People Who Died 2014 — Part 1

See Also: People Who Died — Part 2  |  People Who Died — Part 3

LGBT activist

Gloria Casarez

Gloria Casarez fought hard for LGBT rights, but not simply because she was a lesbian. In college, she was active in the Latino Student Union and later went on to help found the housing-rights group Empty the Shelters. Toward the end of her life, she fought unsuccessfully to save the century-old, Spanish-language La Milagrosa chapel in Spring Garden. For Casarez, a native Philadelphian of Mexican descent, the fight for LGBT rights was part and parcel of a larger movement to achieve justice for everyone. “All these things are interconnected,” says Tricia Dressel, human-resources director at Project HOME, Casarez’s partner of 13 years and, finally in 2011, her legal wife thanks to the ongoing success in the fight for marriage equality. “Gloria saw herself as a civil-rights activist.” Casarez, who died of breast cancer on Oct 19 at age 42, no doubt left her greatest mark as an outspoken LGBT rights activist, founding the Philly Dyke March and serving as the longtime executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative (GALAEI). In 2008, Mayor Michael Nutter appointed her the city’s official liaison to the community. “She wasn’t doing her work for a sense of prominence or pride,” says Dressel. “She saw herself as somebody who could make an impact.” Her illness didn’t stop her from kicking off this year’s Dyke March in June, sporting a shirt spelling out D-Y-K-E in the shape of the city’s famous LOVE statue. She led a chant of “The Dykes United will never be divided” and then reminded the crowd of fundraising needs. “If you haven’t bought a T-shirt, buy a fucking T-shirt already.” Her service in the highest levels of city government and the nonprofit world didn’t blunt her radical edge. Casarez’s reputation as an organizer zealously committed to making life better for everyone will no doubt survive her death.

—Daniel Denvir

Firefighter

Joyce Craig-Lewis

Just a few weeks before Christmas, firefighter Joyce Craig-Lewis of Engine 64 in Lawncrest signed up to work an overtime shift at a firehouse in Oak Lane. It was Dec. 9, just hours after the 11th anniversary of the day she began her dream job as a member of the city’s Fire Department. Sadly, that day turned out to be her last. Craig-Lewis, 36, was killed while trying to contain a blaze that started in the basement of a row house in West Oak Lane, becoming the first female firefighter in the city’s history to die in the line of duty. She and other firefighters were inside the structure when the intense heat and smoke grew so dangerous that they were ordered to withdraw. Once outside, fellow firefighters realized she was missing and went back in to rescue her, but it was too late. “Everybody’s heartbroken,” said Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer, who knew her and praised her strong work ethic. He also noted that the work her crew had done in battling the fire had given firefighters time to save the life of the home’s elderly resident. Craig-Lewis, who had wanted to be a firefighter since she was in grade school, left behind two children, a son, Mehki, 16, and a daughter, Laylani, 16 months. Her brother, Michael Craig, called his sister a hero. “She went out fighting,” he said.

—Lillian Swanson

The firefighters’ union has set up a donation fund for Craig-Lewis’ children. Donations should be made out to the “Local 22-Joyce Craig-Lewis Memorial Fund” and mailed to the union at 901 Arch St., Phila., PA 19107.

 

Columnist

Chuck Stone

Chuck Stone retired from the Daily News 24 years ago in 1991; as the years go by, an increasing percentage of the city has never heard of him. But in Stone’s nearly two decades at the newspaper, it seemed that the whole city read his columns on race, racism, politics and police corruption and brutality — so much so that over his career, 75 Black people wanted by police surrendered to Stone in the Daily News newsroom, a sort of insurance policy against the beating they feared they’d get if they turned themselves in directly. Stone would take the suspect’s picture and document his or her physical condition, then call the police. Stone died April 6 at age 89. He was a personality, with a propensity for using obscure words and an average-day outfit of Brooks Brothers suit, thick glasses and heavy cologne. He even dressed to the nines when Gov. Dick Thornburgh asked him to negotiate a hostage situation at Graterford prison in 1981, the idea being that the prisoners would be more willing to trust Stone, a passionate critic of the prison system. (Stone did manage to defuse the situation.) Stone was a Tuskeegee Airman in World War II, and worked at various Black newspapers before becoming one of the first journalists of color at a mainstream newspaper when he joined the Daily News in 1972. A few years later, he helped found and served as the first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, a group dedicated to making newsrooms more accurately represent the diversity of the cities they serve.

