The Mets said the cause was cardiac arrest.

He is the fourth member of the Mets’ 1969 World Series championship team — the “Miracle Mets,” as they were called — to die this year, following Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson and Jim McAndrew.

The Mets were nearly halfway to a 40-120 record in 1962, their first season as a National League franchise, when they signed Kranepool for a bonus of $80,000. A tall, left-handed batter, he had just broken Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg’s single-season home run record at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Ed was 17 and living at home.

Kranepool brought a jolt of youthful promise to a team managed by Casey Stengel, the wizened former New York Yankees skipper, and stocked with mediocrities, castoffs, players past their primes and the inaccurately nicknamed Marvelous Marv Throneberry.

When Stengel assessed Kranepool’s talent, he told The New York Times: “He don’t strike out too much and he don’t let himself get suckered into goin’ for bad pitches. I wouldn’t be afraid to play him. He don’t embarrass you.”

After playing briefly for the Mets at the end of the 1962 season, Kranepool struggled against major league pitching during the next two seasons. When he faltered in 1963, one fan raised a banner that asked, “Is Ed Kranepool Over the Hill?”

He was 18.

He was soon sent to the Mets’ top minor league team in Buffalo, New York, for parts of the 1963 and 1964 seasons.

And in 1970, when a batting average of .118 led to another demotion, Times columnist Robert Lipsyte wrote, “Kranepool was the last player linked to the bad old days, and it might have been more than symbolic that the Mets rose into first place the day after he was cut loose, like a balloon freed of ballast.”

He was promoted about six weeks later, played sparingly and wound up hitting .170. And the Mets faded to third place.

But the next season was one of Kranepool’s best — he hit 14 home runs, drove in a career-high 58 runs and batted .280.

Nicknamed “Steady Eddie, ” Kranepool inspired fans to chant “Ed-die! Ed-die!” He was selected to the 1965 National League All-Star team, though he didn’t play. In the 1969 World Series, he hit a home run as the Mets rolled to the championship in five games over the favored Baltimore Orioles.

After the ’69 Series, Kranepool and several teammates, including Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones, put together a musical act that performed in Las Vegas, singing, among other songs, “The Impossible Dream.” After the group’s debut on the Circus Maximus stage at Caesars Palace, Kranepool conceded that the singing Mets were nervous.

“It’s not like Shea Stadium, where we know what we’re doing,” he told the Times. “But we had enough Scotch.”

Edward Emil Kranepool III was born in New York City’s Bronx borough on Nov. 8, 1944, less than four months after his father, Edward Jr., an Army sergeant, was killed in battle in Saint-Lô, France, during World War II. His mother, Ethel (Hasselbach) Kranepool, raised her son and her daughter, Marilyn, on a military pension and earnings from various jobs.

Ethel Kranepool told The Daily News in 1963 that it had been difficult to be a single parent. “With Edward it was always a case of slapping him on the backside with one hand and handing him an ice cream cone with the other,” she said.

Ed Kranepool swung a toy bat at age 3, then played baseball in local playgrounds and sandlots. By high school, he stood 6-foot-3 and was launching long drives at James Monroe’s home field toward a large oak in right center field that came to be known as “Eddie’s Tree.”

He played for the Monroe team that lost, 6-5, to Curtis High School of Staten Island in the Public Schools Athletic League title game in 1962. Around graduation time, he tried out for the Mets at the Polo Grounds, the former home of the New York Giants and the Mets’ temporary home before Shea Stadium opened in 1964. He impressed the team by hitting nine balls into the stands.

That flash of teenage muscle helped give rise to the improbable notion that the Mets might have signed another great left-handed-hitting first baseman, like Mel Ott of the Giants or Lou Gehrig of the Yankees.

But Kranepool never became a superstar. Rather, he was a line-drive hitter with modest power — he never had more than 16 home runs in a season — who turned into an elite pinch-hitter as his time as a first baseman and outfielder diminished.

When the Mets returned to the World Series in 1973, facing the Oakland A’s, Kranepool went hitless in three plate appearances. The Mets lost in seven games.

From 1974 to 1978, he came off the bench to hit .396 as a pinch-hitter. In 1978, he had 15 hits in 50 at bats in that reserve role, including three home runs.

