Obituaries - Nov. 1, 1999

Theodore Benzinger; Invented Ear Thermometer

Theodore H. Benzinger, 94, inventor of the first ear thermometer. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Benzinger was a medical researcher who conducted studies on decompression, and respiratory and high-altitude physiology in German pilots in the 1930s. During that period, he discovered the air embolism as a cause of death from blasts. After World War II, he joined the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., where his studies led to a new method of measuring temperature in humans. His research on temperature regulation research helped to open the field of biothermodynamics. In the late 1950s, he invented a highly accurate ear thermometer, which, after modifications by other researchers, now is a common household item and used widely in doctors’ offices. He developed the human calorimeter, which measures heat gain and loss. Benzinger, who held a dozen patents for inventions and wrote 136 scientific papers, retired from the Navy institute in 1970 as director of its bioenergetics division. On Tuesday in Bethesda of pneumonia.

Leonard E. Boyle; Vatican Librarian

Leonard E. Boyle, 75, who led the Vatican Library into the age of computer catalogs and gift merchandising before being dismissed under cloudy circumstances in 1997. The Irish-born Boyle, an expert in medieval manuscripts who earned a doctorate at Oxford, was ordained in Britain in 1949. He taught at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto for more than 20 years before moving to the Vatican Library in 1984. During his 13 years as keeper of manuscripts and chief librarian, Boyle modernized the library, computerizing its old catalogs, wiring the main reading room for laptops and trying to make money by selling the rights to the library’s warehouse of images. Scandal, however, undermined Boyle’s administration in the mid-1990s. In 1995, an Ohio State University professor, Anthony Melnikas, stole pages from an ancient manuscript once owned by the 14th century Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. Melnikas, a close friend of Boyle’s, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and fined $3,000 for stealing from the Vatican Library and from Spanish cathedral libraries. The next year, the Vatican was forced to pay $1.3 million in attorneys’ fees to settle a lawsuit that resulted from Boyle’s sale of exclusive rights to reproduce library images. Since leaving the library, Boyle had been living quietly with the Dominican community in Rome. Last Monday in Rome, two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas and kidney.

Howard Browne; Movie and TV Screenwriter

Howard Browne, 92, a movie and television screenwriter, novelist and screenwriting teacher at UC San Diego. Born in Omaha, the son of a bakery owner, Browne dropped out of high school and rode the rails to Chicago in the Roaring ‘20s. He was a legman for a local newspaper before getting a job as a department store credit manager. He turned to pulp fiction writing in 1939 in “an effort to escape from a 9 to 5 desk job.” In 1941 he became a magazine editor at Ziff-Davis publishing and stayed in that position while writing novels both under his name and the pseudonym John Evans. Some years ago, a Times reporter characterized Browne’s writing as “spare, with hard-bitten women, guys with guilty secrets and dialogue that crackles like your hair during a Santa Ana windstorm.” In Hollywood, Browne wrote the screenplays for several gangster films, including “Capone,” “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” and “Portrait of a Mobster.” For television, he wrote scripts for “Columbo,” “Mannix,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “The Fugitive” and “Mission: Impossible.” On Thursday in San Diego.

Eknath Easwaran; Meditation Teacher, Author

Eknath Easwaran, 88, an internationally known author and teacher of meditation. Born into an ancient matrilineal family in Kerala state, South India, Easwaran left his village at age 16 to attend a nearby Catholic college. As a young man, Easwaran met Mohandas K. Gandhi. That experience had a profound impact on his life, teaching him the power of the individual. After graduate work at the University of Nagpur in central India, where he took degrees in literature and in law, Easwaran entered the teaching profession. He eventually returned to Nagpur as a full professor and head of the graduate school of English. He developed a reputation as a writer and a speaker, contributing articles to the Times of India and giving talks on English literature on All-India radio. He came to the United States in 1959 on a Fulbright scholarship and began giving talks throughout the San Francisco Bay Area on India’s spiritual tradition. Before returning to India at the end of his Fulbright tour, Easwaran founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in Berkeley, designed to teach his eight-point program of meditation. In 1965, he returned to California from India and remained here for the rest of his life. In 1968 at UC Berkeley, he inaugurated what is believed to be the first academic course on meditation offered for credit at a major American university. In 1971, he moved with some of his students to a 250-acre farm near Petaluma, where he continued his work. Easwaran also founded the Nilgiri Press, through which he sold many of his books on spiritual matters, the most popular being “Meditation,” which has sold more than 200,000 copies since 1978. On Tuesday in Tomales, Calif.

