THE LIVES THEY LED

There were plenty of extraordinary souls who died in 2008. Some were better known than others, but eventually all will become a mere thread in the weave of history.

We chose six of them to portray in these pages.

These are people you may have known as friends and neighbors — or not at all — but they are remembered here, generously, by some of the people who knew them best.

In some ways, their stories are similar: whatever recognition they received, a part of them lived quietly among a loving circle of family and friends. Many laid down their deeds and built their lives out of the limelight, like unseen masons. They raised families, sought regular work and helped those in need and near them, when they could.

To people who didn't know them, their lives are sometimes obscured by the details: the professional titles or time of death; the organizations they belonged to or lists of family members they left behind. So instead of rendering just the cold, hard facts, we focused on the stories, comments or qualities that made them human.

BRUCE GORA

They are merely six of the 148,865 who depart this world in every single 24 hours on this space-born planet. But they lived in our community and were here on New Year's Day 2008. Now they're gone.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARCHITECT AS A MUSICIAN

Even if you didn't know architect Bruce Gora, you've probably seen one of the many buildings he designed in Fort Myers. There's the parking garage in downtown he fought to paint a "salsa" color, to the shock of many old timers in the 1990s; or The Alliance for the Arts, the Fort Myers Beach Library and Temple Beth-El.

"Almost anywhere you go in this town, you can give directions by saying, turn at the Bruce Gora building," said longtime friend Hal Arkin, a realestate agent.

Mr. Gora was also an accomplished photographer. But of his rich faculty of talents — friends often describe his as a "renaissance man" — jazz trumpet and harmonica may have been especially close to his heart.

"We had to rein him in a little bit when he came in Monday morning bleary eyed after playing a full weekend of musical gigs," said Dan McGahey, who was Mr. Gora's partner, in the Gora/McGahey architectural firm, for 22 years. "Music was really a love as much as architecture."

Mr. Gora died in December at 58, after a battle with cancer. He was especially remembered for music by former bandmate Dr. Larry Hobbs, the medical director at Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center.

"He was chairman of the Horizon Council, Chairman of Alliance for the Arts and all these different leadership accolades," said Dr. Hobbs, who met Mr. Gora at the University of Florida in 1974. Mr. Hobbs was a pre-med freshman and Mr. Gora was a fifth-year architecture student. "He always did a lot for the community, but I always knew him as a musician — and a great athlete. He was a great snow skier as well."

Back in college, Mr. Gora was a frequent trumpet soloist for the University of Florida jazz band. Mr. Gora had also hired Dr. Hobbs to play bass guitar in a dance group outside school. In 1985, after both their career paths landed them in Fort Myers, they became two of three core members in a popular local Blues and R&B band called The Juice. It lasted for 15 years. Mr. Gora designed the cover art for The Juice's album "Plugged In," a close up of an orange with electrical cords plugged into it.

"He was a fantastic jazz musician — a fantastic one," Dr. Hobbs said. "He could play with anyone, anytime, anywhere."

Dr. Hobbs said that Mr. Gora was also a huge Florida Gators fan. If they won a game, he would incorporate the Gator's fight song into one of his Saturday night trumpet solos.

"Every moment that I played with Bruce Gora was the best moment I played with Bruce Gora," said Dr. Hobbs. "He never stopped amazing me since I started playing with him in 1972."

Mr. McGahey said that in architecture, Mr. Gora was ambitious, striving to create the very best building with each project. His ambitions were similar in music.

Mr. Gora grew up in Fort Lauderdale, where he played trumpet in bands when he was a teenager with friend Jaco Pastorius, arguably one of the best bass players in the world. He also has two brothers, one an attorney in Fort Lauderdale and the other a saxophonist who lives in Boca Raton. His wife Carolyn, an art teacher at Cypress Lake Middle School, and two daughters, Natalie Schultz and Julie, live in Fort Myers.

Mr. McGahey said watching Mr. Gora play music "was inspirational. He would completely lose himself in the music. That was when he was happiest, I think. That, and in the struggle and turmoil of architectural design."

LECLAIR BISSELL

A PIONEER IN THE SCIENCE OF ADDICTION AND CHAMPION OF ANIMALS, DEMOCRATS, WOMEN AND MORE

Dr. LeClair Bissell was "part of the fabric" of Sanibel Island for many years, friends say. She was known for her dedication to helping wounded animals with the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, commonly called C.R.O.W.

