Tag: Dies

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Business

John Naisbitt, Enterprise Guru and Writer of ‘Megatrends,’ Dies at 92

John Naisbitt, Business Guru and Author of ‘Megatrends,’ Dies at 92

His marriage to Mrs. Senior ended in divorce, as did his second to Patricia Aburdene. He and his daughter are survived by his third wife, Doris (Dinklage) Naisbitt; his sons James, David and John; another daughter, Nana Naisbitt; a stepdaughter, Nora Rosenblatt; 11 grandchildren and two stepchildren.

Running out of money after just two semesters, Mr Naisbitt dropped out of college with his first child en route to write executive speeches at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY

He and his family moved to Chicago in 1957, where he worked in public relations. He worked in Washington between 1963 and 1966, first as assistant to the director of the National Education Commission, then as assistant to the secretary for health, education and social affairs.

He first developed his method for trend analysis while on a contract to evaluate the effects of various Great Society programs under President Lyndon B. Johnson. A fan of American history, he had read Civil War books by Bruce Catton, who relied heavily on contemporary newspapers to get a feel for the mood of the country during the war.

“I went to a newsstand and bought about 50 newspapers out of town,” he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1982. “And I was absolutely stunned by what I learned in three hours about what was going on in America.”

He called it “content analysis” and after returning to Chicago he put it into practice with his first company, Urban Research Corporation. Long before computers did this job almost instantly, Mr. Naisbitt employed a small army of analysts to read dozens of newspapers daily and cut stories of urban protests, crime, and campus rioting, which he relied on to produce reports for nonprofits and writing to corporate clients.

After the end of his first marriage and the loss of his company, he moved back to Washington in the mid-1970s and opened another similar company. It also failed and resulted in bankruptcy filing in 1977.

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Entertainment

James Hampton, Bumbling ‘F Troop’ Bugler, Dies at 84

James Hampton, Bumbling ‘F Troop’ Bugler, Dies at 84

James Hampton, a character actor who achieved some level of sitcom immortality in one of his earliest roles, the inept signaler Hannibal Dobbs in the 1960s series “F Troop,” died Wednesday at his home in Trophy Club, Texas. He was 84 years old.

Linda McAlister, his agent, said the cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Hampton had a kind face that lends itself well to comedic roles characterized by bumblebees or gullibility. He was among them on a handful of television shows like “Death Valley” and “Dr. Kildare” when the director of a “Gunsmoke” episode he was in drew his attention to a casting director at Warner Bros. That led to the role in “F Troop,” a spunky ABC comedy about a military outpost, Fort Courage, in the 1860s.

The show featured Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Melody Patterson and Ken Berry, but Mr. Hampton made an indelible mark in his supporting role as the horn player, whose playing bore only a passing resemblance to music. (In the show’s opening montage, an arrow hits the bell end of his horn directly as he plays.) The show only ran two seasons, but its exaggerated humor in an era of milder comedies like “The Andy Griffith Show” made it known to a specific audience segment .

Mr. Hampton was known to a later generation from the 1985 film Teen Wolf, in which he portrayed the title character’s father, a werewolf played by rising star Michael J. Fox. He was also in the sequel to “Teen Wolf Too” with Jason Bateman in 1987.

Mr. Hampton also played a more serious role, including the utility company’s PR man showing Jane Fonda’s character in a nuclear power plant when a disaster strikes in The China Syndrome (1979).

He has occasionally directed, including episodes from the 1990s series “Hearts Afire,” which cast Billy Bob Thornton. When Mr. Thornton wrote his acclaimed film “Sling Blade” (1996), he ensured that Mr. Hampton played a role in it as the hospital administrator.

Burt Reynolds was another major influence in his career. They met while they were working on Gunsmoke together when Mr. Reynolds was a regular cast member. The two appeared in the 1974 soccer film “The Longest Yard,” and Mr. Hampton wrote and directed episodes of Mr. Reynolds’ 1990 series, “Evening Shade.”

James Wade Hampton was born in Oklahoma City on July 9, 1936. His father, Ivan, owned a dry cleaner, and his mother, Edna (Gately) Hampton, worked in a fashion workshop.

He grew up in Dallas and studied speech and theater at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas). He was drafted into the army in 1959 and served in Europe. He returned to Texas in the early 1960s and worked in the local theater before moving to New York in 1962.

Recognition…Barry Crowbar / WireImage

Mr. Hampton worked non-stop for the next four decades, getting roles occasionally, even after he retired in 2002 and settled in Texas. He is survived by his wife, Mary Deese Hampton, whom he married in 2002. two sons, James and Frank; a daughter, Andrea Hampton Doyle; and three grandchildren.

After “F Troop”, Mr. Hampton returned in 1976 in the movie “Hawmps!” He played a mid-19th century lieutenant assigned to oversee an experiment in Texas using camels in the cavalry. Mr. Hampton was a Johnny Carson favorite at the time and was a frequent guest on his “Tonight Show,” including the night of the Hollywood premiere of “Hawmps!”