—Emily Guendelsberger

 

Poet

Stephen Berg

Along Kelly Drive, between a patch of grass and the Schuylkill, some lovely words are etched into the top of a stone retaining wall. It’s a poem, “Sleeping Woman,” and it’s 1,125 feet long. Stephen Berg — who died at 79 on June 12 — along with artist Thomas Chimes created the work in 1991. Berg made poetry part of the physical landscape of Philadelphia, after already making it part of the emotional one in 1972, when he founded the American Poetry Review. Berg published 17 books of poetry, eight anthologies, and two books of poetry translations/versions, taught at several colleges and universities, including UArts, and earned fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Pew foundations, as well as the Frank O’Hara Prize. “Anything that could help everyday people enjoy poetry was important to Steve,” said friend Linda Richardson. You might say planting some poetry in a busy part of Fairmount Park did the job.

—Mikala Jamison

 

Comedian

David Brenner

A self-proclaimed street urchin of South Philly and West Philly, the lanky, self-deprecating David Brenner was an innovator of observational standup comedy that often was directed at exaggerated Philly characters. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, if he wasn’t standing on the stage at Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show to deliver a monologue, he was sitting behind its desk as host, making a record 158 appearances on the late-night program. Brenner authored five books, including the 1983 autobiography Soft Pretzels With Mustard, filled with stories about growing up poor and Jewish in West Philly. In a statement released upon his death, on March 15 at age 78, his family said he left a last laugh: A final request that $100 in small bills be placed in his left sock “just in case tipping is recommended where I’m going.”

—A.D. Amorosi

 

Auschwitz guard

Johann Breyer

Johann Breyer, 89, died on July 22, just hours before a federal judge approved his extradition to Germany to face charges of aiding and abetting murder as a Waffen SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp. Breyer immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, moving to Northeast Philly, getting work as a tool and die maker and raising three children. In 2012, it was reported that Germany had launched an investigation into his alleged war activities. Breyer told the Associated Press that he had only served as a guard at a part of Auschwitz that was primarily a slave labor camp and not at the infamous death camp nearby. “I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t rape anybody — and I don’t even have a traffic ticket here,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” German prosecutors contended that because a death camp’s function was to commit mass murder, any service at such a facility constituted accessory to murder.

—Daniel Denvir

 

Radio DJ

Don Cannon

Disc jockey Don Cannon, born Dominic Canzano and later known to many as “Dean of Philadelphia Morning Radio,” died on Aug. 22 at age 74. He was a fixture on the Philly airwaves since 1969, on stations like WIFI, WIP, WFIL, WIBG and WSNI. His longest run was on 98.1 WOGL, where he spun oldies on his popular morning show from 1990 until his 2004 retirement. Nationally, he may be best remembered as the voice you hear in the background when Rocky, in the original film, drinks raw eggs. But locals will fondly recall his suede baritone, friendly demeanor and frequent appearances at charity events — not to mention all those years of playing the hits.

—Patrick Rapa

 

Civil-rights activist

Melvin Dorn

Local civil-rights activist Melvin Dorn, who worked with both Martin Luther King and Philadelphia NAACP President Cecil B. Moore in the move to desegregate Girard College, died July 21 at age 69. Dorn’s sympathies appeared to lie with the more militant Moore, who organized poor Blacks in North Philly to challenge their exclusion from good-paying jobs. “When I met Cecil B. Moore, he showed me a different strategy of how to deal with things,” Dorn told the Inquirer. “We were nonviolent, but Cecil would tell you, ‘If anybody hits you, knock their ass out.’” Joey Temple, a longtime civil-rights activist, called Dorn “one of the young militants.” Temple told City Paper, “Mel, he was a warrior, a young warrior. That’s one of the pet peeves I still have. I still try to remind people that Cecil B. Moore was our Martin Luther King. Our Malcolm X. He was all that to us. … That’s [also] how Mel felt.”

—Daniel Denvir

See Also: People Who Died — Part 2  |  People Who Died — Part 3