William Sokolin holding the bottle broken at the Four Seasons in 1989. It was insured.Credit
William E. Sauro/The New York Times
The
slightest mishap can cause someone to cry over their beer, or shed
tears over spilled milk, but on April 23, 1989, at the Four Seasons
restaurant in Manhattan, nobody could have blamed William Sokolin if he
had sobbed over a broken bottle of wine.
Not
just any bottle, even by Four Seasons standards, where a double magnum
of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, St. Julien 2008 now goes for $2,700. The
bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke that night was a 1787 Château Margaux,
which had been found in a Paris cellar in 1985 and was said to have
belonged to Thomas Jefferson. (It was inscribed with the initials Th.J.)
Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.
A
wine merchant for more than a half-century, Mr. Sokolin died of heart
failure at 85 on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan, his son, David, said.
He
was born on April 25, 1930, the son of David Sokolin, who opened a
liquor store on Madison Avenue after Prohibition ended (and was said to
have been granted New York State license No. 4), and the former Lillian
Isacoff.
Eugenie
Clark, whose childhood rapture with fish in a New York City aquarium
led to a life of scholarly adventure in the littorals and depths of the
Seven Seas and to a global reputation as a marine biologist and expert
on sharks, died on Wednesday at her home in Sarasota, Fla. She was 92.
The
cause was lung cancer, her son Nikolas Konstantinou said.Long before
“Jaws” scared the wits out of swimmers, Dr. Clark rode a 40-foot whale
shark off Baja California, ran into killer great white sharks while
scuba diving in Hawaii, studied “sleeping” sharks in undersea caves off
the Yucatán, witnessed a shark’s birth and found a rare six-gill shark
in a submersible dive off Bermuda.
Eugenie Clark, Scholar of the Life Aquatic, Dies at 92
Photo
Eugenie Clark in 1951.Credit
The American Museum of Natural History
Dr.
Clark was an ichthyologist and oceanographer whose academic
credentials, teaching and research posts, scientific activities and
honors filled a 20-page curriculum vitae, topped by longtime roles as a
professor at the University of Maryland and director of the Mote Marine
Laboratory in Sarasota.
She
also wrote three books, 80 scientific treatises and more than 70
articles and professional papers; lectured at 60 American universities
and in 19 countries abroad; appeared in 50 television specials and
documentaries; was the subject of many biographies and profiles; made
intriguing scientific discoveries; and had four species of fish named
for her. Over the years, Dr. Clark made more than 70 deep dives in submersibles, once to 12,000 feet.Credit
Tak Konstantinou
Ms.
Clark was born in New York City on May 4, 1922, to Charles Clark and
the former Yumico Mitomi. Her father died when she was 2. Her mother
worked in Lower Manhattan, and when the girl was 9 she began leaving her
on Saturday mornings at an aquarium near the Battery. Fascinated,
Eugenie persuaded her mother to buy her a 15-gallon tank and kept fish,
toads, snakes and a small alligator at home.
She
graduated from Bryant High School in Queens and Hunter College, where
she majored in zoology, and earned a master’s degree at New York
University.
After
doing research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the
University of California, San Diego, she was a research assistant at the
Museum of Natural History in New York and returned to N.Y.U., where she
earned a doctorate in 1950, focusing on fish reproduction.
Sadecki, a left-hander who finished his career with the Mets,
was 19 when he reached the majors, joining the Cardinals in 1960 and
establishing himself as a starter. He helped the team become a reliable
winner. Six seasons later, he left in a trade that also helped the
Cardinals win.
In
his second season with St. Louis, he pitched 222 innings, with a 14-10
record and an earned run average of 3.72, the 10th best in the National
League. Three years later, he and the Cardinals had breakout seasons.
Pitching
220 innings, Sadecki won 20 games in 1964. His victory total was the
third best in the league, but he was probably only the Cardinals’
third-best starter, behind Bob Gibson, who won 19 games, and Curt
Simmons, who won 18.
