The Wall

People Who Died

Hello and welcome back to Volume III of The Wall where we celebrate the lives of people we have lost.  If you like this blog, please hit the follow button and tell your friends about it.  I understand that this may not be everyone’s cup of tea but no one is getting out of this place alive so sooner or later we are all going to be there (or here if you are lucky) and I am sure we will want those we leave behind to celebrate our lives in much the way that we here celebrate the lives of those who have departed.  So, the more who join in, the merrier, I say.

              We’ll start this month where we started last month- with the Love Boat.  It is certainly listing.  Last month we lost Captain Stebbing (Gavin MacLeod) and this month, we lost the real captain of the ship, Douglas S. Cramer.  Mr. Cramer was the  Producer of the Loveboat and other notable shows, (Dallas among them) when producers, unlike today when they mostly just provide funding, were actually involved in most aspects of the show including casting.  The Loveboat had a number of odd guest appearances by such luminaries as Halston, Bob Mackie and Andy Warhol (whose occasional stand-in Alan Midgette also passed).  In an interesting encounter, Cramer once ran into Barry Diller in a parking lot and, mistaking him for the parking attendant, gave him the parking ticket to retrieve his car.  In spite of such mistakes, his career flourished.  Bon voyage.

The Hollywood B list has taken some hits of late.  Frank Bonner who played Herb Tarlek, the always-in-plaid salesman for WKRP in Cincinnati, who endlessly and hopelessly wooed Jennifer Marlow, played by the vivacious Lonnie Anderson, made his last sales pitch.  In one memorable episode, thinking turkeys could fly, the sales department cooked up a plan to drop them from a helicopter for a Thanksgiving giveaway. Hard to know if any animals were harmed in the making of that episode.   

Perhaps dropping below the B list (hey, he got a New York Times Obit),  Milton Moses Ginsberg, a filmmaker (and I use the term loosely) has died.  Known mostly for two rather unconventional films that bombed, he has gained some respect as being forward looking.  His first movie, Coming Apart, was about a psychiatrist who psychologically disintegrates.  Of the film, the Village Voice wrote “if everybody in the cast had refused to strip for action or inaction, ‘Coming Apart’ would have crumbled commercially into a half-baked amateur movie incapable of selling enough tickets to fill a phone booth.”  He followed that film with The Werewolf of Washington, about an assistant press secretary in the Nixon Whitehouse who would morph into a werewolf, killing people.  According to his New York Times obituary, the film was based on the movie Wolf Man “which terrified Mr. Ginsberg as a boy, and by President Richard M. Nixon, who terrified him as a man.”  Perhaps it is even more relevant today than it was when he made it.  After the two films tanked, Mr. Ginsberg, A Bronx Science High School and Columbia University graduate, went back to film editing.    

The big loss of the month for me was Clarence Williams, III who played Linc Hayes on The Mod Squad.  The tag line for the show was “First they got busted then they got badges.”  That was before law enforcement merely busted people and turned them into cooperators, negating the reason to have to pay them.  Mr. Williams went on to a good film career where, seems to me he often played to role of people’s fathers.  For instance, he was Prince’s father in Purple Rain, Wesley Snipes’ father in Sugar Hill, Muhammad Ali’s father in Ali.  Regardless, for me, he will always be the embodiment of cool.   

Ned Beatty who, unfortunately for him, will always be remembered for having to “squeal like a pig,” but who also received an Oscar nomination for his performance as Walter Jenson in Network, died at 83.  The world is a corporation was the misguided message of the network executive.  Mr. Beatty was in more than 150 films.  While Network and Deliverance are probably his most noteworthy, it was his portrayal of Rudy’s father in Rudy that hit it best for me when he announced, upon being ushered into the home stadium for the Fighting Irish: “This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen.”  Mr. Beatty knew what it meant to play like a champion.    

Martha White, the Rosa Parks before there was Rosa Parks, passed away at 99.  One day on her way home from her housekeeper job in Baton Rouge, the city of her birth, she was tired and sat in the only seat on the bus available – in the white’s only section.   This was in 1953 when things like that were unheard of in the Jim Crowe South.  For her transgression she was summarily thrown off the bus.  Her act and the reaction to it caused a bus boycott by blacks which was settled by a partial desegregation of the Baton Rouge bus system.  This boycott was the blueprint for others to follow, especially the more famous Montgomery boycott, more than two years later.  It was Ms. Parks’ actions, very similar to Ms. White’s, which prompted the Montgomery boycott that was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Montgomery Boycott had a much more profound effect on the civil rights movement which, sadly, has had to continue for too long.  When blacks boycotted the busses after Ms. White’s ejection, they organized a ride sharing program that bought the transportation agency to its knees.  Dr. King visited Baton Rouge to learn about their tactics and deployed many of them later in Montgomery.   According to Eugene Collins, the President of the Baton Rouge NAACP, “we can make the argument that none of the rest of that history happens without Martha White.”  Any movement has many heroes. In the civil rights movement, Ms. White is certainly one of them.  

