Robert Persichitti (US Navy – ret.) has passed away at the age of 102.
Persichitti, meanwhile, had served in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guam as a radioman second class on the command ship USS Eldorado during WWII.
He was among the US troops who witnessed the raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945 — a moment that would go on to become one of the most famous photos captured during the war.
“I was on the deck,” Persichitti told Stars and Stripes in a 2019 interview when he returned to the region. “When I got on the island today, I just broke down.”
He was part of a group of veterans traveling to Normandy when he fell ill, was airlifted off the ship, and passed away in a hospital.
Bob Kelley. You might not know the name, but if you’re into cars, you know the book.
The Kelley Blue Book started in 1926 at the Kelley Kar Co., a Los Angeles dealership founded by Mr. Kelley’s father, Sidney, and an uncle, Leslie Kelley. As one of the biggest used-car dealerships in the region — and eventually the country — they had a constant need for new inventory, and the book originated as a simple list of prices that they were willing to pay for certain cars in certain conditions.
Mr. Kelley joined the company after the end of World War II, a prime time to get into the used-car business. The war had put an end to new-car production, and it would be several years before automakers could meet the demand.
He was initially in charge of both valuations on new inventory and compiling the book, and he brought a jeweler’s eye to the job. He studied all the factors that go into deciding a car’s road-worthiness and visual appeal — mileage, sound system, paint color — then developed a long list of data points that, combined, would produce a price.
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The Kelleys closed their dealership in 1962 and sold the Kelley Blue Book to a fellow dealer in Los Angeles. By then Sidney and Leslie Kelley had largely left the business, but the new owners kept Bob Kelley and the rest of the team as employees.Mr. Kelley worried at first that without the dealership, confidence in the book would diminish. Instead its popularity continued to grow, largely because of Mr. Kelley’s reputation for evaluating cars.
As he deepened the data underlying his valuations, the Kelley Blue Book became increasingly valuable beyond used-car dealerships. Courts, insurance companies and banks all used it to evaluate what for most people constituted one of the biggest assets they would ever own.
He also expanded the scope of the book to encompass new cars as well as used, and to include motorcycles, boats, RVs and trucks as well as luxury vehicles and imports. Eventually, an updated edition of the book appeared every other month, selling a total of a million copies a year.
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Tom Bower, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “The Rockford Files”.