Archive for February, 2023

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Obit watch: February 28, 2023.

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

Bob Richards, aka the “Vaulting Vicar”, ordained minister…and legendary pole vaulter.

Although he broke Olympic records and Russian hearts, and although he became one of America’s most lionized and familiar celebrities — a motivational speaker and Wheaties pitchman who personified wholesome values and once ran for president of the United States on a third-party ticket — Richards, even at the peak of his athletic power, was not the greatest American pole-vaulter of all time.

…

Richards himself never vaulted more than 15 feet 6 inches. But from 1947 to 1957, he dominated national and international competitions by clearing 15 feet more than 125 times. Besides winning two gold medals in the Olympics in the 1950s, he took a bronze medal at the 1948 Olympics in London and gold at the Pan American Games in 1951 and 1955. He also won 17 A.A.U. championships in indoor and outdoor vaulting competitions, and United States decathlon championships in 1951, 1954 and 1955.

In case you were wondering…

Today’s top male vaulters, with refined techniques and springy fiberglass poles that bow almost to U shapes, routinely soar over crossbars set above 19 feet. The world record is held by Armand Duplantis, an American-born Swedish athlete known as Mondo, who on Feb. 25 vaulted 20 feet 4 ¾ inches. That mark (pending official ratification) surpassed his own previous five world records, all over 20 feet and all set since 2020.
Even Richards’s son Brandon, as a teenager using a fiberglass pole in 1985, vaulted 18 feet 2 inches, which was then a national record for a high schooler and stood for 14 years.

And the greatest American pole vaulter was probably Cornelius Warmerdam, who set world records in the 1940s (using bamboo poles) but never got to compete in the Olympics because of WWII.

Fred Miller, Baltimore Colt.

Miller, who was drafted out of LSU in the 7th round by the Colts in the 1962 NFL draft, made the Pro Bowl as a defensive tackle three straight seasons from 1967-69.

…

Miller was part of the Colts’ 1968 NFL title team which shutout four teams, including the Browns in a 34-0 win in the NFL championship game before losing to the Jets in Super Bowl III.
He was also in Baltimore’s 1970 championship squad that found redemption with a 16-13 win over the Cowboys in Super Bowl V, with Miller making five tackles against Dallas.
“What a bond we had as a team,” Miller told the Baltimore Sun in 2009. “We gave a damn about each other. No cliques. Our wives socialized. We babysat for each other. That didn’t happen on other clubs.”

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Missed it by THAT much…

Friday, February 24th, 2023

…that much being 2-13 in conference play this season.

Kermit Davis out as men’s basketball coach at Ole Miss.

The Rebels are among the worst offenses in the SEC this season. They present no real interior threat, and shoot only 28.9% from 3-point range. Without a true strength on that end of the court, Ole Miss is often prone to long, listless stretches of offense that cost it games. Defensively, the Rebels are better, but the analytics ultimately place them comfortably in the SEC’s bottom half. Ole Miss is good enough to offer some resistance at times, but not good enough for Davis to get the wins he needed to keep his job.

He coached for close to five seasons, but I can’t find an overall record for his tenure.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 24, 2023.

Friday, February 24th, 2023

Chief Special Warfare Operator Michael Ernst (USN).

During his military tenure, Enrst was awarded a Silver Star — the third highest award for valor a military member can receive for gallantry during combat, a Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and three Combat Action Ribbons — having been in combat situations in three different theaters of war.
“Mike was an exceptional teammate. He was a dedicated NSW Sailor who applied his talents and skills towards some of our nation’s hardest challenges, while selflessly mentoring his teammates,” Adm. Keith Davids said.

He was killed in a parachute training accident in Arizona.

Thomas H. Lee, “billionaire financier and investor”. He was found dead in his office yesterday, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Tom Whitlock, lyricist.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 22, 2023.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023

Apologies once again for the direct NYT links, but archive.is is being balky once again. In general, I’ve found that opening the links in a new private or incognito window lets you bypass their paywall, although that seems to be having issues today as well.

Paul Berg, DNA pioneer. He shared the Nobel Prize in 1980 (with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger) for his work on recombinant DNA.

