Robert W. Guenther; 30-Year Newsman at The Times

Robert W. “Wally” Guenther, 69, who spent 30 years with the Los Angeles Times in a number of positions, including editorial director of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, editor of Home magazine, You magazine and TV Times, Travel editor, and as an editor for Times on Demand. A graduate of Cal State L.A., Guenther began his newspaper career in 1948 as a copy boy on the old Los Angeles Daily News. He joined The Times in 1955 as a copy editor in the suburban sections. In 1969, he began an eight-year stint as editor in chief of House Beautiful magazine in New York. He returned to The Times in 1978. Guenther is survived by his wife, Jolene; two daughters, Jane Gamble of Beaverton, Ore., and Anne Guenther, managing editor of TV Times; and three grandchildren. There will be no services. Donations may be made to the Wellness Community in Westlake Village or to TreePeople. Of cancer in Los Angeles on Monday.

Bernice Waller McKenna; Claremont McKenna Benefactor

Bernice Waller McKenna, 91, benefactor of Claremont McKenna College and widow of college founder Donald Carnegie McKenna. McKenna met her husband in elementary school in Claremont and attended Pomona College with him. She shared her husband’s personal and philanthropic interests, supporting Claremont McKenna’s Atheneum speaker series and international student scholarships. She is survived by a sister, Margaret Heald of Laguna Beach; son Malcolm, a vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; four grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. Contributions may be made to the Nature Conservancy of Colorado, 1244 Pine St., Boulder, CO 80302, in honor of McKenna’s love of the Colorado Rockies. On Saturday at her home in Laguna Beach.

Harvey Miller, 63; Co-Wrote ‘Private Benjamin’

Harvey Miller, 63, television and film writer, producer, director and actor. Miller had an eclectic career, which began in the 1960s when he wrote lines for comedian Dick Gregory, President Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader and later for comics Shecky Greene, Alan King and Sandy Baron. His work with Baron on a television series called “Hey Landlord!” launched him as a writer, producer and director for “The Odd Couple” and other popular shows, including “Taxi” and “The Tracy Ullman Show.” His most successful venture into film was the 1980 Goldie Hawn vehicle “Private Benjamin,” which Miller co-wrote and produced. It earned him an Oscar nomination and an award for best original screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. Last year he ventured onto the stage, starring in a one-man show called “A Cheap Date With Harvey Miller” at the Court Theatre in Los Angeles. The show opened to good reviews and was filled with self-deprecating zingers, such as this line summing up his adolescence as a loner with raging hormones: “I’m dying to be intimate with someone who will leave me alone.” The show was scheduled to open off-Broadway this spring. He is survived by a brother, Stanley Howard, a niece and a nephew. On Friday of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles.

Naomi Mitchison, 101; Scottish Novelist, Poet

Naomi Mitchison, 101, a prolific poet and novelist and radical feminist, known as the doyenne of Scottish literature. Born in Edinburgh in 1897, Mitchison attended Oxford University and wanted to be a scientist, inspired by her father, the biologist J.S. Haldane. But she gave up her studies and turned to writing, producing 18 novels--most of them historical--over five decades. She also wrote science fiction, poetry, children’s books and a three-volume autobiography. Her most controversial work was “We Have Been Warned,” published in 1935, which was ultimately censored for its exploration of rape, seduction and abortion. Mitchison, who was married to a member of the Labor Party in Parliament, was deeply interested in politics and was an ardent feminist and Bohemian, subscribing to the principles of open marriage. She helped establish the first birth control clinics in London and was involved in political action with the counterrevolution in Austria in 1934 and with sharecroppers in Arkansas in 1935. On Monday in Scotland.

Eid-ul-Ara Begum Nasrin; Mother of Controversial Author

Eid-ul-Ara Begum Nasrin, 61, the mother of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin. Nasrin’s imminent death from colon cancer drew her daughter out of a four-year self-imposed exile in September. Taslima Nasrin went home to nurse her dying mother, despite death threats from Islamic extremists who have charged her with blasphemy and placed a $5,000 bounty on her head. A physician turned poet, novelist and journalist, the younger Nasrin has vigorously criticized Muslim treatment of women. In her 1993 novel “Shame,” she criticized Muslim intolerance of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority. She was forced to flee when an Indian newspaper quoted her as saying that the Koran should be rewritten. Although she denied making the remark, a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa, or religious edict against her, forcing her into the same predicament faced until recently by Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie. She went into exile, living in Sweden, France, Germany and New York. When word of her plans to return to Bangladesh got out, her mother pleaded for her safety. Nasrin remains a fugitive under Bangladeshi law, but was by her mother’s side when she died Monday of cancer in Mymensingh, 70 miles north of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital.