RIP

[TaylorSp]

Peggy Dunkle (Slamdunk7)has passed away, and I feel the need to say something here about such a wonderful person, friend, and mentor. :( :unsure:

 

I met Peggy on BBO in 2012, when I was in a nowhere job and really unhappy. I met her somehow on BBO, and she offered to teach me and play with me. She was always so patient, kind, and welcoming, and it was through her that I met so many nice bridge players. Also, my game greatly improved. She was an excellent player and teacher. Over the past 6 years I moved all around the world, and would always check in with her on BBO. She was unfailingly positive, kind, and so fun! Such a lovely human being! In 2014 I visited her in southern Indiana and we played in a sectional and earned some gold points and then went and celebrated at a local Cracker Barrel! We had a lovely day! I always promised myself and her I would return and visit her again, but I was never able to do so and now she is gone. I am very sad, and I know her many, many friends on BBO and in her local club will miss her.

 

Make sure you tell your loved ones you love them and often! I wish I would have had a chance to say that to my friend Peggy!

 

Best wishes,

 

Taylor Spence (TaylorSp)

[Chas_P]

I was thinking the same, including that maybe it is superfluous to mention it. I was also wondering just what to say. The RIP thread probably should not be given over to extensive discussion of my views, or anyone's views, of his strengths and weaknesses, or of how the world has changed, etc. etc. But maybe I can say this much. I voted for Dukakis, but I very much felt that the country was in good hands with GHWB as president. Bush's note to Bill Clinton as Clinton took office is a stunning example of grace and generosity, and the two were later to become good friends. At a young age he made an excellent choice of a life partner. More knowledgeable people have said much more.

 

He was a true statesman. We need more like him.

[The_Badger]

I was thinking the same, including that maybe it is superfluous to mention it. I was also wondering just what to say. The RIP thread probably should not be given over to extensive discussion of my views, or anyone's views, of his strengths and weaknesses, or of how the world has changed, etc. etc. But maybe I can say this much. I voted for Dukakis, but I very much felt that the country was in good hands with GHWB as president. Bush's note to Bill Clinton as Clinton took office is a stunning example of grace and generosity, and the two were later to become good friends. At a young age he made an excellent choice of a life partner. More knowledgeable people have said much more.

 

But there again, Ken, diplomacy hasn't always been a George H. W. Bush trait. Months before the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, where a Pan Am plane had been brought down by a bomb over Scotland with the loss of life of over 250 passengers and crew, Bush had said this about a similar incident (where a passenger plane had been misidentified and a similar number of innocent people killed.)

 

Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, who was running for president in 1988, said at the time of the U.S.S. Vincennes incident that he would “never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” (reported in The Washington Post)

 

That to me summed up the bellicose, over-patriotic rhetoric of a man obsessed with power.

[Al_U_Card]

But there again, Ken, diplomacy hasn't always been a George H. W. Bush trait. Months before the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, where a Pan Am plane had been brought down by a bomb over Scotland with the loss of life of over 250 passengers and crew, Bush had said this about a similar incident (where a passenger plane had been misidentified and a similar number of innocent people killed.)

 

Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, who was running for president in 1988, said at the time of the U.S.S. Vincennes incident that he would “never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” (reported in The Washington Post)

 

That to me summed up the bellicose, over-patriotic rhetoric of a man obsessed with power.

And spoken like the true "company" man that he was from the very start.

[Cyberyeti]

To go back to somebody of less import to the world, but a big impact on my teenage years, Pete Shelley, lead singer of the Buzzcocks

 

[y66]

Sister Wendy

 

From an early age she intended to become a nun, and at 16 she joined the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a teaching order, as Sister Michael of St. Peter. She became Sister Wendy after Vatican reforms relaxed formalities.

 

She studied literature at Oxford in the early 1950s, living in a convent and observing its strict code of silence for four years. She graduated at the top of her class. Returning to South Africa, she taught for 15 years at a Cape Town convent and later lectured at Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand.

