In Passing

Paris

Bernard Lacoste, apparel executive

Bernard Lacoste, who spent more than 40 years at the helm of the Lacoste clothing empire best known for its crocodile-embossed polo shirts, died Tuesday in a Paris hospital. He was 74.

The family did not provide the cause of death, but said Bernard Lacoste had been suffering from a “serious illness” for more than a year.

Bernard Lacoste succeeded his father, tennis player Rene Lacoste, as president of the Paris-based clothing manufacturer in 1963. The Lacoste polo shirts adorned with the little crocodile have for generations been the company’s staple. Bernard Lacoste is widely credited with turning the family sportswear business into a major apparel company.

Glen Ellyn, Ill.

Leon Daniel, war correspondent

Leon Daniel, a colorful United Press International reporter who spent three decades covering many of the world’s hot spots, died March 19 at a hospital in Glen Ellyn, Ill., from a blood clot in his lung, five days after a heart procedure. He was 74.

A former Marine who spent 36 years with the wire service, Daniel reported on the civil rights movement in the South, rebel movements in Afghanistan and the Dominican Republic, and the Gulf War in Kuwait.

He first reported from Vietnam in 1966 and was one of the few Western reporters to remain in the country after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

“Leon was one of the most knowledgeable and boldest reporters in Vietnam,” war correspondent Peter Arnett told the Associated Press. “He was also among the most amiable of men.”

As chief correspondent for UPI in 1990 and 1991, Daniel directed coverage of the Gulf War.

Washington

Desmond T. Doss, honored medic

Desmond T. Doss Sr., an Army medic on Okinawa during World War II who saved more than 75 wounded soldiers at great personal peril and became the first conscientious objector to the receive the Medal of Honor, died March 23 at his home in Piedmont, Ala. He had a respiratory ailment and was 87.

Doss grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose tenets forbid bearing arms. However, when he was called to the draft, the lanky native Virginian declined a religious exemption that would have allowed him to continue working in a shipyard.

He served in the Army with the designation of conscientious objector, but he detested that phrase. He preferred “conscientious cooperator.”

Doss developed tuberculosis after the war and spent years in hospital wards undergoing treatment, including the removal of a lung.

Unable to work a full-time job, he spent considerable time talking about the war and working with Seventh-day Adventist scouting programs.