Xie Fei; Leader in China’s Politburo

Xie Fei, 66, a leading member of China’s ruling Communist Party who pushed for rapid economic growth in Guangdong province. A native of Guangdong, Xie had been a member of China’s policymaking Politburo since 1992. As the party’s boss of Guangdong, Xie pushed for rapid growth to help strengthen the southern province’s position as a powerhouse of the Chinese economy. But under Xie’s rule, Guangdong also developed a reputation for corruption and crime. Some of the province’s cities became havens for smuggling, drugs, prostitution and unsafe conditions for factory workers. Xie, who joined the Communist Party in July 1949, just months before the Communists seized power in China, was appointed vice chairman of the National People’s Congress in early 1998, ending his rule of Guangdong. On Wednesday in Guangdong. China’s official television did not announce the cause of death, but Xie was believed to be battling cancer.

Walter Skees; Army Officer Sang for Presidents

Walter Francis Skees, 64, who sang for seven presidents in the White House as the Army’s top vocalist. Skees, a retired sergeant major, was a soldier from 1955 to 1983. He began singing at the age of 7 on radio stations in Providence, R.I., his hometown. At the age of 19 he was drafted into the Army, where he won a contest to select the service’s best vocalist, following such notables as Eddie Fisher and Steve Lawrence. He entertained Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. Nixon was a special fan of Skees, according to the soldier’s wife, Patricia. He would often ask the singing soldier to perform on the presidential yacht. “After the guests left, Nixon liked to play the piano,” she told reporters. “Nixon would play and Walter would sing till 3 or 4 in the morning. . . . They did this quite often.” Skees also performed on television shows hosted by Bob Hope, Steve Allen and Merv Griffin. After his retirement from the Army, Skees worked as a cruise director. On Oct. 23 in Carmel, Calif., of a heart attack.

Saumiamoorthy Thondaman; Sri Lankan Trade Unionist

Saumiamoorthy Thondaman, 87, leading Sri Lankan trade unionist who led a massive 1998 strike of tea and rubber plantation workers. Thondaman was the longtime head of the Ceylon Workers Congress, a 1-million-strong union of rubber and tea plantation workers, mainly Tamils of Indian origin. Born to a south Indian family that owned a tea estate in the former British colony of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, he came to identify with the tea workers on his father’s estate. As head of the union, he led workers in several strikes over the past decade that critics said left Sri Lanka’s tea industry unable to compete with cheaper operations in Kenya and Indonesia. He led 600,000 workers in a nine-day strike over wages last year that brought the country’s vital tea production to a halt. The workers’ wage demands were met, although the strike caused an estimated $60-million loss in export revenues. Thondaman was such an important figure in Sri Lanka that he was given a seat in the Cabinet, leading to a paradoxical situation in which he was leading strikes against his own government. For the past two decades, he successfully squeezed the government for wage hikes for tea plantation workers although output per acre was stagnant or in decline. Thondaman was a hero to thousands of Indian Tamils, who were brought to the island nation by the British to work on tea estates but were denied citizenship in Sri Lanka after it won independence in 1948. Thondaman won citizenship for them. Elected to Parliament in 1947, Thondaman was instrumental in keeping the Indian Tamils out of the separatist movement of Tamil militants. On Saturday of heart failure in Colombo, Sri Lanka.