The Memorial Wall

Coleman Hough, who received solo screenplay credit on the quirky Steven Soderbergh-directed improvisational films Full Frontal and Bubble, has died. She was 62.

Hough died Feb. 24 at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, her friend Jennifer Romine told The Hollywood Reporter. She was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s when she was 42.

Full Frontal (2002), set in Hollywood and a film within a film, shot in 18 days using a consumer-grade digital camera and was the first produced screenplay by playwright and poet Hough.

Featuring Julia Roberts, Catherine Keener, David Hyde Pierce, Blair Underwood, David Duchovny and Jeff Garlin as a Harvey Weinstein type, it marked an extreme change of pace for Soderbergh, who was coming off Erin Brockovich (2000), an Oscar win for Traffic (2000) and Ocean’s Eleven (2001).

Hough’s characters are “simultaneously self-absorbed and less introspective than they think they are,” Craig J. Clark wrote in a piece for Crooked Marquee in 2022. “They stop short of being completely contemptible, however, thanks to the fleeting moments of grace Hough affords them — with one notable exception … movie producer and all-around creep Gus Delario (Duchovny).”

Hough then came up with an outline for Bubble (2005), which employed nonprofessional and local actors in a crime drama about workers in an Ohio factory that makes parts for dolls. That film also took less than a month to shoot.

Coleman Ann Hough was born on Feb. 26, 1961, in Charleston, South Carolina. Her parents, Kenneth and Ann, were teachers. She attended the Emma Willard all-girls private boarding school and graduated from Emerson College with a degree in acting in 1982.

She was a professor at Lehman College in the Bronx from 1987-98 and at Emerson from 1988-90 before making her way to Los Angeles.

Hough was a publicist’s assistant at Disney and staging plays at L.A. theaters when Soderbergh saw her in Angel and Mr. Charm, one of her productions. He gave her an uncredited role in his 1996 film Schizopolis and hired her to write a modern adaptation of Julius Caesar that never made it to the screen.

In 2003, she penned a short play called Shipping and Receiving that eventually became Full Frontal. She initially created nine 10-minute scenes for the movie, which is set over a 24-hour period.

“Steven asked me to write a list of questions he would ask the actors. But beyond that, I had no say. I wanted no say; I was curious to see what it would become.” Hough told MovieMaker magazine in 2005. “Once I had written the script, Steven, the crew and the actors took over. It took on a life of its own.”

Hough was researching Midwestern industries when she found the doll-parts factory that would be used for Bubble.

She also performed for the experimental theater Dixon Place in New York; wrote and directed the short film The Diagnosis (2008), starring Lesley Ann Warren and James Urbanick; and wrote a script about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham for HBO.

And she taught screenwriting at Ohio University and USC.

Survivors include her sister, Lee. 

To the average wine drinker, Ron Mansfield wasn’t a household name. But the viticulturist was a quiet force who shaped California wine in important ways over the last 35 years.

He helped put El Dorado County, and by extension the Sierra foothills, on the map as a wine destination. He was among the first in the state to plant now-beloved grape varieties like Gamay. The fruit that Mansfield grew ended up in bottles made by some of California’s most highly respected wine producers, like Arnot-Roberts, Edmunds St. John, Jolie-Laide and Keplinger.

Mansfield died last month at age 76, after a long ordeal with Parkinson’s disease. Since his death, those who knew him have been reflecting on his remarkable legacy. It’s a legacy that stretched all the way to the White House, which served the cherries that Mansfield grew — he was as much a stone-fruit farmer as a grape farmer — during every presidential administration from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama.

“It was such an important thing for me to have the chance to work with somebody like Ron,” said Steve Edmunds, the winemaker behind Edmunds St. John. “I felt very lucky to have somebody with Ron’s gift for farming interested in what I was doing.”

When Mansfield began farming in the 1980s, El Dorado County was in a transitional moment. The region’s pears, then the cornerstone of its agricultural industry, had been infected with blight. It was clear that farmers would need to shift to a new crop.

