited with rescuing the credit union industry by guiding it through a period of deregulation, died March 18 of a blood disorder at his home in Sacramento.

A native of Youngstown, Ohio, Callahan earned his bachelor’s in mathematics and master’s in educational administration at Marquette University.

He spent much of his life in Illinois, where he taught high school, coached sports and served as principal and then superintendent of the Catholic schools in Rockford, Ill. He went on to work for the Illinois state government as director of financial institutions, supervising 2,000 consumer finance companies, 1,200 currency exchanges and more than 1,000 state-chartered credit unions.

In the early 1980s, President Reagan appointed him chairman of the National Credit Union Administration. As the highest-ranking credit union administrator in the country, he moved to deregulate saving and loan rates. He also allowed a credit union to serve multiple groups as long as they could prove a common bond. He opened a consulting firm after leaving office in 1985. He last served as president and chief executive of Patelco Credit Union in San Francisco.

Steven Lee Carson

Authority on President Lincoln

Steven Lee Carson, 66, a former archivist and editor who became a historian and lecturer on presidential history, notably as an authority on the life of President Lincoln, died March 27 at his home in Silver Spring, Md., after a heart attack.

During the last few years, he was a presidential historian at the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. He spent his early career at the National Archives, as well as writing for and editing the Manuscript Society News and other publications aimed at librarians, archivists and curators.

He wrote a play about Robert Todd Lincoln, the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to live into adulthood. The play was staged in the mid-1980s at Ford’s Theatre.

Carson also chaired a conference on presidential children. He was a New York native and as a young man attended meetings of the Civil War Round Table with his mother. He was an American history graduate of New York University, where he was granted a Ford Foundation fellowship. He earned a master’s in American history at Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded another fellowship.

-- times staff and wire reports news.obits@latimes.com