Lionel Van Deerlin, a former congressman who served nine terms during the 1960s and '70s before returning to his journalism roots by writing political columns for the San Diego Union-Tribune, has died in San Diego. He was 93.
He was elected to Congress in 1962 as a Democrat in a region dominated by Republican lawmakers. While in office, Van Deerlin championed congressional ethics. He also pushed for revisions in federal law that allowed California to set tougher emission standards than the rest of the nation and helped create C-SPAN, the cable network that broadcasts live proceedings in the House and Senate.
Van Deerlin lost his seat in 1980, when he was defeated by Duncan Hunter, a Republican who is still in Congress.
Before entering politics, Van Deerlin worked in journalism and served in the Army during World War II. When he left Washington, he taught communications classes at San Diego State University and wrote for the Union-Tribune.
Zelia Gattai, the celebrated author of the Brazilian best-seller "Anarchists, Thank God!" and the widow of famed Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado, died Saturday. She was 91. Gattai was hospitalized weeks ago in her home city of Salvador, the northeastern Brazilian city immortalized in Amado's novels.
Gattai was born July 2, 1916, in Sao Paulo, the daughter of Italian anarchist Ernesto Gattai. She befriended rising authors Mario de Andrade and Rubem Braga and then met Amado, whom she married in 1945. The couple spent the first part of their marriage in exile in Europe, as Amado, a Communist, was forced to leave Brazil. Gattai studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris before returning with Amado to settle in Salvador around 1955. Amado went on to write more than a dozen more novels.
When she was 63, Gattai began her own literary career with "Anarchists, Thank God!", a 1979 autobiography outlining her early life. It became a Brazilian best-seller and popular TV miniseries.
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