Post Mortem

Don Voegeli, a University of Wisconsin music professor who composed the "All Things Considered" theme song for National Public Radio, died Saturday in Madison, Wis. He was 89.

This is more of an audio story than a text one, so I'll just link you to the NPR web page that lists the theme and variations over the years; it's fun to dial back and see which ones you remember, if you're an NPR listener.

In addition, here's the NPR story that appeared in 2002 in which Mr. Voegeli talked about how the theme song came about.

Good morning, and plan for a thankful week.

Rusty Kanokogi was once stripped of a medal for competing against men in judo. Determined that no woman would have to have a similar experience, she dedicated herself to establishing women's judo and getting the sport into the Olympics. (Don't miss the testimonial from Billie Jean King in the last paragraph).

Few things provide as much delight for children as a carousel and Patrick M. Donelan did his part to restore the historic St. Louis carousel -- 60 horses and four reindeer. Too bad there's not a photo of the carousel with the obit.

A YMCA scuba diving course changed Larry Thornton's life, and he became a salvage diver, historian, and treasure hunter who was still diving while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. He died Nov. 11.

Mountain-climbing stories are only partly about techniques and rock skills. Human behavior and relations are the real stories behind the adventures, and that's the case in the tale of Lino Lacedelli's first successful climb of K2, the second highest mountain in the world. The real story came out decades later.

Robert Rines, whose innovations in sonar helped find the Titanic, spent a lot of his time on earth pursuing a much more elusive goal -- proof that a Loch Ness sea monster existed. A respectful Economist obit describes his quest.

The man who carried the American flag in a civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, a day that is credited with ensuring passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, died last week. During that 1965 march, when police turned on the marchers, James Armstrong dropped to his knees, but he never let the flag touch the ground.

One of the great delights of this job is finding a well-edited oral history of someone we write about. That was the case with the obit of diplomat James M. Wilson last week. The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, housed at the Library of Congress, is one of the best.

"Many accounts provide information on what to do when your embassy is blown up, or if one is in the midst of a war or civil unrest. These accounts include those of Robert Dillon whose embassy in Beirut was hit by Islamic extremists in 1983 and Prudence Bushnell whose embassy in Nairobi was blown up by Al Qaeda in 1998," wrote Charles Stuart Kennedy, describing the collection.

In addition to European history, the collection has remembrances from those who served in Indochina, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and "the tale of the son of missionaries in China, who, as a teenager during World War II, joined Chinese guerrillas to fight the Japanese and many years later returned as U.S. ambassador to Beijing."

The Archives of the Museum of American Art also has good digital version of oral histories as do several neighborhoods, including Capitol Hill. Georgetown is starting one. The Washington Press Club Foundation's oral histories have been useful for interviews with some of the female journalists who made a mark in Washington, although some of the interviewees don't allow them to be available online. Some of the National Institutes of Health have great interviews, too, including videos which are posted online.

It's great to hear a person reflecting in their own words about their life; it adds a dimension that is sometimes missing from the straight news or feature articles.

The great Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom has died at the age of 82. She was regarded as perhaps the finest singing actress on the operatic stage -- in other words, she had not just a beautiful voice, but a deeply expressive, nuanced acting talent as well.

Soderstrom made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1959 and was in huge demand for several years, then virtually disappeared from the American stage. She had returned to Sweden to raise her three sons and to continue her career at home.

She later made a triumphant return to this country and continued to appear in operas and tour in recitals, often with pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, until well into her 60s. (Here she is in a badly out-of-synch tape of Beethoven's "Fidelio.")

She had a magnetic stage presence and rare ability to describe the intricacies of music in general, and singing in particular, as you can see in this excellent British video:

Jeanne-Claude, the wife and collaborator of the artist Christo, has died at 74. She was a vibrant figure in the art world, and not just because of her hair, which was the color of a fire engine crossed with a pumpkin.

I particularly enjoyed working on this obituary because I was able to draw on one of my former journalistic lives as an art critic. I've seen two Christo efforts in person (the Central Park gates and the 1985 wrapping of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris), and I have to say there really is something magical about what Christo and Jeanne-Claude created. There's an enchanting spirit of joy in their work. People respond to it, and there is a palpable sense of shared communal happiness that can't be denied. They lift up the heart.

The New York Times's Michael Kimmelman captured the essence of their work in this description of their 1995 Reichstag project in Berlin: "It was a celebration of art as a galvanizing and transformative, even magical, experience."

Everyone knows the name of Jeanne-Claude's husband, of course, and his vast environmental works that sometimes extend for miles. His "Running Fence," for instance, raced across the California hills for 24 miles before vanishing into the Pacific Ocean. His monumental work of 1995 -- the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin -- required 200 climbers and technicians and nine miles of rope. With its shimmering silver fabric, it looks something like a building designed by Frank Gehry.

In 1961, Herbert J. "Jack" Miller Jr. received a call from Robert F. Kennedy, the new attorney general, asking if he would accept the job of running the Justice Department's criminal division. Miller, a Republican, could only blurt out, "Who, me?"

Miller, who died Nov. 14 at age 85, carried out Bobby Kennedy's war on organized crime, leading the Justice Department's crusade against mob families and corrupt labor unions. He secured an indictment and ultimately a conviction against Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa and helped write laws regulating the interstate activities of organized crime.