When he retired after the 1979 season, Kranepool held several Mets career records, all but two of which have been surpassed: the most pinch hits, 90, and most games played, 1,853

Kranepool admitted to regrets that he had spent too little time being nurtured in the minor leagues and that he had played for a team so desperate for fresh talent. “If I could have seen ahead in 1962, I would have signed with another club,” he told the Times as the Mets were heading to the World Series in 1969. “It was a lot of fun playing in the majors, but a lot of frustrations, too.”

He is survived by his wife, Monica (Bronner) Kranepool; his daughter, Jamie Pastrano; his sons, Keith Kranepool and Darren Todfield; seven grandchildren; and a sister, Marilyn Ternay.

During his playing career, Kranepool was a stockbroker and, with his teammate the outfielder Ron Swoboda, an owner of The Dugout, a restaurant in Amityville, New York, on Long Island. When he heard in 1979, during his final season, that the Mets might be for sale, he said, he assembled a group to purchase the franchise. But it was acquired by a group led by Fred Wilpon and Doubleday & Co., the publishing house. The Wilpon family later became the team’s majority owner and ultimately sold the Mets to the current owners, Steve and Alex Cohen, in 2020.

In about 2011, with Wilpon and his family facing financial pressure following losses from their involvement with fraudster Bernard L. Madoff, they sought investors to buy minority stakes in the club. At a team dinner, a Mets spokesperson recalled, Kranepool talked to Jeff Wilpon, the club’s chief operating officer and one of Wilpon’s sons, about the sales of the shares.

“I don’t want shares,” the spokesperson quoted Kranepool as saying. “I want to buy the whole team so I can run it better than you and your father.”

The encounter caused a rift that ended seven years later with a call from Jeff Wilpon that led to Kranepool’s throwing out the first pitch before a game in 2018.

“I was on the outside looking in,” Kranepool told the Times, “and I’m glad I’m not anymore.”

In 2017, after announcing that both his kidneys were failing, Kranepool auctioned his 1969 Mets world championship ring for $62,475 to defray medical expenses. After undergoing transplant surgery nearly two years later, he learned who his donor was: a Mets fan.

A few months after the surgery, he helped the Mets celebrate the 50th anniversary of their World Series victory. Speaking at Citi Field during the ceremony, he encouraged the team, then near the bottom of the National League East, to turn their season around.

“They can do it, like we did — you got to believe in yourself,” he said. “Good luck. You have half a season. I wish you the best so that we can celebrate in October.”

The team did rally, finishing third in the division, but there was no 50th-anniversary miracle. The Mets didn’t make the playoffs.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

NEW YORK (AP) — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.

His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.

The pioneering Jones, who in 1965 became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama (“As the World Turns”) and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was also given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.

“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”

Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”

He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions of Disney’s “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.

“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the pavement in these streets looking for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.

Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three blockbuster Tom Clancy adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.

LeVar Burton, who starred alongside Jones in the TV movie “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones,” paid tribute on X, writing, “There will never be another of his particular combination of graces.”

Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”

As a rising stage and television actor, he performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.

Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.

When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.

“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”

Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.

Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.

At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.

In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.

True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.

Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.

In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”

Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.

“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

“What an incredible woman,” said Dr. Susan J. Dulkerian, chair of Mercy Medical Center’s Department of Pediatrics.

“Her forte was her calm, kind empathy and demeanor toward her families and students. She was an extremely kind person,” Dr. Dulkerian said.

Celeste Woodward, daughter of Dr. Theodore E. Woodward, a noted University of Maryland medical educator and a Nobel Prize-nominated researcher in infectious diseases, and Dr. Celeste Woodard, a physician, was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park.

Dr. Woodward, who always used her maiden name professionally, was a 1964 graduate of Roland Park Country School.

She attended Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania Nursing School and the University of Maryland, College Park, but did not earn a bachelor’s degree.

“At Maryland, in her fourth year, they required her to take a course in public speaking, but she didn’t want to do that,” said her daughter, Grace Cleveland of Charlottesville.

Not having a bachelor’s degree did not deter Dr. Woodward from enrolling in medical school at the University of Maryland, from which she graduated in 1972.

While in medical school, she became the first female member of the Rush Medical Club, the oldest student medical club in the country.

She completed both an internship and residency in pediatrics at what was then D.C. Children’s Hospital, now Children’s National Hospital.

From 1974 to 1975, she completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at Maryland.

