Goodbye to a famous cat

BEEN AND GONE By Nick Serpell BBC Obituary Unit

Socks coped well with the media attention

Our regular column covering the passing of significant - but lesser-reported - people of the past month.

As speculation grew over the breed of the awaited Obama family pooch, a former White House pet slipped away. Socks was the Clinton family cat, originally found as a stray in Arkansas, who moved to Washington in 1993 when Bill Clinton became president. His reign as America's first pet was threatened when the family took on a Labrador named Buddy with whom Socks never got on. However Socks maintained his fan base. One American congressman questioned the use of official White House stationery and stamps to answer letters sent to the cat.

The larger than life experiences of Terry Spencer could easily have been made into a blockbuster film. Born in the middle of a Zeppelin raid in 1918 he joined the RAF and flew Spitfires, usually at low level during World War II. Shot down over German-held territory he managed to escape and get back to the UK. After the war he married a beautiful actress before becoming a successful photo journalist. Among his assignments for Life magazine were coverage of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa and the Vietnam War. He also spent weeks on the road in the early 1960s with The Beatles, shooting over 5,000 pictures of the newly emerging Fab Four.

Conchita Cintron was a lone woman in a macho profession

The career of Conchita Cintron might also have made a feature film despite the antipathy of many to her chosen sport, bull fighting. Born in Chile she made her debut in 1936 in Portugal when, following local custom, she fought the bull on horseback. She spent four years in Mexico, where she fought on foot, earning the admiration of the crowds who named her La Diosa de Oro (the Golden Goddess). She went on to perform in Spain where women were prohibited by the Franco regime from fighting on foot because of worries that their flesh might be exposed if they were gored. She defied the law and dismounted during her last appearance in 1949 and was quickly arrested. However, a massive protest by the crowd forced the authorities to release her without charge.

As the twin towers collapsed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks Beverley Eckert was on the phone to her husband who was trapped in the building. His death prompted her to campaign for an investigation into the cause of the attacks which helped to bring about the 9/11 Commission. She also pushed for a permanent memorial to the victims of the attack and improvements in US intelligence gathering operations. She was on her way to Buffalo, New York to mark what would have been her husband's 58th birthday when the commuter plane in which she was a passenger crashed on its approach to Buffalo airport.

Lux Interior was known for his exuberant stage presence

In the early 1970s any serious self-respecting music fan had a single by The Cramps, the US punk band fronted by Lux Interior. Born Erick Purkhiser he founded the Cramps with his wife Kristy Wallace, known as Poison Ivy. His own moniker was taken from a new car brochure. The band quickly became notorious for decadent stage performances featuring a screaming Lux dressed in a variety of macabre costumes. The band supported The Police on a UK tour in 1979 and won some acclaim for the albums Psychedelic Jungle and Songs the Lord Taught Us. Always keen to push the boundaries they once gave a performance for the patients in a Californian psychiatric hospital.

The building of the Channel Tunnel owed much to the pioneering work of Alan Muir-Wood, dubbed by some as the father of modern tunnelling. Between 1958 and 1960 he produced a feasibility study for the project, much of which was used when the tunnel was eventually built in the 1980s. His early works as a civil engineer included the Clyde Tunnel in Glasgow, built in difficult conditions through a shifting river bed, and the 1960s tunnel at Heathrow, designed to carry cargo between the terminals, which was condemned by some engineers as impossible to build. In his retirement he campaigned against a proposal to concrete the Victorian interior of Marc Brunel's Thames Tunnel, carrying the East London underground line, and persuaded English Heritage to give it a Grade II listing, the first for any tunnel.

Among others who died in February were EastEnders and Are You Being Served? actress Wendy Richard, director of the Main Event and Private Benjamin, Howard Zief, Whitbread Award-winning Irish author Christopher Nolan, and bass player and vocalist with ELO, Kelly Groucutt.