She is also internationally regarded for her pioneering work in alcoholism addiction treatment (she overcame the disease herself and produced groundbreaking books on the topic). R Barbara King was a social worker at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, where Dr. Bissell founded the Smithers Treatment and Training Center for alcohol addiction, in the early 1970s.

"It was a pioneering effort because there wasn't an

COURTESY PHOTO Dr. Bissell was dedicated to helping wounded animals at C.R.O.W. on Sanibel.

inpatient alcohol treatment center in New York City at that time," said Ms. King, who has been a longtime friend and neighbor of Dr. Bissell in North Carolina. "(Alcoholism) was not widely recognized as being a disease. That's old hat now, but at the time she started the treatment program, it was a big boost."

In Lee County, Dr. Bissell was actively involved in the Democratic Party, and often voiced her political opinions in the daily paper. She was involved with Zonta; Chihuahua Rescue; Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Coalition; and Planned Parenthood.

"She never stopped," said friend Ann Heckes, who met Dr. Bissell through the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Myers. "There was always a cause. There were always things to be done. There was always a way to make the world better. She was a truly incredible person."

Dr. Bissell grew up an "Army brat," the daughter of Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, who commanded all American Air Forces in India, Burma and China in World War II. Men like Gen. George Patton and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower were also a part of her childhood.

"Ike Eisenhower gave her horseback riding lessons when she was a girl," friend Barbara Joy Cooley of Sanibel said.

Just a few months before Dr. Bissell died of cancer in August at the age of 80, she was rescuing injured birds near her home on Sanibel Island for C.R.O.W. She had worked for the wildlife rehab agency for nearly three decades. After Dr. Bissell and her life partner of 48 years, Nancy Palmer, had moved to the island in the late 1960s, they helped found C.R.O.W.'s Volunteer Emergency Rescue and Transport system.

"It enabled us to reach far beyond what we had been able to service before," said Dr. P.J. Deitschel, the clinic director. "People think of C.R.O.W. as Sanibel but we service all of Lee County.

"One of my last memories of LeClair was she had just gotten out the hospital and we asked her if she could rescue a white pelican, which is a very large bird. And she went in her kayak to pick it up — she had just gotten out the hospital the day before. That was a few months before she died."

A FILMMAKER WHO SHOOK AMERICAN'S SEXUAL MORES

GERARD DAMIANO

When Gerard Damiano released his film "Deep Throat" in 1972, he didn't know it would shake sexual conventions across America and help change the way everyone viewed and talked about sex. The film was famous for its humorous depiction of oral sex and coinage of the popular term, as well as being the first well-known "pornographic" movie with a story line.

Still, it was one of Mr. Damiano's early, less mature works, said his son Gerard Damiano Jr. who lived with his father in Fort Myers for the last five years of his life. Mr. Damiano died of a stroke in October at age 80.

"He's been asked many times, 'Did you set out to change the world when you made 'Deep Throat?'" Mr. Damiano, Jr. said. "And of course he didn't. They were just trying to make the best film they could make with very little money…

"He would never tell you that 'Deep Throat' was a good film, but it was funny, it was quirky and it was the right place at the right time. It presented sex and sexuality in a way that was funny, so people were able to talk about something that was taboo."

Based on a 1973 New York Times interview with Mr. Damiano about "Deep Throat," the term

COURTESY PHOTO Director Gerard Damiano Sr. on the Set of "The Story of Joanna" at the Woolworth Mansion, 1975.

"porno sheik" became popular. Husbands and wives in middle America went to see the film on legitimate dates. Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy went to see it in New York.

The term "Deep Throat" was even the cover name for W. Mark Felt, a former second-in-command at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a secret source for The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. (He also died this year).

"It transcended just a porno film and became a part of pop culture," Mr. Damiano Jr. said.

As the country struggled with the line between pornography and art in the 1970s, Mr. Damiano made frequent appearances in court. In each new state his movie appeared in, it seemed, there was another courtroom waiting to debate that fine line.

"My dad used to say, 'If I like it, it's art. If you like it, it's pornography,'" Mr. Damiano said. "The truth is, it's very subjective."

Mr. Damiano "did consider himself an artist, above all," his son said.