 

After suffering three grand mal seizures and learning that she had a form of epilepsy, she received Vatican consent to give up teaching for a life of solitude. In 1970, she returned to England and moved into the trailer at the Carmelite Monastery.

 

“I really didn’t think it was anything,” Sister Wendy recalled of her decision to talk about art on television in her book “Sister Wendy on Prayer” (2006). “I thought it was just a weekend here or there.”

 

Sister Wendy eventually wrote some 25 books, including collections of poetry and meditations, and made a dozen documentaries, many released on DVD. She always returned to the austere seclusion that was her home for nearly a half-century, although her trailer was upgraded in 1994.

 

“The sisters worried about the lack of insulation, so they put up a small mobile home, which has a lavatory, bathroom and light fittings,” she told The Telegraph of London in 2010. “I have an electric kettle, fridge, warming oven and night storage heater, so my life is as comfortable as it needs to be.”

[y66]

Jessica Tcherepine

 

Her portraits — of pumpkins and peppers, mushrooms and morels, coconuts and quinces and more — combined a delicate artistic sensibility with superb technique, and scientific accuracy with a passion for nearly anything that grows out of the ground.

 

..Ms. Tcherepnine was also a longtime board member of the Horticultural Society of New York, for whom she taught botanical drawing to prisoners at Rikers Island, the city’s main jail.

 

“She’d come out several times a year and talk to the inmates about the colors and elements of a flower,” Sara Hobel, the society’s executive director, said in a telephone interview. “Once, she conducted a fantastic discussion with them about pepper plants.”

 

..“When I am doing a painting, my subject is the last thing I look at before I go to bed and the first thing I look at when I get up in the morning,” Ms. Tcherepnine wrote in the article for the American Society of Botanical Artists. “And I am thinking about it in between.”

[paulg]

Gerald Haase, 1950-2019

BBO: blooddoc

 

From the SBU website:

 

"We are sorry to report the death of Gerald Haase, one of our most successful players.

 

"He learned bridge at University, and soon became proficient. He played his first Camrose match in 1973, aged 23, with Michael Rosenberg, aged 19. Scotland won that series. Later he played with George Cuthbertson, and it is a matter of record that the partnership never lost a Camrose match. Gerald moved to England, but remained steadfastly Scottish. He played two more Camrose matches, with Victor Goldberg in 2003, and John Murdoch in 2015.

 

"He also enjoyed considerable success in the Junior Camrose, winning in 1973 and 1975.

 

"Gerald was one of the select band of Scots who have won the Gold Cup twice: in 1977 and 1982.

 

"Recently he has been one of our reliable Seniors. He was a member of the Scottish Senior team that played in the World Championships in Bali in 2013. He represented Scotland as a Senior in Budapest (2016) and Ostend (2018). He played for Scotland in the Teltscher Trophy (Senior Camrose) in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with John Murdoch. Last year, Scotland recorded one of the most convincing wins ever.

 

"Gerald was a medical doctor whose speciality was blood transfusions. He suffered a head injury following a heart attack/stroke towards the end of 2018, and sadly never came out of the induced coma.

 

"To quote John Murdoch: 'His heart was only flawed in the medical sense.' He is remembered by our organisers and TDs as one who always remembered to thank the staff.

 

I didn't know Gerald as well as many but met him often at events that I was helping to run, such as the Senior trials, Camrose matches, Senior Camrose matches, and when I was watching the Scottish National League. I found him much more amiable and pleasant than his NPCs, teammates, and opponents had suggested! He took an interest in what we were doing with the juniors and how things had changed since his day.

 

He was still very active and intended to play in the SBU Winter Foursomes this weekend and the Senior trials at the end of this month.

 

RIP

[barmar]

Goodbye, Dolly!

[y66]

John C. Bogle

 

John C. Bogle, 89, who revolutionized the way Americans save for the future, championed the interests of the small investor, and railed against corporate greed and the excesses of Wall Street, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Bryn Mawr, his family confirmed.

