PASSINGS

Sal Guarriello

Longtime councilman

Sal Guarriello, 90, a longtime West Hollywood city councilman who was elected in 1990, died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a sudden illness, West Hollywood Mayor Jeff Prang announced.

A former insurance agent, Guarriello and his wife, Rita, moved to West Hollywood in 1964, 20 years before the city incorporated.

He joined the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant-rights group, in 1983 and three years later became part of its steering committee. An advocate for rent control and affordable housing, Guarriello also was named to the West Hollywood Community Housing Corp.’s board of directors in 1986.

After his initial election to the City Council, Guarriello was reelected four times, most recently in 2007. He was instrumental in the creation of the city’s veterans memorial at Holloway Park in 2003.

Salvatore J. Guarriello was born March 2, 1919, in New York and grew up in the city’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. He served as an Army medic during World War II.

His wife, who served on the West Hollywood Planning Commission, died in 1997.

Michael Wise

Key figure in S&L scandal in 1980s

Michael Wise, 64, a key figure in the 1980s savings and loan scandal, jumped to his death April 8 in Florida.

Wise jumped from the ninth level of a parking garage at Tampa International Airport, said Henry Poage, a spokesman for the Hillsborough County, Fla., medical examiner’s office. Wise was taken to a hospital, but died in the emergency room.

Wise had served as chairman of Denver-based Silverado Savings and Loan Assn., whose 1988 collapse attracted attention for its $1-billion cost to taxpayers and the makeup of its board of directors, which included Neil Bush, son of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. A jury acquitted Wise of criminal charges in connection with that failure, but he was banned from banking for life.

He later pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $9 million from investors in an Aspen, Colo., mortgage business and served 3 1/2 years in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan.

After his release from prison, Wise moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., where he worked for the parent company of CFIC Home Mortgage.

Born Aug. 31, 1944, in San Francisco, Wise spent most of his early years in Kansas. He graduated in 1967 from Emporia State University in eastern Kansas and was a clothing salesman before working his way up the ladder at a savings and loan in Emporia.

Maurice Druon

French author, Resistance fighter

Maurice Druon, 90, a French author, fighter for France’s World War II Resistance movement and writer of one of its anthems, died of cardiovascular problems Tuesday in Paris, French authorities said. He was 90.

Druon served for more than four decades with the Academie Francaise, the state-sponsored body that oversees French language and usage. A winner of the Prix Goncourt, the country’s most prestigious literary prize, he also was a conservative government minister and recipient of numerous official honors.

Born in Paris on April 23, 1918, Druon joined the movement against France’s German occupiers in his mid-20s and co-wrote with his uncle Joseph Kessel “Le Chant des Partisans,” or “The Partisans’ Song.”

The song -- featuring the lyrics, “Friend, do you hear the black flight of the crows over our plains? Friend, do you hear the deaf cries of a country in chains? Partisans, workers, peasants! It is the alarm!” -- was quickly adopted by the resistance forces fighting the Nazi occupiers and remained in France’s collective memory after the war’s end.

After the conflict, he wrote historical novels including the “Rois Maudits,” or “Accursed Kings” series.

Jack McCoy

Hall of Fame stock-car racer

Jack McCoy, 72, a stock-car driver who won a record 54 races in the 1960s and ‘70s in NASCAR’s West Coast regional series, died Tuesday, the racing body announced.

McCoy’s family told the Modesto Bee that he died in a Modesto hospital, but they declined to release a cause of death.

In 1966 and 1973, McCoy won series championships in the minor circuit known over the years as Winston West and Grand National West. He finished second in 1969, ’70 and ’71.

Known for driving Dodges, usually painted purple, McCoy retired from racing in 1974. He was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2002, a year after he wrote about his exploits in a book titled “Racing’s Real McCoy.”

One of the colorful stories he told was about racing from New York to California in the illegal Cannonball Baker Memorial Sea to Shining Sea Trophy Dash in 1975.

McCoy balanced his racing with his work at his tire shop in Modesto.

Born March 29, 1937, in Los Angeles, McCoy moved with his family to the Central Valley. He went to work in his father’s tire shop before opening his own business.

Nate Dolin, former Cleveland Indians vice president and part-owner of the baseball team from 1949 to 1962, died of pneumonia Sunday in Rancho Mirage, where he spent winters. He was 95.

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