Jasper Howard

STORRS, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut football player who was an expectant father was stabbed to death early Sunday after an on-campus dance, just hours after helping his team to a homecoming victory. Jasper Howard, 20, of Miami, and another student were stabbed during a fight after a fire alarm was pulled during a university sanctioned dance at the UConn Student Union just after 12:30 a.m., police said. Police had not identified a suspect or released the name of the other victim. Connecticut coach Randy Edsall said the team was heartbroken and devastated over the loss of Howard, a junior and the team’s starting cornerback who came to the school to get away from the violence on the streets of his hometown. He became the first person in his family to go to college. “I know this,” Edsall said, his eyes red and welling with tears, “he loved UConn; he loved his teammates; he loved everything about this.” Edsall said Howard’s death was especially tragic, because he was about to become a father. No additional information about the expectant mother, identified by Edsall as Howard’s girlfriend, was provided by police or the university. Jasper Howard, 20, died after getting stabbed after Connecticut’s game Saturday Joanglia Howard said she got news of her son’s death about 4 a.m., and described him as a ‘good kid’ who never got into trouble. “All I wanted him to do was go to school and get an education, and he was doing what I asked him to do,” she told WSVN-TV in Miami. Edsall gathered his team at its training facility at 6 a.m. to deliver the news. “As Jazz looks down on us, I can promise him and his family, that son or daughter will have 105 uncles,” punter Desi Cullen, a team captain, said at an afternoon news conference. “And we will do what it takes to not get through this, but to grow from it.” UConn Police Major Ronald Blicher said this is the first homicide at the university in the more than 30 years he has been associated with the school. Blicher said Howard was stabbed following a fight between two groups that included students and non-students. The altercation broke out just after a fire alarm went off in the student center, forcing the evacuation of about 300 people, from a “Welcome Back” party and dance sponsored by the school’s West Indian Awareness Organization. Police and the school declined to say whether any other athletes were involved in the incident. Police cordoned off the crime scene near the university’s Gampel Pavilion basketball arena for much of the day. “Certainly not all 300 saw this event,” Blicher said. “We have been actively interviewing people through the night and day, and we continue to seek anybody who might have information.” Police were trying to determine whether the alarm and the fight were related. The university community was sent messages warning them to be cautious, but Blicher said officials don’t believe anyone else is in danger and that the stabbing did not appear premeditated. “The university does not have an individual walking around just stabbing people,” Blicher said. Howard and the other stabbing victim were taken to Windham Community Memorial Hospital, where the second victim was treated and released. Howard was later airlifted to Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, where he died from his injuries. Edsall drove to the hospital Sunday morning and was asked to identify Howard’s body. “One of my sons has been taken away,” the coach said. University President Michael Hogan told The Associated Press the stabbing is a tragedy for the entire university community. “I was in the locker room after the game yesterday. It was such a joyous moment,” Hogan said. “To go from that game and such a victory to the developments at 12:30 last night is such a tragedy.” Howard had a career-high 11 tackles Saturday against Louisville and made perhaps the game’s biggest play, forcing a fumble just as Louisville was about to score with UConn up 21-13 in the third quarter. UConn won 38-25, and following the game, Howard, who led the Big East in punt returns last season, talked to the AP about the play. “I felt my hand go on the ball and I felt that I had a chance to get it out. I just stripped it out. It was a big play. We needed it,” he said. Corey Bell, director of football operations at the University of Miami, coached Howard at Miami Edison High School. He told The Miami-Herald Sunday that he was stunned. “I’m real close to all my guys, but Jazz and I were real close,” Bell said. “We spoke at least once every week. He’s a great kid, coachable, dependable, real tough mentally and talented. He had dreams of getting to the next level and making it and taking care of his mom and his sister.” A phone and e-mail message left with the Miami’s media relations department were not immediately returned. New England Patriots cornerback Darius Butler, described by Edsall as the player who taught Howard the ropes while at UConn, was shaken by the news. “It hasn’t settled in, but it was tough on the UConn family,” Butler said. “He’s in my thoughts and prayers.” The school was arranging for Howard’s parents to come to Connecticut. He also had two teenage sisters. The student union was reopened late Sunday, and the snack shop there was soon doing a brisk business. Aaron Price, a 19-year-old music major, said he was a bit concerned that nobody had yet been arrested, but didn’t fear for his own safety. “I’ve never felt unsafe,” he said. “I’ve never even thought about whether or not I felt safe.” Gov. M. Jodi Rell visited the campus Sunday to offer her condolences and any assistance the university might need. Edsall said the team will not practice until Tuesday, but plans on playing next Saturday at West Virginia. He said they would wear some remembrance of Howard, and would plan a more permanent memorial at the team’s training center. “The Howard family will get through this, as well as the UConn family,” Edsall said. “Because we are determined and we are willing to make sure that Jazz will be honored in the right way, and how we do things is what he’ll be expecting out of all of us.” Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

