* Gaby Brimmer; Mexican Writer Inspired Film

Gaby Brimmer, 52, Mexican writer whose struggle with cerebral palsy inspired the 1987 movie “Gaby, a True Story.” Brimmer was born in Mexico City, the daughter of Austrian Jewish emigres. She was afflicted from birth with cerebral palsy so severe that she was unable to speak and had movement only in her left leg and foot. With the help of a devoted nanny, she learned to communicate by pointing at letters on an alphabet board attached to the footrest of her wheelchair. Encouraged by her parents and a junior high teacher, she began to write poetry. By 1980 she was a published poet and had written her autobiography. “How can I scream when I can’t talk? How can I stop loving with the seed of a woman inside me?” she wrote. “God, if life is so many things that I am not, and never will be, give me the strength to be what I am.” Her poignant story caught the eye of film director Luis Mandoki, who brought it to the screen several years later in a critically praised film that starred Robert Loggia and Liv Ullmann as Brimmer’s parents and Rachel Levin as Brimmer. The film portrayed Brimmer’s struggle to communicate, to receive an education in regular schools and to find romance. Times reviewer Kevin Thomas called it “an emotion-charged expression of the triumph of the spirit.” On Monday of a stroke in Mexico City.

* William H. Burgess; Electronics Entrepreneur

William H. Burgess, 82, former chairman of International Controls Corp. who built a small Los Angeles firm into an electronics empire. Burgess, a Minneapolis native and Harvard Business School graduate, joined Electronic Specialty Co. as a salesman in 1946. He took over the company, which made a device called the Shavex for speeding up electric shavers, a few years later and immediately began to reorganize and diversify the faltering business. By 1962, the company had grown from six to 4,000 employees and had $66 million in annual sales from its operations in nine states, Canada and Western Europe. “Don’t let anybody tell you there are no more fortunes to be made in this country,” he said in a 1961 interview, when he was 43. In 1968, his company was merged with International Controls Corp., which tottered near bankruptcy in the early 1970s after founder Robert Vesco fled the country on fraud charges. The company recovered from its financial problems and Burgess became chairman of International Controls’ operating committee in 1978. He served as chairman of the board from 1984 to 1987, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A longtime resident of Pasadena, he later moved to Palm Springs, where he helped organize a Presbyterian church and built the Clara Burgess Trail, a bridle path named for his wife, who survives him, along with two daughters and six grandchildren. An avid tennis player, Burgess was international president of the Young Presidents Organization and a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. A funeral service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Palm Springs Presbyterian Church, 620 S. Sunrise, Palm Springs. On Dec. 31 of cancer at his Palm Springs home.

* George Carl; Comedian in Vaudeville, Circus, Films

George Carl, 83, a comedian who last appeared in Jerry Lewis’ 1995 motion picture “Funny Bones.” A native of Ohio, Carl pursued his show business career largely in the circus and in vaudeville, beginning as a teenager. He was an acrobat and a clown, and was adept at pantomime. He modeled some of his slapstick routines after Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. Carl performed for Queen Elizabeth and was honored at the Circus of Monte Carlo with a clowning award presented by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco. Carl also appeared in the 1977 film “Crazy Horse de Paris” and in the television specials “Clownaround” in 1972, “A Whole Lotta Fun” and “New Vaudevillians III” in 1988 and “The Annual American Comedy Awards” in 1989. On Jan. 1 in Las Vegas.

* Bill Lancaster; Longtime GOP Assembly Member

Bill Lancaster, 68, a former ranking Republican in the Assembly who represented the eastern San Gabriel Valley for two decades. Lancaster’s career in politics started in 1958 when he was elected to the Duarte City Council. His tenure in Sacramento began in 1972 when he was elected to the 62nd Assembly District as a conservative. Yet he went against the GOP position and opposed Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax cut, out of concern that it would starve local coffers. Lancaster served on several committees and was a vice chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee. He left office in 1992 rather than battle fellow Republican Richard Mountjoy after a court-mandated plan merged their districts. On Sunday of a heart attack at the Inter-Community Campus of Citrus Valley Medical Center, where he was being treated for a lung infection.

* Dick Pabich; San Francisco Political Advisor

Dick Pabich, 44, political consultant who helped elect San Francisco’s first openly homosexual supervisor, Harvey Milk. Pabich and former associate Jim Rivaldo ran Milk’s historic 1977 campaign. Afterward, Pabich followed Milk to City Hall as an aide. He was steps away when Milk’s tenure came to an abrupt and tragic end. On Nov. 27, 1978, he saw former Supervisor Dan White enter Milk’s office and heard shots. White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Milk. After the murders, Pabich was cleaning out Milk’s office when he found a bottle of Chivas Regal Scotch that White gave to Milk before he killed him. White had given a bottle to each of his fellow supervisors when his son was born. Pabich saved the bottle, promising to open it the day White was convicted of murder. But on May 21, 1979, a jury found White guilty of manslaughter, not murder, a verdict that caused the city’s gay community to erupt in a window-smashing, police-car-burning riot. The bottle of Scotch remained unopened until seven years later, when White gassed himself in his garage after spending five years in prison. “It’s sitting in my house and I’m going to open it,” Pabich told a reporter after White’s suicide. “I haven’t been sitting here clamoring for his death, but this seems a fitting close to the story.” Pabich entered political consulting after Milk’s death and ran successful campaigns for Harry Britt, who was named to succeed Milk after his assassination. He also was a close advisor to Assemblywoman Carole Migden, who praised his “lifetime promoting social change.” He recently served as Mayor Willie Brown’s unpaid advisor on AIDS issues. On Jan. 1 of AIDS-related complications in San Francisco.