When Mr. Hampton told The Community Common in Portsmouth, Ohio in 2007, he was Mr. Carson’s first guest so he could leave early to get to the premiere. He happened to mention to Mr. Carson that his mother was in the studio audience. Mr. Carson turned on the house lights and congratulated her on her son’s big night.

His mother replied by saying, “You just go to the premiere, James. I’ll stay and watch the rest of Johnny. “

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Health

Yehuda Ben-Yishay, Pioneer in Treating Mind Accidents, Dies at 88

Yehuda Ben-Yishay, Pioneer in Treating Brain Injuries, Dies at 88

Yehuda Ben-Yishay was born on February 11, 1933 in Cluj, a city in the Transylvania region in western Romania. His father, Chaim Ben-Yishay, was a businessman; his mother Leah (Finkelstein) Ben-Yishay was a seamstress.

His family survived the Second World War largely unscathed. Although hundreds of thousands of fellow Romanian Jews died during the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands survived, especially in the southern part of Transylvania, where the family had moved just before the war.

The Ben-Yishays were zealous Zionists and in 1946 boarded a converted cattle ship with about 2,000 other Jews heading for Palestine. The British authorities had banned such mass migration and when Yehuda arrived he and his two brothers and sisters were separated from their parents when they were taken to refugee camps.

After Israel gained independence in 1948, Dr. Ben-Yishay in Nahal, part of the Israel Defense Forces that established agricultural settlements. He later attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the hope of studying psychology, but there was no one to teach it: Arab guerrillas had murdered the department head and several colleagues in 1948.

Dr. Ben-Yishay studied sociology instead, graduating in 1957. He received a scholarship to the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and arrived at the end of the year.

To cover his living expenses, he taught Hebrew and worked with retirees, including at a summer camp in Brewster, NY. There he met Myrna Pitterman know. They married in 1960 and had three sons, Ari, Ron and Seth. All survive him along with his brothers Israel and Meir; his sister Pnina; and eight grandchildren.

At the New School, Dr. Ben-Yishay headed by a German emigrant psychologist named Kurt Goldstein. Dr. Goldstein insisted that patients with traumatic injuries could only recover in a “holistic” setting that would take into account not only their physical well-being but also their emotional and spiritual health.

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Business

Prince Philip of Britain dies at age 99

Prince Philip of Britain dies at age 99

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 2015.

Matt Dunham | WPA pool | Getty Images

LONDON – Prince Philip, the Greek-born king who was the longest-serving consort of a British sovereign as the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, passed away on Friday. He was 99 years old.

“HRH passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle this morning,” announced the Royal Family. “Further announcements will be made in due course. The royal family and people around the world mourn his loss.”

The Duke of Edinburgh’s death came 12 days before Queen Elizabeth’s 95th birthday on April 21st. Following a long-running plan known as Operation Forth Bridge, his death heralds a time of national mourning.

Philip, whom the Queen described as “my strength and my stay,” was hospitalized in February after “feeling unwell” and being treated for an infection and pre-existing heart disease, Buckingham Palace said. He was released a month later after heart surgery.

Philip, who popularized the sobriquet “The Firm” for the family firm Windsor, finished his official duties in the fall of 2017. Months earlier, in June, he was hospitalized for an infection and missed the Queen’s speech re-elected Parliament opened this month.

Two days after the absence of Easter 2018 In St. George’s Chapel he was admitted to King Edward VII Hospital for a previously planned hip operation, the palace announced. This 10-day hospitalization came weeks before the birth of Prince William and Kate’s third child, Prince Louis Arthur, and Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018 in St. George’s.

In January 2019, Philip was uninjured after being involved in a collision while driving a Land Rover near the Queen’s Sandringham Estate at the age of 97. According to witnesses, the vehicle overturned and two women were treated for injuries. Weeks later, he decided to surrender his driver’s license.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Philip and Elizabeth lived at Windsor Castle, west of London.

The Duke of Edinburgh supported his wife in an unprecedented time of social, economic, technological, political change and family crises.

Fourteen prime ministers held their office, while Philip was British consort – companion of the sovereign – under Winston Churchill in 1952 through the incumbent Boris Johnson.

Both the Duke and Queen, the world’s longest reigning monarch, saw the transformation of a once global British Empire into a Commonwealth of 52 independent member states, a free association under the Queen’s direction.

Philip’s public statements had been rare in recent years, and his direct contact with the media was even rarer. Previously, the Duke was known to express his opinion in public engagements, often with terrifying remarks that went beyond the boundaries of humor.

For example, during the 1981 recession, he said, “Everyone said we needed more free time. Now they are complaining that they are unemployed.”

“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” Philip asked a wealthy Cayman Islands resident in 1994.

“You are too fat to be an astronaut,” he said in 2001 to a 13-year-old boy.