Switching gears big time, we look at Carol Jarecki, a chess referee (who knew there was such a thing) who died in June at the age of 86.  For my money, Arthur Mercante was the best boxing referee so she must have been the Arthur Mercante of chess if that can be imagined.  She was a woman in a man’s game but apparently was the best at what she did.  That, however, is not why she makes the Wall.   Born in Neptune, New Jersey, she became a nurse and married Richard Jarecki, a doctor who grew up in Asbury Park.  While living in Germany they began frequenting casino’s and focused on the workings of roulette wheels.  They would watch and chronicle the wheels, sometimes for as many as 10,000 spins.  In doing so they picked up on minute manufacturing flaws or particular wear and tear that would cause the wheels to land on certain numbers more than others.  They used this information to bet against casinos throughout Europe and won over $1.2 million which would be more than $8 Million today.  How is that for ingenuity?  They were even thrown out of if Italy for it but sued and won.   She got into chess the way many parents get into sports -- through her son who was a prodigy.  While he did not stick with it, she did and pretty much occupied the field in grandmaster tournaments.  For me, however, it is her groundbreaking work with roulette wheels which is most impressive. 

Moving onto science, we lost Richard Earnst who won the Nobel Prize for his work in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.  To someone who barely passed science in high school and steered way clear of it in college, I prefer to think of it as magic.  In any event, he is the guy who put the MRI technology over the top.  Thank God for that as who knows where the Mets would be if their players couldn’t take regular rides on the MRI machine.  I myself would give a Nobel Prize to the guy or gal who could keep the damned thing quiet.  It sounds like the car I drove when I was 18.  A lot has been written about him but very little of which I can comprehend.  He did, however, receive 17 honorary doctorates which, I believe, bespeaks his greatness.  We should all think of him each time we suffer the racket of the machine his research helped to perfect.    

George Stranahan, who proved that scientists are not all boring died in June at the age of 89.  While his family owned the Champion Sparkplug company, he earned a PH.D in physics from what is now Carnagie Mellon University.  He started the Aspen Center for Physics which in that world is revered.  Something as mundane as that would not get him on the Wall,  However, after leaving a tenure teaching gig at Michigan State and serving as the president of his prestigious Center for Physics, opening the Woody Creek Tavern that hosted the likes of  Hunter Thompson; starting a single malt whiskey company; climbing K2; operating a ranch that produced a bull that was the 1990 National Western Stock Show champion (his semen went for $15,000 a shot); and starting a brewery whose beer names were labeled with profane references to female dogs and feces (one was “Good Beer – No Shit” and another was  “Raging Bitch”) and which were deemed obscene by the Colorado Liquor Board will get you there.  After a prolonged battle the brewery beat the State.  Of his friendship with Mr. Thompson, he said, “we talked a lot, drank a lot and dynamited a lot.”  As a rancher, Mr. Stranahan had access to dynamite.  One night, he and Mr. Thompson decided to initiate his son into manhood which involved their drinking (not the seven your old son), lipstick and a tarantula.  According to the New York Times, “Patti Stranahan awoke to find her husband and Mr. Thompson, both drunk, with her young son, the whole group wearing lipstick and playing with a venomous spider. Just your typical night at home. ‘She turned around and went back to bed.’”

And John McAfee who proved that some scientists are crazy also died.  Most everyone who has a computer is aware of McAfee anti-virus software.  We probably have paid for it multiple times on our computers.  While he started the company, he sold it in 1994 and the Company was quick to distance itself from him upon his death. Too bad.   Mr. McAfee started the company in 1987 to combat a Pakistani computer virus.  He received licensing fees and the company grew.  It went public in 1992 and he made some $80 million.  He resigned from the company in 1994 and began to mentally disintegrate.  He lost most of his money and was alleged by the government to have used cryptocurrency to evade taxes.  He was in a Spanish jail awaiting extradition when he died, apparently a suicide.  A great mind that apparently went wrong.  His work, however, continues.   Intel bought the company in 2010 for $7.7 Billion and six years later sold a majority interest to an investment firm.  

The law took a big hit this month.  F. Lee Bailey, a colorful defense attorney who was a regular on the Johnny Carson show is with us no more.  I can recall like it was yesterday seeing him on that show telling Johnny and the audience that if the government is investigating you, just because you did nothing wrong, doesn’t mean you have nothing to worry about.  I have since learned he was brutally accurate in that assessment.   Bailey represented high profile people accused of bad things.  He represented the Boston Strangler, the Commander of the My Lai massacre, Patty Hearst, O.J. Simpson and thousands upon thousands of others.  Part, extraordinary attorney, part P.T. Barnum, he became a larger-than-life figure who like many larger-than-life figures, shrunk after a time and became almost a caricature of himself.  However, he was a brilliant tactician with an ominous presence and a booming voice who worked incredibly hard and often took cases that were seemingly unwinnable and while not winning all of them, made them all horse races.  Were I in trouble and able to afford him in his prime, you can bet I would have been looking for his number.    

