Bette Nash has passed away at 88.
Ms. Nash was the longest serving flight attendant ever. She started working for Eastern Air Lines in 1957, and kept working: first on the Trump Shuttle, then US Airways, and finally American. She never officially retired.
Wearing white gloves, heels and a pillbox hat, Ms. Nash served lobster and champagne, carved roast beef by request and passed out after-dinner cigarettes.
Things have changed a lot since then — the smoking is gone, and so is the carved meat — but Ms. Nash remained largely the same.
…
At a ceremony at Reagan National Airport to mark her 60th anniversary, in 2017, American Airlines presented her with a pair of diamond earrings and a $10,000 donation to the food bank where she volunteered.
Then she went to work, loading passengers for the next shuttle to Boston. As the plane taxied to the runway, a pair of fire trucks doused the plane with a water-cannon salute, an honor usually reserved for retiring pilots.
Richard Ellis, artist with a speciality. He specialized in sea creatures.
Mr. Ellis had no formal training in marine biology, conservation, painting or writing. But in fusing his artistic flair with an encyclopedic knowledge of ocean creatures, he became an invaluable, sui generis figure to conservationists, educators and those curious about sea life.
“Richard was an enthusiast, and he absolutely adored the natural world, especially the sea,” said Ellen V. Futter, the former president of the natural history museum, where Mr. Ellis was a research associate for many years. “He wanted everybody to share his appreciation and joy from the beauty of it, but also to feel the same sense of responsibility to protect it.”
…
I know I have a bias in the direction of photo realistic and representational art. But Mr. Ellis’s work looks fantastic: I would be proud to have an original Ellis hanging on one of my walls.