Frank E. Campbell

The investment advice sounds solid. "People that don't buy our stock just don't like money. It's the greatest investment I've ever seen. People are always going to die."

Imbedded in a great two page spread in this NYT Sunday Styles Section is a story by Alex Vadukul about the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, that any New Yorker worth the value of a fully loaded Metro Card will tell you, is the preferred mortuary/funeral home for NYC's well-known, and sometimes not so well known.

The quote, albeit from 1993, comes from Robert L. Waltrip, founder of Service Corporation International, a Texas-based conglomerate that went public in 1969 and that now operates 1,900 cemeteries and funeral homes, including Frank E. Campbell, Riverside Memorial Chapel, and Walter B. Cooke, marquee names in providing funeral services in New York City.

I've been getting the Sunday Times home delivered now from my usual Monday-Saturday carrier gratis, for some reason. I was about to email the carrier and tell them not to bother, since I long ago gave up on the Sunday Times (They don't even have a separate sports section anymore.) I get advance Sunday sections with Saturday's delivery. I don't really need anymore.

But today's Sunday edition brought me this wonderful two, full-page story about the history of the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, introduced by an absolutely priceless nearly full page 1926 photo on the first page of the Sunday Styles section. Hold off on the email.

I delivered many a floral funeral piece to Campbell's in my prior life as a delivery boy for the family flower shop in the 1960s. You used the service entrance, of course, and there in a room populated with several people at desks was an entire staff just placing death notices with NYC newspapers.

None of the deceased I ever delivered flowers for were famous. Th most famous one I ever delivered an  arrangement for wasn't to Campbell's, but to an Episcopal Church in Riverdale, the Bronx, Christ Church.

The name was famous by being former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's sister,  Gemma Gluck. Despite Gemma's and Fiorello's mother being Jewish, the pair were raised as Episcopalians.

The delivery was sometime in the '60s and I only learned of the relationship to the famous mayor through a woman who was in the church by the bier who asked me if I knew who she was. I didn't. I don't know who sent the flowers, and it struck me that there was no one was in the church but this woman and the deceased, someone for whom I would have expected to be receiving a bigger send-off given the fact that she was the sister of perhaps the most famous mayor in the city's history.

But this was the mid-1960s and Fiorello had passed away in 1947. Given that, it started to be clearer why no one else was there. Fame is fleeting, and fame by association even more fleeting.

The lede to the story lists some of the many famous people for whom Frank Campbell's provided services. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's name leads the list. And while her burial arrangements were handled by Campbell's, she wasn't waked there.

Senator Ted Kennedy, Jackie's brother-in-law, made arrangements to have Jackie waked in her Fifth Avenue apartment so that swarms of mourners could be kept away. I remember the news stories of the time that portable embalming equipment was brought in, as well as a casket, all from Campbell's. The online version of the piece shows a photo of the casket being brought into the apartment building.  Privately invited mourners got to pay their respects by being allowed into the apartment. 

The front page of the Sunday Styles section is a treasure of a 1926 photo of what it looked like outside Campbell's when Rudolph Valentino was waked there.  Valentino was a silent screen heartthrob nicknamed The Sheik. His funeral brought out best in female fan hysteria.

In 1926 Campbell's was located on Broadway at West 66th Street. Look closely at the photo on the first page of the Sunday Styles section and you can see trolley tracks, streetcars and double decker buses. In the top left hand portion of the photo you can glimpse the 9th Avenue El, the first elevated line built in Manhattan. Eventually there was a 2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue and 6th Avenue El. The 9th Avenue El was dismantled in 1940. 

The pictured El is at the intersection of 65th Street, 9th Avenue and Broadway, Broadway pretty much being  a north/south thoroughfare that cuts a swath through the length of Manhattan in what is the original cow path. It is a fantastic photo for any NYC nostalgic nut.

The only time I was ever in attendance at Campbell's for someone who had passed away was in 1968, when the father of two brothers I was very close to was waked at Campbell's in February. He was Jewish, and the services for him were held in a chapel at Campbell's.

One Thanksgiving I was over the brothers' apartment on West 55th Street for dinner when their mother quipped that when her two older gentlemen, her husband and his brother had drifted off to sleep after the meal, that she hoped she wasn't going to have to call Campbell's twice that evening. (She didn't have to.)