He made other films like the early "Changes" (1969-70), a documentary about the sexual revolution; and, possibly his masterpiece, "The Devil in Miss Jones" (1973). It was a film about suicide, purgatory and hell, which was compared thematically to Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit."

Gerardo Rocco Damiano was born in 1928 in New York City and grew up during the Great Depression. He worked as a shoeshine boy in Times Square and a busboy at hotels in the Catskills during the summer.

He joined the Navy when he was 17, at the tail end of World War II. Later, he was an X-ray technician at Jamaica Bay Hospital in Queens, before attending beauty school. He managed a successful salon in Queens.

He was married three times, each ending in divorce. But his second to Barbara Walton, produced his son and a daughter, Christar, who also lives in Fort Myers.

In his later years, he moved to California, and continued to pursue filmmaking, but lived in a trailer park. Although "Deep Throat" had grossed more than $600 million, according to Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Damiano didn't see any of the profits.

"Some people think that he was rich, but they don't know that the producers kept all the money," Mr. Damiano said. "He had some unscrupulous business partners at every turn."

(It's widely believed that associates of the Colombo crime family put up the original $25,000 to make "Deep Throat.") In 2003, Mr. Damiano moved to Fort Myers, living mostly off Social Security.

But things improved at the end. There was a documentary made in 2005 about the enduring cultural significance of Mr. Damiano's most famous movie, called "Inside Deep Throat." And he enjoyed a quiet social life in Fort Myers, attending theater and art openings and supporting the local arts community.

"He didn't die a wealthy man, but he continued to make films," Mr. Damiano Jr. said. "He wanted to be a filmmaker; that was his dream."

FORT MYERS' OWN CELEBRATED ARTIST, TEACHER

GALE BENNETT

Gale Bennett was an impressionist painter, teacher, graphic artist and music critic who always returned to Fort Myers, although his influence as a teacher and artist was international.

For his ad agency in the 1970s, he designed the menu still used at one of his favorite restaurants, The Veranda.

In 1996, Mr. Bennett opened a school called ArtStudy in Giverny, France. There, he took students to paint in Claude Monet's garden.

Mr. Bennett died Easter Sunday in Cape Coral after a stroke, but he had battled illness for some time. He was 68 years old. Even while suffering from brain tumors the last year of his life, his wife Cello Bennett said, he produced more than 30 paintings, which was close to his yearly average.

Mrs. Bennett met her husband seven years ago when they spoke on the phone about a classical music critique he wrote for The News-Press. 

They celebrated a fifth wedding anniversary the Friday before he died.

"He was my fourth husband," Ms. Bennett said. "I was his sixth wife… I always used to tease him because I would say 'there's a street named in Fort Myers for each of your wives; that's why you can't move away from this area.'"

But it also might have been because of his strong ties to Fort Myers. Mr. Bennett graduated from

COURTESY PHOTO Gale Bennett and his dog Sasha.

Fort Myers High School and his mother ran a beauty salon downtown. He played with Barbara B. Mann's children as a boy, and worked at Sydney Davis' men's clothing store in Fort Myers.

"He was really from here," Ms. Bennett said. "We think of Barbara Mann and Berne Davis as the grand dames, but they knew him when he was a little kid. I'm sure when they looked at him with his white hair, and getting ill, they could still see him as a boy."

The first time he left Fort Myers as a teenager, Mr. Bennett hitchhiked to Nebraska with a friend, to seek out a girl his friend was in love with. They came back when he decided he didn't love her after all. Not long after, he left for The School of Visual Arts in New York City.

"To me what was so interesting about Gale is, right at the moment when his shows were at galleries in New York and some of his works were chosen to be in the collection at the Museum of Modern art, he came back to Florida," Ms. Bennett said. "He said he missed the nature so much. Central Park just didn't do it."

He also became an art teacher, privately and in various Lee County institutions like The Alliance for the Arts. He is remembered by students as having a generous heart.

"So many thousands of students have taken his classes," said Sanibel resident Sheila Hoen, Mr. Bennett's student since 2001. "I think he loved teaching — loved it. And people loved him for that. He made everyone feel, and do, their very best work."

David Robinson, the former president of Edison College, was an art student of Mr. Bennett's for 15 years after he retired from Edison. Now he said he's teaching his 10 grandchildren some of the things he learned.

