Features

Pauline Phillips, the writer behind the Dear Abby advice column died Wednesday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She was 94.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Her real name was Pauline Friedman Phillips, and she was one of the most widely read advice columnists in the world. You probably recognize her as Dear Abby.

Phillips died yesterday at a hospital in Minneapolis. She was 94 and had struggled for many years with Alzheimer's.

NPR's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.

On today's Morning Edition, Shereen Marisol Meraji had a great piece about the memorial of Southern California public-television staple Huell Howser, who died of cancer earlier this month.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people turned out to remember him. As Meraji says, for these fans, Howser was "a man who took them to places they never knew they wanted to go and introduced them to people they never knew they wanted to meet."

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

In Southern California fans gathered yesterday to say goodbye to a regional icon, Huell Howser. He was a host of popular travel shows on PBS, focusing on the charms of his adopted state, California and gaining a huge following with a camcorder and an aw-shucks Southern drawl.

HUELL HOWSER: Well, hello everybody. I'm Huell Howser. And you know over the years, we have done literally thousands of stories about all kinds of subjects all over this state.

MONTAGNE: Howser died earlier this month of cancer.

Today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 84 years old. As is our annual tradition, we take a moment to reflect on his legacy, by replaying his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Eugene Patterson was a man of the South. He grew up in a time of racial segregation. He became a newspaper columnist. And the story we're about to hear is the story of how he chose to use that platform during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Eugene Patterson has died after cancer treatments at the age of 89 and NPR's David Folkenflik reports on his life.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Eugene Patterson will be forever be known in Atlanta as a fearless champion of racial equality.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep. Let's talk now about the life and death of Aaron Swartz. He was a 26-year-old computer protégé and social activist. He created new technologies. He led campaigns that touched millions of lives and last Friday, Mr. Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was facing a criminal investigation at the time. NPR's Steve Henn is covering this story. Good morning, Steve.

STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Good morning.