A
late-season surge, coupled with a remarkable collapse by the
Philadelphia Phillies, helped the Cardinals win the pennant. They
defeated the Yankees in the World Series in seven games.
George Shuba greeted Jackie Robinson, right, when Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in a minor league game in 1946.Credit
Associated Press
George
Shuba, the Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder who played in three World Series
during the 1950s but who was best remembered for his welcoming gesture
to Jackie Robinson at home plate on the day Robinson, as a minor
leaguer, broke baseball’s color barrier, died on Monday at his home in
Youngstown, Ohio. He was 89. His son, Michael, confirmed the death.
Playing
in Brooklyn for seven seasons, Shuba was usually a backup, but he had
his moments. Known as Shotgun for his ability to spray line drives, like
buckshot, out of his left-handed batting stance, he batted .305 for the
Dodgers’ 1952 National League pennant-winner. He was the first National
Leaguer to hit a pinch-hit homer in the World Series, connecting for a
two-run drive off Allie Reynolds at Yankee Stadium in Game 1 of the 1953
Series.
But
his career was most pointedly defined in Jersey City, by an image at
home plate at Roosevelt Stadium two years before Shuba made his major
league debut.
But
his career was most pointedly defined in Jersey City, by an image at
home plate at Roosevelt Stadium two years before Shuba made his major
league debut.
On
the afternoon of April 18, 1946, Robinson became the first black player
in modern organized baseball when he made his debut with the Dodgers’
Montreal Royals farm team in their International League opener against
the Jersey City Giants.
Shuba in 1948.Credit
The New York Times
In
the third inning, Robinson hit a three-run homer over the left-field
fence. When he completed his trip around the bases, Shuba, the Royals’
left fielder and their next batter, shook his hand.
Congratulating a home-run hitter was a commonplace ritual, but Shuba’s welcome to a smiling Robinson was captured in an Associated Press photograph that has endured as a portrait of racial tolerance.
“I
couldn’t care less if Jackie was Technicolor,” Shuba told The Montreal
Gazette on the 60th anniversary of that handshake. “We’d spent 30 days
at spring training, and we all knew that Jackie had been a great athlete
at U.C.L.A. As far as I was concerned, he was a great ballplayer — our
best. I had no problem going to the plate to shake his hand instead of
waiting for him to come by me in the on-deck circle.”
Robinson
had four hits in five plate appearances that afternoon in the Royals’
14-1 victory. In their second game of the season, Shuba hit three home
runs.
Paul
Gibson Jr., a lawyer and airline executive who in 1974 became New York
City’s first black deputy mayor, died on Friday at his home in Jamaica,
Queens. He was 86. His family announced the death.
Mr. Gibson was a vice president of American Airlines, one of the highest positions a black had achieved at any airline, when Mayor Abraham D. Beame appointed him deputy mayor.
Mr.
Gibson had earlier been general counsel and housing chairman in the
state N.A.A.C.P., a board member of the Democratic Club in Jamaica and a
social worker in Brooklyn, among other positions.
Some had criticized Mr. Beame for explicitly making race a job qualification, a view expressed in an editorial in The New York Times,
though it recognized what it called Mr. Gibson’s “substantial talents.”
But Mr. Dinkins, in a phone interview on Tuesday, said that such racial
criteria had been necessary then because no black had ever been named
deputy mayor.
Paul Peyton Gibson Jr. was born in Manhattan on Aug. 5, 1927. His father
was a post office supervisor, and his family moved to the Bushwick
section of Brooklyn when he was 8. He graduated from Boys High School in
Brooklyn and entered the City College of New York. In 1946, he was
drafted into the Army and assigned to a unit of the Army Air Forces in
the Philippines.
Don Zimmer, left, and Joe Torre in 2000.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times From loathed Red Sox to lovable Yank.Don
Zimmer, the stubby, Popeye-muscled baseball lifer with the
unforgettable jowls whose passion for the game endured through more than
60 years as a player, manager, coach and adviser, died on Wednesday in
Dunedin, Fla. He was 83. His
death was announced by the Tampa Bay Rays, a team he served recently as
a senior adviser. Zimmer had surgery April 16 to repair a leaky heart
valve, according to The Tampa Tribune.
