Luis Garden Acosta, resuscitator of a Brooklyn neighborhood (1/11/19)
Coltrane's "Cousin Mary" (9/11/19)
Michel Bacos, Hero Pilot of Jet Hijacked to Entebbe (3/28/19)
valiant French pilot who was forced by terrorists to fly his jetliner to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, but refused to abandon Jewish passengers before an audacious rescue by Israeli commandos
Paul Badura-Skoda, Who Could Make a Piano Sing, Dies at 91 (10/4/19)
an Austrian pianist who was known for insightful interpretations of classical era repertory and who had one of largest discographies of any major pianist, more than 200 recordings, died on Sept. 25 in Vienna.
Robert Bernstein, Publisher and Champion of Dissent (5/27/19)
built Random House into an international publishing giant and championed political dissent, freedom of expression and relief for oppressed peoples as the founder of Human Rights Watch
Martin Bernheimer, Tartly Eloquent Music Critic, Dies at 83 (10/2/19)
“Historically,” Mr. Bernheimer wrote in the Financial Times in 2008, “the best critics have guarded standards, stimulated debate and, in the complex process, reinforced the importance of art in society. They have been tastemakers, taskmasters and possibly ticket-sellers. Some have even written well.”
Susan Beschta, Punk Rocker turned Judge (5/10/19)
As a career changer myself, I appreciate her. Punk rock to the bench is quite a change.
David Binder, Chronicled the Cold War and Its Aftermath (7/1/19)
A restless, relentless journalist, Mr. Binder covered the Berlin Wall’s construction in 1961 and its destruction in 1989 — bookends to his many hundreds of reports on East-West tensions and life under the Communist regimes in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
Hal Blaine, Wrecking Crew Drummer and Rock Hall of Fame Member 3/11/19
In the end it may be easier to list the musicians he didn’t support during his years of work during the heyday of such Hollywood studios as Capitol, Gold Star, United, Western and RCA. His work also encompassed movie soundtracks and TV scores and themes.
Curtis Blake, a Founder of the Friendly’s Chain (5/30/19)
Died at 102; Herman Wouk died 2 weeks earlier at 103.
Vivian Cherry, 98, Socially Aware Street Photographer (3/14/19)
photographer whose gritty black-and-white images of street scenes recall a bygone era in New York City
Dick Churchill, last survivor of ‘The Great Escape’ (2/26/19)
Joe Coulombe, Who Founded Trader Joe’s, Dies at 89 (3/1/2020)
“Equal parts gourmet shop, discount warehouse and Tiki trading post,” his stores caught on in Southern California and, eventually, beyond.
Fernando Corbató (7/12/19)
His work on computer time-sharing in the 1960s helped pave the way for the personal computer, as well as the computer password
Barbara Crane, 91, Dies; Photographer Found Abstract in the Ordinary
Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar (3/17/19)
Stanley Donen, ‘Master of the Musical’ who directed ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (2/23/19)
Bob Dorian, Genial Guide to Old Films on AMC (7/1/19)
He displayed his lifelong zest for old Hollywood films as the easygoing prime-time host of the American Movie Classics cable channel for nearly two decades.
Rafi Eitan, Israeli spymaster who caught Eichmann (3/23/19)
the canny Israeli spymaster who commanded the Nazi-hunting team that captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and many years later was unmasked as the handler of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American Navy intelligence analyst who pleaded guilty to passing on more than 1,000 secret documents to the Israelis, died in Tel Aviv.
The Pollard affair strained the close ties between the United States and Israel and raised the specter of divided loyalties among some American Jews, though today, after revelations in 2013 of the United States spying on allies through the National Security Agency, the double-dealing seems routine.
Ethel Ennis, singer who walked away from fame (2/22/19)
Paul Findley, Congressman Behind War Powers Act, Dies at 98
Jane Fortune, champion of Florence’s female artists (10/2/18)
She worked to restore and bring to light masterpieces by female artists, especially painters in Renaissance Florence.
Harold Ross’s Last Cartoonist: Dana Fradon (10/3/19)
Donald M. Fraser, Lawmaker Who Bared a South Korea Plot (6/3/19)
A liberal Democrat and protégé of Hubert H. Humphrey, the former Minnesota senator and vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Fraser served eight terms in the House of Representatives, from 1963 to 1979. Like Humphrey, he also served as mayor of Minneapolis, in his case for a record four terms.