When Philip met a mayor in 2012 who was using a mobility scooter, he asked him, “Did you run over someone?”

Early life

Philip was born on June 10, 1921 on the Greek island of Corfu as the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice von Battenberg. Andrew, whose father, King George I of Greece, was murdered in 1913, was the commander of the Greek army during the war with Turkey from 1919 to 1922. After the defeat of Greece, Andrew and the family were exiled in 1922 and settled in France.

Philip’s maternal grandfather, Prince Ludwig von Battenberg, renounced his German title, took the surname Mountbatten, an Anglicized version of the German Battenberg, and became a British citizen.

At the age of 7 in 1928, Philip was sent to school in England. He lived with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, and his uncle, George Mountbatten.

Philip’s four sisters married German aristocrats, and three of them – Sophie, Cecilie, and Margarita – joined the NSDAP. Of course, one of his brother-in-law was among those involved in the 1944 conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler.

In an interview with historian Jonathan Petropoulos, published in his 2006 book Royals and the Reich, Philip noted that he was never “aware that someone in the family was actually expressing anti-Semitic views,” but admitted that there was “inhibitions against the Jews” and “jealousy of their success. “

As a teenager, Philip joined the Royal Navy and served in World War II, including participating in the battles of Cape Matapan and Crete and the invasion of Sicily. He was in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 because of the Japanese surrender and later received the Greek War Cross of Valor for his service in the Navy.

Royal marriage

In 1947, 26-year-old Philip married his third cousin, Princess Elizabeth, 21, renouncing his Greek title in order to become a naturalized British subject. He was later made Duke of Edinburgh by Elizabeth’s father, King George VI.

The royal marriage was controversial at the time as Philip was not a native son. The Queen Mother is said to have called him “the Hun”. Even so, the couple married at Westminster Abbey and received more than 2,500 wedding favors from around the world. A year later, the son and heir to the throne, Charles, was born, followed by Anne, Andrew and Edward.

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Queen’s coronation celebrations on June 2, 1953.

Keystone | Getty Images

Philip’s maritime career, during which the newly married couple were briefly stationed in Malta, later ended when George VI died on February 6, 1952 and Princess Elizabeth became Queen.

The Duke assumed his new role as wife and accompanied Her Majesty on domestic trips, state visits and Commonwealth tours around the world.

Elizabeth was officially crowned Queen in the first live television coronation broadcast worldwide in 1953. Shortly thereafter, Philip and Elizabeth embarked on a seven-month international tour, visiting 13 countries and covering over 40,000 miles.

“Nobody has ever forgotten to meet him”

In addition to his royal obligations, the Duke became a qualified pilot and played polo regularly until his 50th birthday. Philip achieved many flight qualifications that earned him his Royal Air Force wings in 1953, his helicopter wings two years later, and his private pilot’s license in 1959.

In an official capacity, Philip has traveled to more than 140 countries.

“The great thing about my dad is that nobody ever forgot to meet him, so they all have their stories,” said Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, during an engagement at Windsor Castle in May 2017.

“Wherever he’s been, wherever in the world – people remember him. You can’t really get a better award,” he added.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip also had to survive times of crisis, including the fact that the British monarch was fired with spaces in 1981. Two years earlier, the Queen’s art advisor, Anthony Blunt, was exposed as a communist spy and Philip’s uncle Louis “Dickie” Lord Mountbatten was killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb.

In 1992 the marriages of three of her children broke down. Andrew and Anne divorced their spouses, and Charles and Diana began a separation that ended in divorce four years later. Also in 1992, Windsor Castle, one of the couple’s official residences, was destroyed by fire. The Queen described this 12 month period as “annus horribilis”.

During Charles and Diana’s troubles, Philip reportedly advised the couple to reconcile, but to no avail. A year after their 1996 divorce, Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed were killed in a car accident in Paris while photographers chased their limousine. Before the funeral, Philip successfully encouraged his 15-year-old grandson William to walk behind Diana’s coffin. Sixty years earlier, Philip, then 16, marched behind his sister Cecilie’s coffin after she was killed in a plane crash.

“If you don’t go, you will probably regret it later,” Philip told William, according to British media reports. “If I go, will you go with me?”

Fayed’s father claimed Philip ordered the couple’s execution, but in 2008 a London medical examiner dismissed Mohamed al Fayed’s allegations of conspiracy and ruled that there was no such evidence. The jury ultimately decided that the crash was due to grossly negligent driving of the couple’s chauffeur and paparazzi chasing their limousine.

“I … owe him a debt greater than he would ever say.”

Queen Elizabeth II sits with Prince Philip as she delivers her speech during the Opening Ceremony of Parliament at the House of Lords in Westminster on June 4, 2014 in London.

Getty Images

In the decades following his marriage to the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh had made more than 22,000 individual engagements, made 637 overseas visits, made an estimated 5,493 speeches, and acted as a patron of nearly 800 organizations, according to the royal website.