Zimmer
had been having kidney dialysis since May 2012 after falling into a
diabetic coma at his home. But he continued to visit the Rays’ Tropicana
Field when he could.
Zimmer was married on a baseball diamond in 1951, and it seemed he never left the field.
He played the infield for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series
championship team, he was an original member of the Mets and he was
Yankee Manager Joe Torre’s confidant as his bench coach on four World
Series championship teams. He filled in as the Yankees’ manager for 36
games in 1999 when Torre was being treated for prostate cancer.
“All I’ve ever been is a simple baseball man, but it’s never ceased to
amaze me how so many far more accomplished people I’ve met in this life
wanted to be one, too,” he said in “The Zen of Zim,” (2004) written with
Bill Madden. “What a game, this baseball!”
Zimmer in 1999 Don Zimmer visits Greg Maddux on the mound during a 1999 game in Wrigley Field. (ED WAGNER, CHICAGO TRIBUNE /May 4, 1999)
His exit was also one of the most memorable in Cubs history. Zimmer handed an ultimatum to Tribune Co. executive Don Grenesko to give him a contract extension early in the 1991 season, asking for the same kind of security the players had.
“Am I any different?” Zimmer said he told Grenesko. “What am I? A piece of garbage in Lake Michigan?”
The ploy didn't work, and Zimmer was fired after 37 games. In typical fashion, he invited the beat writers into his New York hotel suite and told them to empty out the minibar so he could charge it to the team.
In 1989, Zimmer reached the zenith of his managerial career, throwing out the book and using crazy strategy to great success, including squeeze bunts with the bases loaded and a triple-steal with a pitcher at the plate. Tampa Bay Tribune ST. PETERSBURG — Don Zimmer, whose long and star-crossed career linked baseball’s golden age of the mid-1950s to the present, allowing him to tell tales of Jackie Robinson and Derek Jeter, died Wednesday.
Zimmer said he never drew a paycheck outside of baseball. When asked how he supported his family in the offseason back when players’ salaries were a fraction of what they are today, Zimmer answered with two words: “Winter ball.”
He spent winters in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico honing his craft.
He played winter ball after his rookie season in 1954, teaming with future hall of famers Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. Zimmer and was named the MVP of the Caribbean World Series that winter.
To the rest of the major leagues, Don Zimmer was a a Popeye lookalike, a prominent-cheeked baseball lifer who in 66 professional seasons once won a World Series with Jackie Robinson, once stole home 10 times in one minor-league season, once famously grappled with Pedro Martinez on the mound in a playoff game at Fenway Park.
To Cincinnati, Don Zimmer was a West Side legend, part of formidable Western Hills High and Bentley Post American Legion teams with Jim Frey and Glenn Sample, long forgiven for being on the other side in the fabled 1975 World Series when he coached third for the Red Sox.
Only a portion of one of his 66 seasons was spent with the Reds, 1962, .250 with a couple of homers and 16 RBI. That never mattered.
Jeb Magruder, a former high-level aide to President Richard M. Nixon
who went to jail in the Watergate affair and who years later made the
startling assertion that Nixon himself had ordered the break-in that set
the scandal in motion, died on Sunday in Danbury, Conn. He was 79.
His death, announced on Friday, was caused by complications after a stroke, his family said.
Released
from prison in 1975 after seven months, Mr. Magruder, a former
successful businessman, went on to earn a master’s degree from Princeton
Theological Seminary and serve as a Presbyterian pastor. For years he
preferred not to speak about the scandal that led to Nixon’s downfall.
But
he eventually yielded to continued questions, acknowledging in
interviews that Nixon had not just covered up the burglary — at the
Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate complex in
Washington — but had been involved from the start.
