NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – Jane Burgio, the first woman to hold the job of secretary of state in New Jersey, died Tuesday, The Star-Ledger reported. She was 83.

Burgio, a Republican, was appointed by former Gov. Thomas Kean and served as secretary of state from 1982 to 1990. She also was a state assemblywoman from 1973 to 1981.

Burgio represented the state as a delegate to the Republican national conventions in 1984 and 1988.

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Heinrich Gross

VIENNA, Austria (AP) – Dr. Heinrich Gross, a psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis killed and conducted cruel experiments on thousands of children, died Dec. 15, his family announced. He was 90.

Gross, who was implicated in nine deaths as part of a Nazi plot to eliminate “worthless lives,” had escaped trial in March after a court ruled he suffered from severe dementia. No cause of death was given.

He was a leading doctor in Vienna’s infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic. Historians and survivors of the clinic had accused him of killing or taking part in the clinic’s experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazis to be physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Adolf Hitler’s vision of a perfect world.

Gross proclaimed his innocence for decades, insisting he had not been present at the hospital at the time in the 1940s when most of the children were killed.

A prominent neurologist after the war, Gross was put on trial three times, but all the cases were dismissed.

Across Europe, 75,000 people, including 5,000 children, were killed by the Nazis for real or imagined mental, physical or social disabilities.

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Elrod Hendricks

BALTIMORE (AP) – Elrod Hendricks, who spent more than four decades as a player and coach with the Baltimore Orioles, died Wednesday at a local hospital, a spokeswoman said. He was 64.

Hendricks broke into professional baseball in 1959 and made his major-league debut with the Orioles in 1968. He played in 711 games – including 658 with the Orioles – before retiring in 1979.

He was made the bullpen coach following the 1977 season and was a player-coach in 1978-79. Hendricks became a fixture in Baltimore by holding the position as bullpen coach for 28 years, the longest coaching tenure in Orioles history.

Hendricks was relieved of that position in October, in part because he had a mild stroke in April. He was to be reassigned to another position within the organization, one that would enable him to take advantage of his popularity within the Baltimore community.

The 2005 season marked the 37th that Hendricks served in a Baltimore uniform as a player or coach, another club record. He also had the longest active coaching streak with one club among all major league coaches.

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John D. McClain

WASHINGTON (AP) – John D. McClain, a longtime Associated Press editor and reporter in Washington who personified “multitasking” before the word became fashionable, died Sunday. He was 67.

McClain died of cancer in his home state of Missouri. He had retired from the Washington bureau of the AP in 1998 and moved to the Midwest, concluding a wire service career that started in St. Louis and lasted nearly 40 years.

McClain, who lived in Lake Ozark, Mo., was an avid fisherman – an appropriate hobby for a man renowned in AP’s Washington office for his patience, alertness and disciplined work style. As assignment editor, his news coverage decisions formed a sort of daily dance card for dozens of journalists.

McClain played a key role in helping to modernize the handling of news copy in 1969, creating a “universal desk” now known as a “general desk,” where editors file news stories to the wire. McClain also took his organizational talents to many national political conventions, establishing an on-the-road assignment desk.