Cullen Bryant

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cullen Bryant, who spent 11 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, was a running back on their 1980 Super Bowl team and fought the NFL’s trading rules to remain in town, has died. He was 58. Unknown to his family, Bryant had been under a doctor’s care when he died Tuesday at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo., said his sister-in-law, Wanda E. Bryant. She did not supply other details. Bryant was the Rams’ second-round draft pick in 1973. He played with the team until 1982, was with the Seattle Seahawks in 1983 and 1984 and returned to the Rams for his last pro season in 1987. In 13 NFL seasons, Bryant scored 23 rushing and receiving touchdowns and ran back kickoffs for three others. He ran for 3,264 yards in 849 carries, and caught 148 passes for 1,176 yards. He ran for a 1-yard touchdown in the 1980 Super Bowl, which the Rams lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-19. At 6-foot-1 and 234 pounds, he was the biggest player of the time to regularly return kickoffs. “When Cullen hits those holes, nobody wants to stick their nose in there,” teammate Jack Youngblood told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “Those little 180-pound (defensive backs) just jump on his back when he runs by.” “He was an outstanding person with great character traits,” said Chuck Knox, Bryant’s coach with both the Rams and Seahawks. “When we asked him to do certain things, he’d do them. He never complained about anything. When he got that big body moving, it was something else, and he had muscles on top of muscles.” Born William Cullen Bryant on May 20, 1951, in Fort Sill, Okla., Bryant attended high school in Colorado Springs and played football at Colorado University, where he received consensus All-American recognition. In 1975, only two years after going to the Rams, Bryant went to federal court to challenge the right of then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to order him off the team. The Rams had signed former Detroit Lions receiver Ron Jessie. Under the “Rozelle Rule” on free agents, the team signing a free agent had to compensate the team that lost the player. If the teams couldn’t agree on compensation, the commissioner had the power to award either draft choices or players. He decided Bryant should go to Detroit. At the behest of Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, Bryant went to court in Los Angeles. A judge was unsympathetic to the NFL’s position during a hearing, and the league backed off several days later before a ruling could be made. The Rozelle Rule eventually was modified. Bryant, who was divorced, is survived by three brothers; two adult sons, William Cullen Jr. and Brandon, and a 13-year-old daughter, Brianna. Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

SUGGS-FOXWORTH, HALEY MARIE

Haley Marie Suggs-Foxworth Haley “Haley Bugg” Marie Suggs-Foxworth, a resident of Ashford, died early Monday morning, October 12, 2009, in the Shands at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL hospital. She was 16. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. Friday, October 16, 2009, in the Ashford High School Auditorium with Rev. Kevin Freeman and Rev. Danny Bynum officiating. Burial will follow in the Antioch Baptist Cemetery, near Ashford. Holman-Head-land Mortuary is in charge of funeral arrangements. The family will receive friends from 4:00 until 7:00 p.m. Thursday in the Ashford High School Auditorium. Flowers will be accepted or memorial contributions may be made to the Car-ingBridge, Donation Processing Center, P.O. Box 131447, Houston, TX 77219-1447 or to the American Cancer Society , 2346 West Main Street, Dothan, AL 36301. Haley Marie Suggs-Foxworth was born and reared in Ashford where she lived all her lifetime. She was an 11th grade student at Ashford High School where she was a member of the FFA and formerly participated in softball. Haley “Bugg” was a member of the Antioch Baptist Church. She was preceded in death by her grandfather, Robert Evans and an uncle, Robert Darrell Evans, Jr. Surviving relatives include her parents, Melissa Evans Foxworth and Todd Foxworth, Ashford; and Robert Suggs, Ashford; a sister, Tori Foxworth, Ashford; a brother, Hunter Suggs, Slocomb; her grandparents, Katherine and William “Bill” Lowe, Montezuma, GA; Jimmy and Shirley Foxworth, Pansey; James and Carol Suggs, Ashford; her great grandparents, Victor and Betty Hull, Dothan; and Freida Pierson, Ohio; her best friend, Chelsea “Bakon” Smith, Pansey; her boyfriend, Zack Gaz, Traverse City, MI; several aunts, uncles, cousins and a host of friends. Serving as active pall-bearers will be Kenneth Hunter, Caleb Mullikin, Christopher Carroll, Luke Lien, B.J. Perkins and Cody Brown. Serving as honorary pallbearers will be the Ashford High School 11th Grade Class, T.J. Emerson and Chelsea Smith. Holman-Headland Mortuary, (334) 693-3371, www.holmanmortuaries.com is in charge of arrangements.

