In Passing

Palm City, Fla.

Martin F. Dardis, Watergate figure

Martin F. Dardis, the chief investigator for the Dade County State Attorney who linked the Watergate burglars to President Nixon, died Tuesday at a Florida nursing home from a vascular condition. He was 83.

Dardis traced money found on the Watergate burglars to the Committee to Re-elect the President. The 1972 discovery led to further misdeeds, which ultimately forced the resignation of Nixon.

“He was always for the underdog,” said his daughter, Erin Dardis. “He did things like help people get out of prison that were wrongly convicted. He would get involved for free and spend his time investigating. He always sought the truth.”

In 1972, Dardis was tipped off to a Miami bank’s cash connection with the Watergate burglars and subpoenaed its records. He learned that one burglar, Bernard L. Barker, had worked with the CIA during the Bay of Pigs and held an account with a recently deposited $25,000 check from a major Republican fundraiser.

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has called that check the “connective tissue” that linked the burglars to Nixon’s re-election campaign.

Dardis later said he was misrepresented in Carl Bernstein and Woodward’s book and subsequent movie, “All The President’s Men,” in which he was portrayed by Ned Beatty. He told the Miami Herald last year the movie made him seemed like a shabbily dressed “buffoon.”

Hawthorne, N.Y.

Lew Anderson, TV performer

Lew Anderson, whose antics as Clarabell the Clown alongside Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody on one of television’s first children’s shows made an indelible impression on baby boomers, has died. He was 84.

Anderson, a musician and bandleader who regularly played New York clubs, died May 14 of complications from prostate cancer at a hospice in Hawthorne, N.Y., said his son, Chris Anderson.

In the final moments of “The Howdy Doody Show” on Sept. 24, 1960, Anderson as the long-mute clown broke Clarabell’s silence by turning to the camera with a tear in his eye and saying, “Goodbye, kids.” His first and last words on the show became a staple of television highlight reels.

Though Anderson’s six years as Smith’s sidekick were an interlude to his long career as a jazz musician, the TV role brought him years of enjoyment and enduring fame. Although Anderson was the third actor to portray Clarabell, he was the best, Smith recalled in his 1990 memoir “Howdy and Me.”

Ocala, Fla.

Joyce Brand, commercial artist

Joyce Ballantyne Brand, the artist who created the iconic image for Coppertone sun lotion of a mischievous puppy pulling down a little girl’s bathing suit bottom, has died. She was 88.

Brand had a heart attack two weeks ago and died at home Monday, said her daughter, Cheri Brand Irwin.

Irwin was 3 years old in 1959 when her mother used her as the model for the Coppertone Girl. Brand was paid a $2,500 commission.

“She enjoyed commercial art, and she’s done many projects,” Irwin said. “The Coppertone one surprised her with its recognition and staying power.”

Brand in 2004 described the Coppertone ad as “kind of boring.”

“Yeah, it was a good billboard, but it was hardly the only art I ever produced,” she told the St. Petersburg Times of Florida. “But that’s what everybody remembers. That’s what everybody wants to talk about. The Coppertone Girl.”