In Passing

Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Robert McCurry, auto executive

Robert McCurry, an innovative automotive executive who pioneered cash rebates while at Chrysler and was a key force in establishing the Lexus division for Toyota, has died. He was 83.

McCurry died Monday of cancer at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

McCurry was famous in the industry for his astute product sense, keen marketing focus and larger-than-life persona.

“The creation of the Chrysler rebates in the 1970s was a moment that changed the automotive industry forever,” said Chris Denove, vice president and executive director of J.D. Power and Associates.

“When today’s consumers see factory programs such as employee pricing or zero-percent financing, in a very real way they have McCurry to thank,” said Denove.

After an influential career with Chrysler, McCurry joined Toyota in 1982 as general manager of the Los Angeles sales region. His influence as national sales chief grew as the carmaker’s popularity surged.

Havana

William Lee Brent, hijacker, emigre

William Lee Brent, a member of the Black Panthers who hijacked an airliner to Cuba in 1969 and later wrote a gritty account of his life, died Nov. 4 of bronchial pneumonia at his home in Havana. He was 75.

After years of crime, prison and low-paying jobs, Brent joined the Black Panthers in 1968 and quickly rose in the ranks of the radical black-power organization based in Oakland, Calif. To avoid trial for his role in a shootout with San Francisco police, Brent hijacked a TWA flight and spent the rest of his life in Cuba.

He chronicled his life in his 1996 autobiography, “Long Time Gone: A Black Panther’s True-Life Story of His Hijacking and Twenty-Five Years in Cuba.” Although he came to miss the United States and had reservations about life in Cuba, he said he never regretted the actions that separated him from his family and his homeland.

New York

Ellen Willis, journalist, critic

Ellen Willis, a former columnist and senior editor for the Village Voice and the first pop music critic for the New Yorker, died of lung cancer Thursday at her home in Queens, N.Y., said her daughter Nona Willis-Aronowitz. She was 64.

In the months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a chasm “the size of ground zero” opened between Willis and the burgeoning anti-war movement.

Willis was a radical, but she supported military action and found herself taken aback by young protesters “looking and sounding like preserved specimens of the ‘60s anti-war counterculture, with the same songs and peace-and-love slogans.”

Beginning in the late 1960s, Willis freelanced and became a contributing editor for the Village Voice, an alternative paper in New York.

She also worked at US magazine, Rolling Stone and in 1967 became the New Yorker’s first pop music critic.

Willis supported abortion rights and argued against anti-pornographers, extensions of her belief in an individual’s right to pleasure and freedom. Decades later, she supported war in Afghanistan, for some of the same reasons.