Jeb Stuart Magruder was born on Nov. 5, 1934, on Staten Island. His
father, who owned a print shop and was a Civil War buff, named him after
J. E. B. Stuart, the Confederate general.
Playing
all 10 of his N.H.L. seasons with the Rangers, Laprade was a superb
puck handler and penalty killer, and he seemed to glide effortlessly
along the ice.
His
finesse was evident even to a hockey novice like William Faulkner, who
was commissioned by Sports Illustrated to witness his first hockey game.
Attending
a January 1955 matchup between the Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens
at the Garden, Faulkner singled out three players who were “as fluid and
fast and effortless as rapier thrusts or lightning”: the Canadiens’ Maurice Richard and Bernie Geoffrion and “the veteran Laprade, still with the know-how and the grace.”
Laprade did not incur a single penalty in three of his seasons, playing
in 151 games. He drew only 42 penalty minutes in 500 career games.
Matthiessen's Works Include "The Snow Leopard" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" a rich man's son who spurned a life of ease in favor of physical and spiritual challenges and produced such acclaimed works as "The Snow Leopard" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," died Saturday. He was 86.
His publisher Geoff Kloske of Riverhead Books said Mr. Matthiessen, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, was ill "for some months." He died at a hospital near his home on Long Island.
Mr. Matthiessen helped found The Paris Review, one of the most influential literary magazines, and won National Book Awards for "The Snow Leopard," his spiritual account of the Himalayas, and for "Shadow Country." His new novel, "In Paradise," is scheduled for publication Tuesday.
A leading environmentalist and wilderness writer, he embraced the best and worst that nature could bring him, whether trekking across the Himalayas, parrying sharks in Australia or enduring a hurricane in Antarctica.
He was a longtime liberal who befriended Cesar Chavez and wrote a defense of Indian activist Leonard Peltier, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," that led to a highly publicized, and unsuccessful, lawsuit by an FBI agent who claimed Mr. Matthiessen had defamed him.
Mr. Matthiessen was born in New York in 1927, the son of Erard A. Matthiessen, a wealthy architect and conservationist.
While at Yale, he wrote the short story "Sadie," which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, and he soon acquired an agent. After graduation he moved to Paris and, along with fellow writer-adventurer George Plimpton, helped found The Paris Review. (Mr. Matthiessen would later acknowledge he was a CIA recruit at the time and used his work with the Review as a cover).
The magazine caught on, but Paris only reminded Mr. Matthiessen that he was an American writer. In the mid-1950s, he returned to the U.S., moved to Long Island's Sag Harbor (where he eventually lived on a six-acre estate), socialized with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other painters, operated a deep-sea fishing charter boat — and wrote.
In 1961, Mr. Matthiessen emerged as a major novelist with "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," his tale of missionaries under siege from both natives and mercenaries in the jungles of Brazil. Its detailed account of a man's hallucinations brought him a letter of praise from LSD guru Timothy Leary. The book was later adapted into a film of the same name, starring John Lithgow and Daryl Hannah.
In the 1980s and '90s, Mr. Matthiessen published a trio of novels—"Killing Mr. Watson," ''Lost Man's River" and "Bone by Bone"—about a community in Florida's Everglades at the turn of the 20th century and a predatory planter. Unhappy, especially with "Lost Man's River," he spent years revising and condensing all three books into "Shadow Country," published in 2008 and a surprise National Book Award winner.
Much of his fiction, from "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" to "Bone by Bone," bestowed a lion-like aura upon nature—grand when respected, dangerous when provoked, tragic when exploited.
Paul Colby outside the Bitter End in 1992. The club is still standing years after most others from its heyday have closed.Keith Meyers/The New York Times
Paul
Colby, the owner since 1974 of the Bitter End, a celebrated
coffeehouse-cum-nightclub that helped make Greenwich Village a legendary
place by showcasing young performers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell,
Billy Crystal and countless others, died on Feb. 13 at his home in
Montclair, N.J. He was 96.
