Hank Palmieri; National Geographic Filmmaker

Hank Palmieri, 43, who created National Geographic’s feature film division. A member of the New York Explorer’s Club and the Royal Geographic Society, Palmieri was a natural to bring drama to the documentaries and nature films of the historic magazine. Educated at London’s School of Architecture, he pursued a career as a Los Angeles architect before becoming a production executive at Vista Films. Palmieri, who credited his international view to a trip around the world with his father at the age of 12, sought to portray the core idealism that drove each hero’s quest for discovery, innovation and exploration. Among his films were “Forbidden Territory,” about the meeting of Dr. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley in Africa, which appeared on ABC in December 1997. Other projects included the upcoming mini-series about Lewis and Clark based on Stephen Ambrose’s book “Undaunted Courage,” and the story of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. On Sept. 18 in Malibu of metastatic melanoma.

Basil Rodzianko; Retired Bishop of Orthodox Church

Basil Rodzianko, 84, retired bishop of the Orthodox Church in America who formerly ministered in San Francisco. For more than 30 years, the bishop made regular religious radio broadcasts from England and the United States to his native Russia and the Soviet Union over Vatican Radio and the Voice of America. He moved to the United States in 1978 as bishop of Washington and of the Orthodox Church in America, which is an independent unit of the Russian Orthodox Church. He later took on additional duties as bishop of San Francisco and the West and lived for a time in San Francisco. He retired in 1984 and returned to Washington, where he continued his radio broadcasts. Since 1991 he had made regular visits to Moscow, where he appeared on Russian national television. On Sept. 17 in Washington of cardiac arrest.

Forrest Shelton; Taught Tuskegee Airmen to Fly

Forrest Shelton, 79, flying instructor who trained the first black aviators in U.S. military history, the famed Tuskegee Airmen. Shelton was born in Tuskegee, Ala., and learned to fly as a student at Georgia Military Academy, now Woodward Academy, in College Park, Ga. He began the training of black military pilots at a time when white Americans thought that teaching blacks to fly was impossible. Segregation in the armed forces was widely accepted. In what was then the Army Air Corps, blacks dined and were housed in separate quarters from whites. Even after the Tuskegee Airmen’s unit--the 332nd Fighter Group--was formed in 1941, the Army assigned its black pilots to separate bases and rest camps. Shelton trained about 1,000 black aviators at the U.S. Army air base in Tuskegee, helping to create an elite corps that changed the course of race relations in the U.S. military. “Shelton gave these men the opportunity to fight for their country when they were discriminated against, when they had to fight for the right to fight for their country,” retired U.S. Air Force Col. Roosevelt Lewis, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, told Reuters. “There are hundreds of stories about the tricks he played on his students to convince them they were ready to fly solo.” The Tuskegee Airmen compiled an exemplary record, flying more than 1,500 missions over Europe and North Africa and destroying more than 600 planes. While escorting bombers on their missions, the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a single bomber to enemy fighters. Shelton was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his work training the black airmen. He later served as a major in the Air Force reserves during the Korean War and flew commercially as a pilot for National Airlines and Piedmont Airlines. On Saturday of cancer in Tuskegee.

Dr. Ellis E. Toney Jr.; Pioneer Black Psychoanalyst

Dr. Ellis E. Toney Jr., 81, the first black psychiatrist trained by the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Born in Sanford, N.C., Toney graduated from Talladega College in Alabama and earned his medical degree at Howard University. After interning at Harlem Hospital, he served as an Army surgeon in Europe during World War II. After the war, Toney took psychiatric training at the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Los Angeles and in 1947 added psychoanalytic training at the institute. After completing that training in 1954, Toney joined the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society. He was also a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and practiced psychiatry for many years in Beverly Hills. He remained on the staff of the Veterans Administration Hospital Mental Hygiene Clinic from 1949 until his retirement in 1975. Toney also taught at UCLA Medical School, specializing in treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction, and taught psychiatric residents working at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital/Drew Medical Center. He was a consultant to Catholic Big Brothers and to several clinics serving the poor, and helped found the Central City Community Mental Health Center. Among Toney’s extensive writings were “Transference and Counter-Transference in Interracial Psychotherapy” and “The Assessment and Treatment of Afro-American Families.” On Sept. 17 in Los Angeles of respiratory failure after a stroke.

John Vanderhoff; Former NASA Chief Scientist

John W. Vanderhoff, 74, scientist who helped create the first product manufactured in space. As former chief scientist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Vanderhoff helped develop a chemical process that made tiny plastic spheres, each measuring about 1/2,500th of an inch. Nearly a billion of the mini-spheres were produced aboard the Challenger space shuttle in 1985. The spheres were sold to eight companies, one university and the Food and Drug Administration to be used as microscopic yardsticks. Vanderhoff had helped create the chemical process during his long tenure at Lehigh University. On Sept. 16 in Bethlehem, Pa.