Jim R. Bounds / AP

Vollis Simpson, a builder of whirligigs, is seen in Lucama, N.C., in June 2010. Whirligigs are wind-driven creations that could stand as high as 50 feet.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Vollis Simpson, a self-taught North Carolina artist famed for his whimsical, wind-powered whirligigs, has died. He was 94. 

Beth Liles of Joyner's Funeral Home confirmed the death Saturday. Simpson's wife, Jean Simpson, was quoted by the Wilson Daily Times as saying that her husband died Friday in his sleep at his home in the town of Lucama.

Jean Simpson also was quoted by the paper as saying that her husband had received a successful heart valve replacement in February but experienced complications. 

Simpson became known for his whirligigs, wind-driven creations that stand as high as 50 feet and are constructed from recycled parts including motor fans and cotton spindles. 

Jim R. Bounds / AP

Giant whirligigs designed by Vollis Simpson are shown in Lucama, N.C. in June 2010.

He built the contraptions on land near his machine shop in Lucama, about 35 miles east of Raleigh. More than 30 of them were on display there until last year, when an effort to restore them began. The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park is scheduled to open in November in Wilson, about 50 miles east of Raleigh. 

People from across the world visited Simpson at his shop, where he would happily sit and talk with them.

"What Vollis was doing mechanically, creatively and artistically is unparalleled," Folklorist Jefferson Currie, who has worked on the renovation, said Saturday. "He worked on a scale that was a lot larger than anyone else. And even in that scale, he had a lot of intricacy. ... It's hard to get your ahead around how one man could create all of this." 

Simpson's creations have also captured national attention, with buyers including a shopping center in Albuquerque, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Four of them were also put on display at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. 

Last month, the North Carolina House approved a measure making whirligigs the state's official folk art.

The whirligigs weigh as much as 3 tons and have hundreds of moving parts. They're folk art or what's also known as outsider art, works created by someone without formal arts training. 

Neither did Simpson have a formal engineering degree. But that didn't stop him from constructing a motorcycle with a bicycle and a stolen motor when he was an Air Force staff sergeant on Saipan during World War II. He also built tow trucks for moving houses. 

In an interview last summer, Simpson told The Associated Press he was conflicted about the park in his honor. He said he knew he could no longer care for his creations if they stayed at home with him, but he felt lonely without them. 

"I just hope I live to see it," he said of the park.

NBC4

Former Bishop Watterson physical education teacher Carla Hale was fired in March.

A gay teacher who was fired from a Catholic high school in Ohio says she has been dealt another blow: Her local union isn't supporting her.

Carla Hale taught physical education for 19 years at Bishop Watterson Catholic High School in Columbus. She was fired in March after her name appeared with her longtime lesbian partner's name in her mother's obituary.

The firing, which the school said was prompted by an anonymous letter from a parent complaining about a lesbian teacher, resulted in a heated debate on both sides for the diocese of Columbus.

On Monday, Hale and her attorney announced their request for help with her case had been turned down by the local union for Catholic educators.

"The COACE [Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators] informs you of the decision of its Grievance Committee not to carry forward the grievance Ms. Carla Hale has filed to challenge the termination of her employment as a Diocesan teacher," read the letter from the Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators, according to WCMH.com in Ohio. It was signed by the union's president, Kathleen Mahoney.

The association did not return calls seeking comment.

Hale was fired March 28, ater returning from a break for her mother's funeral. She said she was called into a meeting with administrators, who had a copy of the obituary for her mother that she and her brother had written. They also handed her an anonymous letter from a parent calling the diocese disgraceful for employing a lesbian teacher at its school. 

Her termination letter from Bishop Watterson Principal Marian Hutson declared, "Your written spousal relationship violates the moral laws of the Catholic Church."

Following Hale's dismissal, the school said it received threatening phone calls and a slew of online criticism. But it stood by its decision, even as Hale filed a grievance to seek reinstatement and was denied.

