Notable deaths in 2004, April thru June
Stanley M. Gortikov, a former head of Capitol Records who served as president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America during a time when record companies, responding to outside pressure, agreed to print warning labels on rock albums containing explicit or suggestive lyrics, died at his home Los Angeles on Thursday, June 24, 2004. He was 85. In 1985, he and his organization were forced to address the concerns of the Parents Music Resource Center, an organization spearheaded by Tipper Gore (wife of then-Tennessee Sen. Al Gore), Sandy Baker (wife of then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III) and other well-connected Washington, D.C., wives and mothers. After consulting with the heads of the major record companies, Gortikov, and the group agreed to printing warning labels on the jackets of explicit records. (AP/Los Angeles Times)
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Notable deaths in 2004, April thru June
Frances Shand Kydd, the mother of the late Princess Diana, died on Thursday, June 3, 2004, at her home in Oban on Scotland’s Argyll coast. She was 68. She was born Frances Ruth Burke Roche, daughter of the Fourth Baron Fermoy. Her mother, Lady Ruth Fermoy, was a confidante and lady in waiting to the late Queen Mother, and later had a hand in promoting Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles. She married Edward John Spencer, 12 years her senior, in 1954. They had three daughters - Diana was the youngest - and one son. The marriage foundered in 1967 when she fell in love with Peter Shand Kydd, a married wallpaper heir. The Shand’s divorced in 1969. She married Kydd in 1969. Diana stayed with her father after the split. Decades later she recalled her childhood was unhappy and unstable: “The biggest disruption was when Mummy decided to leg it. That’s the vivid memory we have - the four of us (including her brother and two sisters).” Kydd admitted a turbulent relationship with her daughter. She also admitted she had not spoken to Diana in the last four months of her life and that the princess had returned all her letters unopened. Princess Di and her companion, Dodi Fayed, were killed on Aug. 31, 1997, in a crash in a Paris tunnel. This photo shows mother and daughter in 1993 in Scotland. (AP/Adam Butler, file)
Phil Gersh, shown in his Los Angeles office in February 2002, was one of the last of the Hollywood agents who dominated the talent business in the 1940’s and 50’s and represented some of the great stars and filmmakers of Hollywood’s golden age. He died on Monday, May 10, 2004, at his home in Beverly Hills, his family announced. He was 92. Hollywood celebrities he represented included actors Humphrey Bogart, David Niven, James Mason, William Holden, June Allyson and Richard Burton, directors Don Siegel and Robert Wise and writers Budd Schulberg and Julius J. Epstein. (AP/Los Angeles Times, Ken Hively, file)
The Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, a Catholic priest who served 35 years as executive vice president of the University of Notre Dame before retiring in 1987, died May 2 at Holy Cross House on the Notre Dame campus of complications from a stroke suffered in 2002. He was 87. Father Joyce oversaw the school’s finances and building programs. During his tenure, the operating budget grew from $9 million to $400 million and more than 40 new buildings were constructed on campus. The student body grew from 5,000 to 9,000. He also headed the university’s board in charge of athletics. During his tenure, the Irish won national football championships in 1966, 1973 and 1977, and they won another the year after he retired. The basketball team went to the NCAA tournament 21 times, advancing to the Final Four in 1978. (AP/South Bend Tribune, file)
Architect Pierre Koenig talks about about using steel in the design of homes in Sept. 18, 1995. Koenig, a leader in the Modernist movement that became emblematic of progressive postwar America, died on Sunday, April 4, 2004, in Los Angeles. He was 78. (AP/The Los Angeles Times, Perry C. Riddle)
