Kevin Berry

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) _ Kevin Berry, who won a gold medal for Australia at the 1964 Olympics and set 10 swimming world records during his career, died Thursday. He was 61.

Berry died after a fall in a nursing home, Swimming Australia said in a statement.

His gold at Tokyo came in the 200-meter butterfly and followed his three gold medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia.

Berry, who had suffered from an undisclosed illness in recent years, was picture editor of the Sydney Morning Herald after he retired from swimming and later became head of Australian Broadcasting Corp., sport.

___

David Bronstein

MOSCOW (AP) _ David Bronstein, a chess grandmaster who nearly became world champion, died Tuesday, the World Chess Federation announced. He was 82.

He died in Minsk, Belarus, the federation said. It did not give the cause of death, but the Russian Chess Federation said he died of a stroke.

(Story continues below)

Bronstein, born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, was champion of the U.S.S.R. in 1948 and 1949. He challenged reigning champion Mikhail Botvinnik in 1951, but drew the match 12-12 _ despite leading with two games left to play _ leaving the title in Botvinnik's hands.

It quoted Bronstein as saying once that chess has an almost spiritual aspect: "Beauty is the most important aspect of chess. ... We are passing our knowledge and our understanding of beauty to the next generations, and thus life goes on forever."

___

Russell A. Buchanan

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) _ Russell A. Buchanan, one of the nation's last surviving World War I veterans, died Wednesday. He was 106.

The longtime Watertown resident suffered a stroke the day before Thanksgiving and died at Mount Auburn Hospital, said Marge Schwendenman, executive director of Brigham House, an assisted living facility in Watertown where Buchanan spent his last two years.

Buchanan served in the Navy in the final months of World War I and then enlisted in the Army to serve in World War II when he was in his 40s.

He remained physically active in his old age by regularly walking at a local shopping mall well past his 100th birthday. He participated in a Veterans Day event at the Statehouse last month, Schwendenman said.

Buchanan at first tried to join the Marines but was turned down, he told The Boston Globe in a 2001 interview. He was allowed to join the Navy in 1918 only after gaining a few pounds to make the 118-pound minimum.

Between the wars, he worked as a pressman with Cambridge Paper Box Co. After joining the Army in 1940, he was sent to Europe.

There are 14 confirmed World War I veterans still alive in the United States, said Terry Jemison of the federal Veterans Affairs Administration. There is believed to be just one other World War I veteran in Massachusetts, 110-year-old Antonio Pierro of Swampscott.

___

Muriel Cohen

BOSTON (AP) _ Muriel Cohen, whose reporting and vast contacts helped The Boston Globe win the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1975, died Tuesday of cancer, family and former colleagues said. She was 86.

She died at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Cohen, who worked as an education reporter at the Globe for 20 years and contributed freelance articles after she had retired, was known to possess the most extensive Rolodex of any reporter covering the Boston school district. The access helped the paper during its coverage of school desegregation, for which it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Cohen was born Muriel Libin in Chelsea to Russian immigrants. She graduated from Simmons College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Before being hired by the Globe in 1972, Cohen worked as a Boston Herald Traveler reporter.

___

Pat Holshouser

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. (AP) _ Pat Holshouser, the wife of former North Carolina Gov. Jim Holshouser, died Wednesday evening at her home. She was 67.

Pat Holshouser died after a long illness, according to the Bowles Funeral Home in Southern Pines. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported on its Web site that she died after being diagnosed with cancer.

Pat Holshouser became first lady at age 33 after her husband, a Watauga County state House member, upset Democrat Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles in 1972. He was the state's first Republican governor of the 20th century.

At the time, North Carolina governors were limited to one four-year term.

During her husband's term, Pat Holshouser managed the restoration of the Executive Mansion and accompanied him on a European trade mission. She also used that time to attend college to earn a nursing degree.

___

Johnnie Bryan Hunt Sr.

LOWELL, Ark. (AP) _ Johnnie Bryan Hunt Sr., a former truck driver who founded one of the nation's largest trucking companies, died Thursday, the company announced. He was 79.

Hunt had been in critical condition at a Springdale hospital after hitting his head when he fell on some ice at a parking lot near his home in Goshen on Saturday. A sharecropper's son, he began J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. in 1969 with five tractors and seven trailers.

By 2004, when Hunt stepped down as the company's senior chairman, the company was a billion-dollar business with more than 16,000 employees and a fleet of some 11,000 trucks.