 

Mr. Bogle, a chipper and unpretentious man who invited everyone to call him “Jack,” was founder and for many years chairman of the Vanguard Group, the Malvern-based mutual-fund company, where he pioneered low-cost, low-fee investing and mutual funds tied to stock-market indexes. These innovations, reviled and ridiculed at first, enabled millions of ordinary Americans to build wealth to buy a home, pay for college, and retire comfortably.

 

Along the way, Vanguard, which Mr. Bogle launched in 1974, became a titan in the financial-services industry, with 16,600 employees and over $5 trillion in assets by the end of 2018, and Mr. Bogle earned a reputation as not only an investing sage but a maverick whose integrity and old-fashioned values set an example that many admired and few could match.

 

“Jack could have been a multibillionaire on a par with Gates and Buffett,” said William Bernstein, an Oregon investment manager and author of 12 books on finance and economic history. Instead, he turned his company into one owned by its mutual funds, and in turn their investors, "that exists to provide its customers the lowest price. He basically chose to forgo an enormous fortune to do something right for millions of people. I don’t know any other story like it in American business history.”

In his 70s, he displayed the energy of men half his age, and his pace and ambition were the more remarkable because of his lifelong battle with heart disease, the result of a congenital defect that affected the heart’s electrical current.

 

Mr. Bogle had his first heart attack in 1960, when he was only 30, and his heart stopped numerous times thereafter. When he was 37, his doctor advised him to retire. Mr. Bogle’s response was to switch doctors.

 

Mr. Bogle outlived three pacemakers, and kept a gym bag with a squash racket by his desk. In 1996, surgeons at Hahnemann University Hospital replaced his faulty heart with a strong one, ending a 128-day wait in the hospital. He reunited with his doctors years later.

 

“He was fiercely competitive when it counted, more intellectually alert than any person I’ve ever met, willing to face — indeed, almost court — controversy and criticism, stubborn but willing to compromise when absolutely necessary, and most importantly, loving, sentimental, kind, charitable, and courageous."

.

Mr. Bogle was proud of the many jobs he held in his youth — newspaper delivery boy, waiter, ticket seller, mail clerk, cub reporter, runner for a brokerage house, pinsetter in a bowling alley.

 

“I grew up in the best possible way,” Mr. Bogle said in 2008, “because we had social standing — I never thought I was inferior to anybody because we didn’t have any money — but I had to work for everything I got.”

 

“When he had the heart transplant, it changed him dramatically. He became much more connected to the family. He was very emotional, and teared up easily over things. He was literally reborn, and he really appreciated the chance of having a second go at life.”

 

“In a lot of ways, the last decade, an extra decade of my life, has been the happiest of my life,” Mr. Bogle said in 2008. “I’m contributing to society. I’m doing what I want to do. I’m writing what I want and saying what I want, and I think my name and reputation, for whatever that’s worth, have been enhanced.”

 

A man who believed in the value of introspection and who was always questioning his own motives and behavior, Mr. Bogle sought to define what it means to lead a good life. It was not about wealth, power, fame and other conventional notions of success, he concluded. “It’s about being a good husband, a good father, a good colleague, a good member of the community. Everything else pales by comparison.”

[barmar]

John C. Bogle

This is coincidentally BBO-related, as we use Vanguard for our 401(k) retirement plan.

[y66]

From Remembering Nathan Glazer at The Bulwark:

 

Nathan Glazer, the preeminent sociologist and a pioneering neoconservative critic of progressive social reforms, died Saturday at the age of 95. A child of Jewish immigrants from Warsaw, Glazer began his career sympathetic to socialism before becoming disillusioned with the effects of the policies he once championed. He joined other former liberals like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz as one of the originators of the neoconservative movement. We’ve collected remembrances and homages to him here.

In 2017, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an interview of Glazer by John Kaag. The last question is perhaps the most illuminating about the breadth of his curiosity and the flexibility of his intelligence — all without arrogance or complacency:

 

When you think about your career, what are you most proud of?