Ira Gitler, influential Jazz critic and historian (2/27/19)
one of the most respected and prolific jazz writers of the postwar era and an early champion of bebop. For all the musicians Mr. Gitler wrote about, Parker and Gillespie made the strongest impressions on him. “He said that Bird was one half of his heart,” Fitz Gitler said in an interview, “and Dizzy was the other half.”
Mike Greco, salami king of Bronx's Little Italy (3/26/19)
known to connoisseurs of Italian cuisine as “the Salami King” and “the Mayor of Arthur Avenue,” and whose salumeria has catered to old neighbors, visiting politicians and insatiable Bronx expatriates for more than six decades
He often said that the 1951 movie “A Place in the Sun,” which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, caused him to shift his focus to acting.
“It was two things,” he told the Television Academy Foundation in an oral history. “One is I think I developed an overwhelming crush on Elizabeth Taylor. And two, Montgomery Clift made acting look like, ‘Gee, well that looks pretty easy — just a guy talking.’”
Alfred Haynes, Pilot Who Saved Scores in Crash Landing, Dies at 87 (9/24/19)
In 1989, he defied the odds in bringing his crippled United Flight 232 in for a crash landing; more than 180 people survived.
Born in Paris, Texas.
After the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board programmed the conditions faced by the United 232 crew into a flight simulator to see if anything could be gleaned that could be incorporated into pilot training. It found, basically, that what Mr. Haynes and his crew had accomplished defied too many odds to be reduced to a pat lesson.
Buck Henry, Who Helped Create ‘Get Smart’ and Adapt ‘The Graduate,’ Dies at 89
He was a regular on SNL in its early days, too.
Ernest Hollings, a South Carolina senator who evolved (4/6/19)
Having grown up in segregated Charleston, attended a segregated college and served in a segregated army, Mr. Hollings had little contact with poor black people and initially opposed civil rights legislation. Guided by N.A.A.C.P. officials, he toured poor black and white areas of his state in 1968 and 1969, and what he saw shocked him
Tony Horwitz, found Confederates in the attic (5/27/19)
He once spoke at the Civil War Roundtable of NY, when I used to go. I had found his book beforehand, and found it brilliant. That he dies suddenly at 60 was shocking.
Lee Iacocca, Visionary Automaker Who Led Both Ford and Chrysler (7/2/19)
Once upon a time, he was on television ad nauseam, hawking Chryslers. Before that, Henry Ford II fired him because, lore had it, he didn't like his face.
Detractors branded him a Machiavellian huckster who clawed his way to pinnacles of power in 32 years at Ford, building flashy cars like the Mustang, making the covers of Time and Newsweek and becoming the company president at 46, only to be spectacularly fired in 1978 by the founder’s grandson, Henry Ford II.
The same person would've been described as an aggressive risk-taker, a doer.
Randy Jackson, the last Brooklyn Dodger to hit a home run (3/20/19)
that home run seemed nothing special to him when the third-place Dodgers closed out their history the next day with a 2-1 loss to the Phillies, the last Brooklyn pitch delivered by an unproven left-hander named Sandy Koufax.
Nurit Karlin, found her voice in wordless cartoons (5/7/19)
Sergei Khrushchev, Son of Former Soviet Premier, Dies at 84
A former Soviet rocket scientist and the son of Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader during the Cold War of the 1950s and ’60s, died on June 18 at his home in Cranston, R.I. He was 84.
J.H. Kwabena Nketia, pre-eminent scholar of African music (3/19/19)
Ron Leibman, Tony Winner for ‘Angels,’ Is Dead at 82 (12/6/19)
Jacques Loussier, pianist who jazzed up Bach (3/12/19)
a French pianist who led a trio that performed jazzy interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach, selling millions of albums and touring the world; classically trained, he had dabbled in jazz improvisation for years when he formed the Jacques Loussier Trio in 1959. The other members were the drummer Christian Garros, who had played with Django Reinhardt, and the bassist Pierre Michelot, who had recorded with Miles Davis. I know Michelot from a 1959 performance in Paris with Bud Powell; I know only that from a YouTube video I found some few years back.