She was on the pediatric faculty at Maryland from 1975 to 1984 when she joined Mercy Medical Center as a pediatrician and was also an attending physician in the medical center’s outpatient clinic.

While at Mercy, she had a joint appointment at the University of Maryland Medical School, where, as a clinical professor of pediatrics, she continued to train and teach medical students.

“She was the consummate educator. She led by example, and while a woman of few words, they learned plenty from her and that her words meant a lot,” said Dr. Dulkerian.

“It wasn’t uncommon to see trainees or residents having confidential meetings in her office, and I know those confidential conversations meant a great deal to them,” she said.

Dr. Woodward, who was known as “Sis,” retired in 2004.

Roland Park Country School continued to be a thread throughout her lifetime, and in 1998, she became the second woman and first alumna to chair the RPCS board, while becoming the school’s longest-serving trustee.

“She was full of integrity, empathy and had a willingness to work hard. We knew her as a compassionate physician,” said former head of school Jean Waller Brune, RPCS Class of 1960, who headed the school from 1992 to 2016.

“She was a person who lived her ideals. She was an alum of the school and a parent. Her daughter was a graduate of the school,” Ms. Brune said. “Sis was an inspiring person to work with and learn from. She definitely helped me as head of school. She gave sound advice, wisdom and was always willing to listen.”

Prior to moving to Charlottesville some years ago, she and her husband of 52 years, Dr. Mark Applefeld, a retired physician, lived in Poplar Hill, where they graciously hosted RPCS Class of 1964 reunion dinners.

Dr. Woodward was an avid tennis player, reader and baker. She was also an accomplished needlepointer and enjoyed making Christmas ornaments for her grandchildren.

She was a former longtime communicant of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Mount Washington.

A celebration of life gathering for Dr. Woodward will be held on the RPCS campus, 5204 Roland Avenue, at 12:30 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Sinex Theater.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Dr. Woodward is survived by her son, Lewis Applefeld of Rye, New York; and five grandchildren.

“Glyn was a great guy. Hardworking and reliable,” said E. Ray Lichty, a retired CSX executive, longtime colleague and friend. “Tough but fair.”

Glyndon Leslie Bailey, son of Leslie Bailey, an A&P grocery store manager, and Catherine Bailey, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville.

He began his lengthy railroad career with the B&O Railroad in 1940 in the freight office at Camden Station after graduating from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington.

During World War II, he served in an Army ordnance unit from 1943 to 1945 and obtained the rank of sergeant.

Mr. Bailey, who was known as Glyn, was promoted to traveling auditor in 1951, and from 1954 to 1956, he was assigned to Columbus, Ohio, before returning to Baltimore and settling in Catonsville.

He was a traveling auditor responsible for covering the B&O’s eastern territory, and in 1962, he was named chief traveling auditor.

After all freight accounting offices were consolidated into zone accounting offices, Mr. Bailey was put in charge as auditor of all the bureaus.

“As a traveling auditor back in the 1940s and 1950s, he would ride steam-powered trains all over his territory to check the records and ensure all was well and the cash was properly handled,” Mr. Lichty explained in an email. “One day it might be a train to Oakland for a few days and then off to Aberdeen for another review.”

At the time, Mr. Bailey didn’t own a car and commuted to work at the B&O’s headquarters in downtown Baltimore by streetcar.

“When they did audits for a large station, such as the ticket office in the B&O Building, a team would arrive after the office closed for the day and work all night checking the paperwork and the handling of cash and tickets, finishing up in time to open the next morning,” Mr. Lichty wrote.

“When I came to the B&O in 1954, I met him on my first day. Glyn was my assistant director,” said Diane Homburg.

“He was a true gentleman who never spoke a harsh word,” she said. “He was a great boss and fair, and he never played favorites, but fair bosses can’t always be popular,” said Ms. Homburg, who retired in 2009 from CSX where she was a computer programmer. “We became great friends and I was so glad to have known him.”

In 1975, Mr. Bailey was promoted again to auditor-accounts receivable, and finally to director of customer accounting, a position he held until retiring in 1980.

After undergoing bypass surgery in 1990, Mr. Bailey joined The Mended Hearts Inc., a support group for those who had undergone heart surgery.

In retirement, he and his wife, Mary Jeanne Bailey, whom he married in 1943, moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and then returned to Maryland in 1999.

