Obituaries In The News

April 2, 2005

Jack Keller

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Pop songwriter Jack Keller, who wrote the theme song for "Bewitched" and other TV sitcoms and was a producer on the Monkees' first album, died Friday in Nashville. He was 68.

Keller died of leukemia, according to his son.

Anne Kincaid

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Conservative Christian activist Anne Kincaid, who lobbied tirelessly for Virginia's first substantial abortion restriction, died of cancer Thursday. She was 58. Kincaid had battled the disease for 19 years, said a longtime family friend.

Kincaid became the leading voice of Virginia's anti-abortion movement in the early 1980s and helped harness the political might of the state's religious conservatives in the Republican Party's ascent to power in the 1990s.

Kincaid described herself as a flower child of the late 1960s whose life was altered by her illegal abortion in 1970. She became a "born-again Christian" whose past made her all the more credible and passionate, friends said.

Kincaid and Walter E. Barbee jointly founded the Family Foundation in 1985 while Christian conservatives were energized by flexing their electoral might in President Reagan's 1980 and 1984 landslides.

Frank Perdue

BALTIMORE (AP) - Frank Perdue, the folksy CEO who turned his father's backyard egg business into one of the world's biggest chicken companies by appearing in TV commercials that featured his remarkably bird-like face, died Thursday. He was 84.

He died at his home in Salisbury after a brief illness, the company said Friday.

Perdue was one of the first CEOs to pitch his own product on television in 1971, turning on the down-home charm as he delivered his famous line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." LINK