In 1965, Miller formed his own law firm and ultimately became one of the most prominent lawyers in town. Washingtonian magazine called him, in a flattering profile, "the perfect lawyer." Miller may not have been as well known as his friend and courtroom rival Edward Bennett Williams, but he was just as influential in Washington's legal world.

In his obituary, published Nov. 19, I have tried to sketch the intricacies of his most significant case: securing the pardon of Richard M. Nixon.

Good morning.

Those of us who are healthy forget the toll that AIDS and HIV has taken on young people the world over. Edward Zold, who was diagnosed with the illness himself, didn't forget and was one of the ones responsible for getting drugs and treatment for fellow sufferers.

Eddie Bell, who died Monday, was the first black All-American and captain of the football team at the University of Pennsylvania, and then one of the brave souls who integrated pro football in the '50s.

Labor lawyer Eugene Cotton championed meatpackers, fighting low wages, no health insurance or pensions, and six-day workweeks. He died Nov. 11, having negotiated some of the first pension and medical benefits in the industry as well as hefty raises, paid holidays and vacations of up to six weeks a year.

Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who died Nov. 6, uncovered and revealed to the American government the existence of an extensive spy-ring working within NATO. He took the risk, he said, because he believed it would lead to a nuclear meltdown. He was caught. He had been betrayed, it is believed, by the CIA counter-intelligence officer and Soviet spy Aldrich Ames.

Australian botanical artist Elizabeth Conabere has died at age 80. Her illustrations, the Melbourne Age says "were technically brilliant, perfect in colour and tone, and captured the nature of the plant in its environmental niche." Too bad they were unable to publish an image of one.

That's it for this week for me; my colleagues will post blog items over the next few days and I'll return Monday. Have a great end-of-week and weekend.

Good morning.

The pickings are a bit slim this morning, but I'd advise you take a look at the amazing life of Medal of Honor winner Lewis Millett; it's not the ordinary hero story you'll read elsewhere.

The man described as the power behind the oldest open-air swimming club in the world, Allan Titmuss "would brook no nonsense," the Times of London says. His death will cause him to miss the Christmas dip in the cold waters of the Hyde Park lake.

The tulip man of Oak Lawn, Ill. planted more than 1,000 bulbs of his favorite flower in the front yard, drawing visitors for years. But he never lived in the house where the tulips bloomed, even though he had gutted and rehabbed it. Perhaps, like the tulips, it was just for the beauty of the thing.

Then of course, there's Sy Syms, who drew potential shoppers into his discount stores with the slogan "an educated consumer is our best customer." Forbes debunked that in 1985, but no matter; Syms is ubiquitous on the East Coast of the U.S. and a few states further west.

Sy Syms, 83, the discount clothing retailer who told television viewers for 35 years that "an educated consumer is our best customer," died today of heart disease in New York City.

According to a press release, Mr. Syms founded his business in New York's financial district in 1959, and was the first retailer to sell off-price men's clothing. He narrated his well-known slogan in his first television commercial in 1974 and is used to this day. In 1983, when SYMS had expanded to 11 stores, Mr. Syms took the company public. He remained CEO of SYMS Corp. until 1998, when he was succeeded by daughter, Marcy. Mr. Syms continued as the company's chairman until his death.

Today, SYMS Clothing has 30 stores in 13 states. In June 2009, SYMS acquired Filene's Basement. The company currently operates 52 stores under the SYMS and Filene's Basement brands. SYMS branched out in 1980 to acquire the luxury haberdasher A. Sulka & Company, which it sold in 1989.

T. Rees Shapiro, an obit desk and Post Mortem contributor, writes:

British novelist Jon Canter had some interesting observations on the London Guardian Web site the other day about "bad news."

He wrote: "The fact is, death - currently, of British soldiers in Afganistan - is the top news story of the day, whatever the day is."

On the obituary desk, this is indeed the case. Canter had some ideas on how to give it. He said when given the duty to personally report some discouraging news about death to our friends, we often feel it is neccessary to dilute the information. As Mary Poppins once said, a "spoonful of sugar will help the medicine go down," but Canter asks to what end does that serve the bearer, or receiver, of sad news?

Everyone knows the story: You tell a friend you want to meet them for coffee, you sit and chit chat about how well Sally is doing on the soccer team, and how Timmy is such a fine pianist, when you interupt them mid-conversation with: "We need to talk, I have some bad news."

According to Canter, this is the wrong way to go about it. First, by taking the scenic conversational route and talking about happy subjects such as children and good things going on in life, the bearer of bad news is only giving the listener a higher point to sink from once they do hear the sad report.

Secondly, Canter said we shouldn't leave the the phrase, "I have some bad news," hanging in the air. Doesn't that only make the listener imagine what catastophic information they are about to hear? (Inevitably: Did you get fired? Do you have cancer?)

Much as we try to do on the obituary desk, here is Canter's suggestion: "Give it to them straight."

Canter: "State the headline, then amplify it: time and cause of death, state of nearest and dearest, funeral arrangements and so on." Then finally, as Canter points out, after delivering the blow people often want to put some last minute icing on it, the spoonful of sugar, to help the bereaved deal, that the death "was quick." That he or she "didn't suffer much."

Tsk, tsk, Canter said. "These homilies aren't news, though. They're speculation. How do you know he didn't suffer much? Did he tell you? No. Let bad news be bad news. There'll be time, later, when the news has sunk in, for a comforting little joke about The Weather. "