The researchers used the DNA part of a virus (a circular DNA), which can be propagated in the E. coli bacteria, and incorporated it into a simian virus (a circular SV40 DNA genome). Each of the circular DNAs was converted into linear DNAs with an enzyme. Using an existing technique, these linear DNAs were modified so that the modified ends attracted each other. Mixed together, the two DNAs recombined and created a loop of rDNA, which contained the genes from the two different organisms.
Dr. Berg and his team began preparing for the next step: introducing the rDNA into E. coli and animal cells. But as word about his work spread among researchers, Dr. Berg was challenged to guarantee that this newly created DNA — which, after all, consisted partly of material from a virus that lived in one of the world’s most common bacteria, E. coli — could not escape the laboratory and cause incalculable harm.

…

Dr. Berg used the break in his experiments to focus on the larger ethical and public health issues raised by the manipulation of genes, including human genes. As a public figure who had testified before Congress in favor of federal funding for basic scientific research, and who had a wide range of contacts among biochemists, he was well positioned to help organize a conference at Asilomar, Calif., in February 1975.
About 150 leading DNA researchers from the United States and 12 other countries — including James Watson, a co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA — discussed and then subscribed to rules to govern their own work. The conference was historic: Never before had scientists gathered to write regulations for their own research.

For the record: NYT obits for Red McCombs and Barbara Bosson.

Posted in Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 21, 2023.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

Wow. It has been busy.

Barbara Bosson. Other credits include “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, one episode of a spinoff from a minor SF TV series of the 1960s, “Cop Rock”, “The Last Starfighter”, “Capricorn One”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Midnight“, season 3, episode 5. She was “Miss Riley”. We actually watched that episode a couple of weeks ago because it was the next one in sequence: the “Miss Riley” part was extremely small, and as I best as I can recall, had no lines.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Lee Whitlock, British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, the film of “The Sweeney”, “He Kills Coppers” (a TV movie based on the Shepherd’s Bush murders) and “The Bill”.

Red McCombs, prominent local car dealer and philanthropist. He was also a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs and the Minnesota Vikings.

In 2022, Forbes listed him among the richest men in the world, with a $1.7 billion estimated net worth. McCombs was also a co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, now known as iHeartMedia, and also owned the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.

…

The McCombs family and the McCombs Foundation — the family’s primary philanthropy arm — have contributed more than $135 million to civic causes in Texas since 1981, according to McCombs Enterprises.

Zach Milligan, climber.

Milligan and his friend, Jason Torlano, made headlines in 2021 when they became the first people to ski down Yosemite National Park’s famed Half Dome.

…

Milligan, who grew up in Tucker, Ga., got hooked on climbing at the age of 18 when he was getting a haircut and noticed a photo of Half Dome on the wall, SFGate reported.
He later moved to Yosemite National Park, where he spent 20 years including 13 living in a cave while workin for a cleaning service.
He climbed the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome 20 times and the 1,640-foot tall Steck-Salathé route up Sentinel Rock at least 275 times, according to the outlet.

Eileen Sheridan. She was a major female cyclist in the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1945, her first year of competitive cycling, Mrs. Sheridan won the women’s national time-trial championship for 25 miles, and in the coming years she won at 50 and 100 miles as well. After going professional in 1951, she broke 21 women’s time-trial records, five of which she still holds.
She is best remembered for her epic ride in July 1954 from Land’s End, at England’s southwestern tip, to John O’Groats, at the northern edge of Scotland — an 870-mile trek that she completed in just 2 days, 11 hours and 7 minutes, almost 12 hours faster than the previous record.
She had spent six months training, but the trip was nevertheless grueling, with mountain ranges and rough stretches of road, not to mention cold nights even in the middle of the summer. She developed blisters on her palms so painful that she had to hold on to her handlebars by just her thumbs until her support crew could wrap the grips in sponge.
“We had a nurse,” she said in the documentary, “and she actually wept.”
When she arrived at John O’Groats, after getting just 15 minutes of sleep over the previous two days, she decided to push farther, to see if she could set a women’s record for the fastest 1,000 miles. She took an hour-and-48-minute break, enough to eat a quick dinner and rest. Then she remounted her bike and took off into the night.
She began to wobble toward the side. She had hallucinations of friends urging her on and strangers pointing her in the wrong direction; she even imagined a polar bear. But she stayed the course and made it to her final destination, the John O’Groats Hotel, the next morning, after riding for three days and one hour. She celebrated with a glass of cherry brandy, on the house.
Her 1,000-mile record stood for 48 years, until Lynne Taylor of Scotland finally broke it in 2002.

