ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 7, 1996 TAG: 9611070076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
Mario Savio, a free speech protest leader who ushered in a decade of student protest in the 1960s, died Wednesday. He was 53.
Savio had a history of heart problems and collapsed Saturday night. He died at Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol, 60 miles north of San Francisco, where he had been hospitalized in a coma.
Savio rose to fame as the voice of the free speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when he stood up on a campus police car after a student was arrested for political activity.
``In the '60s he was a powerful symbol of how an ordinary person could stand up and make history,'' said one-time fellow radical Tom Hayden, now a California state senator. ``He symbolized the possibilities in all of us, to resist becoming cogs in somebody's machine.''
After many years out of the limelight, Savio had recently re-entered public life, leading a drive against higher student fees at Sonoma State University where he taught math, logic and philosophy.
LENGTH: Short : 30 linesby CNB