Given that the NYT has given what might be considered so much free advertising to Frank E. Campbell's, investment in the business of dying might be worth a look at.

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Septembers (11 & 16)

The following memorializes the terrorist events of 9/11 at New York's World Trade Center and those of the executions at Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield on the morning of 9/16 at 1440 Broadway, our temporary office space after losing our offices on 9/11.

The dates on the stones let you measure the time
Of the lives that lived in between.
The bracketed years reveal to the current
The joys and the troubles they've seen.

On any given day a person is born
You can record the date of their birth.
And on any given day a person can die
And you can record that they've left this earth.

And the morning we made our dusty descent,
An accomplishment undiminished,
We learned of the others and their bracketed date,
And our own, that remained unfinished.

So it is incredible to believe the end can be met
At the hands of someone we knew.
He put an end to life, he put an end to himself,
But he didn't put an end to you.
______________________________________________

September 16, 2002

Twenty-two years is not a so-called milestone anniversary, but no less memorable.

No one ever dies
Who lives in hearts
Left behind.

https://onofframp.blogspot.com/2023/01/september-16-2002.html

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#

Watching Jeopardy each night is a humbling experience. Aside from marveling at the correct answers to clues that I'm often convinced no one will know (and sometimes no one does know, except host Ken Jennings who has all the answers), I learn something I never expected. Did you know the symbol # has a formal name? I bet you didn't. Octothorpe.

An AI generated Google response tells us:

The formal word for the hashtag symbol is "octothorpe". The word "octo" refers to the eight points in the symbol, and "Thorpe" may come from the surname Thorpe. [Is that a wild guess?]

The hashtag symbol (#) has been referred to as the pound sign, crosshatch, and hash mark. The term "hash" may have originated from the phrase "hash mark".  [Wow, what are the chances of that?]

The hashtag was originally designed for categorizing posts on Twitter, but now it's commonly used to supplement or comment on text or images. [Whatever you say.]

It's a new Jeopardy season, so we're not made to look too stupid by the prosaic contestants who are first-timers. I don't remember the category, or the phrasing that involved "octothorpe" but the word was part of the clue. Hashtag was the answer.

I think it was the middle contestant, an active-duty Navy Lieutenant Commander, who correctly fielded the clue, and who who went on to win the mach. He'll be back tonight.

Thankfully, no automated message has never told anyone to hit the "octothorpe" sign when they are finished. Everyone would still be on phone looking for the right key to press. 

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I Often Wonder

I often wonder, why am I suddenly thinking about something? What triggered my thoughts to seek out a Robert McFadden obituary for Amory Bradford, the NYT chief labor negotiator with the striking Typographical Union No. 6, headed by Bertram Powers, during the famous strike of 1962-1963?

The 114-day strike was monumental. Until then, most people really did get their news from newspapers. There were 8 newspapers published daily in New York City at the time. During the strike, TV news expanded (some might say exploded), and what had been the 11 o'clock news that lasted for 15 minutes, became the 11 o'clock news that went for 30 minutes. More expansion followed. The TV media genie was released from the bottle, and was never put back.  

I can full well tell you what triggered those thoughts.

In what we call our computer room/my "office" I have my father's desk from when he and my mother lived in Philadelphia after the war. They had both been freshly discharged from the Army and my father was working aa a design engineer at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. 

My father told me the desk came from Wanamaker's Department store and cost what was then a staggering sum of $75. It's a cherry wood, knee hole desk that has been in my family every since. It is now one of the two desks I have in the computer room. It's been in this room now for over 30 years so it's not something I don't see or use everyday.

For some reason as I was reaching over the desk to turn the air conditioning on when I thought of the roll top desk we had in the back of the flower shop. Well, it started out as a roll top desk, but my father told me his older brother, at some point when the desk was in the flower shop's prior location across 18th Street, removed the roll top and left the flat surface and drawers. It was a "truncated" roll top desk for evermore and where I did all my homework through high school in the '60s.

My father was the third of four boys. He was born in 1915 and his older brother Angelo was probably born in 1907, or 1908. My father never liked Angelo and I suspect the little I knew of Angelo when I was growing up, I can imagine he was a bully to the three younger brothers.