Al Martino

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. (AP) — Singer Al Martino, who played the Frank Sinatra-type role of Johnny Fontane in “The Godfather,” died Tuesday afternoon at his childhood home. He was 82. Publicist Sandy Friedman, of the Rogers & Cowan public relations firm, confirmed Martino’s death in the Philadelphia suburb of Springfield, in Delaware County, but didn’t cite a cause. Starting in 1952, Martino was known for hit songs including “Here in My Heart,” ”Spanish Eyes,” ”Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Volare.” Besides acting in the Marlon Brando classic “The Godfather,” Martino sang the 1972 film’s title score, “The Love Theme From The Godfather.” His Fontane character is a singer and occasional actor and is the godson of Brando’s Mafia boss character, Don Vito Corleone. Martino was born in South Philadelphia as Alfred Cini and was a longtime resident of Beverly Hills, Calif. Philadelphia radio and television personality Jerry Blavat dined with Martino and his wife on Monday night. Blavat told the Philadelphia Daily News that Martino appeared to be in fine shape and that he was shocked when he learned of the singer’s death. “He was the last of the show business legends,” said Blavat, who has played Martino’s songs on the radio for years. “There’s nobody else. The last of the performers. A magnificent voice.” Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

Bruce Wasserstein

Bruce Wasserstein, the Wall Street investment banker who helped pioneer the hostile takeover in the 1980s and reshaped the mergers and acquisitions business into a high art, died Wednesday.

Mr. Wasserstein, 61, was the chairman and chief executive of Lazard. The cause of death could not be immediately learned, though he had been hospitalized earlier this week for what was described as an irregular heartbeat. The company had described his condition then as serious, but said he was “stable and recovering.”

Mr. Wasserstein, who began his career as a lawyer but quickly moved into investment banking, worked on some of the biggest deals of the past three decades, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’s takeover of RJR Nabisco.

Mr. Wasserstein never looked like a stereotypically urbane investment banker, long preferring a rumpled look, his shirt often untucked. But he transformed deal-making from a business built on relationships, as practiced by forebears like Andre Meyer and Felix G. Rohatyn of Lazard, into one built on high-priced free agency.

To Mr. Wasserstein, deal-making was a chess game, one ripe for complex strategies — that often came at high cost. Never one to easily lose a deal, he often urged clients to reach deep into their pocketbooks to win, often stroking their egos with what became known as his “Dare to be Great” speech. (Critics bestowed upon him a sobriquet he detested: “Bid-‘em Up Bruce.”)

“He was a great tactician,” Mr. Rohatyn said Wednesday. “He frightened people. That’s why they called him ’Bid-‘em Up Bruce.’”

Mr. Wasserstein was never afraid to speak his mind. After working on a three-way takover battle for City Service involving Gulf Oil and the corporate raider Boone Pickens, he said: “There are ten people in the world who know how to do these kinds of deals. And Boone Pickens isn’t one of them.”

Bruce Wasserstein was born Dec. 25, 1947, in Brooklyn. Even in his youth, Mr. Wasserstein was known for his precocity. One of his sisters, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein (who died of lymphoma in 2006), once remembered her hiking adventures with her brother.

”At the end of the trail, Bruce planted a stick, proclaiming it Bruceania,” she said. “It never occurred to me to claim the new world as Wendyania.”

He graduated from the University of Michigan at the age of 19, moving to Harvard Law School and the Harvard Business School, where he somewhat improbably served as one of Ralph Nader’s “Nader’s Raiders.” He later studied at Cambridge University in England as a Knox Fellow.

After graduation, he first began working at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. But he soon left for the more lucrative world of banking, joining the nascent mergers and acquisitions department at First Boston.

Together with Joseph Perella, Mr. Wasserstein built the firm into a powerhouse deal shop. Many of the deals that symbolized the frenzy that was the 1980s Wall Street — Texaco’s acquisition of Getty Oil, ABC’s sale to Capital Cities — bore their fingerprints. (Mr. Rohatyn said he tried to lure Mr. Wasserstein and Mr. Perella to Lazard in the 1980s.)

