EDDINGER: Richard Aaron Eddinger Jr., 55, of Paradise, died March 4, 2024, in Paradise. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003. No services are planned.

WHEAT: Pam Wheat, 61, of Chico, died March 29, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Affordable Mortuary, 530-214-0177.

HONOLULU — The last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor has died. Lou Conter was 102.

Conter passed away at his home Monday in Grass Valley following congestive heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley said.

The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that launched the United States into World War II. The battleship’s dead account for nearly half of those killed in the surprise attack.

Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. Sailors were just beginning to hoist colors or raise the flag when the assault began.

Conter recalled how one bomb penetrated steel decks 13 minutes into the battle and set off more than 1 million pounds (450,000 kilograms) of gunpowder stored below.

The explosion lifted the battleship 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 metes) out of the water, he said during a 2008 oral history interview stored at the Library of Congress. Everything was on fire from the mainmast forward, he said.

“Guys were running out of the fire and trying to jump over the sides,” Conter said. “Oil all over the sea was burning.”

His autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” recounts how he joined other survivors in tending to the injured, many of them blinded and badly burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their senior surviving officer was sure they had rescued all those still alive.

The rusting wreckage of the Arizona still lies in waters where it sank. More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed inside.

Conter went to flight school after Pearl Harbor, earning his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to look for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted dive bombing at night in planes painted black.

In 1943, he and his crew where shot down in waters near New Guinea and had to avoid a dozen sharks. A sailor expressed doubt they would survive, to which Conter replied, “baloney.”

“Don’t ever panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re dead,” he said. They were quiet and treaded water until another plane came hours later and dropped them a lifeboat.

In the late 1950s, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the next decade training Navy pilots and crew on how to survive if they’re shot down in the jungle and captured as a prisoner of war. Some of his pupils used his lessons as POWs in Vietnam.

Conter retired in 1967 after 28 years in the Navy.

Conter was born in Ojibwa, Wisconsin, on Sept. 13, 1921. His family later moved to Colorado where he walked five miles (eight kilometers) one way to school outside Denver. His house didn’t have running water so he tried out for the football team — less for a love of the sport and more because the players could take showers at school after practice.

He enlisted in the Navy after he turned 18, getting $17 a month and a hammock for his bunk at boot camp.

In his later years, Conter became a fixture at annual remembrance ceremonies in Pearl Harbor that the Navy and the National Park Service jointly hosted on the anniversaries of the 1941 attack. When he lacked the strength to attend in person, he recorded video messages for those who gathered and watched remotely from his home in California.

In 2019, when he was 98, he said he liked going to remember those who lost their lives.

“It’s always good to come back and pay respect to them and give them the top honors that they deserve,” he said.

Though many treated the shrinking group of Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Conter refused the label.

“The 2,403 men that died are the heroes. And we’ve got to honor them ahead of everybody else. And I’ve said that every time, and I think it should be stressed,” Conter told The Associated Press in a 2022 interview at his California home.

BANGS: Ronald Bangs, 85, of Oroville, died March 22, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

JUDGE: Zelene Judge, 83, of Chico, died March 20, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Brusie Funeral Home, 530-342-5642.

KINCAID: Delbert Abram Kincaid Jr., 53, of Oroville, died March 21, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

MCCAIG: Max Bayer McCaig, 89, of Chico, died March 16, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

PARKER: Leo Kenneth Parker, 83, of Oroville, died March 23, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

WIGDAHL: Joetta Marie Wigdahl, 85, of Orland, died March 25, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Sweet-Olsen Family Mortuary, 530-865-3349.

MACKENZIE: John Duncan Mackenzie, 82, of Chico, died March 25, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

MALLOY: Belinda Janel Malloy, 73, of Chico, died March 25, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

MALONEY: Gloria Beverly Maloney, 98, of Chico, died March 16, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

NOKLEBY: Former Paradise resident James Nokleby, 90, of Chico, died March 22, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Brusie Funeral Home, 530-342-5642.

VINCENT: James B. Vincent, 90, of Chico, died March 23, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Brusie Funeral Home, 530-342-5642.

GOODMAN: Marilyn Goodman, 99, of Oroville, died March 21, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Scheer Memorial Chapel, 530-533-5255.

CERVANTES: Armando Villegas Cervantes, 54, of Chico, died April 19, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Brusie Funeral Home, 530-342-5642.

COLLINS: Charles Collins, 80, of Chico, died March 19, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Affordable Mortuary, 530-214-0177.

FELDMAN: Rochelle Feldman, 66, of Chico, died March 19, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Brusie Funeral Home, 530-342-5642.