One of his most successful associations has arguably been the creation of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, a youth self-improvement program that has been running for 65 years.

In May 2017, the palace announced that the then 95-year-old prince would finally cease his royal duties from autumn. Philip and his wife had gradually passed on some of their respective workloads over the past few years. Their son and heir, Prince Charles, as well as grandchildren, Princes William and Harry and other family members, assumed more collective responsibility until Andrew was effectively stripped of royal duties in 2019 for being linked to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Harry back as a senior Royal in 2020.

The Queen said in honor of her husband on their golden wedding anniversary on November 20, 1997: “Quite simply, he was my strength and stayed all these years and I and his whole family in this and many other countries owe him a debt that is greater is than he would ever ask, or we will ever know. “

The couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in November 2017. During their private ceremony at Windsor Castle, Elizabeth presented him with the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order for “Services to the Sovereign”.

Survivors include his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, and their children: Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. The Queen and Philip also had eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren, including Augustus Philip Hawke Brooksbank, who was born on February 9, 2021 to Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank, and was named in part in honor of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Philip had insisted that, according to The Times of London, he didn’t want the “excitement” of a state funeral at Westminster Hall. Instead, his body is expected to be in St. James’s Palace, where Prince Diana’s body lay prior to her burial.

– CNBC’s Marty Steinberg is based in New Jersey.

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Politics

Rep. Alcee Hastings dies, narrowing Democratic Home majority to only 7

Rep. Alcee Hastings dies, narrowing Democratic House majority to just 7

Rep Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) at a House Committee meeting on Rules to Examine H. Res. 755 charges against Donald John Trump, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors on Capitol Hill.

Erin Schaff | Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., Died Tuesday after fighting pancreatic cancer for more than two years, NBC News confirmed.

Hastings, who served in the House of Representatives for nearly three decades, was 84 years old. During his career, he has held several important committee and management positions, most recently as vice chairman of the regulatory committee.

After the Congressman’s death, the Democrats have a slim advantage of 218-211 in the House of Representatives, giving the party little margin for error in passing laws. Six places are free.

Hastings, a former federal district judge, was charged in 1988 on charges of bribery and perjury. The Senate voted to remove him from the bank the next year, but did not vote to exclude him from his future office.

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Health

Edith Prentiss, Fierce Voice for Disabled New Yorkers, Dies at 69

Edith Prentiss, Fierce Voice for Disabled New Yorkers, Dies at 69

Edith Prentiss, a fiery disabled attorney who struggled to make the city she loved more navigable for all, died on March 16 at her home in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. She was 69 years old.

The cause was cardiac arrest, said her brother Andrew Prentiss.

In 2004, the city’s taxi fleet had only three wheelchair-accessible taxis – minivans with ramps – and people like Ms. Prentiss had less than one in 4,000 chances of calling one. “They’re like unicorns,” she told the New York Times earlier this year. “You have to be clean to catch one.”

The number of vehicles available would eventually increase to 231, but it took nearly a decade and a class action lawsuit – of which Ms. Prentiss was the plaintiff – before the city’s taxi and limousine commission agreed to make the fleet 50 percent accessible by 2020. (This deadline has been postponed due to the pandemic and other issues; the fleet is now 30 percent.)

Ms. Prentiss also fought for accessibility in subways and in police stations, restaurants and public parks. And she fought on issues that did not directly concern her, such as those that could hinder people with intellectual, visual, acoustic, or other disabilities.

When the city held a hearing in 2018 on banning plastic straws, a matter close to environmentalists but not the disabled community, they made sure a group was put together and an opinion was given. There are those who cannot hold a cup the group wanted to point out, and straws are an essential tool when visiting a restaurant.

At the meeting, group after group testified in favor of the ban. But Ms. Prentiss and her colleagues were not called.

“It’s hard to miss us – most people are in wheelchairs,” said Joseph G. Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled and communications and strategy director of the Taxis for All Campaign. Prentiss was the chair, “but it went on and on and finally Edith had it. She said, “Hey, we’re here to speak. We have an opinion on this bill. ‘“The group was allowed to speak.

“She worked inside, she worked the angles, and when she had to scream, she did,” added Rappaport. “And she did well.”

She was bristle and relentless and always prepared. Woe to the city officials who failed to keep their promises or did their homework. She knew up to an inch how long a ramp was and how high a curb should be cut. She drove her motorized wheelchair while she spoke with tremendous confidence and sometimes a little deliberate recklessness; She wasn’t overwhelmed with riding the toes of anyone in her way.

Among the many New York officials who made statements about Ms. Prentiss’s death were Gale Brewer, president of Manhattan District, and, in a joint statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Victor Calise, mayor’s commissioner for people with disabilities.

In May, Ms. Prentiss will be inducted into the New York State Hall of Fame for Disability Rights, and Mr. Calise will appear in her place at the virtual ceremony.