But in 1988, after months of public feuding with First Boston, he and Mr. Perella left to set up their own shop, Wasserstein Perella & Company, taking many of their former colleagues and clients.

“When Bruce and Joe left First Boston, they and their colleagues came across Park Ave to our office to continue working on a number of major deals,” said Martin Lipton, a partner at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and another gray eminence of deal-making. “They were so busy that they overloaded our phone system so that they, and we, were out of business for several hours.”

It was there that Mr. Wasserstein advised on K.K.R.’s takeover of Nabisco, memorably recaptured in the book “Barbarians at the Gate.”

Though Mr. Perella left the boutique firm in the 1990s, Mr. Wasserstein stayed on and sold it to Dresdner Bank in 2000 for about $1.4 billion. Ever the inveterate deal-maker, much of those proceeds went to him.

In 2002, he was hired by Lazard’s Michel David-Weill, then the firm’s chairman, to run the investment bank he had long admired. Mr. Wasserstein, however, persuaded many of the firm’s deal-makers to support one of the biggest deals of his career: taking Lazard public and ending more than a century of private ownership. The move set off a bitter feud between the two men, one often played out in the press.

Soon after Lazard went public, Mr. Wasserstein embarked on another major deal, aiding Carl C. Icahn in trying to shake up AOL Time Warner, his former client. However, that effort ended quietly, with the company reaching a compromise with the gadfly investor.

Most recently, he has led the team advising Kraft in its potential takeover of Cadbury.

But Mr. Wasserstein had interests beyond the boardroom. In 2004, he made a surprise bid for New York magazine, defeating some of the city’s richest businessmen in the process. Years before, he purchased a passel of trade publications including The Deal, a trade publication aimed at deal-makers, and American Lawyer, one aimed at the legal field. He sold the magazine group to Incisive Media, a British publisher, in 2007 for $630 million.

Adam Moss, New York’s editor in chief, described Mr. Wasserstein as an unusual owner for the magazine.

“He had always been interested in journalism, an interest sharpened by being on the receiving end of it,” Mr. Moss said. “But he never used it to wield influence the way other powerful men would have, never tried to plant a story, never complained about anything we published.

“He just took a kind of personal pleasure in owning it, and was an enormous believer in it as a business.”

Mr. Wasserstein is survived by his wife, Angela Chao, and seven children, including the daughter of his sister Wendy. He has been divorced three times.

– Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael J. de la Merced

Lou Albano

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Captain Lou Albano, the charismatic professional wrestler who appeared in Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video, has died. He was 76.

World Wrestling Entertainment confirmed the death Thursday on its Web site.

Albano performed with WWE from 1983 to 1996, when he was inducted into its hall of fame. He began his wrestling career in Canada in 1953.

Albano expanded his fan base greatly when he played Lauper’s father in the video for her hit single on a fledgling MTV in 1983. He later claimed to be the catalyst for her success, according to WWE.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press

Stephen Gately

PORT D’ANDRATX, Mallorca (AP) – Stephen Gately, a singer with the Irish boy band Boyzone who made headlines when he came out as gay a decade ago, has died while on vacation in Spain, the group said on its Web site. He was 33. Gately “tragically died” on Saturday while visiting the island of Mallorca, the band said in a brief statement. The cause of death was not immediately clear. Gerald Kean, a Gately family friend in Ireland, said Sunday the singer died of natural causes, without identifying them. “There’s no foul play involved, and it’s not suicide. It’s just a tragic accident is what we’ve been told, and we’re happy that that is correct information,” Kean said. “There is nothing untoward. It’s not drugs, we don’t believe. It’s not suicide. It’s not murder. It’s not a fight. That’s what we’ve been told.” Kean said an autopsy was expected to be conducted Tuesday. Gately and his partner Andrew Cowles, who were wed in a civil uni on in 2006, were in Mallorca together, the band’s statement said. “At present we don’t have too many details,” the statement said. Members of the group were expected to arrive at Palma de Mallorca international airport Sunday afternoon. Spanish police said they were called to a house near Port d’Andratx on the western tip of the island on Saturday afternoon. The cause of death was unknown and there were no signs of violence, a police spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in keeping with police rules. He said there was likely to be an autopsy. The house, situated on an exclusive tree-lined seafront street, overlooks a rocky bay reputed to have some of the best sunset views on Spain’s favorite holiday island. By midday Sunday journalists had begun to gather outside the quiet, seaside building with several vacation apartments. Boyzone members Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch said they were “completely devastated by the l o ss of our friend and brother, Stephen.” “We have shared such wonderful times together over the years and were all looking forward to sharing many more. Stephen was a beautiful person in both body and spirit. He lit up our lives and those of the many friends he had all over the world. Our love and sympathy go out to Andrew and Stephen’s family. We love you and will miss you forever, ‘Steo’,” their statement said. Boyzone was a U.K. hitmaker in the 1990s and announced a comeback tour at the end of last year. Gately also had released several solo singles and appeared in stage musicals, including “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” He revealed his sexual orientation to a British newspaper in 1999. Elton John said Sunday that he and his partner, David Furnish, were “stunned by this tragedy.” “Stephen was the kindest, gentlest soul. We send our love and condolences to his partner Andy and to all his friends everywhere,” John said in a stat e ment. Boyzone was one of the biggest acts to come out of Ireland in the 1990s. Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Gately’s death was “a huge tragedy to Irish entertainment, Irish music and further afield as well.” “Boyzone and Stephen, they’ve all been part of Irish life and far wider than that, the last 15 years, and so successful, so it’s a huge, huge tragedy. It’s so sad,” Ahern said. Boyzone sold millions of records and topped the British charts with six No. 1 singles during the 1990s, including “All That I Need” and a cover of the Bee Gees’ “Words.” The group was formed in 1993 by impresario Louis Walsh, who placed an ad in the press announcing auditions for Ireland’s first boy band. Among the unsuccessful hopefuls was actor Colin Farrell. Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

