Arizona governor, 3-nation ambassador
The Associated Press
PHOENIX -- Raul Hector Castro, Arizona's only Hispanic governor and an American ambassador to three countries, died Friday. He was 98.
Family spokesman James Garcia said Castro died in his sleep in San Diego, where he was in hospice care.
Castro, a Democrat, was a self-made man who overcame poverty and discrimination to graduate from college and embark on a successful career in politics and diplomacy.
He went on to serve as U.S. ambassador to three Latin American countries under three U.S. presidents. Lyndon Johnson sent him to El Salvador, where Castro became known as "Yankee Castro" to differentiate him from the other Raul Castro -- the brother of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Johnson later sent him to Bolivia, and he stayed for a short time under Richard Nixon before returning to Arizona and making the first of two bids for governor.
His statewide races were two of the closest gubernatorial elections in state history. He lost to Republican Jack Williams in 1970 by 1.5 percentage points.
He fared better four years later as the Republican Party was embroiled in the Watergate corruption scandal. Castro defeated Republican Russ Williams by less than 1 percentage point three months after Nixon resigned in controversy.
Castro was governor for 2½ years before resigning when President Jimmy Carter appointed him ambassador to Argentina.
Character actor known for L.A. Law role
The New York Times
Richard Dysart, a character actor who specialized in lawyers, doctors and other authority figures -- most notably Leland McKenzie, the founding partner of the law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak on the drama L.A. Law -- died Sunday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Kathryn Jacobi Dysart.
He played doctors in The Hospital (1971), a comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg; The Terminal Man (1974), based on Michael Crichton's medical thriller about brain surgery and mind control; First You Cry (1978), a television movie adaptation of the first-person account of a mastectomy and its aftermath by the newscaster Betty Rollin, who was played by Mary Tyler Moore; and Being There (1979), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's short satirical novel about a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) who becomes a presidential adviser.
L.A. Law, seen on NBC from 1986 to 1994, made him widely known. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, the show focused on the firm led by McKenzie, who presides over an office full of well-dressed, ambitious, usually greedy and very often randy partners and underlings.
As McKenzie, Dysart was nominated for Emmy Awards four times. He won for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1992.
Dysart's other film credits include The Day of the Locust (1975), Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985) and John Carpenter's The Thing (1982).
Metro on 04/11/2015