Obituaries

Punk rock musician Iain Burgess, no age given, of a pulmonary embolism, a complication of liver and pancreatic cancer. He died Thursday.
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Fred Morrison, 90, creator of the Frisbee, of cancer:

Beloved of man and dog, the Frisbee has for more than half a century been the signature product of Wham-O, a toy and sporting-goods manufacturer based in Emeryville, Calif. The company has sold more than 200 million of the discs since acquiring the rights to Mr. Morrison’s Pluto Platter, as it was then known, in 1957.

At least since antiquity, mankind has been hurling flat, round objects — or flying discs, as they are known in aficionados’ parlance — aloft. But Mr. Morrison is widely credited as having designed the first commercial flying disc expressly manufactured and marketed as such.

Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee in 1958, influenced by the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut, whose tins Yale students hurled for sport. A Westerner whose plainspoken ways could be mistaken for gruffness, Mr. Morrison deplored the change.

“I thought the name was a horror,” he told The Press Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2007. “Terrible.” (Before perfecting the Pluto Platter in 1955, Mr. Morrison had called earlier incarnations of his disc the Flyin’ Cake Pan, the Whirlo-Way and the Flyin-Saucer.)

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Designer Alexander McQueen, 40, of an apparent suicide:

Mr. McQueen often showed a dark streak in his collections, commenting on brutality toward women and what he saw as the inanity of the fashion world, and it carried over into his personal life. Though he had an acknowledged history of drug abuse and wild behavior, close friends said they were surprised by the news of his death. He had been deeply affected, in 2007, by the suicide of Isabella Blow, the eccentric stylist who had championed him, and he was said to be devastated by the death of his mother, Joyce, on Feb. 2, after a long illness.

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Former Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, 76, of cardiopulmonary arrest.

It was an unusual role for a congressman representing an unworldly East Texas district. From 1973 to 1996, Mr. Wilson kept his seat by balancing liberal views on many domestic issues with a hawkish stance on foreign policy and paying close attention to his constituents’ needs.

Until his secret role in Afghanistan became the stuff of Hollywood, Mr. Wilson’s fame was pretty much summed up by his nickname, “Good Time Charlie.” An article in Texas Monthly in 2004 said he gave his girlfriends nicknames like Snowflake, Tornado and Firecracker.

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Reality show star Phil Harris, 53, of a stroke.
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Vietnam commander Frederick C. Weyand, 93.

He was known as an acute analyst of intelligence data. As a deputy to Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, he became concerned about unusual movements of North Vietnamese forces in the weeks before the Tet festival in early 1968 and urged that American troops be redeployed closer to Saigon to repel a possible attack.

Westmoreland, persuaded, called off a series of planned pre-emptive strikes on Vietcong sanctuaries near the Cambodian border and allowed General Weyand to shift 15 battalions back to the Saigon area, a move that made it possible for American forces to react quickly and inflict heavy casualties when the North Vietnamese mounted the Tet Offensive.