He later became assistant regional director of Mended Hearts and established chapters in hospitals in Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Myrtle Beach and Orangeburg, South Carolina. He also volunteered at LifeBridge Health Sinai Hospital.

He was a member and past president of RABO, a CSX retirees organization.

He was an avid model railroader.

His wife of 72 years died in 2015.

Mr. Bailey was a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Towson, where a Mass of Christian Burial was offered Aug. 28.

He is survived by a son, Thomas M. Bailey of Louisville; a daughter, Mary Jo Rodney of Towson; four grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

“His body gave out and he died of natural causes,” said his daughter Shelly Himmelrich.

Born in Rejowiec, Poland, he was the son of Max Pechter and Sara Bittner. Beginning in 1939, as a 5-year-old, he and his family fled the Nazi occupation of Poland. They moved east and reached the Russian border on horse and buggy, then rode cattle cars with other refugees. They lived in Siberian and Uzbekistan displaced persons camps before reaching Baltimore in 1949.

His father burned all his personal documents to hide their Orthodox Jewish background.

Mr. Pechter’s mother told the family: “Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be better.” She also advised her son to take care of other people throughout his life and planted the seeds of his philanthropic endeavors.

He attended Talmudical Academy and Forest Park High School, where he met his future wife, Marilyn Bernstein. He studied at the University of Maryland, College Park and served two years in the Army.

“My father dove into real estate, first as a laborer, then a broker and quickly scraping a few dollars from friends and family to become an investor and developer,” his daughter said.

He built homes along Route 40 West, along York Road and in Parkville and White Marsh. He also owned the Timonium and Perry Hall shopping centers and the old Enchanted Forest property in Howard County.

In a 1999 Sun story, Mr. Pechter said he believed the power of hate can be diminished only through education. At that time he was the largest private donor to the then-new Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem.

She said her father was inspired by his parents and his journey to help the less fortunate.

“He truly had a rare kindness in him that was inherited straight from his mother. He did all of the things, and worked a lot professionally and in service to others,” said his daughter Shelly.

Named Tau Epsilon Phi’s 1989 Man of the Year, he was a founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Endowment Fund. He was honored by the Midtown Churches of Baltimore, a group based in the Old Goucher neighborhood, for his work for the homeless.

Mr. Pechter was also honored by the Jewish National Fund in 1995 for a lifetime of work.

He was active in the Associated Jewish Charities and Welfare Fund and the State of Israel Bonds. He also supported the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

He was a Sinai Hospital board member, and a cafe there is named in his parents’ honor.

Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Marilyn Bernstein Pechter; two sons, Martin Pechter, of Boca Raton, and Jeffrey Pechter, of Delray Beach, Florida; two daughters, Shelly Himmelrich, of Delray Beach, and Melissa Pechter, of Housatonic, Massachusetts; a sister, Dora Schwartz, of Florida; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Services were held Aug. 26 at B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton.

The longtime Cockeysville resident was 92.

“She was a wonderful teacher, so calm and even-keeled,” said Glen Davis, a former biology and chemistry student who is now an electrical engineer.

“She loved the material and was almost a geek about it. She always was very excited about the lessons and she passed that joy and enthusiasm on for the material,” he said.

Barbara Lois Miles, daughter of Walter Miles, an upholsterer and bartender, and Sally Miles, who sold women’s apparel, was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she graduated from Central Catholic High School in 1950.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1954 from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids.

She also obtained a master’s degree in science in 1971 from Morgan State University and a second master’s degree in education from Towson State University in 1977.

Widowed at 35, after her husband of 14 years, Cornelius Lems, a science professor at Goucher College, was killed in a 1968 automobile accident — leaving her to raise their six daughters.

She began teaching that year at Maryvale Preparatory School in Brooklandville, and the next year joined the faculty of Cockeysville Junior High School.

In 1977, she began teaching science, biology and chemistry at Dulaney.

Ms. Lems also taught technical crew — lighting and sound for the school’s theater productions and band concerts — with many of her students going on to successful professional careers in TV production, movies and film.

She also led the school’s chess team to several championships.

“She let us do our own experiments,” Mr. Davis recalled.

One day, Mr. Davis and several fellow students were to measure the pressure of a glass beaker, and when they got it too low, it imploded.