"My living arrangements are my personal business. I'm a very moral person," she told reporters Monday after learning of the union's decision. "My decision to acknowledge a loved one in my mother's obituary was not immoral. I am not immoral." 

Hale has also filed a complaint with the city of Columbus, which prohibits firing employees based on sexual orientation. 

Her attorney, Tom Tootle, said it could take a month or more for the city to rule on her case, according to WCMH.com. Without help from her union, he asked her supporters for financial assistance.

"Arbitrations can be very expensive. Without the support and assistance of the COACE, we will need the support of all those who have been out there," Tootle said.

Hale's case has received national attention. A Change.org petition calling her to get her job back has more than 127,000 signatures. Locally, a group supporting her called Halestorm Ohio has more than 5,000 members, according to WCMH.com.

"We have a real opportunity not only to see justice done for a great teacher and great mentor, but to also make history. What we do here could impact employment policy all over the country," Amanda Finelli, a member of Halestorm Ohio, told WCMH.com.

NBC News' Jeff Black contributed to this report.

Read original story: 

Fired lesbian teacher fights to get job at Catholic high school back

Talya C. Arbisser

Dr. Joyce Brothers.

Popular television psychologist and columnist Joyce Brothers passed away at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey on Monday, her family confirmed to NBC News. She was 85.

Brothers died peacefully, surrounded by family, according to an obituary written by her family and provided to NBC News.

She was born on October 20, 1927 in New York City and married physician Milton Brothers in 1949.

Her career spanned nearly six decades after her start in 1955 as the only woman to ever win the television quiz show “The $64,000 Question.”

And in 1958 she was offered a trial television show on NBC where she doled out advice on personal problems ranging from love, marriage and raising a family. The show took off and she gained fame by diving into subjects that at the time were seen as too taboo to speak about publicly.

Her television show would soon make her a pop culture fixture.  She made nearly 100 appearances on Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show.” Her frequent public appearances propelled her to become one of the most admired women in America, appearing on Gallup’s list of most admired American women.

Her syndicated column appeared in more than 350 newspapers.

But Brothers’ status as a “media psychologist” was sometimes cause for critique by other members of her profession. Some in her field called it unprofessional to diagnose patients on the spot without knowing their backgrounds, but she responded by saying that she always would advise people to seek professional help when needed.

Brothers is survived by her sister, Judge Elaine Goldsmith (retired) of Somerville, New Jersey, her daughter Dr. Lisa Brothers Arbisser, and son-in-law Dr. Amir Arbisser, of Davenport, Iowa and Sarasota, Florida, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren.

Courtesy of Barbara Williamson

Undated photo of John Williamson at the Sandstone Retreat in California.

John Williamson, a pioneer of the 1960s sexual revolution as co-founder of Topanga Canyon's Sandstone Retreat, where nudity and free love once took place with abandon, has died. He was 80.

Williamson died of cancer March 24 at a hospital in in Reno, Nev., according to his wife, Barbara Williamson. The pair had lived on a Northern Nevada ranch for the past 18 years, taking in abandoned lions, tigers, cougars and other big cats.

They were a young newlywed couple in 1968 when they bought a cluster of rundown buildings on 15 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and turned it into the Sandstone Foundation for Community Systems Research.

It offered seminars on human bonding, relationships and sexuality, but its Sandstone Retreat, where as many as 500 people would gather on weekends to frolic in the nude, swap spouses and engage in group sex, quickly made its existence in the bohemian canyon notorious.

"We actually had open sexuality and nudity, but it was optional. Everything was optional," Barbara Williamson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We provided a wonderful, wonderful environment in a natural setting, and that natural setting just sort of gave people permission."

As the retreat's frontman, Williamson became known as the "messiah of sex" — a title his wife said he always carried proudly.

Many celebrities were said to have paid quiet visits to Sandstone over the years, and Williamson joked Thursday that she probably "saw more naked Hollywood stars than any other woman."