“On
behalf of all of us in the business of moving the emotions with our
imaginations, special thanks to Paul Colby for being one of us,” Kris
Kristofferson wrote in his foreword to Mr. Colby’s 2002 memoir (written
with Martin Fitzpatrick), “The Bitter End: Hanging Out at America’s Nightclub.”
Mr.
Colby bought the club, at 147 Bleecker Street near La Guardia Place,
about a decade after he began managing it. It provided him with a
lifetime of memories: watching Van Morrison kick over tables for
dramatic effect; hearing Allen Ginsberg read poetry; seeing Woody Allen
so nervous that he tried to crawl out a window just before he was due
onstage to do his stand-up routine. James Taylor, in one of his early
appearances, bombed. Mr. Crystal did six shows in 1976 for a total of
$500.
Among
the many other performers who played at the club — which seats only 150
people and holds 80 more — were Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne and Neil
Diamond.
In
1992, the folk singer Tom Paxton told The New York Times that the
Bitter End was a “place to learn, to be bad, a place where you could
clock your hours, learn what worked and didn’t.” Mr. Kristofferson told
The Times that it was the place where “people like me and Bob Dylan
didn’t just perform, we came to hang out.”
Other
Greenwich Village clubs, including the Village Gate, Cafe Wha? and the
Village Vanguard, were integral parts of the same scene in the late
1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, that scene began well before then: In the
late 1950s, a club called the Cock and Bull occupied the space that
would become the Bitter End and offered a similar format. But the Bitter
End acquired cachet — not least because of its distinctive brick walls —
and is still standing years after most other clubs from its heyday have
closed.
The
club was started in 1961 by Fred Weintraub, who named it for its
nocturnal appearance. A graduate of the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania, he had abandoned marriage and children and a
successful baby-carriage business in search of a “more authentic way of
life,” he said in a biographical sketch on his website.
He played the piano in a bordello and operated a fishing boat in Cuba
and roamed Europe before deciding the Greenwich Village music scene was
where he wanted to be.
One
of the first acts to perform at the Bitter End was a new group called
Peter, Paul and Mary; they used the brick walls as the backdrop for the cover of their first album.
Mr.
Weintraub hired Mr. Colby to manage the club and book acts in 1965. It
did not have a license to serve alcohol at the time but did offer
coffee-and-ice-cream drinks with names like Frosty Freud and Zen Sundae.
He entered the music business when he was hired by a publisher to
deliver sheet music, then worked his way up to music promoter. Frank
Sinatra often used him for personal errands, like picking up Ava Gardner
at the airport.
In recent years Mr. Colby had two partners in the club, Paul Rizzo and
Ken Gorka. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Rizzo noted that although
fewer stars appear in small clubs these days, the Bitter End still has
its share of stars-to-be: Stefani Germanotta, for example, appeared
there in 2006. She later took the name Lady Gaga.
Times obit His genial, well-informed and occasionally tongue-twisted presence
accompanied all of Mets history, from the verbal high jinks of Casey
Stengel and the fielding high jinks of Marv Throneberry to the arrival
of the fireballer Tom Seaver and the miraculous World Series
championship of 1969, from the thrilling 1986 Series victory over the
Red Sox to the dispiriting Subway Series loss to the Yankees in 2000 and
the Madoff-poisoned, injury-riddled ill fortune of recent seasons.
Kiner, who hit 369 homers, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1947.Associated Press
Over
half a century of Met broadcasts, while sharing the microphone with
Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Tim McCarver — whom he once called Tim
MacArthur — among many others, Kiner proved himself especially valuable
in explaining the nuances of hitting, and though occasionally criticized
for a flat affect and a penchant for phrase-bungling — “On Father’s Day
we again wish you all happy birthday!” — he was known as an amusing
raconteur who was generally well prepared with both facts and stories,
and his intended wit was often as memorable as his unintended humor.
