Harry Olivieri, cheesesteak creator
Harry Olivieri, co-inventor with his brother Pat of the Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich, died Thursday of a heart attack at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Pomona, N.J., a hospital spokeswoman said. He was 90.
During the Depression, the Olivieri brothers ran a sidewalk hot dog stand in South Philadelphia.
As the story goes, one day in 1933, Pat sent his younger brother Harry to the nearby Italian market to buy steak, because they were tired of eating hot dogs for lunch. They chopped the steak and grilled it with onions, then slapped it on a hot dog bun.
The exact ingredients varied over the years, but connoisseurs of the Philadelphia cheesesteak still line up around the clock at Pat’s King of Steaks for the thinly sliced steak and chopped onions cooked on a sizzling grill then mounded in a roll, topped with Cheez Whiz and doused with South Philly attitude.
Harry Olivieri was the youngest of three sons born in Philadelphia to Italian immigrants, Michael and Maria Olivieri. Harry learned the carpentry trade and worked in construction and at the hot dog stand before he and Pat switched to steak sandwiches full time.
Washington
Edward Bilkey, port scandal figure
Edward “Ted” H. Bilkey, the American shipping executive who sought to dampen the political furor over Dubai-owned DP World’s takeover of operations at six U.S. ports, died during a business trip to the Dominican Republic, the company said.
Bilkey, 72, retired in June as chief operating officer for DP World, the world’s third-largest ports company. Bilkey, who died in his sleep July 14, was in the Dominican Republic to visit the company’s marine terminal at the Port of Caucedo, which recently began participating in a U.S. anti-terrorism program.
DP World dispatched Bilkey to Washington in the earliest days of the port-security flap to ease concerns over the company’s $6.8 billion purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The sale would have put the Dubai company in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif.
Robert Mardian, Nixon attorney
Robert Mardian, an attorney for President Nixon’s re-election committee whose conviction in the Watergate scandal was overturned, has died. He was 82.
Mardian died of complications from lung cancer Monday at his vacation home in Southern California, said his son Robert.
The attorney long denied helping conceal the Nixon administration’s involvement in the break-in and attempted bugging of the Democratic National Headquarters office at the Watergate complex.
Nixon had named him head of the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department in 1970, but Mardian left two years later to work for Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President. He represented the committee when the Democratic National Committee sued shortly after the 1972 break-in.
In March 1974, Mardian and six others were indicted. Mardian was charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
In October 1976, a federal appeals court ruled Mardian should have been tried separately and the special prosecutor dropped the charge.