Author Gay Talese has said he spent a substantial amount of time there, much of it naked, when he researched his 1981 book, "Thy Neighbor's Wife" on the sexual revolution. Sandstone was also the subject of a 1975 documentary.

It was reading Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" that John Williamson said prompted him to quit a defense-industry job in electronics and move to California in the early 1960s. The book portrays a society in which people, fed up with government and industry controlling their lives, walk away from their jobs.

But Williamson continued to work in a mainstream job, running an electronics company, until he met his wife when she came by his office one day in 1966 to try to sell him insurance. A few weeks later they were married, and soon after they were planning Sandstone.

Although membership flourished, Barbara Williamson said, the retreat never took in enough money to pay the bills. They sold the property in 1972, and Sandstone closed a couple years later.

After an effort to build a tribal community in Montana foundered, the couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area, then to Nevada. There they began to take in big cats whose owners wanted to get rid of them.

At the time of his death, Williamson was attempting to turn their property into a wild animal sanctuary and educational center.

Retired Col. Benjamin Purcell, the highest ranking Army POW during the Vietnam War, died on Tuesday. He was 85.

Retired Col. Benjamin Purcell, the highest ranking Army POW during the Vietnam War, died on Tuesday, April 2.

After serving a combat tour in Korea, Purcell volunteered for a tour in Vietnam.

In early 1968, the helicopter he was riding in was shot down near Quang Tri City. He and the crew were captured - and at least one of the American soldiers was executed on the spot.

Purcell was taken as a prisoner of war by the Viet Cong and spent the next 1,874 days as a POW in Laos - more than 5 years. During that time he escaped twice, but both times was recaptured. He spent much of his time in captivity in solitary confinement, enduring starvation and beatings.

Purcell was released two months after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and was finally reunited with his family in late March, 1973.

The first words Purcell spoke publicly following his release were reportedly, "Man's most precious possession, second only to life, is freedom."

Purcell and his wife, Anne, later wrote a book together about how they endured those long years apart, called "Love and Duty."

After leaving the service in 1980, Purcell ran a Christmas tree farm, because, as Stars & Stripes reported in 2004, after spending so much time in the Army he wanted to be his own boss.

Purcell's funeral is scheduled for Saturday, in Clarkesville, Ga.

Magnolia Pictures via AP

Linda and Burt Pugach in 1974. She died this week at age 75, still married to the man convicted of hiring hit men to throw lye in her face.

Linda Pugach, the real-life co-star of one of New York City's craziest love stories, died this week -- still married to the man who was convicted of hiring goons to blind her with lye. She was 75.

Then known as Linda Riss, she became a household name in 1959 when she was attacked on the street and her married ex-lover, lawyer Burt Pugach, was accused of orchestrating the ambush.

Linda, blinded in one eye and scarred, became a fixture on the front page of the city papers, her pretty face always obscured by dark sunglasses.

Burt was convicted of masterminding the attack and spent 14 years in prison, where he indulged his obsession with Linda by writing her love letters.

After his release, he divorced his first wife, began wooing Linda, and proposed to her on live television.

“It was a fairytale romance,” Burt Pugach, 85, said Thursday after Linda was laid to rest in a crypt where he will one day be entombed next to her. “We loved each other so much.”

Like any marriage, it had its bumps, though.

The couple had been married for more than 20 years when Burt was in trouble again, charged with threatening a mistress who jilted him by warning he would make it "1959 all over again."

He beat the rap with a little help from ever-loyal Linda, who took the stand and explained that heart surgery she had in 1990 -- which left her blind in her other eye -- led him to cheat.

"I was not able to have sex with my husband. I was so terribly weakened I was at death's door," she told the court.

Their bizarre romance later became the basis for a well-received documentary, "Crazy Love."

“Did they love each other?” said Dan Klores, who directed “Crazy Love.”

“I think they needed each other. Some definition of love, maybe, but certainly not the traditional view," he said.