Roger C. Schank, AI theorist.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, Dr. Schank developed ideas for how to represent in symbols for a computer simple concepts — like people and places, objects and events, cause-and-effect relationships — that humans describe with words. His model was called “conceptual dependency theory.”
Dr. Schank later came up with ways to assemble this raw material of knowledge into the equivalent of human memories of past experience. He called these larger building blocks of knowledge “scripts” and regarded them as ingredients for learning from examples, or “case-based reasoning.”
“When I was a graduate student in the late 1970s, Roger Schank was required reading,” Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, wrote on a memorial website. “He was regarded as one of the major researchers and theoreticians in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.”

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Leiji Matsumoto, manga artist.

The European audience knows Matsumoto primarily through Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999. America owes its anime and manga fandom to the huge TV impact of Star Blazers, the US edit of Space Battleship Yamato. This resumé ignores an immense and almost unexplored hinterland of Matsumoto works, from I am a Man (Otoko Oidon) the gritty tale of a penniless student from the provinces scraping to get by in a cheap Tokyo boarding house, and his first SF manga, the spy-fi adventure Sexaroid, to girls’ manga Natasha and Miime the TabbyCat about one of his beloved cats, who also appears in Captain Harlock. There are his manga biographies of musicians, including David Bowie for RecoFan magazine, and many stories on the pain and pointlessness of the Pacific War. To see Matsumoto purely through the space opera lens is to miss so much of his range and depth.

I am way out of my depth when talking about manga or anime, so I’m just going to leave that link.

William Greenberg Jr., NYC baker. He sounds really interesting:

Mr. Greenberg, an affable redhead at 6 feet 4 inches tall who was raised in the Five Towns area of Long Island, opened his first bakery in Manhattan in 1946, in a narrow storefront on East 95th Street, near Second Avenue, with $3,000 — poker winnings from games he played in the Army. It turned out that Mr. Greenberg was as skilled with cards as he was with a piping gun.

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Lee Strasberg, the imperious director and acting teacher, loved Mr. Greenberg’s fudgy brownies; so, apparently, did the film director Mike Nichols, who was said to have coaxed his actors into their best work with the promise of one. The actress Glenn Close ordered themed cakes for wrap parties. A well-known decorator was said to have offered Mr. Greenberg’s schnecken (German for snail) — bite-size sticky buns — to his clients along with his bills, to soften the blow…
The writer Delia Ephron was partial to the chocolate cream tart — a cake, actually, layered with fudge and fresh whipped cream. Alexa Hampton, the interior designer, favored the candy cake, topped with shaved chocolate, crowned with rich chocolate squares and blanketed on the sides with vertical piping of whipped cream. Her father, Mark, was a schnecken man.
Another regular, the celebrated violinist Itzhak Perlman — a poker buddy of Mr. Greenberg’s — once ordered a cake fashioned in the shape of Ebbets Field, the storied home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, for his wife’s 40th birthday (not an easy creation, given the stadium’s elaborate Romanesque arches).

…

…they received a call to make a cake for President Bill Clinton’s 50th birthday, in August 1996. They conceived an American flag, made from layers of yellow poundcake. It was a colossus, requiring 432 eggs, 96 pounds of butter, 98 pounds of sugar and 100 pounds of flour, layered with 15 pounds of raspberry preserves and topped with 15 pounds of dark fudge glaze, and it would take two full days to prepare it. (The birthday event was a fund-raiser, and the Greenbergs donated their creation, which would have cost $4,000 at retail.)

Posted in 1970s, Cycling, Food, Mannix, Movies, NFL, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 20, 2023.

Monday, February 20th, 2023

Richard Belzer. THR. Tributes.

I hate reducing an actor to just one role, and I know he had other accomplishments as a comedian (who got dropped on his head by Hulk Hogan, and bought a house in France as a result) and an author. But man, what a role.

