other notable deaths

The Baltimore Sun

DOUG MARLETTE, 57

Award-winning cartoonist

RALEIGH --Doug Marlette, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who recently turned his incisive wit toward a budding career as a novelist, died yesterday in a car accident in Mississippi. He was 57. Mr. Marlette, who split his time between Hillsborough and Tulsa, Okla., and was visiting Mississippi to help a group of high school students with the musical version of his syndicated comic strip, Kudzu. He had just delivered the eulogy at his father's funeral Friday in Charlotte, N.C.

"You know, there's a couple of family members I'd rather have lost instead of Doug," said author Pat Conroy. "And he would have laughed at that. This has been a shock of all shocks."

Mr. Marlette started his cartooning career in 1972 at The Charlotte Observer, and most recently was on staff at the Tulsa World. He won the Pulitzer prize in 1988 for his work at The Observer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the same year The Observer won the Pulitzer's public service award for its work detailing the misuse of funds by Jim Bakker's PTL television ministry.

Mr. Marlette was the passenger in a pickup truck driven by John P. Davenport, of Oxford, Miss., said Sgt. Leslie White, a spokesman for the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Mr. Davenport was treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford and released. Marshall County Coroner John Garrison said the accident occurred in heavy rain about three miles east of Holly Springs.

DOROTHY ROUDEBUSH, 95 Women's rights activist

Dorothy Coleman Roudebush, an educator and lifelong activist for women's rights, died Wednesday in St. Louis of congestive heart failure and dementia, her family said.

She worked to repeal Missouri's law that prohibited married women from teaching in public schools and campaigned for women's right to family planning services. She served on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region for many years and was an emeritus member at the time of her death.

From 1963 to 1968, she was chairwoman of the Citizens Committee for Family Planning Through Public Health Services, which sought to make family planning services available through public health clinics. She also was a founder and president of the Committee for Legal Abortion in Missouri before the U.S. Supreme Court established a woman's constitutional right to abortion in 1973.

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