OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – Clem McSpadden, a grandnephew of Will Rogers who went on to serve in Congress and become one of rodeo’s premier announcers, died Monday. He was 82.

McSpadden died after fighting cancer, his nephew, Herb McSpadden, said Tuesday.

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

He also gained fame as the announcer at the National Finals Rodeo, where he helped discover Reba McEntire.

McSpadden 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. He was still active as a lobbyist, and Herb McSpadden said his uncle cherished the time he got to spend with his son and grandson in the process.

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John Y. Simon

CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) – John Y. Simon, one of the nation’s foremost scholars on President Grant and the Civil War, died Tuesday. He was 75.

Simon died at a Carbondale hospital, said a Huffman-Harker Funeral Home spokesman.

The award-winning historian spent more than four decades at Southern Illinois University and led the Ulysses S. Grant Association, which is based at the Carbondale school, since 1962.

A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Simon spent decades amassing a collection of documents about the Union general, compiling them into the “Papers of Ulysses S. Grant.” The 31st volume of the collection is in its final stages, school officials said.

Simon, also an authority on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, won a Lincoln Prize for outstanding scholarship about the late president, a lifetime achievement award from The Lincoln Forum, and an Award of Merit from the Illinois State Historical Society, among other accolades.

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Sir John Templeton

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) – Sir John Templeton, an investor and mutual fund pioneer who dedicated much of his fortune to promoting religion and reconciling it with science, died Tuesday. He was 95.

Templeton died of pneumonia at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas, said his spokesman Donald Lehr.

Templeton created the $1.4 million Templeton Prize – billed as the world’s richest annual prize – to honor advancement in knowledge of spiritual matters. Winners have included Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Templeton wanted the monetary value to surpass that of the Nobel Prize to show that advances in spiritual fields were just as important, Lehr said in a statement. Next year’s prize is expected to be almost $2 million, he said.

Templeton was born in Tennessee, graduated from Yale University and became a Rhodes scholar, earning a master’s degree in law at Oxford University. He later moved to Nassau and became a naturalized British citizen.

AP-ES-07-08-08 2220EDT