Mansfield had just come into some money thanks to a winning racehorse named Loyal Lad, and in 1980 he bought a plot of land. He grew cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums, calling the operation Goldbud Farms. The Goldbud cherries soon gained renown; they’re what caught the attention of White House chief usher Gary Walters. The Chronicle devoted an entire article to Mansfield’s cherries in 1991, quoting one of his retail customers: “The cherries are the biggest, darkest, best-tasting I have ever had.”

Soon Mansfield took over the farming at neighbor Al Fenaughty’s property, where he tended to a small section of Gewürztraminer and Syrah grapevines.

The Syrah grapes initially went to home winemakers, but in the late ’80s, Edmunds came calling. He was looking for Syrah and bought the entire Fenaughty Vineyard crop, which he estimates was about one barrel’s worth. “The wine was really intriguing and quite lovely,” said Edmunds. He shared some with Amador County winemaker Bill Easton, and the two agreed that it smelled like the legendary French Syrah Côte Rôtie.

From then on, Mansfield and Edmunds became inextricably linked. Many other vineyard owners throughout El Dorado began hiring Mansfield to farm their vineyards, and whenever he had the chance to plant something new, he’d consult Edmunds about which grape varieties might do well. He was willing to take chances on obscure, unproven cultivars like Vermentino and Grenache Blanc. Eventually, word got out among winemakers in Napa and Sonoma that Mansfield oversaw a treasure trove of these types of grapes, which tend to be scarce in Cabernet- and Chardonnay-dominant Wine Country.

“It was just slow, steady, organic growth,” said Mansfield’s son, Chuck Mansfield. Once Mansfield started working with a winemaker, “if they wanted some variety, and even if it was a bit of an outlier like Arneis or Negroamaro, we’d put in a little block for them.” 

Gamay may have been the ultimate coup. The signature red grape of France’s Beaujolais region has never been a major commercial success, always doomed to command lower prices and less respect than a somewhat similar-tasting grape, Pinot Noir. Yet wine geeks, especially those who prize subtler wines, adore Gamay.

“I felt like I had tricked Ron into planting it,” Edmunds said. In the 1990s, when Mansfield began cultivating Gamay in the granite-packed soils of the Barsotti Vineyard, Edmunds said, “what anybody in California knew about Gamay was virtually nothing.” Mansfield later planted it at additional sites too, including the Witters Vineyard, and winemakers now line up for the chance to buy it.

Along the way, Mansfield supported the burgeoning wine industry in his community. “So many people I didn’t realize he’d worked with have come to me and said, ‘Your dad helped me so much, getting my irrigation lines set up or choosing the grape varieties,’ ” said Chuck Mansfield, now Goldbud’s general manager.

“Mansfield is known in the community as someone who sticks his neck out but who knows what he is doing,” wrote Sibella Kraus in that 1991 Chronicle article.

He never lost his passion for horse racing, and he remained an active competitive bowler through his later years. In 2022, while fighting Parkinson’s symptoms, he competed in his 50th consecutive U.S. Bowling Congress Open Championship in Las Vegas. He earned a standing ovation, Chuck Mansfield said.

And through the end, Mansfield remained just as committed to his other crops, like the cherries, as to wine grapes. When asked which fruit his father favored, Chuck Mansfield returned a surprising answer.

“I think he really loved Fuji apples,” Chuck Mansfield said. “They’re not the most profitable. We don’t get the most attention or notoriety for those. But the satisfaction on his face when he was eating one of those Fuji apples — it was the same look on his face as when he and Steve were having a wine that really spoke to them.”

Jon Larry Sidwell "Sid" Jenson died of Parkinson's Disease in his home in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 27, 2024 at 88 years of age. He was born October 20, 1935 on a farm in Rexburg, Idaho. His parents were Neils Christian Jenson and Maggie Irene Wayman. He graduated from Madison High School in 1953 and went on to study Agronomy at Ricks College and then graduating with a BS in Crop Science and Agronomy from Utah State University in June of 1962. He was a Corporal in the US Army National Guard in Idaho.

He played basketball at Ricks College and Utah State University where he's in the Athletes Hall of Fame. He continued to play basketball in the Senior Olympics competing all over the world for the USA team, winning 15 gold medals until he was 78 years old.