TROTTER: Penny Lynn Trotter, 67, of Stirling City, died March 15, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003. No services are planned.

LOWE: Frieda T. Lowe, 89, of Chico, died March 20, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton Bracewell Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

LOS ANGELES — M. Emmet Walsh, the character actor who brought his unmistakable face and unsettling presence to films including “Blood Simple” and “Blade Runner,” has died at age 88, his manager said Wednesday.

Walsh died from cardiac arrest on Tuesday at a hospital in St. Albans, Vermont, his longtime manager Sandy Joseph said.

The ham-faced, heavyset Walsh often played good old boys with bad intentions, as he did in one of his rare leading roles as a crooked Texas private detective in the Coen brothers’ first film, the 1984 neo-noir “Blood Simple.”

Joel and Ethan Coen said they wrote the part for Walsh, who would win the first Film Independent Spirit Award for best male lead for the role.

Critics and film geeks relished the moments when he showed up on screen.

Roger Ebert once observed that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”

Walsh played a crazed sniper in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy “The Jerk” and a prostate-examining doctor in the 1985 Chevy Chase vehicle “Fletch.”

In 1982’s gritty, “Blade Runner,” a film he said was grueling and difficult to make with perfectionist director Ridley Scott, Walsh plays a hard-nosed police captain who pulls Harrison Ford from retirement to hunt down cyborgs.

Born Michael Emmet Walsh, his characters led people to believe he was from the American South, but he could hardly have been from any further north.

Walsh was raised on Lake Champlain in Swanton, Vermont, just a few miles from the U.S.-Canadian border, where his grandfather, father and brother worked as customs officers.

He went to a tiny local high school with a graduating class of 13, then to Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

He acted exclusively on the stage, with no intention of doing otherwise, for a decade, working in summer stock and repertory companies.

Walsh slowly started making film appearances in 1969 with a bit role in “Alice’s Restaurant,” and did not start playing prominent roles until nearly a decade after that when he was in his 40s, getting his breakthrough with 1978’s “Straight Time,” in which he played Dustin Hoffman’s smug, boorish parole officer.

Walsh was shooting “Silkwood” with Meryl Streep in Dallas in the autumn of 1982 when he got the offer for “Blood Simple” from the Coen brothers, then-aspiring filmmakers who had seen and loved him in “Straight Time.”

“My agent called with a script written by some kids for a low-budget movie,” Walsh told The Guardian in 2017. “It was a Sydney Greenstreet kind of role, with a Panama suit and the hat. I thought it was kinda fun and interesting. They were 100 miles away in Austin, so I went down there early one day before shooting.”

Walsh said the filmmakers didn’t even have enough money left to fly him to New York for the opening, but he would be stunned that first-time filmmakers had produced something so good.

“I saw it three or four days later when it opened in LA, and I was, like: Wow!” he said. “Suddenly my price went up five times. I was the guy everybody wanted.”

In the film he plays Loren Visser, a detective asked to trail a man’s wife, then is paid to kill her and her lover.

Visser also acts as narrator, and the opening monologue, delivered in a Texas drawl, included some of Walsh’s most memorable lines.

“Now, in Russia they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else. That’s the theory, anyway,” Visser says. “But what I know about is Texas. And down here, you’re on your own.”

He was still working into his late 80s, making recent appearances on the TV series “The Righteous Gemstones” and “American Gigolo.”

And his more than 100 film credits included director Rian Johnson’s 2019 family murder mystery, “Knives Out” and director Mario Van Peebles’ Western “Outlaw Posse,” released this year.

GARCIA: Anthony Edward Garcia, 87, of Oroville, died March 17, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

HALL: Robert Hall, 74, of Oroville, died March 18, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

HEARNE: Patricia Ann Hearne, 88, of Chico, died March 16, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

LINDBERG: Charlotte Lindberg, 95, of Oroville, died March 19, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

MALONEY: Gloria Beverly Maloney, 98, of Chico, died March 16, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003.

MATHIS: Darlene Mae Mathis, 87, of Oroville, died March 18, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Scheer Memorial Chapel, 530-533-5255.

MAYFIELD: Seibert Stephens Mayfield, 84, of Oroville, died March 14, 2024, in Oroville. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

NASTRI: Patricia Beatrice Nastri, 85, of Chico, died March 14, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Ramsey Funeral Home, 530-534-3877.

FRANKLIN: Dennis Thomas Franklin, 69, of Chico, died March 15, 2024, in Chico. Arrangements are under the direction of Newton-Bracewell Chico Funeral Home, 530-342-9003. No services are planned.