 

Maybe I should leave this out, but I’ve been thinking of my past and not thinking about it as large and significant. I had some fortunate accidents, which gave me a prominence I probably don’t deserve. I worked on a book that became The Lonely Crowd, and it became the biggest best seller in American sociology. I was supposed to write the great book on American ethnicity, and eventually, I didn’t. I’d collect essays and think about it, but then I thought there were enough good people saying good things about the issue. Sometimes I think that I wasn’t self-directed enough, that I got diverted into too many different topics.

 

Of course American Judaism — that was really my first book. And it became a kind of semi-classic in this little field, so that commits you in a way to go to conferences and so on. And then there is the second edition, the third edition, and eventually you lose touch since so much keeps happening. Like I said, I got diverted.

 

I was interested in architecture always. And when I came to Harvard I was into art. I had a connection to the architecture school at Berkeley, and at Harvard they offered me a similar opportunity.

 

My interests were diverse, and I’m pleased that despite how diverse they were I was able to achieve a reputation in sociology. I certainly don’t regret not having made a fuller commitment to the discipline, because I had these interests. What could I do?

With Glazer’s passing, the last of a generation of critics of progressivism has gone. The entire conservative movement is indebted to them for their intellectual honesty, unquenchable curiosity, and rigor. Their shadows, Glazer’s included, seem only to grow longer as the virtues they embodied seem to grow rarer.

[kenberg]

From Remembering Nathan Glazer at The Bulwark:

 

 

 

 

Although I have "always" known the name Nathan Glazer I don't think I have ever read anything he wrote. The above makes me think that was my error.

 

I grew up Protestant in Minnesota in the 1940s-50s, which is, or at least can be, a lot different from growing up Jewish in New York in the 1920s-30s but academic life tends to throw people of different backgrounds together. Last night I had a long chat on the phone with a childhood friend who lives on (well, on the edge of) a lake in northern Minnesota. I also had an email chat with a mathematician friend, Jewish and only a little younger than Glazer, who grew up in New York and whose father went to jail during the HUAC days. The world is an interesting place. Maybe I will read some Glazer.

 

Thanks for posting this.

[barmar]

Although I have "always" known the name Nathan Glazer I don't think I have ever read anything he wrote. The above makes me think that was my error.

I'd never heard of him, but I have a bridge friend named Nathan Glasser, and I momentarily had a scare when I read the first line.

[kenberg]

I'd never heard of him, but I have a bridge friend named Nathan Glasser, and I momentarily had a scare when I read the first line.

 

I just looked him up on the Wik and they mention "Beyond the Melting Pot" was published in 1963. This seems right. I was young and interested in such things, so that's why I recall the name, and I was in grad student and my daughter turned 2 that year, which pretty much explains why I didn't read that or much of anything other than math books..

[y66]

Erik Olin Wright; Marxist Sociologist With a Pragmatic Approach

 

Dr. Wright, who was the Vilas distinguished research professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, spent his entire teaching career at Madison, starting in 1976. His presence was a draw for students and helped the university’s sociology department maintain its place for decades as one of the premier departments in the country.

 

While immersed in theoretical aspects of social class and social change, Dr. Wright also delved into real-world challenges like poverty, income inequality and unemployment. His venue was often the A. E. Havens Center for Social Justice, which he established to bring in visiting scholars to discuss progressive ideas.

 

He wrote hundreds of research papers and published 15 books. A 16th, “How to Be an Anti-Capitalist for the 21st Century,” is to be published this year.

 

Part of a circle of intellectuals that prided itself on being nonideological — as distinct from doctrinaire Marxists — he believed in open debate and empirical evidence.

 

.. In recent years, Dr. Wright’s focus had shifted “to the democratization of the economy and to the ruling class,” said Mitchell Duneier, a former Madison colleague who is now chairman of Princeton’s sociology department.

 

Dr. Duneier, who interviewed Dr. Wright in December for a sociology textbook, quoted him as saying:

 

“If I were to write a 50-page text on how to think about class in the 21st century, I would begin by saying the problem of class is not the problem of the poor, the working class or the middle class. It’s the problem of the ruling class — of a capitalist class that’s so immensely wealthy that they are capable of destroying the world as a side effect of their private pursuit of gain.”

