Notable deaths last week

• Chuck "Bobo" Brayton, the long-time Washington State baseball coach and college Hall of Famer who had 1,162 career wins, has died at the age of 89.

Brayton played baseball, football and basketball at Washington State.

After graduating in 1950, he became a baseball coach for 11 years at Yakima Valley Community College. In 1961 he became the baseball coach at Washington State.

He led the Cougars for 33 seasons (1962-94) and won nearly 70 percent of his games. His teams captured 21 conference titles, made 10 NCAA postseason appearances and two trips to the College World Series, in 1965 and 1976.

At retirement, Brayton's victories ranked fourth on the NCAA all-time list.

• Hot Rod Hundley, who was the top pick in the 1957 National Basketball Association draft before spending 35 years as a broadcaster for the Utah Jazz, died Friday at his Phoenix-area home, the team said. He was 80.

Hundley called more than 3,000 Jazz games from 1974 through 2009, spending his first 31 years as play-by-play voice of the team's radio and television simulcasts before spending his final four seasons on radio.

In 2003, Hundley was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a broadcaster.

"He had the unique ability to make the game come to life so that you felt as though you could see what was happening on the floor when listening to him call the games," Jazz owner Gail Miller said. "Rod was a very special talent and will be missed by our family as well as Jazz fans everywhere."

Hundley grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, and averaged 24.5 points a game over his three-year varsity career at West Virginia University from 1955-57. He helped lead the Mountaineers to three straight appearances in the national men's college basketball tournament and still holds the school record of 54 points in a game.

Hundley was selected by the Cincinnati Royals with the first pick in the 1957 NBA draft and was traded to the Minneapolis Lakers. He played six seasons in the NBA with the Lakers in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, making two All-Star teams, before bad knees and poor training habits forced an early retirement in 1963, according to his alma mater.

• Swedish poet and Nobel Literature Prize winner Tomas Transtromer has died at age 83, Swedish publisher Bonniers said.

The reclusive, mild-mannered wordsmith - considered a master of metaphor and one of the most important Scandinavian poets of the post-World War II era - died Thursday after a short illness said Bonniers spokeswoman Anna Tillgren.

In famous collections such as the 1966 "Windows and Stones," Transtromer used imaginative metaphors to describe the mysteries of the human mind. His work has been translated into more than 60 languages and influenced poets across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. In 2011 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• The masterful acoustic guitarist John Renbourn, a founding member of the Pentangle in the 1960s, has died at his home in Scotland. He was 70.

Renbourn teamed with the late Bert Jansch and others to form Pentangle, which enjoyed a wide reputation for playing both contemporary and traditional folk songs.

They played complicated ballads and folk tales from the Renaissance, bringing centuries-old music to contemporary audiences.

• Nan Tucker McEvoy, the last member of the San Francisco Chronicle's founding family to head the newspaper, has died after a long convalescence. She was 95.

• Nurlan Kapparov, the Harvard University- trained chairman of Kazakhstan's state-owned mining company that is the world's biggest producer of uranium, has died. He was 44.

He died on Thursday in a Beijing restaurant after collapsing during lunch on a business trip, the Kazakh state- owned news service, Kazinform, said on its website. The cause was a heart attack.

Kapparov was the 43rd richest person in Kazakhstan, according to Forbes, which estimated his net worth at $110 million.

• Sally Forrest, an actress-dancer who graced the silver screen throughout the '40s and '50s in MGM musicals and films such as the 1956 noir "While the City Sleeps," died on March 15 at her home in Beverly Hills, California. She was 86 and had long battled cancer.

A San Diego native, Forrest became a protege of Hollywood trailblazer Ida Lupino, who cast her in starring roles in films including the critical and commercial success "Not Wanted," "Never Fear" and "Hard, Fast and Beautiful."

She also starred in a Broadway production of "The Seven Year Itch."

• Yehuda Avner, a former Israeli diplomat and aide to a string of prime ministers who turned his insider stories about the country's leaders into a best-selling memoir, has died at 86.

In 2010, Avner published his book, "The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership," in which he shared stories of working alongside major Israeli leaders like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin as well as world figures like Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher and the legendary spiritual leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

• Francis C. Rooney Jr., whose leadership of H.H. Brown Shoe Co. prompted Warren Buffett to buy the Massachusetts manufacturer in 1991 for Berkshire Hathaway, has died. He was 93.

• Sheldon Jacobs, whose books and No-Load Fund Investor newsletter advocated do-it-yourself investing to thousands of readers and helped fuel the growth of mutual funds starting in the 1970s, has died. He was 84.

Starting in 1957, Jacobs worked as a media researcher for the ABC and then NBC television networks, testing audience reaction to shows including "Maverick."

In 1979, Jacobs quit his television job and began his newsletter. He published an annual report card on fund performance and continued to write about investing even after he sold the newsletter.

• Steven Smith, a Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur who helped develop the U.S. market for specialty tea blends by co-founding the Tazo brand now owned by Starbucks Corp., has died. He was 65.

"All offended?" former South African newspaper editor Ken Owen asked an audience of friends and family in a speech marking his 80th birthday.

Owen, a tenacious force in journalism in the last years of white racist rule, delivered trademark zingers at the Feb. 21 gathering hosted by his wife, a month before he died of cancer. He warned of a creeping authoritarianism in South Africa's ruling African National Congress and said elections won't stop it.

• Nick Peters, a former Spink Award winner who covered the San Francisco Giants for 47 years and loved to mentor young writers, has died. He was 75.

• Miriam Bienstock, who helped found Atlantic Records and ran the business side of the fledgling label as it became an industry leader during the rise of rock 'n' roll, has died. She was 92.

• Canadian film and television actress Alberta Watson has died. She was 60.

Her agent, Pam Winter, said Watson died Saturday in Toronto after a long battle with cancer.

Watson is best known for her role on "24" as special agent Erin Driscoll during the Fox series' 2004-05 season. More recently, she appeared on the CW series "Nikita" as well as on its earlier version, "La Femme Nikita," on USA.

Her films include "Hackers" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."

• Ellen Conford, an award-winning children's writer whose comic tales about everything from the travails of high school to a girl's summer camp crush made her a favorite for at least one generation of readers, died on her 73rd birthday.

Conford's more than 40 books - for age groups ranging from small children to young adults - included the "Jenny Archer" and "Annabel the Actress" series and the novel "This is Laura." Her husband said that a personal favorite was "The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations," published in 1976 and inspired by the guidelines that their son, Michael, received while in high school.

Ellen Conford's first book, the picture story "Impossible, Possum," came out in 1971, and she published regularly over the next 30 years. Reissues by Lizzie Skurnick Books include "And This is Laura" and "To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie," with "Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood," likely to come out in 2016.

• Earl Baltes, the founder and longtime promoter of Florida's Eldora Speedway, has died. He was 93.

• Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore who was both feared for his authoritarian tactics and admired worldwide for turning the city-state into one of the world's richest nations while in power for 31 years, has died at 91.

• Swiss artist Hans Erni, whose prolific work ranged from tiny postage stamps to enormous frescoes, has diedat 106.

Erni produced hundreds of paintings, sculptures, lithographs, engravings, etchings and ceramics. He kept up a punishing work schedule deep into old age, completing a series of paintings for the International Olympic Committee in his 80s and painting a fresco at a church in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France, where he had a vacation home.

Erni created more than 90 stamp designs for Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the United Nations.