“Its all over,” said someone standing beside him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
“Death is over,” he said to himself. “There is no more death.”
He drew in a breath, broke off in the middle of it, stretched himself out, and died.
“The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, Leo Tolstoy
~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com
LA Times
Roy Chapman, who with his wife, Pat, raced Smarty Jones, the 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, died Friday at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Doylestown, Pa. He was 79 and had suffered from emphysema in recent years.
Chapman, who owned car dealerships in the Philadelphia area, was involved in racing for more than 20 years. Smarty Jones, who never raced again after his Triple Crown attempt was thwarted by Birdstone in the Belmont Stakes, was foaled at the Chapmans’ Someday Farm in Chester County, Pa.
“He was a great guy and a great competitor,” trainer John Servis told The Blood-Horse magazine. “He went out in style. I’ll give him that. He had a great couple of years with Smarty.
“In the short time I trained for him, I enjoyed it. He was a great guy to train for. My favorite moment was at the Kentucky Derby when he said, ‘Be careful what you ask me because I’m a used-car salesman and I’m from Philadelphia.’ “
Besides Smarty Jones, the Chapmans raced eight other stakes winners, including I’ll Get Along, the dam of Smarty Jones, who won more than $276,000.
Before winning the Derby and Preakness, Smarty Jones had won five consecutive races. The Belmont was his only defeat, and he finished with more than $7.6 million in earnings.
The image of Roy Chapman, tethered to an oxygen tank because of the disease, became an enduring image of Smarty’s career.
“Smarty Jones was some of the best medicine he had,” Pat Chapman said.
Technorati Tags: Roy Chapman, Smarty Jones, Kentucky Derby, Preakness, emphysema, Triple Crown
NY Times
Robert Lewis, the owner of the Kentucky Derby winners Silver Charm and Charismatic, died yesterday at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 81.
The cause of death was heart failure, said his son Jeff, who added that Lewis had been in failing health.
Lewis, who owned a beer distributorship in Southern California, had been a horse racing fan since his youth and recalled attending Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif., when the track opened in 1934.
He owned a small stable until he changed course in 1990 and started to develop one of the nation’s most powerful racing operations. Lewis enjoyed almost instant success. By the mid-90’s, his green-and-gold silks, the colors of his alma mater, the University of Oregon, were regularly seen in winner’s circles across the nation.
He would go on to campaign 50 horses that won stakes races. Chief among them were his two Kentucky Derby winners.
Silver Charm won the 1997 Derby and the Preakness before his Triple Crown bid ended at the Belmont Stakes. Two years later, Charismatic won the Derby as a 31-1 underdog. He, too, captured the Preakness before finishing third at the Belmont Stakes. He sustained a career-ending injury at the Belmont and never raced again. Charismatic and Silver Charm are among the six champions Lewis owned.
Technorati Tags: Robert Lewis, Kentucky Derby, Silver Charm, Charismatic
Ray Barretto, a percussionist who helped define the role of the conga drum in jazz and became an influential figure in both jazz and Latin music during a career spanning more than 50 years, died yesterday at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. He was 76 and lived in Norwood, N.J.
The cause was heart failure, said Brandy Barretto, his wife of 28 years.
Throughout his career, Mr. Barretto insisted on being considered a full-fledged jazz musician, as opposed to strictly a Latin player or a product of the hybrid known as Latin jazz. His success made a particular impact among Puerto Ricans in New York.
“Ray was like the quintessential Nuyorican,” said Bobby Sanabria, a percussionist and educator who said he considered Mr. Barretto a mentor. “For us in our community, he was a shining example of how somebody from humble beginnings can rise and achieve greatness.”
Mr. Barretto was the author of a subtle and responsive style of conga playing intended to complement the standard jazz rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. His distinctive approach is more or less in place even on one of his earliest recordings as a sideman, a 1958 album called “Manteca” (Prestige) by the pianist Red Garland.
Technorati Tags: Ray Barretto, jazz, Latin jazz, Bobby Sanabria, Red Garland
Ernie Stautner, an undersized defensive tackle who became the best player on the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ woeful teams in the 1950’s and was later enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died yesterday in a nursing home in Carbondale, Colo. He was 80 and lived in Vail, Colo.