From attorney to Judge, Jack B. Weinstein, who regardless of your opinion of him, was a giant of the Bench, died at 99.  He worked until he was 98 much to the chagrin of many a government attorney and defender of large corporations.  Judge Weinstein (or Jack B as many referred to him) was the definition of an activist judge and he wore that badge proudly.  Like Bailey, he had an oversized personality but he had to fit it into the framework of a federal judgeship.  He certainly cut his own path.  He was an outspoken critic of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines that for many years, (and even now to a large part) are guidelines judges use to compute a particular sentence for a defendant.   As the judge who presided over the Agent Orange cases, he also was the architect of the mass tort settlement blueprint.  Agent Orange was a defoliant used by soldiers in Vietnam.  It was said to cause birth defects and cancer and there were over 600 lawsuits filed which were consolidated and handled by Judge Weinstein.  Unlike many judges, he was willing to criticize the Supreme Court whose Justices were essentially his grand bosses.  He was often reversed by the Second Circuit Court of Appels but refused to compromise his beliefs for an affirmance by that Court.  He was a maverick of which there are too few.  Lawyers may have loved him or hated him but they will not soon forget him.

Now to victim. Ray Donovan was one of those people that F. Lee Bailey spoke of who was investigated by the government when he claimed to have been innocent of their allegations.  Mr. Donovan, born in Bayonne, New Jersey, was the Labor Secretary under President Reagan and he was indicted on charges of fraud in the construction of a subway tunnel in New York.  He had to resign after a judge (not Jack B. Weinstein) refused to dismiss the case.  The press reports of all of this were everywhere.  After his acquittal on all of the charges, he very famously said: “Which office do I go to get my reputation back?”   His is a story of many.  When someone is being investigated or is indicted, the press is all over it and the person is regularly in the papers.  However, the press is rarely around to report on the end of the story if it is an acquittal.   

Another Judge, Robert Katzmann, of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, who routinely would reverse Judge Weinstein, also died but not at 99.  He was merely 68.  I did not really know of him but by all accounts he was brilliant, empathetic and scholarly, all things you would want from a judge.

Love him or hate him, Donald Rumsfeld wielded a lot of power for many years.  He was in four presidential administrations – Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush (for which he is best known and most hated).  He went to Princeton and was captain of both the wrestling and football teams.  He was a navy fighter pilot so at least when he dealt with wars, he knew of which he ordered.  One of his most famous sayings is that there are known, knowns, which are those things we know we know; known unknowns or those things we know we don’t know; and unknown, unknowns which are those things we don’t know that we don’t know.  Those are the things that can really befuddle those in the security business.  Mr. Rumsfeld has now entered the realm of the unknown, unknowns.  

And now onto sports where Mudcat Grant passed away.  If for no reason other than the nickname, Mucdcat he would make the Wall.  But he was more than that.  He was the American League’s first Black, 20 game winner and he helped the Minnesota Twins get to the World Series in 1965.  He was cited by the Sporting News as the best A.L. pitcher.  He was on a pitching staff with Jim Kaat, and Jim Perry and had hitters backing him up like Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva.  He was a great pitcher and also a singer who formed Mudcat and the Kittens who performed around the world.  He once said he made way more money in music than he did in baseball.  He also co-authored a book called The Black Aces: Baseball’s Only African-American Twenty-Game Winners.  In 2007, President George Bush honored Mudcat and other Black Aces at a White House ceremony.

Mike Marshall, the first relief pitcher to win the Cy Young award also died in June, at age 78. In 1974, when he won the award, he appeared in an incredible 106 games (13 of them consecutively) pitching 208 and 1/3 innings, a truly Herculean feat.  He earned a doctorate in exercise physiology from Michigan State University where he later taught.  He never endeared himself to baseball writers because he either talked over their heads or gave perfunctory answers.  As baseball writers can be a prickly bunch, his Cy Young award is all the more impressive.  Since his win, eight other relivers have also won the award. 

Happily, nothing to report on the music front.

That’s it for June.  Still looking for feedback. I know this is long and am thinking about making it more frequent or becoming more selective.  Would you read it if it was weekly or bi-monthly?   Are there people missing?  If so, let me know and if they meet my standards (which admittedly are ever-shifting) they will be noted.   As I have said, I prefer this to be collaborative with me being the final arbiter of course.    As always, the typos and other blunders are mine.  Hit the follow button and share it with your friends or at least the one’s you don’t really like. Thanks.