Tony Fein

SEATTLE (AP) — Tony Fein, an Iraq war veteran and NFL rookie linebacker who played with the Baltimore Ravens during the preseason, has died of unexplained causes after collapsing at a friend’s house on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington state.

Fein, 27, an undrafted rookie free agent from Mississippi, was lying face down and unconscious, vomiting and barely breathing when medics arrived at a house outside Port Orchard just before 9 a.m PDT Tuesday, said Mike Wernet, a battalion chief and medical officer with South Kitsap Fire & Rescue.

The medics put a breathing tube down Fein’s throat after he stopped breathing and administered medication, but he went into cardiac arrest during the drive to Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton, across Puget Sound from Seattle, and was pronounced dead at the hospital at 9:48 a.m. PDT Tuesday, Wernet told The Associated Press.

A man and woman who were present described Fein as a friend who was staying with them. They told the aid crew they awoke to find him unresponsive and vomiting.

“They didn’t really give us a lot of information about what had happened the night before,” apparently because they were upset, Wernet said. “They didn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary.”

There were no obvious wounds or signs of alcohol or other drug abuse, and nothing indicated foul play, he added.

The Kitsap County sheriff’s office wasn’t summoned, and Wernet said he knew of no subsequent contact with his agency to indicate deputies were investigating. Deputy Scott E. Wilson, a spokesman in the sheriff’s office, did not return a call for comment Wednesday.

An autopsy won’t be conducted before Thursday and no report will be issued before all toxicology and other tests are complete, likely in six to eight weeks, said Allen G. Gerdes, Kitsap County chief deputy coroner.

Fein, a native of Port Orchard, was released by the Ravens in their last major round of roster cuts on Sept. 5.

“Tony Fein was a really good teammate, a tremendous American, a tremendous young man … just a really good person,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said before Wednesday’s practice in Owings Mills, Md. “We were proud to have him here as part of our team. We’re unbelievably disappointed about the news.”

Fein’s agent, Milton D. Hobbs, a lawyer in Oxford, Miss., said he last spoke with Fein on Friday and since the death had talked with the Fein’s sister, mother and some friends. He would not discuss a possible cause of death.

“He was working out and we were discussing football opportunities. That was still his goal,” Hobbs said. “We talked about Canada.”

Some Canadian Football League teams had expressed interest in Fein before he joined the Ravens but there had been no contacts since he was cut, the agent said.Fein was arrested on Aug. 23 and charged with misdemeanor assault on a police officer after an incident at a restaurant at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in which the officer reportedly mistook his cellular telephone for a handgun. A trial was scheduled Wednesday, but prosecutors notified Fein’s attorney last Thursday that they planned to dismiss the case because of conflicting witness accounts, state’s attorney spokeswoman Marty Burns said.

Fein played quarterback for South Kitsap High School before graduating in 2000. At age 19 he enlisted in the Army and spent 2½ years in Iraq as a 19 Delta reconnaissance scout.