“She thought that it was fun that we blew something up,” he said with a laugh.

He said Ms. Lems knew how to control a class.

“She told me, ‘I expect the kids to do what I tell them,’ and it went 100 percent her way,” he said.

She retired from Dulaney in 1997.

Mr. Davis went to visit Ms. Lems several weeks before her death.

“She asked me if I knew the difference between fruits and vegetables. She said fruit has seeds and vegetables do not, therefore ‘a tomato is a fruit,'” he said. “A teacher to the end.”

Ms. Lems was a movie fan and a member of Cinema Sundays at the Charles Theater. She was also a fan of classic rock and tennis, especially enjoying matches featuring Rafael Nadal. She was also a die-hard Orioles and Ravens fan.

Ms. Lems was a member of Maryland Mensa and the Chesapeake Audubon Society.

A devout Roman Catholic who embraced Christian values of forgiveness, she donated much of her income to numerous different charities, family members said.

She was a communicant of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, 101 Church Lane, Cockeysville, where a Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 10 a.m. Sept.12.

Ms. Lems is survived by six daughters, Roberta Levine of Jessup, Susan Jones of Lutherville, Mary Jenkins of Phoenix, Baltimore County, Andrea Davison of Baltimore, Patricia Brumbach of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and Casandra Lem of New York City; a brother, John Michael Miles of Grand Rapids; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

“With Mary Ann, you didn’t just do things, you did things right,” said Fred Lazarus, MICA’s former president. “She had an incredible eye for detail.”

Born in Hagerstown, she was the daughter of Powell Page Armel, a Fairchild Industries senior tool designer, and Nellie Armel, who worked in aircraft assembly at the same plant.

She was a 1959 graduate of North Hagerstown High School.

After winning a scholarship to MICA, she became head of the drama club and earned a bachelor of fine arts in visual communication.

She met her future husband, Nicholas Lambros, an interior design major, at the school. They lived in a Marriottsville farmhouse before moving to Columbia.

Ms. Lambros joined the administration of MICA in the 1970s. She retired in 2014 as associate vice president of advancement, after holding numerous posts, including director of alumni relations.

“She wore so many hats at MICA. She worked in fundraising and any large event,” her daughter, Tracy Lambros, said.

“She loved organizing special events at MICA — particularly the fund-raising gala Artafare, where donors and art students would create elaborately themed rooms and dinners,” her daughter said.

She was awarded the school’s distinguished alumni award, among other honors.

Fred Lazarus, former MICA president said: “Over my whole tenure, I had the privilege of working closely with her. She was wonderful with people, very engaging. She was a great writer and said things I wish I had said.

“She was not a person who wanted much attention either,” Mr. Lazarus said. “She would let others take the bows.”

Ms. Lambros was a gourmet cook and quickly learned Greek recipes, including her signature dishes, a cheese and onion pie and cheese and tomato tarts.

“No one ever turned down an invitation to her table,” her daughter said.

“She was generous and stylish,” her daughter said. “Creativity was a lifestyle for her, and her sense of style appeared in everything that she touched. She loved art, supported the Baltimore art scene, and collected works by many of her artist friends and colleagues.”

Among the works she owned was a 1972 anti-war sculpture by MICA ceramics professor Douglas Baldwin. Titled “All Volunteer Red Neck Duck Army Following the Yellow Brick Road,” she gave the work to the Missoula (Montana) Art Museum.

She also solved the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles and enjoyed attending theater and art exhibitions.

Survivors include a daughter, Tracy Lambros, of Columbia; two sons, Christopher Lambros, of Timonium, and Jason Lambros, of Sykesville; a sister, Betty Snyder, of San Carlos, California; a brother, Michael Armel, of Hagerstown; and five grandchildren. Her husband, an interior designer, died in 2018.

A celebration of life is being planned for the fall.

A longtime Baltimore resident, he also composed the score to “Lady Audley’s Secret,” a musical performed at Center Stage and at the Vagabond Players. He was the co-composer of the “The Baltimore Song,” recorded by the Baltimore Men’s Chorus.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Goehring moved to New York City where he worked with other songwriters in the Brill Building, an office structure that contained numerous composer and lyricist offices.

Mr. Goehring told The Sun in 1982 he had personally pitched “Lipstick on Your Collar” to Ms. Francis during a visit her home. He arrived unannounced at her New Jersey residence and demonstrated the song at her personal piano. It became a gold record.