With Munch, Mr. Belzer found phenomenal success. In 2013, when the character was written out of “SVU” — as the “Law & Order” spinoff is often called — Mr. Belzer wrote in The Huffington Post that he had appeared as Munch in more than 500 hours of programming on 10 different shows.
The character’s run began in 1993, on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and included guest appearances on “Sesame Street” and “30 Rock.”
At his retirement, Mr. Belzer was often described as the actor with the longest run playing the same character on television, as well as the actor who had played the same character on the largest number of different shows.

Gerald Fried, composer. He did music for “Roots” and for a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 18, 2023.

Saturday, February 18th, 2023

Stella Stevens, actress.

Stevens also starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), a movie she said she detested.

We’re trying to work our way through all of the Sam Peckinpah movies, but we don’t have “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” yet. And this weekend is “The Last of Sheila” because Raquel Welch.

Other credits include “Hec Ramsey”, “Banacek”, “Nickelodeon” (the Peter Bogdanovich movie), and “A Town Called Hell”.

archive.is seems to be working better today, so here’s the NYT obit.

Posted in 1970s, Elvis, Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 17, 2023.

Friday, February 17th, 2023

Tim McCarver, baseball player and broadcaster.

I apologize for linking directly to the NYT, but archive.is is not working well right now.

That said, he was a solid big-league ballplayer but not a candidate for Cooperstown as a player. He spent most of his career, which stretched from 1959 to 1980, with two National League teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies. His power numbers were low; he hit fewer than 100 home runs in his career and never drove in as many as 70 runs in a season. Still, his career batting average of .271 was respectable, especially for a catcher.

…

In 1967, he hit .295, had career highs with 14 home runs and 69 runs batted in and finished second (behind his teammate Orlando Cepeda) in voting for the National League’s Most Valuable Player award. With McCarver in the lineup, the Cardinals won the pennant in 1964, 1967 and 1968. He was a leading figure in the Cards’ victory over the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, hitting safely in all seven games, batting .478 and blasting a 10th-inning three-run homer to win Game 5. McCarver hit poorly and was less of a factor in the Cards’ 1967 Series win over Boston, but he hit .333 in the ’68 Series against Detroit, though the Cardinals lost in seven games.
In 1967, he hit .295, had career highs with 14 home runs and 69 runs batted in and finished second (behind his teammate Orlando Cepeda) in voting for the National League’s Most Valuable Player award. With McCarver in the lineup, the Cardinals won the pennant in 1964, 1967 and 1968. He was a leading figure in the Cards’ victory over the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, hitting safely in all seven games, batting .478 and blasting a 10th-inning three-run homer to win Game 5. McCarver hit poorly and was less of a factor in the Cards’ 1967 Series win over Boston, but he hit .333 in the ’68 Series against Detroit, though the Cardinals lost in seven games.

…

Over the years, McCarver’s prominence offered him other opportunities. Beyond his game-day appearances, he was host of “The Tim McCarver Show,” a long-running program, first on radio and later on television, in which he interviewed athletes and other sports celebrities. He was a co-anchor, with Paula Zahn, of the 1992 Winter Olympics for CBS.
His books, written with co-authors, consisted largely of tales from the locker room and the diamond and instructions to fans about how to watch a ballgame. He was a fine bridge player who was cited in the bridge column of The New York Times. He appeared in a handful of movies, including “Moneyball,” “Fever Pitch” and “The Naked Gun.” And he even recorded an album, “Tim McCarver Sings Songs From the Great American Songbook.”

Posted in Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 15, 2023.

Wednesday, February 15th, 2023

Raquel Welch. Damn.

THR. Variety.

Her first starring role came with her second film after signing with 20th Century Fox, though it was hardly an actor’s dream. Her biggest line of dialogue in the prehistoric drama One Million Years B.C. (1966) was, “Me, Loana … You, Tumak.” Her experience on the set was even less inspiring.
“On the first day of shooting,” she recalled, “I went straight up to the director, Don Chaffey, and said quite seriously, ‘Listen, Don, I’ve been studying the script and I was thinking …’ He turned to me in amazement and said, ‘You were thinking? Don’t.’”