The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Jill, said.
For 14 National Football League seasons (1950-1963), Stautner, a native of Germany, played for Steelers teams that lost more often than they won. Their offenses were so unproductive that in two of those seasons their leading rusher failed to score a touchdown. But their defenses, led by Stautner, were always strong.
At 6-foot-1 and about 235 pounds, he was small for his position, even in that era, but he was chosen to play in the Pro Bowl nine times and was voted to the N.F.L.’s All-Star team four times. He was elected to the Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio, in 1969, the first year he was eligible. His Hall of Fame biography reads, in part, “He went on to excel in the game of giants.”
Technorati Tags: Ernie Stautner, Pittsburgh Steelers, Pro Football Hall of Fame
LA Times
Robert Rich Sr., 92, a food industry pioneer who in 1945 created nondairy whipped topping, died Wednesday at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. The cause of death was not disclosed.
During World War II, Rich was running Wilber Farms, a Buffalo, N.Y., dairy, and working with the War Food Administration. The war agency’s diversion of milk products such as butterfat to U.S. soldiers caused Rich to begin thinking about developing nondairy alternatives for the home market.
When he heard scientists at a Ford Motor Co. laboratory were working on a nondairy whipping cream made from soybeans, he secured permission to experiment with the same process. After considerable trial and error, he came up with a soybean-based whipped topping that was superior to cream because it could be frozen.
Marketed under the name Rich’s Whip Topping, it became a staple of school cafeterias, restaurants and bakeries. Soon Rich spun off nondairy icings, fillings, dessert toppings and a coffee creamer. His company, Rich Products, grew into an international operation with 7,000 employees and annual sales exceeding $2.5 billion.
Rich’s contributions to the food industry were recognized in 1990 when he became one of the first four inductees in the National Frozen Food Industry Hall of Fame.
Technorati Tags: Robert Rich, nondairy whipped topping, National Frozen Food Industry Hall of Fame
LA Times
In 1973, blade smith Bill Moran created a sensation among knife enthusiasts worldwide when he revived the lost art of forging Damascus steel, an alloy prized by sword smiths during the Middle Ages because of its strength and flexibility.
Moran, known as “the father of modern Damascus,” died of cancer Feb. 12 at a hospital in Frederick, Md. He was 80.
He crafted knives of such superb quality that they lured the likes of Jordan’s King Abdullah II and actor Sylvester Stallone to his tiny, soot-streaked workshop near Middletown, Va. He made his knives by hand from the very best materials — forging the steel, inlaying the precious metal, carving the handle, even stitching the sheath. He made many of his tools as well.
A friendly, self-effacing man, William F. Moran Jr. was born in Frederick to a dairy farmer. He forged his first knife at age 12.
“He told me one time he would steal tools from his father — farm implements and saws and things like that — to make knives,” said Jay Hendrickson, a Frederick knife maker and old friend.
By 14, he was selling knives. He taught himself how to forge a blade, he said, by asking local blacksmiths “and getting all the wrong answers.”
Moran began trying to revive the ancient process of forging Damascus steel in the late 1960s. The metal got its name, historians say, from the Syrian capital, where Westerners encountered it in the Middle Ages. The fine markings on the blades were called damasks, a term now used to describe fabrics with such patterns.
When Moran began working on Damascus, no blade smith in the United States knew the technique. Without a recipe for the process, it was in danger of being lost.
Damascus is made of iron and steel, forge welded into three layers, heated and hammered flat. Moran would then fold the piece, re-weld it and hammer it out again. He would repeat the process eight times.
He founded the American Bladesmithing Society in 1976 and the American Bladesmith School in 1988 to perpetuate the craft.
A knife maker who wants to earn the sobriquet “master blade smith” at Moran’s school must be able to make a Damascus steel knife that is sharp enough to cut an inch-thick piece of rope and sturdy enough to slice a two-by-four in half while retaining enough of an edge to shave the hair off an arm. The knife also must be able to bend 90 degrees without breaking.
He selected Washington, Ark., as the school’s headquarters, because it was said to be the place where legendary blacksmith James Black crafted at least one knife for Jim Bowie.
Technorati Tags: Bill Moran, Damascus steel, American Bladesmithing Society, American Bladesmith School
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