“Two-thirds
of the earth is covered by water,” he declared about an especially
fleet outfielder. “The other third is covered by Garry Maddox.” Cutting
to a commercial after mistaking McCarver’s name for that of the World
War II general, he said: “MacArthur once said ‘I shall return,’ and
we’ll be back after this.”
Smooth as silk.
Malaprops Were Part of the Charm of Kiner, an Enduring Met “He once dropped a name on us, Frenchy Bordagaray, which I couldn’t
pronounce or make any reference to,” said Howie Rose, his former partner
on cable TV. “But I did a little homework and learned about his career.
When I hear younger fans criticize older broadcasters for their
references to players from past generations, I wonder, ‘Do you have an
ounce of curiosity?’ ”
His
lack of pretension and his wit and amiability made “Kiner’s Korner,”
his postgame show, required viewing, even if it looked like public
access programming. In its debut from the Polo Grounds, Mets Manager
Casey Stengel forgot to remove his microphone as he left the interview
and brought the set down.
“Hold
up the cue cards because we have to get to commercial so I can get off
the air,” Kiner recalled telling his production assistant during an
interview in 2012.
Another
story from McCarver. He and Kiner were calling a Mets game in
Philadelphia. Walking through the press box were Jamie Lee Curtis and
her husband, Christopher Guest.
“They’re
huge Phillies fans, and they came in and were introduced to us,”
McCarver said. “But Ralph wants a moment with her because he had once
dated her mother, Janet Leigh. So he sheepishly approaches her and says,
‘Jamie Lee, my name’s Ralph Kiner, and you were just introduced to us
and I wanted to tell you that I used to date your mother.’ And she
throws her arms around his neck and says, ‘Daddy!’ ”
Sheila Guyse, center, performing in "Lost in the Stars."George Karger/Pix Incorporated
Sheila Guyse, a popular actress and singer who appeared on Broadway and in so-called race movies in the 1940s and ’50s, and who for a time, despite limited opportunities in the entertainment industry, appeared headed for broader fame, died on Dec. 28 in Honolulu. She was 88.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter Sheila Crystal Devin said.
For several years, Ms. Guyse (rhymes with “nice”) was compared to stars like Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne and Ruby Dee, black actresses who broke through racial barriers. But by the late 1950s she was out of show business, a result of some combination of health problems, a religious conversion and family obligations.
Ms. Guyse’s husband did not want her to have a career, Ms. Devin said.
Ms.
Guyse’s first two marriages had ended in divorce, and she was a
struggling single mother when she met Joseph Jackson, a New York
sanitation worker so enthralled by her that he would sometimes follow
her in his garbage truck. After they married, in the late 1950s, Ms.
Guyse stopped performing and became increasingly involved with a
Jehovah’s Witness hall in Queens.
“It
wasn’t easy to be a glamorous movie star with people following you for
your autograph and now you’re home making pancakes,” Ms. Devin said.
“She did it, but I don’t think it was easy.”
Etta
Drucille Guyse was born on July 14, 1925, in Forest, Miss. She took
Sheila as a stage name. She followed her father, Wilbert, to New York
when she was a teenager and, her daughter said, lived for a time in a
Harlem rooming house with Billie Holiday.
Her
first marriage, to Ms. Devin’s father, a tailor named Shelby Irving
Miller, was very brief. Her second, to Kenneth Davis, whom she had met
while both performed in “Finian’s Rainbow,” lasted eight years. Mr.
Davis, who was white, became a dancer with American Ballet Theater. In
1952, a photograph of the couple appeared on a cover of Jet with the
headline “Negro Women With White Husbands.”
“I
don’t go about looking for difficulties,” Ms. Guyse said in the
article. “It took me a long time to decide to marry Ken, but I’m glad I
did. We’ve been very happy. Intelligence and understanding are needed to
make a marriage like ours succeed. It takes more than love. You have to
have a mind of your own and be able to ignore what the world is saying
and thinking about you.”
