PASSINGS: Bernard L. Shaw, George Rodrigue, Paul Torday

Bernard L. Shaw

Bodyguard married Patricia Hearst

Bernard L. Shaw, 68, a San Francisco police officer who served as Patty Hearst’s bodyguard and later married her, died Tuesday in Garrison, N.Y. His death after a long illness was announced by the Hearst Corp., where he was employed as vice president for corporate security.

Shaw was best known for his relationship with William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter. She made headlines in the 1970s for her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a paramilitary band of urban terrorists, and her later imprisonment for bank robbery.

The couple were married in 1979, soon after Patty Hearst’s release from prison. She had served 21 months of a seven-year term when her sentence was commuted. A divorced father of two children, Shaw had two daughters with Hearst. The couple lived for many years in Connecticut.

Born in San Francisco in 1945, Shaw was a veteran of the San Francisco Police Department moonlighting as Hearst’s bodyguard when she was out on bail in 1976. He worked at Hearst Corp. for three decades.

George Rodrigue

Artist known for ‘Blue Dog’ images

George Rodrigue, 69, an artist who chronicled Cajun life and later found fame with his enigmatic “Blue Dog” images, died Saturday in Houston after a battle with cancer, his family announced.

Rodrigue, a native of New Iberia, La., began painting scenes of life in the Cajun country in the 1960s, but is perhaps best known for the “Blue Dog” that became his signature creation in the 1990s.

Rodrigue studied art at what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and at the Art Center College of Design’s Los Angeles campus in the 1960s. He displayed his work in galleries he owned in New Orleans, Lafayette and Carmel.

Paul Torday

Author of ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’

Paul Torday, 67, a British novelist who had a surprise best-seller with his debut “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” died Wednesday at his home in Northumberland, said publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson. The cause was not given.

Torday launched his writing career in his late 50s, publishing “Salmon Fishing on the Yemen” in 2007 — the story of a rich sheik who dreams of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to his desert country.

The novel was adapted into a 2011 film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, with Blunt as the sheik’s representative and McGregor as a cynical fisheries expert who begrudgingly accepts the challenge.

Born in 1946 in Manchester, England, Torday earned a degree in English literature from Oxford University’s Pembroke College. He spent years in the engineering business before turning to writing. Following on the success of his first novel, Torday went on to write six more novels and two eBooks.

Times staff and wire reports

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