* Dresser Dahlstead; Radio Announcer

Dresser Dahlstead, 88, announcer of “One Man’s Family” and other classic shows in the golden age of radio. A native of Springerville, Utah, Dahlstead majored in engineering at the University of Utah. He began his radio career at age 19 with San Francisco station KGO and announced the first broadcast from the Golden Gate Bridge. He moved to Los Angeles as chief announcer for NBC. After serving in the Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II, he became chief announcer for ABC. In addition to “One Man’s Family,” Dahlstead was announcer for “The Family Hour” and “Fitch Bandwagon” and many popular commercials. In the 1950s he moved into production and was program director when he retired from ABC in 1959. For the next 30 years, Dahlstead worked as an associate producer of “Truth or Consequences” and other Ralph Edwards Productions shows. Dahlstead was a charter member of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters and held membership card No. 17 in the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians. On April 20 in Las Vegas of heart problems.

* James Curtis Skakel; Adventurer, Developer

James Curtis Skakel, 76, Palos Verdes developer, adventurer and philanthropist. Trained as a geologist, Skakel worked on an oil rig that blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, mined diamonds Venezuela, and lived in Cuba, where he fled Fidel Castro’s takeover and helped many Cuban nationals escape to Florida. Skakel, an avid hunter, was asked in 1962 to harpoon a whale for a Life magazine article showing that “the American male was still cut from the same rugged cloth as his forebears had been.” Skakel and a Life photographer traveled to the Azores and, from a 38-foot sailboat, pursued and harpooned a 42-ton whale. In the mid-1960s, Skakel moved to Southern California, where he developed homes clustered around golf courses, particularly on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. As a philanthropist and volunteer, Skakel served as a Eucharistic minister for Catholic churches in Los Angeles and later Miami. He was the scion of a wealthy family and was the brother of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy. On Saturday in Miami Beach, of renal failure.