“She was brilliant,” Ms. Brewer said in a telephone interview. “She didn’t take any prisoners. She skipped the finer points, but her heart was so generous. “

Edith Mary Prentiss was born on February 1, 1952 in Central Islip, NY, on Long Island. She was one of six children (and the only daughter) of electrician Robert Prentiss and social worker Patricia (Greenwood) Prentiss.

Edith was an asthmatic and later a diabetic. She started using a wheelchair when her asthma became severe when she was in her late 40s.

After graduating from Stony Brook University on Long Island with a degree in sociology, she attended the College of Art and Science at Miami University, Ohio.

Early in her career, Ms. Prentiss was an outreach clerk for ARC XVI Fort Washington, a senior services center. She worked at the Port Authority’s bus station, doing blood pressure tests, and helping elderly people apply for city services and other benefits. She later worked with Holocaust survivors. Fern Hertzberg, the executive director of ARC, said Ms. Prentiss’ last job before she retired around 2006 was at a physical therapy center in her neighborhood.

Ms. Prentiss was president of the 504 Democratic Club, which focuses on disability rights, and has held positions with many other interest groups.

She was not only known for her strong arms. Years ago, Susan Scheer, now the executive director of the Institute for Career Development, a working and training group for the disabled, was a government official in New York City, and she met Ms. Prentiss the usual way: being yelled at in hearings. But when Ms. Scheer, who suffers from spina bifida, started using a wheelchair about a decade ago, she called Ms. Prentiss for help. She realized she had no idea how to navigate the bus from her East Village apartment to her town hall job.

“Don’t worry,” she remembered Ms. Prentiss. “I am on the way.” (It took a while, with the usual obstacles like broken subway elevators.)

Once there, Ms. Prentiss led Ms. Scheer out of her building and through the growl of traffic on 14th Street, blocking the vehicles that threatened her as she trained Ms. Scheer through her first bus launch which was rocky. As she ping-pong down the aisle, she ran over the driver’s toes. “Not your problem,” Mrs. Prentiss called from behind her.

Ms. Prentiss then instructed the less enthusiastic driver to secure Ms. Scheer’s chair (the drivers are not always diligent at this step). And when the passengers groaned and rolled their eyes, said Ms. Scheer, Ms. Prentiss stared at them and announced: “We’re learning here, folks. Let’s be patient. “

On her extensive travels, her brother Andrew said, Ms. Prentiss has had many road accidents and was hit by numerous vehicles, including taxis, a city bus, and a FedEx truck. She was often in the emergency room, but if there was a community board meeting or hearing in town, she made sure to call from the hospital.

In addition to her brother Andrew, her other brothers Michael, Robert Anthony, William John and David Neil survive.

In early January, Ms. Prentiss received her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the Fort Washington Armory. Needless to say, she had some ailments when she told Ms. Hertzberg: The pens used to fill out the health questionnaire were known as golf pens and were too small for people with certain manual disabilities. The writing on the questionnaire wasn’t big enough. And the chairs in the waiting area after the vaccination didn’t have arms that many people can use to stand up.

She called the hospital that administered the program there – and Ms. Hertzberg said you can be sure that it would not take long to fix the problems.

For the past three years, photographer, writer and filmmaker Arlene Schulman has been working on a documentary entitled “Edith Prentiss: Hell on Wheels,” a title that originally addressed the subject. She didn’t think it was strong enough.

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Entertainment

Paul Laubin, 88, Dies; Grasp of Making Oboes the Outdated-Original Manner

Paul Laubin, 88, Dies; Master of Making Oboes the Old-Fashioned Way

Paul Laubin, a revered oboe maker who was one of the few remaining woodwinds to build his instruments by hand – he made so few a year that customers might have to wait a decade to play one – died on March 1st in his Workshop in Peekskill, NY He was 88 years old.

His wife Meredith Laubin confirmed the death. She said that Mr. Laubin, who lived in Mahopac, NY, collapsed in his workshop at some point during the day and the police found his body there that night.

In the world of oboes, his partisans believe, there is Mr. Oubos oboes and then there is everything else.

Mr. Laubin was in his early twenties when he made oboes with his father Alfred, who founded A. Laubin Inc. and built his first oboe in 1931. He took over the business when his father died in 1976. His son Alex started working by his side in 2003.

Oboists in major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra have played Mr. Laubin’s instruments and appreciated their dark and rich tone.

“There’s something that hits a chord deep within your body when you play a Laubin,” said Sherry Sylar, the New York Philharmonic’s principal associate oboist. “It’s a resonance that no other oboe has. It rings in your body. You get addicted to making a sound like this and nothing else will. “

In a dusty workshop near the Hudson River, lined with machines built back in 1881, Mr. Laubin crafted his oboes and cor anglais with an almost religious sense of precision. He wore an apron and puffed a pipe as he bored and turned the grenadilla and rosewood from which his instruments were made. (The pipe also served as a test device: Mr. Laubin blew smoke through the joints of the instrument to detect air leaks.)

