In Passing

Tuscon, Ariz.

Bill Bonanno, Mafia figure

Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno, the eldest son of the late Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno who became the No. 2 man in his father’s crime family in the mid-1960s and shortly thereafter escaped a gangland hit on a sidewalk in Brooklyn in protest against his promotion, has died. He was 75.

Bonanno, who later served prison time and became an author, died Tuesday in a Tucson hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home.

Bonanno told the Los Angeles Times in 2005 that he never intended to follow in the footsteps of his Sicilian-born father, the founder of one of New York’s five Mafia crime families. Dubbed “Joe Bananas” in the tabloid press, Joseph Bonanno was once described by Time magazine as “one of the bloodiest killers in Cosa Nostra’s history.”

“Bill was raised to be legit,” said Gay Talese, author of “Honor Thy Father,” the 1971 bestseller that chronicled the rise and fall of the Bonanno family.

But his life changed in the 1950s when his father came under scrutiny by authorities. Prompted by loyalty, Bonanno said in 2005, he returned to New York to act as a conduit between his father and other members of the Bonanno crime family.

And, Talese said, “little by little, Bill gets in deeper and deeper” – to the point where, about 1965, his father thought his son ought to become his second in command.

London

G.M. Fraser, ‘Flashman’ author

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the “Flashman” series of historical adventure yarns, died Wednesday, his publisher said. He was 82.

Fraser died following a battle with cancer, said Nicholas Latimer, director of publicity for Knopf, which will release Fraser’s latest work, “The Reavers,” in the United States in April.

“Flashman,” published in 1969, introduced readers to an enduring literary antihero: the roguish, irrepressible Harry Flashman.

The novel imagined Flashman – the bullying schoolboy of 19th-century classic “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” – grown up to become a soldier in the British army. In the book and 11 sequels, Flashman fought, drank and womanized his way across the British Empire, Europe and the United States, playing a pivotal role in the century’s great historical moments.

Milan, Italy

Ettore Sottsass Jr., designer, architect

Ettore Sottsass Jr., the influential Italian designer and architect whose creations – including the now-iconic red Olivetti portable typewriter – were designed to change the perception of functional objects and enhance the experience of using them, died of heart failure Monday at his home in Milan. He was 90.

In the United States, Sottsass is known primarily as the patriarch of the Memphis group, a collaborative whose provocative furniture creations in the early 1980s challenged the tenets of modern design.

In a career that spanned 65 years, Sottsass produced a body of work – furniture, jewelry, ceramics, glass, silverwork, lighting, office machine design and buildings – that defies easy categorization, yet has inspired generations of architects and designers.