Deaths elsewhere

Herbert Hamrol, who survived the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and recalled for later generations how his mother carried him to safety that day, has died. He was 106.

Hamrol, one of the last survivors of the catastrophic quake and fire that leveled San Francisco, died Wednesday. His death came less than a month after he celebrated his 106th birthday with a big bash at a steakhouse.

The party was just Hamrol's style, said friends. He smoked cigars into his 90s, and told whoever wanted to know that his secret to a long life was "wild women and good liquor," said Janine Barrett, a manager at Andronico's Market in San Francisco.

Until last month, Hamrol had worked at Andronico's, stocking shelves and greeting customers -- a job he took after retiring as a grocer in 1967.

"He still came in twice a week -- took the BART and the bus to work from Daly City, and walked," Barrett said. "He was very independent."

Dewey Martin, drummer for the band Buffalo Springfield whose career after the group split never ignited like those of former bandmates Neil Young and Stephen Stills, has died. He was 68.

He was found dead Sunday by a roommate in his suburban Los Angeles apartment, longtime friend Lisa Lenes said. Martin had suffered health problems in recent years and played music publicly only sporadically.

He was one of the founding members, along with Young, Stills, singer-songwriter-guitarist Richie Furay and bassist Bruce Palmer, of Buffalo Springfield, a key progenitor of country-rock music. The group recorded three albums, then disbanded after two years amid rising tensions among the band's talented but explosive leaders.

Donald C. Alexander, 87, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner who successfully fought the Nixon administration's attempts to use tax audits and investigations to punish its political enemies, died of cancer Feb. 3 at his home in Washington.

Alexander ran the IRS from 1973 to 1977, when the agency came under severe public scrutiny for its earlier role in investigating political opponents and radicals on the far right and left. Alexander, a prominent tax lawyer when he took the IRS job, learned the day after his swearing-in of a secret band of IRS investigators who combed through the tax returns of 3,000 "notorious" groups and 8,000 individuals.

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