Country-music singer, cancer survivor
FAIR OAKS, Calif. - Kevin Sharp, a country-music singer who recorded multiple chart-topping songs and survived a well-publicized battle with cancer, has died. He was 43.
His sister, Mary Huston, said Sharp died at his mother’s Fair Oaks, Calif., home Saturday of complications from past stomach surgeries and digestive issues.
“He had a strong heart, that’s what kept him alive, [but] I’m so happy for him, that there’s no more suffering,” Huston said. She had cared for her brother since his return home to Northern California last Friday after 10 weeks in the hospital.
Sharp gained fame with the release of “Nobody Knows,” a single on his 1996 debut album, Measure of a Man. He released two other albums, Love Is in 1998 and Make A Wish in 2005.
Born in 1970 in Redding, Calif., Sharp was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, as a high school senior. He overcame it after two years of chemotherapy and radiation.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted Sharp’s wish to meet Grammy Award-winning music producer David Foster, who gave him tips to help jump-start his career.
Sharp also became a motivational speaker, a spokesman for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and wrote Tragedy’s Gift, a 2004 book about fighting cancer.
For the past several years, Sharp had struggled from past stomach surgery and residual issues from his aggressive cancer treatment.
Writer of short stories, No Great Mischief
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alistair MacLeod, the award-winning Canadian author who was best known for his short-story collections and novel No Great Mischief, has died. He was 77.
MacLeod’s former publisher, Doug Gibson, confirmed the death on Sunday. He said MacLeod had been in a Windsor, Ontario, hospital since having a stroke in January.
No Great Mischief, MacLeod’s only novel, won the prestigious 2001 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, then worth $172,000.
The novel, published in 1999, became an immediate critical success, also winning Ontario’s Trillium Prize. The novel’s narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of a family’s life beginning in 18th-century Scotland and ending in 20th-century Nova Scotia.
Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, on July 20,1936, MacLeod moved with his family to a farm on Cape Breton Island in eastern Canada at the age of 10. It was there that the images and themes that informed his work took hold.
He was the subject of a National Film Board documentary in 2005, Reading Alistair MacLeod, and in 2008 was made an officer of the Order of Canada.
MacLeod, who had a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, wrote his first short story, “The Boat,” in 1968.
He gained recognition with the publication in 1976 of the short-story collection The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, about life in his Cape Breton home.
His other published works include the short-story collections As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986) and Island (2000), which combined his first two collections with other stories.
Journalist, Burmese political prisoner
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RANGOON, Burma - Win Tin, a prominent journalist who became Burma’s longest-serving political prisoner after challenging military rule by co-founding the National League for Democracy, died Monday. He was 85.
He had been hospitalized with respiratory problems since March 12.
A former newspaper editor, Win Tin was a close aide to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, another founder in 1988 of the pro-democracy party. In 1989, she was put under house arrest and Win Tin was sent to prison for his political activities. His sentence was extended twice for various reasons, the second time for writing a letter to the United Nations.
Colleagues and admirers paid tribute to the writer and activist, with Suu Kyi sending a handwritten note for his funeral service which was also posted on her Facebook page in her capacity as the party’s chairman.
While incarcerated, Win Tin received several international press freedom awards and suffered from ill health, including heart problems, high blood pressure and inflammation of the spine. In his book titled What’s that? A human hell, published in 2010, he gave a vivid description of prison life - how he endured torture, was denied medical care, and fed only rice and boiled vegetables.
Freed in a general amnesty of prisoners in 2008, he continued working with the National League for Democracy through Burma’s transition from military rule to an elected - though army-dominated - government in 2011. He continued to call on the military to relinquish power, saying democracy would never come to Burma as long as the military continued to dominate the political landscape. He also started a foundation to give assistance to current and former political prisoners.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/22/2014