Donald Weinstein
Dr. Ronald Weinstein, who envisioned the future of telepathology, died Dec. 3 at a medical center in Tucson, AZ. He was 83.
Dr. Weinstein is perhaps the father of a technology now known as telepathology that enables specialists to render diagnoses and other medical opinion from afar using telecommunications technologies. At the time, 1986, the internet was in its early stages, fiber optics were not widely available, and the high-definition screens now common were unknown.
Dr. Weinstein saw early on the potential for telepathology to broaden medical access. “The limited availability of pathologies in some rural locations and areas serviced by federal medical centers is a bottleneck in the United States health care delivery system,” he wrote in Human Pathology in May 1986. By the time he died, his early vision of telemedicine’s possibilities had become an integral part of the health care system, not only in pathology but also in numerous other specialties, bringing clinical services to hundreds of thousands of patients.
Judith Davidoff
Judith Davidoff, who mastered an assortment of stringed instruments not widely played for centuries, especially the cello-like viola da gamba, and became a leading proponent and player of early music, died Dec. 19 at her home in Manhattan. She was 94.
Curiosity led to a passion for early music and the instruments used to perform it. She became part of an early-music scene in the middle of the last century and became a major force in classical music, even influencing how works from various periods were performed.
The curiosity that first led Ms. Davidoff to early music stayed with her for her entire career. In 1971, for example, when she was already established as an early-music performer, she took a course in how to dance the court dances of the Baroque era. Learning the steps gave her new insights into how the accompanying music should be performed. She was also always on the lookout for new discoveries, touring the world in search of instruments to play. Although the instruments she played may have been from earlier eras, she believed new works could and should still be created for them. She was devoted to getting living composers to write for the viola da gamba.
Bob Saget
Bob Saget, the standup comic and actor known as Danny Tanner on “Full House” and the host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” was found dead on Sunday in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes. The cause of death was not known. He was 65.
On “Full House,” Mr. Saget played a widowed father who shared his house with his three daughters, his brother-in-law, and his best friend. The show aired from 1987 to 1995. Later, he voiced the narrator of “How I Met Your Mother,” an older and wiser version of the show’s protagonist. In contrast to his squeaky-clean image on ”Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Mr. Saget delighted in raunchy, profanity and scatological-laden stand-up routines.
Marilyn Bergman
Marilyn Bergman, who with her husband, Alan Bergman, gave the world memorable lyrics about “misty watercolor memories” and “the windmills of your mind” and won three Academy Awards, died on Jan. 8 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93.
The Bergmans, working with composer Marvin Hamlisch, won the 1974 best-song Academy Award for “The Way We Were,” from the Robert Redford-Barbra Streisand romance of the same name. The album of that movie’s score also won the Bergmans their only Grammy Award. Their other best-song Oscar, “The Windmills of Your Mind,” was written with Michel Legrand for the 1968 film, “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Their third Oscar was for the score of Ms. Streisand’s 1983 film “Yentl,” also written with Mr. Legrand.
Aside from the Oscar winners, their other popular songs included the title track of Frank Sinatra’s album “Nice ‘n’ Easy,” written with the songwriter Lew Spence; the ballad “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” from the 1969 movie “The Happy Ending,” with music by Mr. Legrand; and “Where Do You Start?,” written with Johnny Mandel.
The Bergmans also won three Emmy Awards: for the score of the 1976 TV movie “Sybil,” written with Leonard Rosenman; “Ordinary Miracles,” written with Mr. Hamlisch; and “A Ticket to Dream,” another Hamlisch creation. On TV, they wrote the lyrics to the theme songs for the hit sitcoms “Maude,” “Alice,” “Good Times” and “Brooklyn Bridge, and the drama series “In the Heat of the Night.”
The Bergmans were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980, and jointly received a Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2013.
Carl Bennett
Carl Bennett, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder with his wife Dorothy of the Caldor discount department store chain, died Dec. 23 at his home in Greenwich, CT. He was 101.
The Caldor stores continued to expand from the 1950s to the mid 1980s until the Bennetts sold the company of 120 stores to Associated Dry Goods. They had opened their first store in 1951, in a walkup loft in Port Chester, NY, and soon expanded to Stamford, Norwalk and Riverside, CT. In 1961, Caldor became publicly traded on the American Stock Exchange. In 1983, Caldor reached $1 billion in sales.
Carl Bennett received Israel’s Prime Minister Award for distinguished service in 1973, and was awarded Discounter of the Year in 1982. He was inducted into the Retailer Hall of Fame in 1983.
The Bennetts gave generously to Stamford Hospital, Fairfield University, Greenwich Hospital, Jewish Senior Services, the Weitzmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and Yeshiva University.
Robert J. Birnbaum
Robert J. Birnbaum, who as president of the New York Stock Exchange is credited with helping to navigate a major financial crisis during the U.S. stock market’s plunge on what became known as Black Monday in 1987, and who later helped design market circuit breakers to head off future panics, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Boca Raton, FL. He was 94.
Mr. Birnbaum spent his career on Wall Street as one of its most reliable stewards. After studying the mechanics of marketplaces in the mid-20th century as a member of a special team at the Securities and Exchange Commission, he helped reshape stock exchanges while presiding over the American and New York exchanges.
When U.S. stock prices fell more than 22 percent on Oct. 19, 1987, his clear public comments helped soothe investors and prevent a frenzied sell-off from continuing. In the days that followed, Mr. Birnbaum played a crucial role in bringing together the leaders of various exchanges to hash out what had happened and how such a crisis could be averted in the future.
Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern, who for three decades set the bar for courtroom ethical standards in New York State as the first administrator of its Commission on Judicial Conduct, died Jan. 6 in a hospital in the Bronx. He was 86.
Mr. Stern led the commission from its inception in 1974 through 2003, a period in which it sacked, censured or admonished some 600 judges for offenses including corruption, conflicts of interest, favoritism, improper demeanor, and proscribed political activity. Mr. Stern’s scrutiny of judicial conduct set new standards of professionalism in courts across the nation.
He also criticized prosecutors for equating indictments with convictions, in particular Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s.
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