Angelo probably dropped out of high school to work and help support the family, and was likely jealous of the second brother George who went to the Naval Academy and my father, who went to Steven's Tech in Hoboken, then Syracuse University to study engineering.

I only ever knew Uncle Andy as a bartender at the Vanderbilt Hotel's Crypt Bar Room. The few times I saw him there he was wearing the full regalia hotel bartender vest with epaulets that made him look like a Mexican general.

The Crypt Room is a gorgeous, mosaic, low-tiled, ceiled room that is still there, as is the rest of the building that was converted to co-op or condo apartments. I think the address is 4 Park Avenue, just south of 34th Street on the west side of the avenue.

Mother's Day is one of the busiest days in a florist's life. We were busy. Very busy. But handling it. My Uncle Andy had little to do with the flower shop, but lived nearby at 36th Street off 3rd Avenue. 

One Mother's day he decided to pay us an unexpected visit and wanted "to help." Doing what I don't know, because he had no idea what to do with flowers. I don't think he wanted to deliver them. My father glowered.

Thinking back at the moment, as I have many times and just did again, I would describe the shop's temperature as having dropped 15° when my father greeted his older brother with, "No, we're doing just fine." Something like that.

Maybe it's because I just read William McDonald's tribute to Robert D. McFadden on retiring after 63 years at the New York Times at 87, after winning a Pulitzer for Rewriting and having countless obituaries published, while 250 of his advance obituaries await being sprung from the obit morgue to eventually float to an edition's page when the subject passes away. They all eventually pass away.

Where/how did I come up with the thought of a drop in room temperature when someone odious enters a room? A McFadden obit, specifically the one he wrote about Amory Bradford when Amory passed away at 85 in 1998. It did a posting on it in 2009, the first year of this blog.

In 2009 there a presentation at the New York Public library with Daniel Okrent, Marilyn Johnson and Ann Wroe on the stage discussing obituaries. The large room was packed, standing room only.

Marilyn Johnson had just written a book about newspaper obituaries: The Dead Beat: Lost Souls Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. Ann Wroe wrote obituaries for The Economist magazine, one appearing with each weekly issue, and gained considerable notoriety when she wrote one about an African Grey parrot Alex.

Daniel Okrent mentioned he was the first New York Times ombudsman, a position he likened, probably quite accurately, as "the complaint department."

Mr. Okrent fished out some examples of NYT obituaries. One was written by Robert D. McFadden on the demise of Amory Bradford in 1998, a New York Times vice president and chief labor negotiator for the Publishers Association with the striking Typographical Workers' Union No. 6 during the 1962-1963 labor strike that became a 114-day strike, and a watershed moment in the history of newspapers and media in general.

To say Mr. Bradford was of a patrician nature and imperious bearing, would only just start the adjectives needed to describe him. In McFadden's September 6, 1998 obit on Amory Bradford, Mr. McFadden quotes the chief labor writer for the Times, A.H. Raskin, who wrote about the negotiations after the strike ended, as saying, "one top-level mediator said of Mr. Bradford that 'he brought an attitude of such icy disdain into the conference rooms that the mediator often felt he ought to ask the hotel to send up more heat.'"    

An obituary is not just about the person who has passed away; it's about the language used to describe the person who has passed away.

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To Be Continued

I gasped just a bit, then recovered. When I first checked the NYT obituary page online I saw that William McDonald, who I know to be the editor of the obits page, had written about Robert D. McFadden, a long-time NYT reporter—rewrite man—and obituary writer. It would only be fitting that Bill would write McFadden's obit.

Maybe Bill has written McFadden's obit, but it will be an advance one, revealed to the world, well who knows when? When life is discovered in outer space? When the Jets finally win a Super Bowl other than the one they won in 1969? When congestion pricing is implemented in Midtown Manhattan? Everything is certain. It's only when.

No, Bill writes to us about McFadden's retirement on Sunday. After 63 years at the NYT and reaching the age of 87, McFadden can't take it anymore. We wish him well. Unless he does something really dramatic, he's not likely to outlive his money, like some of us. 

Anyone who has read what follows a McFadden byline knows they're in for a lede that can stretch on so grammatically correct that in that paragraph we learn nearly everything about the subject. If you want to speed read, just read a McFadden lede and stop right there. But why would you want to do that? The joy is reading all that follows, and it's always worth it.