His father taught him instrument making techniques that go back centuries. As the decades passed and instrument makers began to embrace computer-aided design and factory automation, the younger Mr. Laubin steadfastly resisted change. If it took him 10 years to build a good oboe, so be it.

“What’s the rush?” Mr Laubin said in a 1991 interview with the New York Times: “I don’t want anything with my name on it that I didn’t make, check and play myself.”

Mr. Laubin stored the blocks of his rare hardwoods outdoors for years so they could get used to extreme weather conditions and become more resilient instruments that could withstand the cracks that do woodwinds to death. After drilling a hole that would become the drilling of the instrument, it sometimes took another year for the piece of wood to dry out.

Mr. Laubin, who was a professional oboist as a young man, constantly played every oboe he worked on looking for imperfections. “Every key is a fight,” he told News 12 Westchester in 2012.

When a Laubin oboe was finally completed, its unveiling became a cause for celebration. A customer came into the Peekskill workshop with a bottle of champagne, and as he played his first notes, Mr. Laubin raised a toast.

Paul Edward Laubin was born on December 14, 1932 in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, oboist and music teacher, started making oboes because he was dissatisfied with the quality of the instruments available. He built the first Laubin oboe as an experiment and melted down his wife’s cutlery to make his keys. Paul’s mother, Lillian (Ely de Breton) Laubin, was a housewife.

As a boy, Paul was enchanted by the instruments his father made, but Alfred initially didn’t want his son to make music. Paul harassed him again and again; When he was thirteen, his father reluctantly gave him an oboe, a reed, and a finger table, and Paul taught himself to play.

Mr. Laubin studied auto mechanics and music at Louisiana State University in the 1950s. It wasn’t long before his yearning for performance overwhelmed him and he got a place in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Soon after, he finally joined the family business and began building oboes with his father in the garage of their home in Scarsdale, NY

In 1958 they moved their workshop to a clarinet factory in Long Island City, Queens, and for a time the company was producing (relatively speaking) 100 instruments a year.

Mr. Laubin married the flautist Meredith Van Lynip in 1966. In 1988 he moved the company to its current location in Peekskill. Over time, Mr. Laubin’s team got smaller, as did his production.

In the 1990s, A. Laubin Inc. produced around 22 instruments a year. By 2005 the average had dropped to 15. Over time, the scarcity of the Laubin oboes only added to their legend. The company has rarely advertised and relied on word of mouth. A grenadilla oboe costs $ 13,200 and a rosewood instrument costs $ 14,000.

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Laubin survives a daughter, Michelle; a sister, Vanette Arone; a brother, Carl; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Laubin was aware that selling so few instruments each year, no matter how exquisite, did not necessarily make financial sense. “I made the decision to follow my father even though I knew I would never get rich,” he told The Times in 1989.

The company’s fate is now undetermined. Alex Laubin served as office manager and helped with some aspects of production, but didn’t learn the entire process. He often asked his father to modernize their business – to no avail.

“Nobody sits down and puts down keys,” said Meredith Laubin. “It doesn’t turn out that there is always an oboe joint. This is all automated now, just like robots build cars. But Paul didn’t advocate any of these things. For him there was no cheating on the family recipe. “

But Mr. Laubin knew that the old ways would come to an end. In recent years he has found it harder to ignore the stark realities of an Old World craftsman in the modern age.

“Paul had to have part of his dream, namely to be able to work with his son,” said Ms. Laubin. “But the other part of his dream, since he knew his work would continue the way he did things, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

Nevertheless, he stuck to the tradition. On the day of his death, the beginnings of the Laubin oboe No. 2,600 lay on his desk.

Categories
World News

Glynn S. Lunney Dies at 84; Oversaw NASA Flights From Mission Management

Glynn S. Lunney Dies at 84; Oversaw NASA Flights From Mission Control

Glynn S. Lunney, NASA’s flight director, who played an important role in the American space program and was hailed for his leadership role in the rescue of three Apollo 13 astronauts when their spacecraft was rocked by an explosion on its way to the moon in 1970, died on March 19 at his home in Clear Lake, Texas. He was 84 years old.

The cause was stomach cancer, said his son Shawn.

Mr. Lunney (rhymes with “sunny”), who joined NASA in 1958 and became its chief flight director in 1968, worked outside of mission control in Houston developing the sophisticated procedures for the flight of Apollo 11 and sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their groundbreaking flight Journey to the moon in July 1969.

He led the mission in July 1975, during which an Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts docked with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with two men. Each vehicle carried equipment that would one day allow another connection if an international rescue mission were needed. The Americans and Russians conducted joint experiments and exchanged commemorative gifts, which became a step towards cooperation between nations in space aboard the International Space Station.