"Each of them fulfilled a big need in the other: She had to be cared for and he tried to rationalize what he did. She needed to be viewed as the beautiful little teenage girl that she was … and he represented the one man that still wanted her.”

Driving back from the cemetery, Pugach said in a phone interview that he had nothing to do with the lye attack and said Linda never believed he did.

“I doubt she would have married me if she did,” he said.

Headlines aside, he said they were a match made in heaven.

“She was so beautiful, so kind; she had such a marvelous spirit. She was a double of Elizabeth Taylor,” he said. “And if you take a look at the pictures of me, I don’t look like Boris Karloff.”

He said his wife suffered childhood rheumatic fever that damaged her heart. She began to ail a couple of months ago and was in and out of the hospital and rehabilitation centers. Burt last saw her a few hours before she died.

“Before I went she said to me, ‘Burt, take me home with you.’ And I said, ‘I would love to,’” he said

“There’s nothing in my life any more. I’m an old man and I don’t know how I can go on without her.”

Courtesy KSL/Deseret News

Val Patterson, left, who wrote his own obituary before he died, is seen next to his wife Mary Jane, of Utah.

Dr. Val Patterson, Ph.D., used his self-penned obituary as an opportunity to tell the world some surprising facts about himself, including: He didn't actually have a Ph.D., and yes, he's the guy who stole that company safe a few decades ago.

The Utah man, who died at age 59 of throat cancer on July 10, prepared in advance a light-hearted summary of his life that was published in The Salt Lake Tribune's obituary section on Sunday. In it, he described growing up in Salt Lake City, meeting the love of his life, traveling, and spending time with good friends.

But then, it was time to clear his conscience. "I have confessions and things I should now say," Patterson wrote.

"I really am NOT a PhD. What happened was that the day I went to pay off my college student loan at the [University of Utah], the girl working there put my receipt into the wrong stack, and two weeks later, a PhD diploma came in the mail. I didn't even graduate, I only had about 3 years of college credit," he wrote. "I never did even learn what the letters 'PhD' even stood for."

To the engineers he worked with who had no idea he didn't really have a doctorate, Patterson said, "I'm sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked very well."

Patterson also came clean about stealing a safe from an inn in 1971.

"I could have left that unsaid, but I wanted to get it off my chest," he wrote.

While much of the obituary is written in a playful tone -- Patterson even told Disneyland it can "throw away that 'Banned for Life' file you have on me, I'm not a problem anymore" -- when addressing his "remarkable" wife Mary Jane, there are no jokes.

"My regret is that I felt invincible when young and smoked cigarettes when I knew they were bad for me," he wrote. "I have robbed my beloved Mary Jane of a decade or more of the two of us growing old together and laughing at all the thousands of simple things that we have come to enjoy."

In a phone conversation with NBC News on Wednesday, Mary Jane Patterson, 50, laughed while talking about her husband of 33 years, whom she described as a smart man who excelled in woodworking, art, electronics -- and making people smile.

"There's only one Val," she said."He had a great sense of humor. If you knew him, you would just be in hysterics."

The couple spent eight years working for an oil company in Saudi Arabia, then returned to their hometown of Salt Lake City in 1988. Over the years, Val worked as a circuit board designer, an an electronics engineer and a consultant. While Val enjoyed the Ph.D. error from his college, he never used it to his advantage, Mary Jane said.

"He didn't even graduate from college because he wanted to quit just to prove to himself that he didn't need a degree to open any doors for him," she said. Nonetheless, his college continued to send him alumni correspondences over the years addressed to "Dr. Val Patterson, Ph.D."

"We just laughed at that. And it's true what he said: He didn't even know what it stood for," she said. "He didn't ever use it to any advantage at all for getting jobs or anything. In fact, he was proud of that fact that his talent with electronics was so good that he didn't need one."

Val had told her about his plans to write his own obituary before he died. Mary Jane agreed with it, and he made her promise she wouldn't change a word of it.

"I didn't mind at all. He was so organized," she said. "He never asked favors from people. He just always did everything himself. He never wanted to burden anyone."