Bill McDonald chooses a selection of the obit ledes for his valentine to McFadden. They are all worthy of mention, and the hope is that someone will collect a selection of McFadden obits and publish them in a hardcover book, like what was done for Robert McG. Thomas Jr. so many years ago, another of the  obit giants.

One obit I will never forget is the one McFadden wrote when John V. Lindsay passed away in 2000, at 79 from complications of Parkinson's. Lindsay was a two-term NYC mayor who served from 1965-1973, an era when I came of age while living in Flushing Queens, a borough—or outer borough of NYC as the NYT likes to sometimes to refer to Queens County—that famously escaped being plowed after a blizzard in 1969, an omission forever laid at Lindsay's feet.

McFadden's front page, above the fold obit, stopped my eyes in their tracks when I read the third paragraph: "At times he had no pension or health insurance. The riches evoked by his patrician manner, turned out to be illusory, and he and his wife, Mary, for years lived in a one-bedroom apartment." Mayor Lindsay may have often been inept, but he wasn't personally larcenous.

The absolute good news that Bill McDonald tells us is that there are perhaps 250 advance obits in the pipeline with a McFadden byline that will only appear when the subject passes away. And since it is never revealed who the obits are about, or what the subjects' current ages are, we can only hope that the exhaustion of the supply will occur after the Jets win a Super Bowl.

Perhaps McFadden stayed so long at the Times because after coming to work for so many years in Manhattan he knew where the best places to eat were. And you don't want to waste that knowledge.

Red Smith once commented that after taking so many years to reach the press box at Yankee Stadium, it would be a shame to give that up.

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No. 10

The Wall Street Journal's A-Hed pieces continues to be a muse to my blog postings. And yesterday's piece was no exception.

A 'Cat-astrophe' Is Brewing at 10 Downing Street
Larry the 'Chief Mouser' meets his sixth prime minister; this one has rival felines

The piece written by Priya Bharadia and David Luhnow is almost a straightforward one about a senior feline resident of No. 10 Downing Street, Larry, that is now getting fed by its 6th Prime Minister, newly elected Keir Starmer.

Larry is 17, and there are those who fully expect his days might be numbered. Nevertheless, Larry is more on guard than a Beefeater at Buckingham Palace.

Prime Minister Starmer is bringing in his own cat. Not to replace Larry, but to hopefully coexist—play nice in their litter box, if indeed they share one.

Seventeen is getting up there in a cat's life expectancy, whether you believe in 9 lives or not. At the end of this April we had to put our cat Cosmo down who had reached 17 and was in the late stages of kidney failure. Not a fun day.

But so far, Larry doesn't seem to be showing signs of looming medical illnesses. There is video of him (of course there is video) giving a pigeon the bum's rush.

This of course doesn't surprise me. Those Rock Doves are just about in every urban setting. What I was rather astonished to read in the next to last column after the jump was that there is video from 2022 of Larry chasing a fox away from the front of No. 10. Yes, a fox! Tally-Ho fox hunting might have been banned in the U.K., but Larry didn't get the edict. He's making sure Downing Street proper remains fox free.

The fox, aside from looking completely out of place, looks sickly. He/she looks skanky and emaciated. They might have been patrolling around for food. Larry, the Chief Cabinet Level Mouser, was having none of it, and gave the fox something else to think about.

What I can tell from Google Earth, No. 10 abuts St. James Park, which hardly compares in size or woodland to Central Park. I once read Central Park has sections of it that meet he definition of a forest. And I'm probably sure has a fox or two hiding out somewhere.

Larry's got roommates, or at least another two other cats that can call No. 10 home. The current Prime Minster, Keir Starmer, has a wife and two teenage children living with him at No.10, along with their cat JoJo, a male ginger tabby. According to the A-Hed piece, JoJo and Larry have yet to encounter each other. Larry didn't get along with the prior Prime Minister's (Rishi Sundak) dog Nova, a Labrador, who reportedly came out on the losing end of their encounter.. Larry looks like the typical territorial male feline. Big.

The Starmers have added a kitten after the teenagers relented and gave up wanting a German Shepard. JoJo and the kitten are confined to the family's living quarters, and Larry gets the run of the rest of the place, coming back in through the back door, opened by a guard on duty. A cat flap in a bombproof door is eluding designers.

