PASSINGS

"Polish politics and scholarship have lost a great man, and many of us, a true friend," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a statement.

Born in Warsaw, Geremek escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto when he was 11 and spent much of the rest of the war in hiding. His father died at Auschwitz.

Geremek joined the Communist Polish United Workers Party, but left the party after Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

He was a leading figure in Poland's democratic opposition in the 1970s. He later joined Solidarity as an advisor to the movement's leader, Lech Walesa, who became the country's first democratically elected president in 1990.

Geremek served as a lawmaker in the Polish parliament and was foreign minister from 1997 to 2000. As foreign minister, he signed Poland's accession treaty to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999.

Clem McSpadden

Politician, famed rodeo announcer

Clem McSpadden, 82, who represented Oklahoma in Congress, become one of rodeo's premier announcers and was a grandnephew of humorist Will Rogers, died July 7 at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after fighting cancer, his nephew, Herb McSpadden, said.

From 1973 to 1975, Clem McSpadden served as a Democrat in the U.S. House and founded the Congressional Rural Caucus. He ran for the Democratic nomination for Oklahoma governor in 1974, losing to the general election's eventual winner, David Boren.

McSpadden also gained fame as the announcer at the National Finals Rodeo, where he helped discover Grammy-winning country star Reba McEntire. As general manager of the rodeo, he hired McEntire, then a little-known country singer, to sing the national anthem at the event.

He served in the Oklahoma Senate from 1955 to 1972, including two terms as its president pro tem, but never again sought political office after his failed run for governor.

McSpadden was born Nov. 9, 1925, in Bushyhead, Okla., and was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

He earned his bachelor's degree from Oklahoma State in 1948.

He remained involved in the rodeo during his political career, announcing the National Finals Steer Roping a record 27 times between 1963 and 2000.

Stig Olin

Swedish actor in Bergman films

Stig Olin, 87, a Swedish actor, director and composer who appeared in many early Ingmar Bergman films and was the father of actress Lena Olin, died June 28 at a nursing home near Stockholm. No cause of death was reported.

The illegitimate son of a pharmacist, Olin was born in Stockholm and was adopted into another family by school age, according to the Ingmar Bergman Face to Face website.

After his screen debut in 1940, he played minor roles in a dozen films while working under prominent directors such as Gustaf Molander and Alf Sjoberg. He came to prominence in Arne Mattsson's 1946 film "Incorrigible" as a young man sent to boarding school, where he becomes a full-fledged thug.

For Bergman, he played a gigolo in "Crisis" (1946), the filmmaker's first time behind the camera; a prostitute's boss in "The Devil's Wanton" (1949); a straying newlywed in "To Joy" (1950); and a ballet master in "Illicit Interlude" (1951).

In the early 1950s, he started his career as a director and in the late 1950s started a three-decade career with Sveriges Radio, Sweden's public-broadcasting system, for several years serving as head of programming.

Matt McHale, 50, a longtime sports journalist in Southern California, died Monday in Norwalk, Conn., after a heart attack. At the Daily News of Los Angeles, he was best known for his beat coverage of the Dodgers and the Kings. He left the newspaper in February because of a medical disability related to his diabetes.

From Times Staff and Wire Reports