In 1959, he met Katherine Miller at Ricks College during her half-time band performance at a football game. Sid served a 2-year mission for the LDS church in Sydney, Australia. While there he played on the Mormon Yankee Basketball Team. After his mission Sid and Katherine married in the Idaho Falls Temple on July 21, 1961 and went on to have 7 children: Daedre Anne, Jacqueline, Julie Kaye, David Sidwell, Katherine Janette, Jared Miller, and Brett Julian.

With his Chemistry and Agronomy education, Sid was a successful farmer and rancher in Roberts, Idaho on Silver Ridge Ranch. He served as a bishop twice, then a stake president, and high councilman in Idaho. He served three missions with his wife, Katherine for the LDS church at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jesup, Georgia, and the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. He also served faithfully as an ordinance worker in the Idaho Falls Temple and Salt Lake Temple.

Sid was Jefferson County Farmer of the Year, President of the Rigby Rotary, Eastern Idaho Alumni President for Utah State University, State Director of Farm Bureau, President of Jefferson County Farm Bureau, Delegate for the Idaho State Republican Party for two Presidents in 1972 and 2000, Ricks College Snow Society Board Member, and Chairman for the Jefferson County Planning Board.

Sid was preceded in death by his father, Neils C. Jenson, mother, Irene Wayman Jenson, brothers, Grant Wilbur, Neils Everett, Lynn, and sisters, Carol Joy, Twila, and Iris, and granddaughter, Mercedes. He is survived by his sister, Lucy and brother Kent, his wife, Katherine and their seven children. Sid has 25 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren.
 

David Gillece, 74, passed away peacefully on August 17, 2024, in Easton, Maryland. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Roberts, his daughter, Casey Gordon (Griffin) of Winnetka, IL, his son, Patrick Gillece (Jennifer) of Bethesda, MD, and five grandchildren.

Jim was born in Asheville, N.C., on July 7, 1938, to Martha and James Belote who were missionaries for the Southern Baptist church. In 1941, at three years of age, he sailed with his parents to Honolulu, Hawaii, en route to their first mission assignment: Canton, China. Due to conflicts arising between Japan and China, this trip was paused in Hawaii where they were reassigned to preach and teach during WWII. As a result, Jim’s earliest memory is of their family running around outside their home, gawking upward at strangely marked planes, one of which actually left a bullet hole in an outside wall of the family house on Dec. 7. After the war the original assignment was restored, and Jim spent some childhood years, first in Canton, China then in the Philippines while Mao Tse Tung conducted his revolution, which included attacks on Chinese Christians. This was followed by a later assignment to Hong Kong, where the family continued their missionary efforts throughout Jim’s high school years. He completed his high school education at King George V in Hong Kong in 1956 and came to Mars Hill NC to attend Mars Hill College (now Mars Hill University) for two years. In 1958, he went to Missoula, Montana, to begin his undergraduate studies in Forestry at the University of Montana. With only one semester left to finish, he interrupted his studies for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps where he worked as a Volunteer in Ecuador, but returned afterwards to complete his degree in History in 1964. Son David was born in Missoula in 1965.

It was his Peace Corps service in Ecuador that provided the direction for much of his life that followed. He met Linda Smith, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer there, and in 1963 they married in Saraguro, a bi-ethnic Ecuadorian national white/indigenous community in the southern highlands. Both Jim and Linda became fascinated by the culture of the indigenous people who were teaching them so much about living a good community life. They decided there and then to go to graduate school to learn (and earn doctorates in) Anthropology. The program in Anthropology at the University of Illinois attracted them, and accepted them both as graduate students in 1966. Their studies included two lengthy periods of residence in Saraguro for research; daughter Karen was born in Saraguro in 1971 during a two-year period of research. Jim’s investigations focused on the Saraguros’ colonization of the tropical forest area to the east in the Amazon basin for cattle-raising. Along with earning his Ph.D. in 1984, Jim earned the distinction of becoming “the person who took the greatest amount of time (18 years) to complete his dissertation” at the University of Illinois.

He also became over the years, the person who most documented the Saraguro culture through photographs. In the early 2000s he gifted the Canton Saraguro government with a full set of his photographs (black-and-whites in the 60s; color thereafter) as well as full sets to the indigenous leaders of a variety of organizations and communities. This record is priceless today.

