The past is quickly fading

One of the most dynamic voices of my childhood has passed. RIP Patti...

###

Making a difference

All of the blogs, e-zines, television news and discussion forums are recapping the notable deaths of this past year. Almost all of these seem to be focusing on sports and entertainment celebrities. I thought I'd do a little obit piece for the also-rans... the people who died this year who made a difference that will last longer than the celluloid... most of whom you've never heard of.

Arfa Karim Randhawa, world’s youngest Microsoft certified professional, died at age 16 in January from respiratory arrest resulting from an epileptic seizure. This Pakistani girl was a young computer genius who became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at age 9. Bill Gates was so impressed with her smarts that he invited her to visit Microsoft’s U.S. headquarters in 2004. Among her words of wisdom spoken to reporter Todd Bishop: “If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind. If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.”

F. Sherwood Rowland, Chemist, died at 84 in March. Rowland was groundbreaking researcher who was recognized by the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 1974 he and his team discovered that chlorinated fluorocarbons, or CFCs, were damaging the ozone layer. The findings were met with skepticism by the scientific community. Rowland did not shrink from speaking out on the potentially catastrophic consequences of ozone depletion, and he strongly advised politicians and activists to push for a ban on CFCs. Today's discussions of climate change could use more voices like his.

Jack Tramiel died at 83 in April. Tramiel founded Commodore International and in 1982 released the Commodore 64. The little home computer became one of the most popular of all time, selling nearly 17 million units between 1982 and 1994. Born 1928 to a Jewish family in Lodz, Poland, he survived Auschwitz concentration camp and in 1947 emigrated to the U.S. Tramiel claimed that after surviving the Holocaust he could survive just about anything. He purchased chip manufacturer MOS Technology and Atari Corp. from Time Warner Communications.

Sam Porcello was the food scientist who died at 76 in May. Known as “Mr. Oreo,” the 34-year Nabisco veteran held five patents directly related to the Oreo, with the most famous being for the crème filling. As a member of the Nabisco R&D team he was really considered an expert on cocoa, but Porcello also created healthy snacks, including Snackwells products.

Sally Ride, Ph.D., Educator, Astronaut and Physicist died July 23, 2012 at the age of 61, following a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. beat out 1,000 other applicants for a spot in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) astronaut program. She went through the program’s rigorous training program and got her chance to go into space and the record books in 1983. After NASA, Sally Ride became the director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a professor of physics at the school in 1989. In 2001, she started her own company to create educational programs and products known as Sally Ride Science to help inspire girls and young women to pursue their interests in science and math. 

Ride received many honors, including the NASA Space Flight Medal and the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Although Sally Ride never publicly stated that she was a lesbian, her official obituary states she was in a 27-year relationship with Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, a woman. She will always be remembered as a pioneering astronaut who went where no other woman had gone before.

Robert Ledley, the inventor of the full-body CT scanner, died at age 86 in July. Ledley’s first career was as a dentist, but later became a biomedical researcher. He is credited as a pioneer in the use of computers in the healthcare field. Ledley founded the nonprofit National Biomedical Research Foundation in 1960 to promote the use of computers in biomedicine. His work was recognized with introduction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990 and with a National Medal of Technology in 1997.

William Moggridge died in September at age 69. In the late 1970s while with a company called Grid Systems Moggridge came up with the clamshell design used for laptop computers. The $8K, 12-pound device, quite portable for its time, gained prominence through NASA and military use. One of Moggridge’s claims to fame was coining the term “interaction design,” referring to the common sense idea that software and hardware should fit people’s needs. “If there’s a simple, easy principle that binds everything together, it’s probably about starting with the people.”

Norman “Joe” Woodland created the bar code (along with Bernard “Bob” Silver) while at Drexel University. He died in December at age 91.  He used his knowledge of Morse Code to come up with a technology that is used five billion times every day. In 1992, Woodland received the National Medal of Technology, and in a more modern tribute to Woodland and Silver’s work, Google introduced a Google Doodle atop its search page in 2009 recognizing the 57th anniversary of the patent.

###

RIP, Col. Potter

###

King of the hippies

You might have known Brent Stein. If you were a street freak (hippie) in Texas in the late 60’s, early 70's, you probably at least heard of him. You likely didn’t know him by that name, but your certainly knew him as the pioneer underground newspaper publisher of The Dallas Notes, and later of Buddy Magazine.