He later enrolled at Scottsdale, Ariz., Community College, became one of the nation’s top junior college recruits and played for Ole Miss in 2007 and 2008. In two seasons at Ole Miss, he had 136 tackles (77 solo) in 24 games, according to the school’s Web site.

“A humble young man,” Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis said of Fein, who stuck with the team until the final cut. “Our hearts definitely go out to his family because it’s such a tragedy for a man to be that young and go through the things he’s been through.”

Lucy Vodden

Alison McDougall/Daily Mail

Lucy Vodden

LONDON (AP) — Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles’ classic song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” has died after a long battle with lupus. She was 46.

Her death was announced Monday by St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, where she had been treated for the chronic disease for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden. Britain’s Press Association said she died last Tuesday. Hospital officials said they could not confirm the day of her death.

Vodden’s connection to the Beatles dates back to her early days, when she made friends with schoolmate Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son.

Julian Lennon, then 4 years old, came home from school with a drawing one day, showed it to his father, and said it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”

At the time, John Lennon was gathering material for his contributions to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a landmark album released to worldwide acclaim in 1967.

The elder Lennon seized on the image and developed it into what is widely regarded as a psychedelic masterpiece, replete with haunting images of “newspaper taxis” and a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

Rock music critics thought the song’s title was a veiled reference to LSD, but John Lennon always claimed the phrase came from his son, not from a desire to spell out the initials LSD in code.

Donald G. Fisher

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Donald G. Fisher, who co-founded apparel giant Gap Inc., has died at age 81 after a long battle with cancer. The company said Fisher died at his home in San Francisco on Sunday morning surrounded by his family. Those who knew him said he was a great entrepreneur and philanthropist who helped shape the retail world and his local community. Fisher and his wife Doris opened the first Gap in 1969 in San Francisco, after running into difficulties finding jeans that fit. They named the store after the idea of “The Generation Gap” and sold jeans and music, to appeal to a younger crowd. The simple, affordable style that became the namesake brand’s trademark resonated with shoppers and took off quickly. A former real estate developer with no previous retailing experience, Fisher initially anticipated maybe “as many as 10″ stores. But Gap grew to be one of the nation’s largest specialty retailers with more than 3,000 stores in over 25 countries. Gap Inc. now also operates the Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta brands. It became a publicly traded company in 1976 and reported sales of $14.5 billion in its 2008 fiscal year. Fisher guided the company through its largest growth phases, serving as CEO from the company’s inception through 1995 and as its chairman until 2004. He continued as a company director and as chairman emeritus until his death. “Today we lost a friend, a mentor and a great visionary,” Glenn Murphy, CEO and chairman of Gap Inc. said in a statement. “Don and Doris took a simple idea and turned it into a brand recognized as a cultural icon throughout the world and changed the face of retail forever.” National Retail Federation CEO Tracy Mullin said Fisher’s true entrepreneurship permeated everything he did, and was part of the reason Gap became such a great global brand. “It feels like the end of an era in a way,” Mullin said. “He really was unique in many ways and people really liked him.” The company was one of the first dominant brands, pioneering the idea of cheap chic, retail consultant Burt Flickinger III said. He said many retailers continue to model themselves based on the company’s design. “Americans would not be able to afford well-made clothes at the low prices and highest possible quality that they have today if it were not for what Don started,” Flickinger said. Fisher was also widely recognized for his commitment to philanthropy and the San Francisco Bay community where he was born and raised and the company’s headquarters still remain. The Fishers’ personal art collection is renowned and includes some of the 20th century’s most well-known artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced Friday it was partnering with the Fishers to house the couple’s some 1,100 works to create one of the nation’s greatest art collections. Don Fisher was also a charter school advocate, and active in the United Way, Teach for America and other educational efforts. The Fishers gave $15 million in 2000 to create the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Foundation, a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools to serve students in underserved communities. They have provided millions more to support the organization through the years. “Don’s contributions to public education, particularly for underserved communities, cannot be overestimated,” said KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth. “He used what he learned in growing Gap Inc. to show us what we could do in public education, and tens of thousands of children have benefited from his commitment and generosity.” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Fisher was a “great San Franciscan, a loving husband and father, and a dear friend. His unwavering commitment to our city’s arts and civic culture will be remembered for generations to come.” Fisher is survived by his wife Doris, their three sons and 10 grandchildren. He is also survived by two brothers and their wives, Jim and Diane Fisher and Bob and Ann Fisher. His son Bob Fisher continues to serve on Gap’s board of directors and Doris serves as an honorary lifetime member of the board. Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press