Starks Funeral Parlor, where a "celebration of life" is being held for Patterson (casual dress is encouraged, he told readers), has been inundated with emails, phone calls and Facebook messages since the obituary was published.

"It's just been unreal. It's a wonderful thing. We've never had anything like this before," Brady Gamble, funeral director at Starks, located in Salt Lake City, told NBC News on Wednesday morning.

While Patterson went so far as to write his own obituary, he didn't plan his service, Gamble said. Mary Jane came in recently to discuss specifics.

"Once in a while we get families where the person who passed away writes their own obituary, but it's very rare for somebody to write one like this and for it to be so inspiring and so interesting," he said.

On the Starks Funeral Parlor Facebook page, which commenters turned to after the funeral home's website crashed from getting so many hits, condolences poured in. "To his widow, and remaining family... I can tell he was a blast to be around!" wrote one person. "I personally did not know him, but from his self-penned obituary, he sounds like just the type of person I would have liked to have as a friend. Mary Jane, you obviously were the joy of his life and must be a wonderful, caring and loving person," commented another.

Gamble believes Patterson's honesty while knowing his death was imminent is what touched so many people.

"He wanted to convey his love to his wife and his remorse for not being able to spend many more years with her," Gamble said. "I haven't spoken with [Mary Jane] directly, but I've heard this is very overwhelming for her. I don't think she was expecting this type of response."

Mary Jane said she felt bad for other people who recently lost loved ones who are trying to access Starks' website.

"Val, what did you do?" she joked.

Patterson is survived by his mother and brother, in addition to his wife. In his obituary, Patterson had one final message to his readers: "If you want to live forever, then don't stop breathing, like I did."

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An Oregon newspaper was forced to print an embarrassing correction after sordid details about the death of one of the paper's own Pulitzer Prize-winning editors began to emerge.

Bob Caldwell, 63, a longtime editorial page editor at The Oregonian, died on Saturday. A family friend initially told the newspaper that Caldwell was found dead in his car; later, The Oregonian reported Caldwell had actually gone into cardiac arrest while engaged in a "sex act" with a 23-year-old woman at her apartment. He reportedly had been paying her in exchange for such encounters.

Caldwell, who is married with three children, was "coughing and then unresponsive" during sex with the woman, the paper reported. The woman, who was not identified, allegedly told sheriff's deputies she met Caldwell about a year ago at Portland Community College. Caldwell gave her cash for books and other items for school in exchange for sexual favors at her apartment, she said, according to The Oregonian.

Caldwell was transported to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center Saturday, and was later pronounced dead, The Oregonian said. He had not given the woman money on Saturday, according to the paper.

No prostitution charges will be filed against the woman, deputies said.

“Technically we probably could have charged her with prostitution because there was an exchange of something, books and maybe tuition money for sex,” Sgt. Dave Thompson told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “But it’s a misdemeanor crime, and the circumstances of the guy dying in her apartment, we felt like it was probably not the most important arrest to make.”

Widow: 'We love him unconditionally'
On Tuesday, Caldwell's widow, Lora Cuykendall, posted a Facebook update about the circumstances concerning his death, and saying he "would have understood why The Oregonian needed to print the story." She added, "He also would have regretted the anguish that it caused to those he loves - both outside and inside of the newspaper. We love him unconditionally. Thanks to all of you for your loving support."

It's not known whether Caldwell's widow was aware of his affair.

The Oregonian's original obituary described Caldwell as having a "big smile and and a bigger laugh."

Caldwell's editorial career with the Oregonian began in 1995, but he worked for the paper for a total of 30 years. The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 under him for a series of editorials about abuses at the Oregon State hospital, titled "Oregon's Forgotten Hospital," according to The Associated Press.

"He never lost his schoolboy enthusiasm for putting out the newspaper," said the obituary. "He never lost sight of the democratic ideals that drew him to journalism in the first place: Tell people the news, and the rest will follow." 

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