 

In addition to scholarship, Dr. Wright loved teaching, and his courses attracted many non-Marxists. When he accepted the university’s distinguished teaching award in 1998, he said his best ideas came from dialogue with students.

 

“Scholarship remains a passion,” he said, “but teaching is a joy.”

[kenberg]

Erik Olin Wright; Marxist Sociologist With a Pragmatic Approach

 

 

 

 

This RIP thread has been very useful to me. I had never heard of Erik Wright but I have now gone to his website and I plan to follow some of the links. This "class" stuff interests me, and often I think fiction writers come closer to getting it right than academics. Two books that I recently read are The Nix and Olive Kitteridge. A striking scene in The Nix has a young girl, a high school senior with an unhappy home life in a small Iowa town whose father is an immigrant factory worker, leaning against the walls of her school, listening to the band practicing. She had played the oboe but her anxiety kept her from performing. She is secretly reading the poetry of Allen Ginsburg. In Olive Kitteridge,a young man with a very modest background is contemplating suicide, and recalling the poetry of John Berryman whose poetry often focused on his own father's suicide. .

 

The point is that class, although definitely in the background, is not the conscious issue. She was not reading Ginsburg so that she could move up in economic or social class, she was reading Ginsburg because she liked to read Ginsburg. For me, it was mathematics and physics that I found interesting. Moving up in class was not at all the motivation. Sort of the opposite, really. In my immediate neighborhood my interests made me a weird kid. But by age 10 or so you don't have to stay in your immediate neighborhood.

 

There is often too much focus in learned treatises on "rising above your background". I was fine with my parents and their way of life, I just was more interested in math and physics than I was in my father's occupation of installing weatherstripping.

 

Anyway, thanks again for another interesting post. I expect to be seeing a bit of what Wright has to say.

[barmar]

There is often too much focus in learned treatises on "rising above your background". I was fine with my parents and their way of life, I just was more interested in math and physics than I was in my father's occupation of installing weatherstripping.

I think a better way to look at it is "not being limited by your background". If you want to follow in your parents' footsteps, fine, but it shouldn't be your fate if you have other interests.

[kenberg]

I think a better way to look at it is "not being limited by your background". If you want to follow in your parents' footsteps, fine, but it shouldn't be your fate if you have other interests.

 

With this I agree entirely. What I was trying to get at is that, in my experience, movement from one class to another is not usually motivated by class concerns. Movement from one class to another is a by-product as a person pursues more specific goals. When I was in high school I would drive over to the university in the evening for physics lectures. I did this for the same reason that I went swimming. I enjoyed it. Any change in class that came out of it was accidental.

 

 

Back to Wright. I listened to the first 15 minutes of one of his lectures:

It is very academic. I plan to look at more but my thinking right now is that it is unlikely that he and I would have found much common ground if we were to discuss class. The old joke is that Wagner's music is better than it sounds, maybe that applies here as well. I plan to take another look.

[barmar]

With this I agree entirely. What I was trying to get at is that, in my experience, movement from one class to another is not usually motivated by class concerns. Movement from one class to another is a by-product as a person pursues more specific goals. When I was in high school I would drive over to the university in the evening for physics lectures. I did this for the same reason that I went swimming. I enjoyed it. Any change in class that came out of it was accidental.

It's easy to say things like that when you were already in a decent class. Your father probably made a decent living installing weatherproofing, affording you the opportunity to pursue your dreams.

 

If you're living hand to mouth, your decisions are mostly motivated by survival, not enjoyment. You take whatever jobs you can get. If you think about class concerns, it's mostly about how society has all these barriers that make it hard for you to move up to a class where you can do what you enjoy rather than just get by.

[kenberg]

It's easy to say things like that when you were already in a decent class. Your father probably made a decent living installing weatherproofing, affording you the opportunity to pursue your dreams.

 

If you're living hand to mouth, your decisions are mostly motivated by survival, not enjoyment. You take whatever jobs you can get. If you think about class concerns, it's mostly about how society has all these barriers that make it hard for you to move up to a class where you can do what you enjoy rather than just get by.

