August 29, 2007

2007James Muir Cameron Fletcher, New Zealand businessman (born 1914)^[†]

Sir James Muir Cameron Fletcher, often known as Jim or JC Junior, was a New Zealand industrialist known for heading Fletcher Construction, one of the country's largest firms. His father, also Sir James Fletcher, founded the company in 1908.

2007Richard Jewell, American police officer (born 1962)^[†]

Richard Allensworth Jewell was an American security guard and law enforcement officer who alerted police during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. He discovered a backpack containing three pipe bombs on the park grounds and helped evacuate the area before the bomb exploded, saving many people from injury or death. For months afterward he was suspected of planting the bomb, resulting in adverse publicity that "came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media".

2007Pierre Messmer, French civil servant and politician, 154th Prime Minister of France (born 1916)^[†]

Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer was a French Gaullist politician. He served as Minister of Armies under Charles de Gaulle from 1960 to 1969 – the longest serving since Étienne François, duc de Choiseul under Louis XV – and then as Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou from 1972 to 1974. A member of the French Foreign Legion, he was considered one of the historical Gaullists, and died aged 91 in the military hospital of the Val-de-Grâce in August 2007. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1999; his seat was taken over by Simone Veil.

2007Alfred Peet, Dutch-American businessman, founded Peet's Coffee & Tea (born 1920)^[†]

Alfred H. Peet was a Dutch-American entrepreneur and the founder of Peet's Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California, in 1966. Peet is widely credited with starting the specialty coffee revolution in the US. Among coffee historians, Peet has been called "the Dutchman who taught America how to drink coffee." Peet taught his style of roasting beans to Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker, who, with his blessing, took the technique to Seattle and founded Starbucks in 1971. Peet later distanced himself, however, from the Starbucks trio as they experimented with ultra-dark roasts. "Baldwin never learned anything from me," Peet was later quoted as saying.