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Avery Brooks

This tenured faculty member of Rutgers University's drama department enjoyed a varied performing career singing jazz, acting in Shakespeare and appearing in occasional regional and off-Broadway ventures when wide popular success on TV in the 1980s arrived as he approached middle age. With his booming voice, piercing gaze and forthright manner, Brooks made a galvanizing sidekick of sorts for Robert Urich as the bald-pated, rather mysterious Hawk on the popular ABC detective drama, "Spenser: For Hire" (1985-88). When that show went off the air Brooks continued for a season with his own spinoff series, "A Man Called Hawk" (1989).