ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 6, 1997 TAG: 9701070034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
Harry Helmsley dies with Leona at side
NEW YORK - Harry Helmsley, a self-made billionaire whose many business successes were overshadowed in recent years by his wife, Leona, and her highly publicized tax evasion conviction, has died. He was 87.
Helmsley died Saturday of pneumonia at a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., said Howard J. Rubenstein, Helmsley's New York-based spokesman.
Helmsley had ``been ailing for some time'' and had been hospitalized for about a week in Arizona, where he and his wife had a home. Leona Helmsley was at her husband's side when he died.
``My fairy tale is over,'' she said in a statement. ``I lived a magical life with Harry.''
From the 1950s to the mid-1980s, Helmsley was a major player in real estate. His vast holdings included 27 hotels and 50,000 apartments and control of the Empire State Building.
By the end of his life though, Helmsley was best known not as a powerful businessman, but as the senile husband of a woman who came to symbolize the greed of the 1980s.
He avoided prosecution on similar tax evasion charges after a court found him incompetent to stand trial because of advanced age and declining health.
- Associated Press
Citadel chooses its 18th president
CHARLESTON, S.C. - The Citadel picked the headmaster of an all-male boarding school Sunday to lead the state-run military college into the era of coeducation.
John S. Grinalds, a retired Marine major general and West Point graduate, was voted in unanimously by The Citadel's governing board as the school's 18th president. He takes over this summer.
Grinalds, 59, said he doesn't know enough to comment about claims last month by two female cadets that they were the victims of hazing that included setting their clothes on fire and being shoved with rifles. He said he wants to see the state and FBI reports first.
A Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Oxford University and Harvard Business School, Grinalds has served as headmaster of Woodberry Forrest School since 1991.
Woodberry Forest is a non-military school about 35 miles northeast of Charlottesville, Va. Grinalds will finish the current academic year there before taking on his new duties.
Grinalds succeeds Claudius Watts, who retired in the summer after a seven-year term.
- Associated Press
Calif. motorists get a video option
LOS ANGELES - California motorists don't even have to turn the ignition key to get remedial traffic safety instruction. Thanks to videos and computers, they can go to drivers' school right in their living room.
Starting Jan. 13, Ventura County traffic violators who want tickets erased from their records can go to the local video store and pay $39.99.
That rents a computer and three videotaped traffic lessons with re-enactments, driver testimonials and lectures by celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld and Phil Donahue.
The computer connects by a toll-free telephone number to U.S. Interactive, the Houston-based traffic school that designed the course.
The computer quizzes the student after each hourlong video lesson and, if the violator passes - and has paid the traffic fine - the computer automatically erases any record of the traffic ticket.
- Associated Press
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