"He said all you have to do is look at nature to get your structure, your form, your color," Mr. Robinson said. "… I can honestly say when I began taking painting from him it's like having cataracts lifted from your eyes."

A PHILANTHROPIC LEADER IN LEE COUNTY

FRANK BIRELEY

Frank Bireley had been an unrelenting patron of the arts, health care and education in Southwest Florida, both financially and as a volunteer, since he retired here in 1987.

"He was such an amazing patron of the arts," said Andrew Kurtz, director of the Southwest Florida Symphony. "He touched a lot of lives in the community and his philanthropy was for cancer and the medical community, but I don't think there was an arts organization that he did not support."

Mr. Bireley died in August after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 71.

Long before he came to the Sunshine State, Mr. Bireley grew up on a street near where Frank Sinatra lived in North Hollywood, Calif.

His father was the creator of Bireley's Orange Drink. The elder Mr. Bireley later developed machines used to squeeze orange juice that were leased to growers in California and Florida. They were a wealthy, but low-key family, said Betty Bireley, Frank's wife of 50 years.

She remembered that Frank's father "was polished, like British proper — any female walked in and he stood and acknowledged her."

Her husband, she said, was easier going by nature.

After high school, Mr. Bireley served four years in the Air Force where he received a commendation medal for meritorious performance. He met his future wife at Hamilton Air Force Base near San Francisco, where they both worked programming computers. They liked to go to the movies in Mr. Bireley's Cadillac and listen to comedian Jack Benny on the radio.

"We'd go to Coconut Grove, the Hollywood Bowl, the Palladium," Ms. Bireley said. "They were swish places where all the movie stars went."

COURTESY PHOTO Air Force Sgt. Frank Bireley.

Mr. Bireley graduated from California State University, San Francisco, and spent his career with IBM. He retired to Fort Myers in 1987 and began a new career in philanthropy.

He has left what Lee Memorial Health System CEO Jim Nathan called "a legacy of love."

Mr. Bireley helped causes such as Habitat for Humanity, The Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida, Lee Cancer Care, The United Way, The Music Foundation, Abuse Counseling and Treatment

Center, Kiwanis Club, Barbara's Friends and many more.

He was one of the driving forces behind the new Regional Cancer Center to open this October, where the coffee shop will be named after him.

"It was kind of appropriate because Frank liked to eat," Ms. Bireley said. "He liked good food."

She added, "I don't think there's anything Frank didn't like."

A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

ALAN ARCIERI

Alan Arcieri was a psychic and spiritual medium who suffered from muscular dystrophy. Even in the last five years of his life he continued to summon those who, like him, had "crossed over."

Mr. Arcieri, 56, died in December at his Cape Coral home of complications from muscular dystrophy and diabetes.

Despite his illness, he had continued hosting a Friday morning psychic talk show on 105.5 the Beat, a job he held for nearly a decade. He also wrote a book called "Earth School 101," which addresses the mystery of existence.

"That's really his legacy," said his wife, Diana Arcieri, 59.

She met him 28 years ago when he was a car salesman on Long Island, N.Y. As Mr. Arcieri began to embrace his psychic abilities more fully, she said, they would help coma patients at hospitals on Long Island by speaking with them telepathically.

"He would communicate through the EKG," Ms. Arcieri said.

After they moved to Florida 24 years ago, the Arcieris were representatives for clients in the wholesale clothing industry, to make ends meet. But Mr. Arcieri was eventually able to support the family, which included his stepdaughter Alicia Merlob, through his psychic readings and "galleries," in which he performed for larger groups.

Ms. Merlob became his caretaker and assistant in the last year of his life. She had moved out of the house as a teenager but developed a newfound respect for her step-father's work.

"I really got to know who he was," she said. "We would talk about everything from soup to nuts. And sometimes we would have opposing views. But it was great because we challenged each other. And I think that was the best part of my relationship with him. I think he met his match when he met me. I think that's what fueled our relationship, that expanding, that constant push to learn more.

"I developed a tremendous amount of respect for what he did as a profession. The fact of the sheer volume of lives he helped changed."

Clients would come to his home office and "when I would escort them out I could see they were visibly changed," she said.

Brenda de Sousa, a Fort Myers psychic and friend of Mr. Arcieris, said, "He would show people a whole world of comfort that they really didn't know existed."