In memoriam through June 9: Three KC fashion and art icons and a beloved chef

(Compiled from The Star’s news services.)

Kate Spade, the Kansas City-born fashion designerwho createda purse and accessories empire, was found dead by suicide June 5 in her Manhattan apartment. She was 55.

Spade, a graduate of St. Teresa’s Academy, worked as an editor at Mademoiselle magazine when she launched her company with her husband, Andy Spade, in their New York apartment in 1993. She became synonymous with her purses, which became status symbols and rites of passage for young women.

“We are all devastated by today’s tragedy,” the Spade family said in a statement. “We loved Kate dearly and will miss her terribly.” Her husband and a sister said she had been battling depression for years. The couple were still close but had been living apart for 10 months, sharing custody of their 13-year-old daughter, Frances Beatrix. She also leaves her father, Frank Brosnahan of Kansas City, a brother and three other sisters.

Anthony Bourdain, travel host and celebrity chef, was found dead by suicide June 8 in a hotel room in France. He was 61. Bourdain was set to record an episode of his show “Parts Unknown” on CNN.

“Anthony was a dear friend,” Eric Ripert, a celebrity chef and restaurateur who appeared with Bourdain on several of his shows, told The New York Times. “He was an exceptional human being, so inspiring and generous. One of the great storytellers of our time who connected with so many. I wish him peace. My love and prayers are with his family, friends and loved ones.”

Bourdain cultivated a renegade style. For decades he worked as a line cook in restaurants in New York and the Northeast before he became executive chef in the 1990s at Brasserie Les Halles in lower Manhattan. He had been an executive chef for eight years when he sent an unsolicited article to The New Yorker about the deceptions of the restaurant world. It resulted in “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” a memoir that elevated Bourdain to a celebrity chef and a new career on TV.

David Douglas Duncan, the Kansas City native who helped change the role of war photography by exposing the anguish of soldiers in Korea and Vietnam, died June 7 at age 102. Duncan died in a French hospital from complications from a lung infection.

A close friend of Picasso, Duncan used his photos to chronicle the artist’s life and work. Duncan’s images of the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions and how they represented America were also widely celebrated. Yet Duncan’s most influential work was as a combat photographer.

In 2013, Duncan, a graduate of Southwest High School, gave the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 161 photographs for its permanent collection, mostly taken at Picasso’s home.

Michael Vollbracht, a fashion designer and illustrator who grew up in the Kansas City area and graduated from Shawnee Mission North High School, died June 6 at his home in North Safety Harbor, Fla., Women’s Wear Daily reported. He was 70. The cause of death is pending an autopsy, but Vollbracht had suffered a series of medical problems in recent months. Vollbracht worked as an illustrator for Geoffrey Beene, sketching Lynda Bird Johnson’s wedding wardrobe among other assignments.

After years of illustrating, Vollbracht started his own company in 1978. His second collection earned a Coty Award. By the 1980s Michaele Vollbracht, as he formerly spelled his name, became a household fashion name. In 1981 he guest-starred as himself on an episode of “Hart to Hart” about a fashion designer suspected of murdering his models, and then appeared on “Paper Dolls” with Lloyd Bridges. Later in his career, Vollbracht was largely associated with Bill Blass, helping the designer with his 2002 museum retrospective at Indiana University and later taking over the creative reigns from Lars Nilsson in 2003.

Jerry Maren, said to be the last surviving Munchkin from the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” died May 24 at a San Diego nursing home. He was 99. Maren played the middle member of the Lollipop Guild that welcomed Dorothy to Munchkinland in the film. Just before the presentation he danced between two other Lollipop Kids as they moved toward Judy Garland singing, “We represent the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild. And in the name of the Lollipop Guild, we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland.”

During his career he also portrayed the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese in McDonald’s commercials and appeared in many TV shows including “Seinfeld,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Bewitched,” “The Wild Wild West,” “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Lou Grant” and “Julia.” He was also in the film “The Terror of Tiny Town.”

Frank C. Carlucci, a Republican who worked for four presidents and served as national security adviser and secretary of defense in President Ronald Reagan’s second term, died June 3 at his home in McLean, Va. He was 87. The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.

After years in the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Carlucci was named national security adviser by Reagan in 1986, succeeding Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, who had resigned over his role in the Iran-Contra affair. The appointment was aimed at restoring confidence in the administration. Carlucci abolished Lt. Col. Oliver North’s political-military affairs section, which had hatched the covert plot to sell arms to Iran to finance right-wing guerrillas, known as the contras, fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government. A year later, Reagan named Carlucci defense secretary. Leaving government when President George H.W. Bush assumed office in January 1989, Carlucci joined the Carlyle Group, a Washington investment partnership. He retired as its chairman in 2003.

Dwight Clark, a San Francisco 49ers football player remembered for a game-winning touchdown in 1982 known simply as “The Catch,” died June 4, a year after revealing he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 61.

The play happened on Jan. 10 when the 49ers hosted the Dallas Cowboys for the NFC title game. The 49ers were facing a third down at the Dallas 6 with less than a minute to play. Joe Montana lofted the ball toward the back of the end zone. Clark leaped to make a fingertip catch over Everson Walls. The 49ers went on to win the game 28-27 and then their first Super Bowl two weeks later against Cincinnati. Clark won two Super Bowls with the 49ers during a nine-year career that ended in 1987.

Jill Ker Conway, the first woman president of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., died June 1 at her home in Boston. She was 83. No cause was given. After a decade leading Smith, she wrote three memoirs among other books and championed feminist causes and ideas. In 2013 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. She served on the boards of companies like Nike and nonprofits like the Kellogg Foundation.

Georg von Tiesenhausen, the last of the German rocket team that launched the U.S. space program, died June 3 at his Alabama home. He was 104. Von Tiesenhausen worked alongside Wernher von Braun during World War II in Germany. After the war, von Tiesenhausen joined von Braun in Huntsville, Ala., where von Tiesenhausen helped form the backbone of the U.S. space program, ultimately aiding in the launch of the first U.S. satellite and the first U.S. astronauts. While at the Marshall Space Flight Center, von Tiesenhausen designed and created the lunar rover that accompanied the last three Apollo missions in 1971 and 1972.

Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, a Marine combat veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who became a military analyst critical of American policy in the wars with Iraq, died on June 2 in Potomac, Md. He was 89. The cause was cancer.

Trainor was a military correspondent of The New York Times from 1986 to 1990 and later an analyst for ABC News and NBC News. In a trilogy of books published from 1995 to 2012, Trainor and fellow Times reporter Michael R. Gordon drew on classified documents, interviews with military personnel, U.S. officials, Iraqi officials and their rivals, oral histories and the authors’ own visits to battle sites. The final book, “The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama” analyzed U.S. intervention in Iraq beginning with the capture of Baghdad in 2003 and ending with the departure of the last U.S. troops in December 2011.

Malcolm Morley, a painter who helped foster photorealism in the 1960s and neo-expressionism in the late 1970s, died June 2 in Bellport, N.Y. He was 86. No cause was given. Morley discovered art in prison after teenaged burglary convictions. By the mid-1960s he was established in New York arts circles, working in a photorealist style. He often made paintings from images on postcards of cruise ships. One work, “Queen of Opera” in 1971 was a 48-by-60-inch oil painting of a Time magazine cover featuring Beverly Sills. Morley then veered away from realistic reproductions into fanciful imagery.

This story was originally published June 9, 2018 at 12:15 PM with the headline "In memoriam through June 9: Three KC fashion and art icons and a beloved chef."