But Mr. Lunney was particularly remembered for his takeover efforts in the dramatic rescue of Apollo 13 astronauts James L. Lovell Jr., Fred W. Haise Jr., and John L. Swigert Jr.

Together with three other flight directors and numerous NASA scientists and astronauts in the command center, he worked out the complex plan that would enable them to return to Earth.

Mr. Lunney looked back on the effort as “the best job I ever did or could hope for”.

“We’ve built a quarter of a million-mile highway, paved by decision, choice, and innovation after another, and repeated for nearly four days to get the crew home safely,” he recalled in an Oral NASA history interview.

“This space highway led the crippled ship back to planet Earth, where people from every continent came together in support of these three endangered explorers. It was an inspiring and emotional feeling that reminded us again of our common humanity. “

Since the astronauts’ command module had been crippled by the explosion, mission control instructed them to use their undamaged lunar lander as a lifeboat to carry them home.

The lander was originally designed to descend from the orbiting Apollo 13 ship to the moon with Mr. Swigert on board, and then return to the mothership with Mr. Lovell and Mr. Haise to travel home. But the Houston ground team, working under heavy time pressure and with no blueprint for this kind of exertion, improvised a way for them to get a safe impact in the Pacific huddled in the lunar lander.

Mr. Lunney was among the NASA officials who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Richard M. Nixon to the rescue. In the 1995 film “Apollo 13”, Marc McClure played Mr. Lunney.

Glynn Stephen Lunney was born on November 27, 1936 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania to William Lunney, a miner and welder, and Helen Glynn Lunney.

As a teenager, Glynn was fascinated by flight and filled his room with model airplanes. He graduated from the University of Detroit (now the University of Detroit Mercy) with a degree in aerospace engineering after serving on a collaborative program in which he spent the time between his studies and working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the Forerunner of NASA, split.

He became a protégé of Christopher C. Kraft Jr., NASA’s first chief flight director.

Mr. Lunney was the space agency’s fourth flight director. In this role, he was responsible for leading teams of air traffic controllers, research and engineering professionals, and support professionals around the world who make decisions during spaceflight.

Among the numerous successes of his NASA career, Mr. Lunney was senior flight director for Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, and Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the first moon landing.

He retired from NASA in 1985 as manager of the space shuttle program, but continued to lead human space operations through senior positions in private industry.

In addition to his son Shawn, Mr. Lunney survived his wife, Marilyn Jean (Kurtz) Lunney, who was a nurse at a forerunner NASA research center. two other sons, Glynn Jr. and Bryan; his daughter Jenifer Brayley; his brothers Bill and Gerry; his sister Carol; and 12 grandchildren.

Astronaut Ken Mattingly, who was supposed to fly on the Apollo 13 mission but was removed from it after being exposed to German measles, was one of the many space agency figures working on the plan to rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts.

He remembered how, immediately after the explosion, “nobody knew what the hell was going on”.

“And Glynn came in, took over this mess,” he recalled in “Voices From the Moon” (2009), an astronaut oral history followed by Andrew Chaikin and Victoria Kohl.

“And he just calmed the situation down,” Mattingly said. “I’ve never seen such an exceptional example of leadership in my entire career. Absolutely great.

“No wartime general or admiral could ever be more splendid than Glynn that night,” he added. “He and he alone brought all the scared people together.”

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Entertainment

Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

The company’s debut program focused on works by George Balanchine – the founder of the City Ballet, whose repertoire still dominates that of Miami City – but also included Mr. Gamonet’s “Transtangos,” which became the company’s signature.

Updated

March 28, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

Mr. Gamonet was prolific, creating several ballets each season. He described himself as a neoclassical choreographer who was indebted to Balanchine, but also to the theatrics of his parents. His offer ranged from remakes of Spanish classics such as “Paquita” and “Carmen” to original pieces by Bach and swing music in “Big Band Supermegatroid”.

In a 1989 Washington Post review, Alan M. Kriegsman wrote that Mr. Gamonet’s works showed “a talent full of flair and flavor and an instinctive sense of dance rhetoric, but also, not unexpectedly, some compositional flaws and immaturity. ”

Music always came first for Mr. Gamonet, with careful study of the score. “Two in the morning,” recalled Mr. Mursuli, “and he would still be preparing and making notes on the score with his headphones on.”

Ballerina Iliana Lopez, who played many roles in Mr. Gamonet’s plays for Miami City, said, “He came with the choreography in mind,” adding, “He made me feel beautiful and free in his work, and not every choreographer can do that. “

During rehearsal and classes, Mr. Gamonet was often weird, nicknamed everyone, but he expected the dancers to work as hard as he did. “He always said, ‘Nobody’s hand is tied to the bar,'” said Mr. Mursuli. “If you didn’t want to work hard, you could go.” But, he added, Mr. Gamonet was also generous: “I can’t tell you how many times he has helped dancers who have no money.”

