Carlos Cachaca; Samba Composer and Pioneer

Carlos Cachaca, 97, whose graceful compositions helped make samba Brazil’s most popular music. Cachaca, whose real name was Carlos Moreira de Castro, began composing in 1923, when samba was still largely unknown. He picked up his nickname from the cane liquor that animated the late-night samba sessions at the Mangueira hill shantytown, or favela. His compositions spoke of life in the favelas, and for that reason were initially frowned on by much of Brazilian society. Among his best-known works was “Alvorada” (“Dawn” in Portuguese), written in partnership with the composer Cartola. It begins: “Dawn, on the hill, such beauty, no one weeps in sadness, no one feels bitterness.” Cachaca helped found the Mangueira samba school and lived to see samba and carnival rise from the shantytowns to be embraced by mainstream Brazil. He received popular recognition but made little money from his work. On Monday in Rio de Janeiro, of pneumonia.

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* Sister Frances Dunn; Hospital Administrator

Sister Frances Dunn, 90, former hospital administrator and general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. Born in Monrovia, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange on July 6, 1931, and was educated at Mills College. She declared herself “a disaster,” first as a teacher and then as an X-ray technician. After electrically shocking another sister, she asked to be relieved of the X-ray job “on humanitarian grounds--before I kill somebody.” She next worked in St. Joseph Hospital’s admitting office in Orange, and found her specialty--business administration. During her career, she served as chief administrator of four hospitals--St. Joseph, St. Luke in Pasadena, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Orange County. She was active in the California Hospital Assn., the hospital councils of Southern California and Northern California, and the California Conference of Catholic Hospitals. From 1969 to 1973, Sister Frances was general superior of her own congregation, where she led development of Regina Residence, a retirement home for nuns. Inspired by her time studying health care in India and Pakistan, Sister Frances showed a lifelong dedication to providing health care for the poor and for migrant farm workers in California. On Aug. 11 in Orange.

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* Dorothy J. Foote; Painter Known as Jean Jourdain

Dorothy Jordan Foote, 87, who painted under the professional name Jean Jourdain. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, and brought up in South Pasadena, she studied art at UC San Diego and business at the Sawyer Business School. After working as a legal secretary in San Francisco and Honolulu, she returned to Pasadena to marry Harold Foote. The couple bought the fire-damaged ruins of the Boulder Crest Estate in Altadena and rebuilt it into a post-and-beam, redwood-and-glass showplace. The home was featured in The Times’ Home magazine and Art and Architecture magazine and included in several home tours. In the 1950s, Foote studied oil painting at the Art Students League in New York City. Her work has been exhibited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York and locally in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pasadena Art Institute and Glendale’s Brand Library. On July 15 in Pasadena.

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* John Gottschalk; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Chief

John S. Gottschalk, 86, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who implemented the earliest endangered species acts. Gottschalk retired in 1970 after 25 years with the service. During his tenure, the national wildlife refuge system added more than 500,000 acres of habitat, the whooping crane made a dramatic comeback, urban wildlife programs were begun, and DDT was banned as an insecticide lethal to bird reproduction. A native of Indiana, Gottschalk graduated from Earlham College there and earned a master’s degree in zoology from Indiana University. He first worked for the Indiana Conservation Department. He was a park ranger, park naturalist and fisheries superintendent until World War II, when he helped produce antibiotics at Schenley Corp. He joined the national Fish and Wildlife Service after the war, first in Montana and then Washington. He was the first director of the service’s sport fisheries division. After five years in Boston as director of the 11-state northeast region, Gottschalk was named national director in 1964. After retiring from government, he worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service and the International Assn. of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. On Friday in Arlington, Va., of cancer.

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* Sir John Hale; Renaissance Historian

Sir John Hale, 75, Renaissance historian who said his greatest extracurricular pleasure was “looking at works of art.” Hale was chairman of the Board of Trustees of England’s National Gallery from 1974 to 1980 and was a trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1984 to 1988. He wrote seven television scripts for the BBC series “One Hundred Great Paintings.” Disparaging his writing style, Hale said that as an academic his greatest value was to provide information for the research of other writers. Nevertheless, he earned the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Time Life Silver Pen Award for his most recent book, “The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance.” He won acclaim for other books, such as “England and the Italian Renaissance” in 1954, “Renaissance War Studies” in 1982 and “Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance” in 1990. Educated at Oxford, Hale taught Italian history at Oxford, Warwick University and University College in London. On Thursday in London of complications from a stroke.

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* Frederick Hart; Sculptor of ‘Ex Nihilo’

Frederick Hart, 56, sculptor best known for the “Creation Sculptures” at the National Cathedral in Washington. The 21-by-15-foot sculpture “Ex Nihilo,” a bas-relief work completed in 1983 at the cathedral’s main entrance, is considered Hart’s masterwork. Hart also is known for the “Three Soldiers” bronze statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The 7-foot statue was added to the memorial in 1984 as a concession to critics of the main design, the black granite V-shaped wall displaying the names of the Vietnam dead. Critics thought the wall, designed by Maya Ying Lin and dedicated in 1982, was too abstract. Hart’s other works include the bust of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond for the U.S. Capitol and a statue of former President Jimmy Carter for the Georgia Capitol grounds. Last year, Hart reached a settlement with Warner Bros. over the use of “Ex Nihilo” in the Al Pacino film “The Devil’s Advocate.” The sculpture depicts the creation of mankind from chaos as told in the book of Genesis. In the film, an image of the sculpture comes to life and writhes erotically in the apartment of the devil. Warner Bros. insisted it had not used the work, but agreed to change the film “to eliminate any perceived confusion.” On Friday in Baltimore of pneumonia after suffering from lung cancer.

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* Altina Miranda; Designer of Harlequin Eyeglasses

Altina Schinasi Miranda, 92, heiress and designer who created the avant-garde Harlequin eyeglasses popular after World War II. Born in New York City, she was the daughter of Moussa Schinasi, a Turkish immigrant who made a fortune with his patented cigarette rolling machine. She studied art under George Grosz at the Art Students League of New York and began as a window display designer. Her Harlequin eyeglass frames, which remained popular well into the 1950s, won the Lord & Taylor Annual American Design Award in 1939. But restless with “the business of business,” Miranda left the eye wear industry and studied at the Jepson School of Art in Los Angeles. She made a prize-winning documentary film about her former teacher, Grosz, called “Interregnum.” She married her fourth husband, artist Celestino Miranda, in 1981 and moved to Santa Fe, N.M. Altina Miranda was a painter and sculptor and in recent years made chairs she called “chairacters.” Her work is represented in the collection of the National Women’s Museum. On Thursday in Santa Fe.

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* Edward L. Morgan; Illegally Backdated Nixon Gift

Edward L. Morgan, 61, who pleaded guilty to signing a backdated deed to former President Richard M. Nixon’s gift of his official vice presidential papers. Morgan, an attorney, served on Nixon’s White House domestic policy staff and as assistant secretary of the treasury under William E. Simon. Nixon was seeking a $576,000 tax deduction for donating his papers to the National Archives. The donation was actually made after expiration of a law providing tax deductions for such gifts, but backdated to take advantage of the law. Morgan said he agreed to sign the deed because Nixon’s tax attorney told him he was only “memorializing” an action that had already taken place. Morgan pleaded guilty in 1974 to conspiring to defraud the government, but received no prison sentence because of his cooperation with prosecutors of other Nixon associates. Educated at the University of Arizona and its law school, Morgan served as a captain in the Army and was a trial lawyer in Phoenix before joining Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. On Aug. 6 in Santa Monica after a long illness.