The Starmers are getting advice on how to make the eventually meeting of Larry and JoJo and the kitten go smoothly. Something about introducing the scent of them to each other through blankets with the others' scent.

Cats Protection, a British charity suggested the scent transfer method by "using a small flannel or blanket to wipe over each cat, and then place near the other cat." I smell you, but do I like you? Yet to be determined.

(I once heard  the story of Johnny Cash meeting Rodney Crowell for the first time, who was then dating Johnny's daughter Rosanne, later marrying and then getting divorced from. Johnny is said to have shook Rodney's hand and told him: "I just met you, and I don't like you.") Fathers can like Larry.

As for popularity, Larry leads in the polls over both the former and the current prime minter. But at 17, how much longer will he remain in power? 

Will Larry eventually join our Cosmo in the heavens above? Everything is certain. It's only when.

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My Dad

Imagine being a boy growing up in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn and being able to brag in the schoolyard to any other boy, no matter how big they were, or how old they were, that, "my dad can beat up your dad, even if your dad is Rocky Graziano," a middleweight boxing champion, and have it be true.

Such was Leonard Riggio's life starting out before he became famous for buying a Barnes and Noble book store and turning the business into a nationwide chain, selling way more than books and making money doing it. Expecting people to pretty much read what they bought. The mind boggles.

The Barnes and Noble that existed when I was in high school in the mid 1960s was a single store located on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and 18th Street, which in today's real estate market would be called The Flatiron District; then only known as 18th Street and 5th Avenue. Times change.

If you haven't heard the news, Leonard Riggio passed away the other day at 83. His father Stephen was a cab driver and a professional prizefighter who really did beat Rocky Graziano twice. Just not for a title.

Leonard was born in 1941. His father's fights with Rocky were in 1943 and 1944 in New York's Madison Square Garden. Stephen Riggio won both fights on points. They were non-title events. Rocky would eventually win the Middleweight title.

Stephen's career was not so ascendant. His ring record was 33-17-3, and he would be considered a journeyman, fighting from 1939-1948; he would be considered an "opponent."

That didn't mean that you would want to fight Stephen over a parking space. While driving his cab he kept in shape by hopping out at red lights and doing push-ups on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. "My dad can beat your dad, even if your dad is Rocky Graziano."

I would have been too young to ever see Rocky fight. I was born in 1949 and Rocky's last fight was in 1952, finishing his career with a 67-10-6 record. I did however see him in his Kip's Bay pizzeria on Second Avenue sometime in the 1970s, popping pies into the oven from the wooden spatula, shuffling his feet in an on-your-toes dance, showing off to a youngster at a nearby table a boxing drill with his hands, alternately flipping one hand front and back on the table, while tapping with it the other hand. A speed bag drill with no speed bag. Try it. Not as easy as you'd think to keep it up.

Rocky was a bit of a media favorite. He did commercials for Breakstone's yogurt, claiming it was "cultured,"  while even in his tuxedo he didn't appear to be, speaking in a somewhat lovable, punch drunk voice.

Rocky appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and talked of growing up with Jake LaMotta, who eventually became another champion middleweight. He described their youth as stealing anything with an "A" in front of it: a car, a bike, a piece of fruit, a lot.

Leonard Riggio's career was not in the boxing ring, but rather in the corporate world of the boardroom. He was a restless entrepreneur who took the one Barnes and Noble store there was and within 5 years saw the sales grow from $1 million to $10 million. He was off to the races, and eventually had a nationwide chain of stores.

The emergence of Amazon put a fair size dent in Barnes and Noble, and Mr. Riggio eventually sold his business in 2019 for $683 million to the hedge fund Elliot Advisors. Thankfully, there are still stores around fit for browsing.

Unmentioned in the NYT obit, but mentioned in the WSJ obit is that Mr. Riggio owned some thoroughbreds and raced them on the NYRA circuit. Occasionally I would see a Leonard Riggio horse's past performance in the Daily Racing Form and recognize his name as being associated with Barnes and Noble. I don't remember any horse's name, and I don't think he won any Grade 1 races, but he was an active owner for awhile.

I once told a Barnes and Noble employee the story of the store starting on 18th street and 5th Avenue selling civil service and Regents review books in the 1960s.

Maybe they read the obituaries and learned even more. Especially about this father.

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