Roger Linscott

LENOX, Mass.—Roger Linscott, a former Berkshire Eagle associate editor who won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, has died. He was 88.

His daughter, Wendy, said Thursday that her father died Monday of pneumonia at the Kimball Farms Nursing Center in Lenox.

Linscott graduated from Harvard in 1941. He joined the Navy and served on a destroyer during World War II. He later was hired at the paper then named The Berkshire Evening Eagle.

Linscott won the Pulitzer Prize for 1972 editorials that the newspaper said illustrated “the wide range of subjects an editorial writer on a small paper must deal with.”



Tom Tescher

BISMARCK, N.D.—Saddle bronc riding champion Tom Tescher, one of the early members of North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, has died. He was 82.

Family members said Tescher died Wednesday night at a nursing home in Wibaux, Mont.

He won the first North Dakota Saddle Bronc Riding Championship in 1948, and along with his late brother Jim, started the Home on the Range Champions Ride at Sentinel Butte, where he grew up, in 1957.

Tom Tescher and his wife, Lorraine, raised 10 children on their ranch near Medora. He retired from professional rodeo in 1967.



Frank J. Valenti

ROCHESTER, N.Y.—Frank J. Valenti, who oversaw organized crime activity in Rochester during its violent heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 97.

He died Saturday at a nursing home outside Houston, according to a death certificate filed Wednesday in Fort Bend County, Texas.

Valenti seized control of gambling, prostitution and extortion rackets in the city in 1964 and had connections with the powerful Bonanno family in New York City, investigators say.

He was toppled by rivals during a violent turf war between mob factions capped by a series of bombings at churches, court buildings and the homes of a judge and a labor union leader.

During Valenti’s notorious reign, his hometown newspaper ran a regular feature on the doings of the dapper gangster.