Leland Stanford MacPhail Jr. was born on Oct. 25, 1917, in Nashville. He
graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he played
baseball and football. In 1941 he became the business manager of the
Dodgers’ Interstate League farm team in Reading, Pa., while his father
was bringing a pennant to Brooklyn for the first time in 21 years as the
Dodgers’ general manager.
Except for teaching history at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and
serving in the Navy during World War II, Mr. MacPhail said, “my whole
working life was baseball.”
In his autobiography, “My 9 Innings,” published in 1989, Mr. MacPhail
was self-effacing in describing the scene when he would go home after a
day at the ballpark.
“When I came out after a game, there were a gang of kids waiting to get
the players’ autographs, and especially in my younger days I would be
mobbed,” he wrote. “Someone at the back of the group would yell, ‘Who is
it?’ and then one of the kids who had gotten my autograph would exclaim
in disgust, ‘Oh, he’s nobody.’ But you couldn’t not sign; they wouldn’t
believe it if you tried to tell them you were nobody.”
In 1998, 20 years after his father was inducted, Lee MacPhail was enshrined at Cooperstown.
Allyn Baum/New York Times -The Scene nightclub in 1965. It first drew artists and stagehands, then rockers like Jimi Hendrix.
You first encountered Teddy, the sharkskin-suited maître d’hôtel, on the
sidewalk. If you got past him, Steve Paul was at the door to insult
you. The insult, usually devilishly clever, was the cover charge to one of
New York City’s hottest, most intriguing clubs in the 1960s. It was
called the Scene, and it was the brainchild of the dashing,
idiosyncratic Mr. Paul, who was 23 when he opened it in 1964. It became
famous for brilliant moments in the history of rock music, as the place
where Jimi Hendrix and the Doors shaped the music of the ’60s in inspired jam sessions. Mr. Paul, who went on to manage Johnny Winter and other rock stars and
record them for his own label, died at 71 on Sunday at a hospital in
Queens. His friend Tariq Abdus-Sabur said the cause was not yet known.
Mr. Paul may not have been a guru with all the answers, but he had no quarrel with being treated as one.
“I know I could become president of the United States,” he told Newsweek, “but I really don’t need it.”
New York City teems with questionable urban legends. But the fable about
the postal clerk and his wife, a Brooklyn librarian, scrimping to amass
an astounding collection of modern art, cramming all 5,000 pieces in a
rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment, then donating the whole kit and
caboodle to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and galleries in
all 50 states, is true. Herbert Vogel, who retired as a postal clerk in 1980 but kept collecting
art, died on Sunday at 89 at a nursing home in Manhattan, the National
Gallery announced. When he and his wife, Dorothy, gave thousands of
artworks to the museum in 1992, J. Carter Brown, then the museum’s
director, called their collection “a work of art in itself.”
In 1992 five full-size moving vans were needed to move their art to the
National Gallery, where they were soon feted by William H. Rehnquist,
the chief justice of the United States, and David Rockefeller. In 2008
the gallery announced that it would help them carry out their plan to
give 50 artworks to a museum in each of the 50 states. The couple liked
to work with the gallery because it has never sold a painting, and
admission is free. In 2008 Megumi Sasaki directed a documentary about the Vogels, “Herb
& Dorothy.” Ms. Sasaki had her camera operators focus on how Mr.
Vogel’s eyes intensified and lit up when he liked something. In addition
to his wife, Mr. Vogel is survived by his sister, Paula Antebi. In 1992
Mr. Vogel, whose highest salary at the post office was $23,000 before
taxes, told The Associated Press that he and his wife could easily have
become millionaires. “But we weren’t concerned about that aspect,” he
said.
A Hewlett patron asked me for help in copying this obit. I did so, but the edge was cut off, so I walked back to this computer and printed it. After passing over the printout, I started to read the obit. Fascinating.
Justice Gustin L. Reichbach, who went from the carefree fraternity life
to leading student protests at Columbia University in 1968 and then to a
career as a fiercely independent lawyer and judge, died on Saturday in
Brooklyn. He was 65. The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his wife, Ellen Meyers, said.