In 2000, Mr. Gamonet’s position with the Miami City Ballet was eliminated. From 2004 to 2009 he ran his own company in Miami, Ballet Gamonet. At the Ballet Nacional del Peru, he revived his earlier works and created new ones, including a full-length “Romeo and Juliet” in 2019.

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Business

Bernadette Bartels Murphy, Pioneering Wall Road Dealer, Dies at 86

Bernadette Bartels Murphy, Pioneering Wall Street Trader, Dies at 86

Bernadette Bartels Murphy, a rare woman on Wall Street in the 1950s, whose work as a trader helped legitimize a once mocked approach to anticipating market trends, making her a respected voice in the financial world, and giving her a platform on television To give, died on March 3 in Nyack, NY She was 86 years old.

Her death was confirmed by her niece, Mary Ann Bartels. Mrs. Murphy died in her niece’s house.

Ms. Murphy began her career at the investment bank Ladenburg Thalmann & Company as a secretary – one of the few roles available to women in the financial industry at the time. But over time she became a trader and analyst, and found a national audience as a regular panelist at Louis Rukeyser’s long-running Wall Street Week, a public television appearance of her for 25 years.

Ms. Murphy worked as a secretary and found it was the work of the traders on her desk that interested her more. She began studying the movements of stocks and the overall market to anticipate future trends, an approach known as technical analysis.

At the time, this method of anticipating market movements was rejected by traditionalists who favored an approach called fundamental analysis: predicting a shift in stock price by determining the intrinsic value of a company and its stocks. They often mockingly referred to technical analysts as “chartists” for the graphs and data tables they looked through for their forecasts.

“I had to keep my diagrams in the bottom drawer of my desk,” Ms. Murphy recalled in an interview with an industry magazine in 1992. “In those days, technical analysis was not considered an acceptable discipline, not in a conservative company.”

To learn more about the business, she took courses at the New York Institute of Finance and began making her own charts. Using the trading floor around her as a training ground, she gathered information about the interactions between the various markets her company operated in, such as corporate and municipal bonds, stocks, and overseas trade orders. (After leaving Ladenburg, she worked for two other Wall Street firms.)

She also began sharing her ideas with colleagues and industry contacts in a newsletter, This Is What I Think, which became her calling card, prompting her company’s clients to ask their managers for their views on the deals they were considering. In the early 1970s, she was monitoring stock portfolios for clients and sharing her projections with them.

Its outbreak came in 1973 when a market crash and global economic downturn left stocks swooning in a 21 month long swoon.

“My readings were very accurate,” said Ms. Murphy in “Women on the Street: Making It On Wall Street – The Toughest Business In The World” (1998) by Sue Herera. For example, she expected a sharp dip in a popular group of stocks known as the “Nifty 50” which included household names like Coca-Cola and Polaroid.

“My timing was right, my expectation of what would happen to stocks was on the money, so I got calls from institutions and invitations to lunch,” Ms. Murphy said in the book. “And so started my business.”

Recognition…via Murphy family

In 1979 she appeared on Wall Street Week, which aired on Friday night.

Ms. Murphy was known within the industry for her contributions to trade groups and civic organizations. She has served at various times as President of the Chartered Market Technicians Association, the New York Society of Security Analysts, and the Financial Women’s Association. She was a charter member and governor of the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute, trustee of Pace University, and a board member of the American Lung Association of New York City.

“Everyone in an organization was always trying to get Bernadette to join, which she often did because she was a social bee,” said Sheila Baird, founding partner of investment firm Kimelman & Baird, where Ms. Murphy was a primary market analyst for many years.

Bernadette Bartels was born on City Island in the Bronx on April 9, 1934, the son of Joseph Francis Bartels, a stationary engineer (maintenance of industrial machines and systems), and Julia (Flynn) Bartels, a Nurse. She was the youngest of four children. She is survived by her sister Julia Campbell.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Our Lady of Good Counsel (now part of Pace University) in White Plains, NY. She credited her father with using her education to make a career.

“I knew for a fact that I would achieve something before my wedding. That was my driving force, ”she said to Ms. Herera. “I wanted to be a fulfilled person, confident.”

In 1982 she married Eugene Francis Murphy, whom she met on Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays, New York, after saving her from a flood. The orthodontist Dr. Murphy died in 1997.

Ms. Murphy, who retired from Kimelman & Baird in 2015, encouraged women to pursue careers on Wall Street, whether speaking in high schools or colleges, or informally with friends and family members. One of them was Mary Ann Bartels, her niece, who became the executive director of Bank of America.

Mrs. Bartels recalled a story Mrs. Murphy often told. As a child, she said, she stopped at a waterfront arcade on City Island and put a coin in a machine to get her horoscope. “It was said that her element was fire, her color was red and ‘you are an aries, the aries – a trailblazer and a pioneer’,” said Ms. Bartels. “She told us this story so many times, and she really lived after it every day.”

Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.