Duangphet Promthep. He was the captain of the Thai soccer team that got trapped in the flooded cave and had to be rescued by divers.

He moved to England last year after securing a scholarship to a soccer academy that promoted its high-level program and international student population. “I promise I will focus and do my best,” he wrote on social media at the time, later posting photographs of his classes and the school grounds.

He was 17 (I’ve seen other sources say 18). He was found unconscious in his room and died in a hospital.

Stanley Wilson, former cornerback for the Lions. He was 40, and this is sad.

In August of last year, he was arrested “after he allegedly broke into a Hollywood Hills home, took a bath in an outdoor fountain and raided the property”. He was held in police custody until February 1st, when he was declared not competent to stand trial and was transferred to a psychiatric facility.

The former NFL player collapsed and died during intake at the medical facility, law enforcement sources told the outlet.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 3 Comments »

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Wednesday, February 15th, 2023

If I had thought about it, I would have prepared a longer post. However, I’ve been distracted by other projects, and would have completely missed this if it wasn’t for McThag.

125 years ago today, on February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor.

Interesting note from Wikipedia (I know, I know):

Maine is described as an armored cruiser or second-class battleship, depending on the source. Commissioned in 1895, she was the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after the state of Maine. Maine and the similar battleship Texas were both represented as an advance in American warship design, reflecting the latest European naval developments. Both ships had two gun turrets staggered en échelon, and full sailing masts were omitted due to the increased reliability of steam engines. Due to a protracted 9-year construction period, Maine and Texas were obsolete by the time of completion. Far more advanced vessels were either in service or nearing completion that year.

(Edited to add: I should clarify, since this is a little confusing: the “Texas” above is the 1892 USS Texas, not the 1914 USS Texas.)

Side note: one of the tour guides at the Texas made an interesting comment, and I’d like to do more research on this. In brief, the Germans pioneered modern welding.

Because of arms limitation treaties after WWI, the weight of battleships was limited. If you rivet battleship plates together, you have to overlap the plates. But if you weld battleship plates, you can basically butt the plates together rather than overlapping. This allows you to use less plate. Less plate means bigger battleship within the weight limitations.

I’d really like to find some good sources on welding history. I think that’d be a technically interesting area to explore.

Anyway, remembering the Maine: somewhere I have what I believe is a first edition of Rickover’s How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. (Affiliate link goes to a Naval Institute Press reprint edition.)

Edited to add 2: Thanks to valued commenter Chuck Pergiel for providing a link to his post on the Maine.

Drachinfel. This one is short:

The USS New Jersey. This is a little under 30 minutes.

Posted in History, Ships | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 14, 2023.

Tuesday, February 14th, 2023

Conrad Dobler, NFL guard.

Over a 10-year NFL career, Dobler embraced his role as protector, joining forces with the likes of future Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf to form one of the best offensive lines in history on the “Cardiac Cardinals.” In 1975, they surrendered just eight sacks — then a league record — with Dobler embracing the task of keeping QB Jim Hart upright, no matter the means.

…

A fifth-round pick out of Wyoming in 1972 — undersized at 6-foot-3 and 254 pounds — Dobler made three straight Pro Bowls from 1975-77 with St. Louis before spending the final two seasons of his career with the Saints and Bills.

ESPN:

On July 25, 1977, Dobler made the cover of Sports Illustrated with the title “Pro Football’s Dirtiest Player.”
Stories about the feisty offensive lineman included him punching Joe Greene, spitting on Bill Bergey and kicking Merlin Olsen in the head.
“I’ll do anything I can get away with to protect my quarterback,” Dobler told the magazine.

Austin Majors, actor. I used to watch re-runs of “NYPD Blue” in syndication, and I remember him playing “Theo Sipowicz”.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 13, 2023.

Monday, February 13th, 2023

Hugh Hudson, director. IMDB.

Cody Longo, actor. Other credits include “CSI: Original Recipe”, “CSI: NY”, and “Piranha 3D”.

NYT obit for Solomon Perel (also known as “Shlomo”), whose death was previously noted in this space.

David Jolicoeur of De La Soul.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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