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Robert Conquest, historian who chronicled Stalin's crimes, dies at 98

 
Forrest M. Bird developed cardiopulmonary devices that were used in homes and hospitals. 
Forrest M. Bird developed cardiopulmonary devices that were used in homes and hospitals. 
Published Aug. 8, 2015

> Robert Conquest, 98, a British-born historian whose landmark studies of the Stalinist purges and the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s documented the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet regime against its own citizens, died of pneumonia Monday in Palo Alto, Calif. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, published in 1968, chronicled Stalin's merciless campaign against political opponents, intellectuals, military officers — anyone who could be branded an "enemy of the people."

> Forrest M. Bird, 94, an eccentric aviator and inventor who studied high-altitude breathing problems of World War II pilots and later created medical devices that saved lives and aided thousands of people with respiratory ailments, died of natural causes Aug. 2 in Sagle, Idaho. In the 1950s and '60s, he pioneered some of the first portable mechanical ventilators for people with acute and chronic heart and lung afflictions.

Jerome Kohlberg Jr., 90, a veteran financier who pioneered the $2.6 trillion leveraged-buyout industry but later rejected its hunger for huge and aggressive deals, died of cancer July 30 in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. He and Henry Kravis and George Roberts formed the investment firm bearing their names, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which set the tone for the buyout industry.

Richard S. Schweiker, 89, a former U.S. representative and senator from Pennsylvania who was the secretary of health and human services during the first term of President Ronald Reagan, died of an infection July 31 in Pomona, N.J. When Reagan was running for the presidential nomination in 1976, he chose Mr. Schweiker as his running mate.

Benton Becker, 77, a lawyer who acted as the liaison between President Gerald Ford and his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, during the delicate negotiations that led to Ford's pardon of Nixon in September 1974, died of liver cancer Aug. 2 in Boynton Beach. Rightly or not, Ford believed a pardon would save the country from unnecessary political bloodletting. Mr. Becker became his personal emissary to Nixon and his representatives.

Cilla Black, 72, who rose from a job checking coats in a Liverpool nightclub to become Britain's top female vocalist of the 1960s, died of a stroke Aug. 1 in Estepona, Spain. With her sleek red hair, miniskirts and buoyant demeanor, she was the Swinging Sixties incarnate, part of a generation of female singers that included Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield.

Donald L. Rasmussen, 87, who was lured to Appalachia as a fledgling physician by a help-wanted ad and set off a grass roots movement that won benefits for coal miners afflicted with black lung disease, died July 23 in Beckley, W.Va., of complications of a fall in May. He proved that even when X-rays did not find evidence of black lung, the disease could also be detected by breathlessness measured while on a treadmill and by blood tests — vastly expanding the pool of miners eligible for benefits.