“Lipstick,”  went on to be popularized by Ms. Francis and covered by Terri Dean, Petula Clark, and others. He also wrote “Half Heaven – Half Heartache,” recorded in 1962 by Gene Pitney and “Suppose,” recorded in 1967 by Elvis Presley. He also composed for Dion, the Platters and Barbra Streisand.

He moved to Baltimore and had a home near Lake Montebello in Northeast Baltimore.

In 1966 Mr. Goehring was the composer for Donald Seale’s adaptation of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel, “Lady Audley’s Secret,” which opened at Center Center in 1966.

The Sun’s theater critic, R.H. “Hal” Gardner, wrote “‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ must be regarded as a triumph for Center Stage.” He praised the adaptation of the mid-Victorian novel into a musical comedy and Mr. Goehring’s score for its “Gilbert and Sullivan quality.”

The musical later revived in New York City off-Broadway in 1972 and at the Vagabond Players in Fells Point in 1989.

“George had the sunniest personality. He had the sweetest disposition,” said a friend, Alan Sea, a former Baltimore Magazine editor. “George also played an important role in the gay musical community of the 1980s, when he was the piano accompanist for the Baltimore Men’s Chorus.”

In 1992 Mr. Goehring was shot in the hand by a U.S. postal agent during a botched drug raid at his home. He settled a lawsuit against the Postal Service for $150,000.

“He was treated at the Union Memorial Hospital hand clinic,” said Mr. Sea. “Miraculously, he was playing the piano again after a few weeks.”

Mr. Goehring also operated an antiques store in Waverly. He collected tobacco tins and once scored a collecting coup when he found a tin box that traded on the name of Babe Ruth — a Bambino brand tin.

More recently, Mr. Goehring assembled a revue of his songs, titled “My Life in the Brill Building,” which he performed at multiple Florida venues.

“George loved playing his music and was still entertaining the people in his assisted living home only a few weeks ago,” said Mr. Sea.

His partner — and later husband — Dennis O’Brien, died in 2023.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Darren, a teen idol who helped ignite the 1960s surfing craze as a charismatic beach boy paired off with Sandra Dee in the hit film “Gidget,” died Monday at 88.

Darren died in his sleep at a Los Angeles hospital, his son Jim Moret told news outlets.

Moret told The Hollywood Reporter that Darren was supposed have had an aortic valve replacement but was too weak for the surgery. “I always thought he would pull through,” his son told the entertainment trade, “because he was so cool. He was always cool.”

In his long career, Darren acted, sang and built up a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director, helming episodes of such well-known series as “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” In the 1980s, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the television cop show “T.J. Hooker.”

But to young movie fans of the late 1950s, he would be remembered best as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the smash 1959 release “Gidget.” Dee starred as the title character, a spunky Southern Californian who hits the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”

The film was based on a novel that a California man, Frederick Kohner, had written about his own teenage daughter and helped spur interest in surfing — one that influenced pop music, slang and even fashion.

For Darren, his success with teen fans led to a recording contract, as it did with many young actors at the time, among them Tab Hunter and Annette Funicello. Two of Darren’s singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (“Goodbye Cruel World” also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans.”) Other singles included “Gidget” and “Angel Face.”

Darren was the only “Gidget” cast member who appeared in both its sequels, 1961’s “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” and 1963’s “Gidget Goes to Rome.” Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carol in the third. (“Gidget” later became a television show, launching the career of Sally Field. )

“They had me under contract; I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But with those lovely young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ll ever be in.”

As a contract player at Columbia Studios, Darren appeared in grown-up films, too, including “The Brothers Rico,” “Operation Meatball” and “The Guns of Navarone.”

By the mid-’60s, when Darren appeared in “For Those Who Think Young” and “The Lively Set,” his big-screen acting career was almost over. He appeared in just a handful of movies after the 1960s ended, last appearing in 2017’s “Lucky,” directed by John Carroll Lynch.

But he remained active on television, appearing as a lead on the sci-fi show “The Time Tunnel” in the late 1960s, and doing guest spots and small recurring roles in TV shows such as “The Love Boat,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Fantasy Island.”

Darren was a series regular for four seasons of the William Shatner-starrer “T.J. Hooker” in the 1980s. While appearing on the show, he noticed that no director was listed for an upcoming sequence and asked if he could try out for it.