John Lukacs, iconoclastic historian and author (5/8/19)
He angered both the right and the left; in my book, that's a major accomplishment and a very good indicator.
Shelby Lyman, 82, Dies; Unlikely Star of a Fischer-Spassky Broadcast (8/20/2019)
a high-ranked player who was drafted to provide live commentary of the celebrated chess match in 1972. The show became an improbable hit. That was when I became a devotee of the game.
James McCord, plumber who led Watergate break-in (4/18/19)
Which eventually led to Nixon's downfall
Sylvia Miles, actress for a flair for the flamboyant (6/12/19)
To say the last. "Excuse me, ma'am; do you know where the Statue of Liberty is?" she was asked, and answered, "Taking a piss in Central Park." Flair? Yup.
Donald Moffat, 87, a top actor who thrived in second billings (12/20/18)
Name might not be familiar, but as soon as you see his face you recognize him. I did, and do. From his obit: His working pace, still brisk in the 1990s, tapered off into retirement a few years later. One of his last appearances was as an aging, penniless former President Ulysses S. Grant in an Off Broadway production of John Guare’s “A Few Stout Individuals” (2002). Ben Brantley, reviewing it for The Times, said Mr. Moffat “registers a touching quality of imperiousness brought to its knees.”
Rosenda Monteros, Mexican actress, had role in 'Magnificent Seven' (1/7/19)
A successful actress in Mexican theater, films and television for more than five decades, played a small but important part in “The Magnificent Seven,” the 1960 remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film “Seven Samurai.”
Knowing Natchez by its dead (4/5/16)
Natchez voted against secession: it was bad for business.
Don Newcombe: Dodger pitcher helped break racial barrier (2/19/19)
Marty Noble (3/25/19)
I read his sports columns, and always enjoyed them.
Eva de La O, soprano who promoted Hispanic composers (5/13/19)
In addition to performing herself at places including Carnegie Recital
Hall, she appeared with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and the
Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. Ms. de La O established Musica de Camara (chamber music, in Spanish), a nonprofit ensemble, in 1979.
The theater she founded, the 13th Street Repertory Company, has been an eclectic presence on the New York scene for almost half a century.
Molly O'Neill (6/17/19)
Molly O’Neill, a freewheeling writer born into a family bent on raising
baseball players who would transform herself from a chef into one of
America’s leading chroniclers of food, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She
was 66.
Young, at 66; my age. I well remember her and reading her writing. She should've been more famous than Bourdain or Gold. The former was brash and self-promoting, the latter a West Coaster who also gained greater notoriety than her; why? Male?
I.M. Pei, master architext who dazzled the world (5/16/19)
“If there’s one thing I know I didn’t do wrong, it’s the Louvre,” he said.
Died at 102, same week Herman Wouk died at 103; not their major accomplishments, but certainly worth noting.
T. Boone Pickens Is Dead; Oil Magnate and Corporate Raider Was 91 (9/11/19)
He was also a jerk: During the 2004 presidential campaign that led to George W. Bush’s re-election, Mr. Pickens helped finance attacks on the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush’s opponent.
Dr. John: Mac Rebennack (6/6/19)
He shouldn't even be put in alphabetical order, but be in his own category, but at least he sits near Leon Redbone; they belong together.
Leon Redbone, idiosyncratic throwback singer (5/30/19)
age indeterminate; I loved his music.
Leon Redbone: An Unusual Singer From A Bygone Era
Well put.
Antonia Rey, Latin actress of stage and screen (3/22/19)
She appeared in 30 movies, including as the landlady in “Klute,” a 1971 crime thriller with Jane Fonda. Other films of hers included “Hair,” “Moscow on the Hudson,” “Coogan’s Bluff,” “The Lords of Flatbush” and “Jacob’s Ladder.”
Cokie Roberts Dies; Veteran Broadcast Journalist Was 75 (9/17/19)
One of the finest journalists I ever saw. I remember her mother, Lindy Boggs, taking over her father's seat in the House, and I sort of remember Hale Boggs. I remember Cokie well. Real, full name was Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs.
Elliot Roberts, Manager of Rock Stars (6/23/19)
He managed the careers of the musical stars Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Tracy Chapman and others but was best known for his five-decade association with Neil Young. “He was my best friend in the world for so many years,” Mr. Young wrote in his tribute.
