In Passing

London

Francis Pym, Thatcher aide

Francis Pym, an antagonist of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who served as her foreign secretary during the Falklands War, died Friday after a long illness, his family said. He was 86.

Pym was defense secretary during Thatcher’s first term as prime minister.

In 1982, he was elevated to foreign secretary during the Falkland Islands war after the resignation of Peter Carrington.

Thatcher fired Pym after winning the 1983 election, and he became increasingly critical of her policies. He had said during the campaign that he hoped the Conservative Party would not win an overwhelming majority.

Thatcher won in a landslide.

Palo Alto, Calif.

G. Fredrickson, racism scholar

George Marsh Fredrickson, an authority on the history of racism whose work comparing the histories of South Africa and America helped spawn a new field of study, died Feb. 25 at his home on the Stanford University campus, where he taught for nearly two decades. He was 73.

The cause was heart failure.

Fredrickson, who was the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History at Stanford when he retired in 2002, wrote several highly regarded books, including “White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History” (1981).

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, “White Supremacy” examined crucial similarities and differences in the development of apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow system of segregation in the American South.

It was considered a model of comparative history, “one of the most brilliant and successful … ever written,” Yale historian David Brion Davis wrote in the New York Times in 1981.

Seattle

Jack Richards, former fire chief

Jack Richards, who rose through the ranks to become city fire chief and later was elected to a term on the City Council, died Monday of respiratory disease at 85.

Richards served with the Navy in World War II and worked briefly for the Boeing Co. before starting a 32-year career with the Fire Department, the last two years as chief.

He resigned in 1974 a day before he would have been fired by then-Mayor Wes Uhlman in a dispute over arson investigation funding.

Uhlman, who had appointed Richards chief, wanted to move the arson money into the general fund, and Richards went behind his back in an appeal to the City Council, which restored the funds to the Fire Department.

“He was a fire chief first, last and always,” said former Councilwoman Jeanette Williams.

Los Angeles

Malvin Wald, ‘Naked City’ writer

Malvin Wald, a prolific writer for film and television best known for co-writing the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 1948 film “The Naked City,” died Thursday of age-related causes at Sherman Oaks Hospital, his son Alan said. He was 90.

Wald wrote the story for the archetypal police drama, which ended with the now-famous line, “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

He and writer Albert Maltz, one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10 who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, were credited with the screenplay, which was also nominated for a Writers Guild Award.

The black-and-white film noir follows a police investigation of a model’s murder.

Filmed on location on the streets of New York, it spawned a television series by the same name and, ultimately, a genre of film and TV dramas that includes “Dragnet,” “Hill Street Blues” and the “CSI” series.