 

Yes, there is the "hand to mouth" class, those in serious poverty. And that wasn't me. But I think that Wright was addressing broader class issues than this. In the talk that I cited, he gets into the Marx view of class, the Weber view, the Durkheim viwe (I jad never heard of Durkheim), he lists these people, and then he speaks of David Grusky whom I also had never heard of. back in the 50s I had a friend who was always talking about Max Weber and trying to get me to read him Nope. I did try Marx once.

 

I have now listened to more of Wright. He really likes metaphors. He really likes analogies. I find them distracting. He sees meaning in a rule change in basketball from, I think, the 1950s. Ok, if he says so. we are now 20 some minutes into his talk and we are discussing football.

 

I need to stop. I don't think I am going to finish this tak. Now we are back to baseball, and how high the pitching mound is.

 

Ah! He just said "Enough of my sports analogies." Yes!

 

[y66]

Izzy Young

 

Izzy Young, whose Greenwich Village shop, the Folklore Center, was the beating heart of the midcentury folk music revival — and who in 1961 presented the first New York concert by a young Bob Dylan — died on Monday at his home in Stockholm. He was 90.

 

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Philomène Grandin.

 

Anyone wanting to capture the essence of the times could do far worse than head to the Folklore Center, at 110 Macdougal Street, between Bleecker and West Third Streets. Established in 1957, it was nominally a music store, selling records, books, instruments, sheet music and fan magazines, most sprung from sweat and mimeograph machines, like Sing Out!, Caravan and Gardyloo.

 

In actual practice, the center was also equal parts hiring hall; Schwab’s Pharmacy, where young hopefuls awaited discovery; matchbox recital space for organized performances and impromptu jam sessions; nerve center for gossip on a par with any small-town barbershop; and forum for continuing, crackling debate on the all-consuming subject of folk music, which thanks in no small part to Mr. Young was enjoying wide, renewed attention.

 

“I began hanging out at the Folklore Center, the citadel of Americana folk music,” Mr. Dylan wrote in his memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004), recalling his arrival in New York in 1961. “The small store was up a flight of stairs and the place had an antique grace. It was like an ancient chapel, like a shoebox sized institute.”

 

Crackling loudest above the din was Mr. Young, who, with his horn-rimmed glasses, prodigious vocal capacity and bottomless cornucopia of opinion, was the platonic, genially abrasive New York nebbish from Central Casting.

 

“His voice was like a bulldozer and always seemed too loud for the little room,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “Izzy was always a little rattled over something or other. He was sloppily good-natured. In reality a romantic. To him, folk music glittered like a mound of gold. It did for me, too.”

 

Until he closed the shop in 1973 to move to Stockholm and start a similar center, Mr. Young reigned supreme as a handicapper (“The first few times I met Dylan, I wasn’t that impressed,” he said. “But as he began writing those great songs, I realized he was really something”); an impresario (he organized hundreds of concerts throughout the city, including Mr. Dylan’s first formal appearance, at the Carnegie Hall complex, as well as performances by the New Lost City Ramblers, Dave Van Ronk, Jean Ritchie and Phil Ochs); and an evangelist who almost single-handedly put the “Folk” in Folk City, the storied Village nightclub.

 

He was also a writer, with a regular column in Sing Out!; a broadcaster, with a folk music show on WBAI in New York; an agitator (in 1961, he helped organize successful public protests after the city banned folk music from Washington Square Park); a ferocious keeper of the castle (“He was even known to throw people out of his store,” Dick Weissman, a former member of the folk group the Journeymen, wrote, “simply because they irritated him”); and an equally ferocious defender of the faith. (Mr. Young repudiated Mr. Dylan after he began wielding an electric guitar in the mid-’60s.)

 

If, at the end of the day, the Folklore Center was a less-than-successful capitalist enterprise — who, after all, goes into folk music to get rich? — it scarcely mattered. Joni Mitchell was discovered there. Peter found Mary there, after seeing her photo on a wall. (Paul joined them soon afterward.) Mr. Van Ronk, then the more established musician, met the newly arrived Mr. Dylan there and invited him to take the stage at the nearby Gaslight Cafe.

