obituary

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett’s No. 2, Dies at 99 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Charles T. Munger, Much More Than Warren Buffett’s No. 2, Dies at 99 – The New York Times:

Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1. 1924, the son of Alfred Case Munger, a lawyer, and Florence (Russell) Munger. As a boy he worked Saturdays in a grocery store then owned by Mr. Buffett’s grandfather. (Mr. Buffett worked there for a time himself, but the two did not meet until much later.) At 17, Charles went to the University of Michigan to major in mathematics, but in his sophomore year, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Buddy Teevens, Pioneering Dartmouth Football Coach, Dies at 66 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Buddy Teevens, Pioneering Dartmouth Football Coach, Dies at 66 – The New York Times:

Buddy Teevens, who had more victories than any coach in Dartmouth College football history, and who became a nationally recognized innovator in player safety when he eliminated tackling during practices to limit the incidence of concussions, died on Tuesday in Boston. He was 66.

Norman Mineta, transportation secretary who helped create TSA, dies at 90 – The Washington Post

by dldamore

Norman Mineta, transportation secretary who helped create TSA, dies at 90 – The Washington Post:

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 authorized $20,000 in reparations for each surviving internee; it passed with support from both parties and served as an official recognition that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was wrong, a result of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” as a presidential panel had concluded.

Was unaware of this.

Lee Kaufman, Who Cleaned Her Way to Late-Life Stardom, Dies at 99 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Lee Kaufman, Who Cleaned Her Way to Late-Life Stardom, Dies at 99 – The New York Times:

They were the pioneers in an advertising strategy for Swiffer built on ordinary people, rather than actors, and the public responded with adoration and a click count that soared into the millions.

A three-minute spot intended for the internet was produced and got such a response that it was carved up into shorter segments for social media and television commercials; a string of other Swiffer ads using ordinary people followed. The Kaufmans’ eureka moments in the bits were genuine enough — the couple said later that they’d been unaware of Swiffer products before the filming.

“The bottom line is, don’t die young,” she said. “There are too many things that can happen.”

Michael Apted, Versatile Director Known for ‘Up’ Series, Dies at 79 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Michael Apted, Versatile Director Known for ‘Up’ Series, Dies at 79 – The New York Times:

Michael Apted, a versatile director whose films were as varied as the James Bond picture “The World Is Not Enough” and the biographical dramas “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and who made his most lasting mark with the “Up” documentary series, which followed the lives of a group of British people in seven-year intervals for more than a half century, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79.

Pierre Cardin, Visionary Fashion Designer, Dies at 98 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Pierre Cardin, Visionary Fashion Designer, Dies at 98 – The New York Times:

His ability to sculpt fabric with an architectural sensibility was his real signature,” he added.

Mr. Cardin drew inspiration from everywhere, be it the pagodas he visited in China, Op Art painting or automotive design. 

“I’m always inspired by something outside, not by the body itself,” he told The New York Times in 1985. Clothing, he said, was meant “to give the body its shape, the way a glass gives shape to the water poured into it.”

Marvin Creamer, a Mariner Who Sailed Like the Ancients, Dies at 104 – The New York Times

by dldamore

Marvin Creamer, a Mariner Who Sailed Like the Ancients, Dies at 104 – The New York Times:

“Under cloud-massed skies, he could divine his location from the color and temperature of the water, the presence of particular birds and insects and even, on one occasion, the song of a squeaky hatch.

Skills like these, he long maintained, had let the master mariners of antiquity answer the seafarer’s ever-present, life-or-death question — Where am I? — and in so doing sail safely round the world.”

 

“It is believed that we rounded the Horn at noon yesterday and have amended our longitude accordingly. We were not able to sight any landmarks so have based our conclusion on (1) the presence of an extremely cold north wind of relatively short duration, and (2) the change of water color from blue to a fairly dark, transparent green to a lighter, less transparent green and back to a quite dark transparent green as we proceeded from west to east at an estimated latitude of 56°55’.”

 

On one occasion they sat, becalmed, bothered and bewildered, until his geographer’s ears came to their aid. As the wind started up again, a crew member happened to open a hatch. It emitted a loud squeak.
That sound told Professor Creamer unequivocally in which direction the boat was facing: Only dry air from the Antarctic, he knew, would have caused it. Moist air from the opposite direction would have lubricated the hatch, yielding a more congenial noise.

 

On May 13, 1984, as the Globe Star negotiated the Atlantic, the crew received a visit from a housefly. They recognized it at once as a humble emissary from land. Sure enough, they arrived back at Cape May four days later.

Charles Van Doren, a Quiz Show Whiz Who Wasn’t, Dies at 93 – The New York Times

by dldamore

“I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years,” he said. He said he had agonized in a moral and mental struggle to come to terms with his own betrayals.

He lost his job at Columbia, NBC canceled his contract, and, along with others who had lied to the grand jury about their quiz show roles, he pleaded guilty to second-degree perjury, a misdemeanor, and received a suspended sentence.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/obituaries/charles-van-doren-dead.html