After he retired, Hunt pursued interests as a private investor in real estate, construction, and development. He and his wife, Johnelle, remained the largest shareholder of J.B. Hunt stock.

Saying federal regulation made it hard to break into the trucking business, Hunt built his fleet of company-owned trucks, driven by uniformed drivers. He courted Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton, who eventually became Hunt's largest customer. All of Hunt's workers were non-union and still are. He saved on fuel costs by giving bonuses to drivers who drove 55 mph.

In 1980, the trucking industry was deregulated, and J.B. Hunt Transport accelerated its growth. Three years later, the company went public. The company had $63 million in revenues in 1983.

In his trucking business, Hunt introduced computers to drivers in the 1990s. Drivers use on-board computers to communicate with fleet managers, ending the search for telephones to find out about the next load.

___

Jay McShann

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) _ Jay "Hootie" McShann, a jazz pianist and bandleader who helped refine the blues-tinged Kansas City sound and introduced the world to saxophonist Charlie Parker, died Thursday. He was 90.

He died at St. Luke's Hospital. The cause of death was not released to the public, hospital spokeswoman Kerry O'Connor said.

McShann, whose musical career spanned eight decades and earned him accolades from both blues and jazz aficionados, was born James Columbus McShann on Jan. 12, 1916 in Muskogee, Okla. Against the wishes of his parents, he taught himself how to play piano, in part by listening to late-night radio broadcasts featuring pianist and bandleader Earl "Fatha" Hines.

He hooked up with Parker in 1937, after hearing the sax genius' music coming out of a Kansas City club, and the two worked together off and on until 1941. Parker, who earned his nickname "Bird" while playing with McShann's orchestra, made his recording debut on McShann's "Hootie Blues" in 1941.

McShann's own nickname stemmed from an incident in which someone slipped him a loaded drink during a jam session. McShann, a nondrinker, was unable to play at the "hootenanny," and the sobriquet, shortened to "Hootie," stuck.

His recording career also took off again, and in 2003, his CD "Goin' to Kansas City" was nominated for a traditional blues Grammy.

He was the subject of a film, "Hootie Blues," in 1978 and was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1996, he received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

In 2000, the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City named its outdoor performance pavilion for McShann.

___

Benjamin S. Ruffin

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ Benjamin S. Ruffin, a one-time aide to Gov. Jim Hunt and the first black chairman of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, died Thursday after an apparent heart attack, a university spokeswoman said. He was 64.

Ruffin suffered the heart attack at his home in this Winston-Salem suburb and could not be revived, said UNC spokeswoman Joni Worthington.

In 1998, Ruffin became the first black to be elected chairman of the board the oversees the university's 16-campus system. At the time, he was also a vice president for corporate affairs at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, but retired the next year to focus more attention on his work with the university system.

Ruffin previously worked as a vice president with the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. and served as a special assistant to former Gov. Jim Hunt.

At the time of his death, Ruffin was an emeritus member of the university system's Board of Governors. The other emeritus member of the board is former Gov. Jim Holshouser, whose wife, Pat, died Wednesday evening.

___

Alma Shippy

SWANNANOA, N.C. (AP) _ Alma Shippy, who became the first black to attend Warren Wilson College after students at the all-white school voted to admit him in 1952, died Dec. 1 in Asheville, college officials said. He was 72.

The cause of death was not immediately available.

Alma Joseph Lee Shippy enrolled at Warren Wilson, then a two-year junior college, a year after the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill admitted five black law students and three years before it admitted its first black undergraduates.

The difference was that Shippy was admitted with the overwhelming support of students and administrators, while the UNC students had to fight in court for an order forcing the school to admit them, historian Peter Wallenstein said Thursday.

He was admitted to Warren Wilson at the urging of a group of students who gained the backing of college President Arthur Bannerman and Dean Henry Jensen. Sunderland Hall dorm residents voted 54-1 to accept Shippy as a fellow student.

When businesses in the community were less welcoming, Shippy's classmates shared in his treatment. If he was refused service in a restaurant, everyone got up and left with him and, at the movies, everyone went in the back door with Shippy and sat in the balcony, said Rodney Lytle, a 1973 Warren Wilson graduate who is now its multicultural adviser.

College officials believed Shippy was the first black to attend a junior college in the modern South, but Wallenstein said he was actually preceded by at least one other _ Ada Webb, who was admitted to Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Va., in 1948.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.