 

Mr. Young, in short, was the original folknik — quite literally, for it was he who had coined the term, in the late 1950s, as attested by the Oxford English Dictionary.

[PassedOut]

John Dingell

 

Impoverishment of the elderly because of medical expenses was a common and often accepted occurrence. Opponents of the Medicare program that saved the elderly from that cruel fate called it “socialized medicine.” Remember that slander if there’s a sustained revival of silly red-baiting today.

 

Not five decades ago, much of the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth — our own Great Lakes — were closed to swimming and fishing and other recreational pursuits because of chemical and bacteriological contamination from untreated industrial and wastewater disposal. Today, the Great Lakes are so hospitable to marine life that one of our biggest challenges is controlling the invasive species that have made them their new home.

 

We regularly used and consumed foods, drugs, chemicals and other things (cigarettes) that were legal, promoted and actively harmful. Hazardous wastes were dumped on empty plots in the dead of night. There were few if any restrictions on industrial emissions. We had only the barest scientific knowledge of the long-term consequences of any of this.

 

And there was a great stain on America, in the form of our legacy of racial discrimination. There were good people of all colors who banded together, risking and even losing their lives to erase the legal and other barriers that held Americans down. In their time, they were often demonized and targeted, much like other vulnerable men and women today.

 

Please note: All of these challenges were addressed by Congress. Maybe not as fast as we wanted, or as perfectly as hoped. The work is certainly not finished. But we’ve made progress — and in every case, from the passage of Medicare through the passage of civil rights, we did it with the support of Democrats and Republicans who considered themselves first and foremost to be Americans.

 

I’m immensely proud, and eternally grateful, for having had the opportunity to play a part in all of these efforts during my service in Congress. And it’s simply not possible for me to adequately repay the love that my friends, neighbors and family have given me and shown me during my public service and retirement.

[y66]

Walter P Jones

 

Out of college, Mr. Jones joined the National Guard and became a wine salesman as well as a Catholic. In 1982 he was drafted by local Democrats to fill out the term of a state representative who had died in office. Mr. Jones served for 10 years, and when his father retired from Congress, he ran for his seat.

 

Walter Jr. lost the 1992 Democratic primary. He tried again in a reconfigured district in 1994, by which time he had switched parties; a strong foe of abortion rights, he felt more comfortable as a Republican. He won that race and rode into office as part of a Republican wave led by the new speaker, Newt Gingrich.

 

Courtly and well liked, Mr. Jones was voted the nicest member of the House of Representatives in a 2004 survey of top Capitol Hill staffers by The Washingtonian magazine.

 

His political impulses were basically libertarian, and he occasionally strayed from Republican orthodoxy. He fiercely opposed measures that would contribute to the national debt and voted against President Trump’s tax-cut bill for that reason. He denounced the influence of money in politics and urged Congress to counter the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision

 

But after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when President Bush sought congressional authority to use military force in Iraq, Mr. Jones gave his wholehearted support.

 

Filled with patriotic fervor, he made perhaps his biggest publicity splash when he pushed for the menus in the Capitol cafeteria to be changed to read “freedom fries” instead of “French fries,” an idea he borrowed from a North Carolina restaurant chain.

 

He was roundly applauded by Republicans and ridiculed by Democrats. (Tina Fey, on “Saturday Night Live,” said that in France, “American cheese is now referred to as ‘idiot cheese.’ ”)

 

It was only about a month later that Mr. Jones attended the Camp Lejeune memorial ceremony that would affect him so profoundly and lead him to apologize, many times, in public.

 

“I did not do what I should have done, to read and find out whether Bush was telling us the truth about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and having weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Jones told NPR in 2015.

 

“Because I did not do my job then, I helped kill 4,000 Americans,” he said. “And I will go to my grave regretting that.”

[Winstonm]

Gene Littler - professional golfer