Frank Robinson, Hall of Fame Slugger and First Black Manager (2/7/19)
one of the very best baseball players I have ever seen play. Not to bemoan modernity, but he never watched a homerun he hit, never celebrated it or thanked the sky. Just played the game at the highest level.
David Rogers, 88, Took on New York’s School Board (3/8/19)
a sociologist whose book vilifying New York’s ossified Board of Education contributed to its eventual abolition and replacement by mayoral control over the city’s public schools
Joachim Ronneberg, led raid that thwarted Nazi atomic bomb (10/22/18)
What future generations don't know about him, myself included. If the raid had not been successful is too awful to contemplate.
George Rosenkranz, 102, a Developer of the Birth Control Pill (6/23/19)
The impact of his development can not possibly be underestimated.
William Ruckelshaus, Who Quit in ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ Dies at 87
Lee Salem, Champion of Quirky Cartoonists, Is Dead at 73 (9/18/19)
Charles Sanna, Man Behind Swiss Miss Cocoa, Dies at 101 (4/2/19)
Carol Serling, Rod’s Wife and Tender of ‘Twilight Zone’ Flame, Dies at 90 (1/23/2020)
Rod Serling, who created “The Twilight Zone,” died in 1975. His wife —
in publishing, academic and screen ventures — helped keep his spirit
alive.
Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s Daughter, Dies at 102 (3/9/19)
Kenny Shopsin, brash owner of a quirky restaurant (9/4/18)
Sometimes the customer isn't right. His restaurant reflected the curmudgeonly, curse-word-employing personality of Mr. Shopsin, a man who was rarely written about without having the word “eccentric” appended to his name.
Joe Sirola, Actor Who Found Riches in Commercials (2/10/19)
Mr. Sirola was a show-business jack-of-all-trades, acting on Broadway,
in small theaters, on television soap operas and dramas, in the
occasional movie; he even produced on and Off Broadway late in life.
Along the way he befriended fellow showbiz personalities large and
small. When he’d tell stories about, say, his drinking buddy Richard
Burton (which he would do often; he was a first-class raconteur), he’d
do it with a pretty good Burton impression.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1/27/19)
Anyone who has seen “Casablanca” knows
the connection between Portugal and World War II refugees. But few know
the story of the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who in
1940 saved tens of thousands of lives only to be punished for this heroism by his own government.
Mel Stottlemyre, pitching ace on terrible Yankees teams (1/14/19)
I remember him getting called up to the parent team in August 1964, my first year as a baseball fan.
Barbara Testa Dies at 91; Her Discovery Rocked the Literary World (12/30/2019)
Peter Tork, court jester of the Monkees (2/21/19)
Hey, hey, we're the Monkees. I'm not ashamed to admit I liked the show.
Rip Torn, an Outsize Presence Onstage and Off (7/9/19)
Mr. Torn made his reputation as a gifted actor in the works of Tennessee
Williams and in roles as diverse as Walt Whitman, Richard Nixon and
Judas Iscariot.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., Grandson of the 10th President, Dies at 95
Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. That Tyler, president 1841-1845: his grandson died on 7 October 2020, 158 years after his grandfather.
Veteran television newsman Sander Vanocur dies at 91 (9/17/19)
Died same day as Cokie Roberts. I remember him well. A giant of journalism.
Dr. Carl Weiss Jr., 84, Dies; His Father, He Said, Didn’t Kill Huey Long
Herman Wouk, 'The Jackie Robinson Of Jewish-American Fiction' (5/17/19)
taut shipboard drama “The Caine Mutiny” lifted him to the top of the best-seller lists, where he remained for most of a career that extended past his 100th year thanks to page-turners like “Marjorie Morningstar,” “Youngblood Hawke”
Hilde Zadek, mainstay of the Vienna State Opera (2/24/19)
In 1934, the year after Hitler became chancellor, Hilde happened to overhear a schoolmate remark, “Es stinkt nach Juden” — “It reeks of Jews.” Sixteen-year-old Hilde knocked out the girl’s front teeth. Expelled from school, she knew she would have to leave the city or risk arrest. She fled to Berlin, then to Munich and, in 1935, to Haifa, in what was then Palestine.
In 1947 she returned to Vienna, sang the title role of Aida, triumphant.