Across six decades of myriad public incarnations, Justice Reichbach
occupied buildings at Columbia as a student, won a court case that
helped legalize residential loft life in SoHo and TriBeCa, blasted a
state agency from the bench for ignoring Medicaid fraud and served as a judge on a war-crimes tribunal in Kosovo.
Elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 1999, he decorated his
courtroom with pictures of Paul Robeson, Clarence Darrow and striking
coal miners, as well as a neon sign showing the scales of justice.
Justice Reichbach was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 9, 1946, and grew up in
Flatbush, one of two sons of a machinist who organized unions. After
graduating from Midwood High School, he attended the State University at
Buffalo, where he was the president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish
fraternity. As the Vietnam War was escalating, the arrival of an
R.O.T.C. military recruiting office on campus awoke a radical spirit in
Mr. Reichbach, said Daniel L. Alterman, a friend who attended Buffalo
with him.
His engagement with radical politics gathered force when he was admitted
to Columbia University School of Law. A classmate, Bruce Ratner, now a
real estate developer, recalled meeting him as they stood in line to pay
tuition in September 1967. “This guy with long blond curly hair, almost white, started talking to
me with a Brooklyn accent that sounded like it was right out of ‘On the
Waterfront’ and asked me if I’d found a place to stay,” Mr. Ratner said.
By the time they reached the front of the line, Mr. Ratner invited him
to crash in his apartment on 103rd Street.
In court, Justice Reichbach wore robes only on sentencing days. A white
scarf usually accented his three-piece suits, along with a Phi Beta
Kappa key from his undergraduate days. His curly mane lost none of its
exuberance as it grayed.
Courtly, incisive and acerbic in equal measure, Mr. Sarris came of
critical age in the 1960s as the first great wave of foreign films
washed ashore in the United States. From his perch at The Village Voice,
and later at The New York Observer,
he wrote searchingly of that glorious deluge and the directors behind
it — François Truffaut, Max Ophuls, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo
Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa.
From WBGO's website, a tribute to this magnificent pianist.
Soulful, boogie-woogie-blues
stylist Ray Bryant passed away on Thursday, June 2nd at New York
Hospital in Queens. He was 79. Here's the New York Times obituary.
WBGO's Becca Pulliam recently interviewed pianist Randy Weston
regarding Bryant's legacy. Listen to Weston's take on his close
friend's unique style and favorite recordings.
There are several sound clips on the page.
From the Times obit: Mr. Bryant had a firm touch and an unshakable sense of time, notably in his left hand, which he often used to build a bedrock vamp. Even in a bebop setting, he favored the ringing tonalities of the gospel church. And he was sumptuously at home with the blues, as a style and a sensibility but never as an affectation.
Along with his wife, Mr. Bryant is survived by a son, Raphael Bryant
Jr.; a daughter, Gina; three grandchildren; and two brothers, Leonard
and Lynwood. Mr. Bryant’s sister, Vera Eubanks, is the mother of several
prominent jazz musicians: Robin Eubanks, a trombonist; Kevin Eubanks,
the guitarist and former bandleader on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”;
and Duane Eubanks, a trumpeter.
Pete Fornatale,
a disc jockey who helped usher in a musical alternative to Top 40 AM
radio in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, presenting
progressive rock and long album tracks that AM stations wouldn’t touch
and helping to give WNEW a major presence on the still-young FM dial,
died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 66.
Mr. Fornatale was at the forefront of the FM revolution, along with
WNEW-FM colleagues like Scott Muni, Rosko, Vin Scelsa, Dennis Elsas,
Jonathan Schwartz and Alison Steele (who called herself “the
Nightbird”). They played long versions of songs, and sometimes entire
albums, and talked to their audiences in a conversational tone very
different from the hard-sell approach of their AM counterparts.
Bill Skowron, the slugging first baseman who played on seven pennant-winning teams with the Yankees in the 1950s and early ’60s, died on Friday in Arlington Heights, Ill. He was 81.
