Clarke M. Williams, 80, who built a tiny telephone company that was a gift from his parents into rural telecommunications giant CenturyTel Inc., died of kidney failure yesterday in Monroe, La.
Mr. Williams, who served as CenturyTel's chairman, grew up in his family's business, the Oak Ridge Telephone Co., in northern Louisiana, which had been purchased in 1930 by William Clarke and Marie Williams. It provided service to the tiny Louisiana community of Oak Ridge.
After returning from World War II in 1946, Mr. Williams was given ownership of the company as a wedding gift, and borrowed $150 to pay the freight charges for the company's first dial switcher. In 1950, he bought an additional exchange in Marion, La., and expanded the company into a three-state service with 10,000 access lines.
In 1968, Mr. Williams incorporated the company as Central Telephone and Electronics. The name was changed to Century Telephone Enterprises Inc. in 1971 and the company went public in 1978.
With more than 6,000 employees, CenturyTel is one of the largest Louisiana-based corporations and is a major rural telecommunications player in 21 states.
Last year, the company rejected a $6.1 billion takeover bid from its major rival, Alltel Corp., but agreed this year to sell its cellular business to Little Rock, Ark.-based Alltel for $1.65 billion in cash.
Murray Fisher, 69, who edited the first Playboy Interview and helped turn it into one of the magazine's most popular attractions, died Friday in Santa Monica after suffering from Alzheimer's disease and a series of strokes, said his wife, Sara.
In September 1962, Mr. Fisher tapped writer Alex Haley to complete an unfinished piece on jazz trumpeter Miles Davis for the first Playboy Interview.
Mr. Fisher was a meticulous editor, asking interviewing journalists to submit several hundred written questions, which he would review and edit. Under Mr. Fisher's direction, the interviewer would spend another month researching the subject's background and talking to those who knew him.
Mr. Fisher left Playboy in 1974 and worked with Mr. Haley on the writer's epic book Roots. Mr. Haley thanked Mr. Fisher in the book's acknowledgments when it was published in 1976.
Caroline Knapp, 42, who chronicled her struggles with alcoholism in the memoir Drinking: A Love Story, died Tuesday in Cambridge, Mass., after a battle with lung cancer.
In her memoir, Ms. Knapp detailed the contradictions in her life as a "high-functioning alcoholic."
Ms. Knapp was an Ivy League graduate and successful journalist who by all appearances had her life in order. But underneath, she was filled with the lies and self-loathing that come with addiction.
Critics praised the book, published in 1996, for its stark honesty, and it was on The New York Times best-seller list for several weeks.
Her next book, Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs, published in 1998, described her relationship with her dog, Lucille.
Boyd Bennett, 77, a veteran of Louisville, Ky., radio and television who wrote the song "Seventeen," died of a lung ailment Sunday in Sarasota, Fla.
Mr. Bennett's band, Boyd Bennett and his Rockets, hit pay dirt in 1955 with "Seventeen," a hit song that was also recorded by several other groups and earned him millions.
Mr. Bennett was the general manager of WLKY-TV in the early 1960s and had appeared on WAVE-TV in the 1950s. He appeared on several shows and created Boyd Bennett and His Space Buddies.
Albin Krebs, 73, an obituary writer for The New York Times, died of cancer Friday.
Mr. Krebs, who earned a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, joined the newspaper in the 1960s. He wrote the obituaries of such figures as cowboy Gene Autry and writers Truman Capote and Eudora Welty, a fellow Mississippian.
Although he retired in 1989, he continued to write obituaries. Most recently, his obituary of writer Walter Lord appeared May 21.