Jim loved learning, in all of its guises. He’d focus on miniscule details while cogitating on universal-scale principles and values. He truly wanted to know and understand “life, the universe and everything.” His favorite environment was the out-of-doors, especially in winter. Special places he loved include the wild lands surrounding Hong Kong, where many fishing pools and waterfalls abound, Lake Superior, Isle Royale, the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, The Paavola Wetlands Nature Area, The Rocky Mountains of Montana, The Cajas region of Ecuador and the high paramos in the same country. Wherever he went, Jim was happiest hiking, exploring, backpacking, camping, canoeing, cross-country skiing, building colossal snow tunnels in the front yard (even in Duluth!), arriving at the highest point in any given area and writing notes about it all in a journal.

His employment while an undergraduate student was working summers for the U.S. Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains as a ribes eradicator. (Ribes is a plant which served as an alternate host to “blister rust” a disease lethal to important trees, like White Pine.) His alternate job those summers was fire-fighter as needed. When he and Linda were seeking employment as anthropologists, he gave her a map with a line drawn across the northern part of the US, and told her they should only apply for jobs in the highlighted “snow belt.” Their first employment in college teaching was a shared appointment between the two of them at Grove City College in Pennsylvania (1972-74); the second was a tenure-track position for Linda at Michigan Tech’s Social Sciences Department (1974-89). This evolved into adjunct faculty appointments at Tech for Jim to teach a variety of courses in Social Sciences, Humanities and even Forestry at one point. He also taught courses at Finlandia from time to time. In 1989, Linda was hired as Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Jim and Karen remained in Houghton that year so that Karen could graduate with her H.S. class. When Jim came to live in Duluth in 1990, he learned the Sociology-Anthropology Department had already created a part-time teaching job for him there. In addition to teaching the Belotes achieved a fairly strong publication record, writing articles together primarily about the culture of the Saraguro people. Jim also solo-authored some fiction and some non-fiction articles in a variety of magazines, including Lake Superior Magazine, Michigan Out-of-Doors and Above the Bridge. Although Jim and Linda felt strong ties to Duluth, when they retired from UMD in January 2006, they felt an even stronger pull back to the Snow Country i.e. the Copper Country (this time to Hancock), in March of that year.

In his retirement years, Jim turned his full attention to his first love–the Out-of-Doors. Specifically, he wanted to make it accessible to the public so that others could learn to relate to, and learn from nature. On any given day, he could mostly be found in one of two places: at the Keweenaw Land Trust’s Paavola Wetlands Nature Area, or on the portion of the North Country Trail that runs through the U.P., which is maintained by the local Peter Wolfe Chapter. On the Paavola property Jim planned out most of the trails that are existing at that area still today, as well as some which have since become overgrown since he last served there as steward. His last real walk was taken at Paavola through a favorite White Pine grove on Oct. 3, 2024, two days before his heart attack. His love for big old trees had been growing as Jim himself aged. He would wander in the woods near the Bluffs where he and Linda lived most recently, and then come home and take Linda to meet his latest find: a huge red oak or perhaps an elderly sugar maple. The Paavola White Pines also invoked Jim’s love.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents, James Dalby Belote and Martha Bigham Belote, as well as his brother Theodore (Teddy) Belote. His close friend and former brother-in-law Robert (Bob) F. Filer also preceded him, in a death which included Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by his son David Clinton Belote and daughter Karen Kay Belote-Stevens, son-in-law Sven Stevens and their daughter Grace Marie Belote-Stevens as well as by three sisters and their children: Virginia (Ginger) Belote Henry and her children Lisa Henry Benham and her daughter; Michael Allen Henry, Sr. and his wife LaTanya and their three children; Carolyn Belote Briggs and her son Seth Belote Roberts and his wife Elizabeth (Libby) and their two daughters; and Linda Anne (Lela) Belote. Jim is also missed by his former sister-in-law Marilyn Filer and her three children Mark Filer, Kristan Coleman and Anne Walker who were very close to their Uncle Jim. Finally, Sarah Filer Zollweg another daughter of Bob Filer, mourns the loss of her uncle as well. As a husband, father, grandfather and friend, with a gracious, loving, gentle spirit, he wlll be greatly missed by all who knew him