“When it was shown, I got several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many offers to direct, I kind of gave up acting and singing.”

For almost two years, Darren directed episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Hunter,” “Melrose Place,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and other series. He returned to acting in the 1990s with small roles in “Melrose Place” and “Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.”

Darren was born James Ercolani in 1936 and grew up in South Philadelphia, not far from such fellow teen idols of the 1950s and ’60s as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. Singing came easy to him, and at 14 he was appearing in local nightclubs.

“From the age of 5 or 6 I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or famous maybe,” he said in a 2003 interview with the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. He noted that such luminaries as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino had lived in the same area as he did, “a real neighborhood. It made you feel you could be successful, too.”

According to a 1958 Los Angeles Times profile, he got a break when he went to New York to get some pictures taken and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout.

He was soon signed by Columbia Pictures, and the newspaper said that after a few appearances, his fan mail at the studio was running “second only to Kim Novak’s. … The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot.”

Darren married his first wife, Gloria, in 1955 and together had Moret, an “Inside Edition” correspondent and former CNN anchorman. After a divorce he married Evy Norlund, who came to the U.S. as the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

He was also the godfather of Nancy Sinatra’s daughter A.J. Lambert. Sinatra, his “For Those Who Think Young” co-star, posted The Hollywood Reporter obituary on her X page, with a broken heart emoji.

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Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary.

Robert James Spence was born in 1947 in Albany, New York, to James Robert Spence, a high school principal and later a college admissions administrator, and Ruth Spence, a home-visit nurse. The middle of three brothers, Dr. Spence was set as a teenager on attending the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

He graduated from Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York, in 1965 and enrolled in a combined bachelor’s and medical school program at Hopkins. At 6 feet 3, he also played basketball for the Blue Jays.

“He wanted to be a surgeon. He was a good athlete and basketball player, and he used his hands very well,” Courtney Spence Omary, a daughter, said. “I don’t want to say this in a bad way. He really loved being a perfectionist, and in reconstructive surgery, he knew he could improve a patient’s quality of life by perfecting the technique and perfecting the treatment.”

While home from school on winter break, he asked Cressy Starkweather, whom he had a crush on since middle school per family legend, to dinner and a movie and later to bake chocolate chip cookies.

The two married in Albany in 1971. He graduated from medical school in 1972 and stayed in the area in a residence program for general surgery and plastic surgery.

“It was the people he met that really kept him in Baltimore,” his daughter said.

The Spences moved to the Original Northwood neighborhood and were within walking distance and earshot of Memorial Stadium. They had season tickets to the Orioles.

From 1980 to 1985 he taught plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine before becoming chief of plastic surgery and the burn unit at Bayview Medical Center, a part of Hopkins. In 2008, he founded the National Burn Reconstruction Center at MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital. While practicing in Maryland, Dr. Spence frequently flew to an Army hospital in Texas to work with burn victims.

“You just knew from his career once he got going that he would be challenging himself, and he did very difficult procedures,” said Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo, a psychiatrist who knew Dr. Spence in medical school. “He was very conscientious of the way he was helping people, not just physically but psychologically.”

Dr. DePaulo said Dr. Spence often argued with insurance companies who tried to deny plastic surgeries as purely cosmetic.

Dr. Spence also co-founded the Maryland Tissue Bank, was a medical director for the Transplant Resource Center in Maryland, and served as a mentor.

“I still remember many of the tips he taught me as a resident and young faculty member — how to sew the perfect bolster, how to choose the donor site, how to cut out a lesion in a sensitive area, how to treat patients with the utmost respect and compassion,” said Lesley Wong, a program director and professor of plastic surgery at the University of Kentucky. “I try to pass these on to my residents.”

Outside the hospital, Dr. Spence was happiest on the Choptank River near his house in Cambridge.

He is survived by his wife, Cressy Spence, of Cambridge; daughters Courtney Spence Omary, of Augusta, Georgia, and Erin Spence, of Rockford, Illinois; son Kevin Spence, of Millersville; younger brother, Paul Spence, of Lutherville; older brother, Dave Spence, of Atlanta; and seven grandchildren.

“Just a humble and decent guy who was so accomplished and medically and personally meant so much to so many,” his brother Paul said.