You may have even known him as one of the defendants infamously known as The Dallas Five, but only because the Dallas Morning News, in reporting on the infamous police raid of April 12, 1970 history knows as The Lee Park Massacre [this is an hour-long video] used his legal name instead of the one we knew him by.

Prior even to that infamous abuse of police authority came the raids that shut down Brent’s first journalistic enterprise, The Dallas Notes. The search warrant authorized the cops to search for and seize “pornographic material” and any equipment used to reproduce same. In the end they seized…

“[T]wo tons of a newspaper (Dallas Notes), one photograph enlarger, two portable typewriters, two electric typewriters, one camera, 'numerous obscene photographs,' and $5.43 in money.”

A second raid 16 days later was in response to a claim that marihuana was concealed on the premises. The warrant for that one authorized the officers “to search for and seize the said narcotic drug and dangerous drug in accordance with the law in such cases provided." 

But they didn’t find any marihuana, so the sergeant called his lieutenant for instructions and in flagrant violation of the 4th amendment of our Constitution, was told to “seize pornographic literature and any equipment used to make it. “

In testimony before SCOTUS it was revealed that the sergeant "didn't know what to seize and what not to seize so [he] just took everything," which included a Polaroid camera, a Kodak Brownie, a Flocon camera, a Kodak lamp, a floating fixture lamp, a three-drawer desk containing printers' supplies, a drafting square, a drafting table, two drawing boards, a mailing tube, two telephones, a stapler, five cardboard boxes containing documents, one electric typewriter, and one typewriter desk. A poster of Mao Tse-tung, credit cards, costume jewelry, cans of spices, a brown sweater, and  a statue of a man and woman in an embrace. This effectively put the Dallas Notes out of business.

At trial the prosecutor told the jury that Stein was a “revolutionist helping rush civilization to hell at a hundred miles an hour.” Brent was found guilty but later sued the Dallas Police and Dallas County DA. The case made it all the way to SCOTUS [see Dyson v. Stein] where it was roundly rejected.  But you’ve really got to wonder why. 

Below is part of the testimony offered by then Dallas Police Chief Frank Dyson.

"Q. What instructions did you give the officers in effecting this search and seizure as to what they were to do?"

"A. They were to search for any obscene material they could find. All of our officers know what obscene material is."

"Q. What is obscene material?"

"A. Well, I wish you hadn't ask [sic] that. I take that back. They don't know, neither do I."

"Q. What instructions had you given them in terms of what they were to do?"

"A. To search for obscene material and seize it."

"Q. What definition, if any, did you give them as to obscene material?"

"A. I didn't."

The original decision by a three-judge panel of the 5^th Circuit had overturned Texas obscenity laws but even with Dyson's damning testimony, SCOTUS refused to rule in Stein’s favor and instead sent the case back to lower courts. Associate Justice William Douglas was the only dissenter, stating in his argument…

“It would be difficult to find in our books a more lawless search-and-destroy raid, unless it be the one in Kremen v. United States. If this search-and-destroy technique can be employed against this Dallas newspaper, then it can be done to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Yakima Herald-Republic, the Sacramento Bee, and all the rest of our newspapers.”

Establishment newspapers, recognizing the truth in Douglas’ words, sided with Stein. The Dallas PD eventually settled and returned the seized property, although much of it was damaged beyond use.

Remaining intent upon getting this man off the streets and stopping the 60’s revolution before the pristine city was somehow soiled, the police continued to harass Stein.

In an unattributed 1974 story titled Getting Stoney Burns, Time Magazine wrote "The law in Dallas, from all appearances, had been bent on getting Stoney Burns for years" when they "found in the glove compartment a tiny stash of marijuana. It was barely enough for one or two joints." 

Didn't matter.  It was enough to get Stoney a sentence of 10 years and a day -- time he never served thanks to Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe who commuted the sentence. 

Pot, at that time, was classified a narcotic under Texas law. It was not unusual for small amounts of the weed to garner multi-year prison terms. Stoney was fortunate.

All of this took a lot of the steam out of this early revolutionary. He gave up Dallas Notes and became a little less flamboyant. Buddy Magazine, heralded as the first magazine of Texas Music, was his next venture. He gave that up a few years ago, living out the rest of his life in his home and prowling the haunts of the Lower Greenville area of Dallas.

Brent Lasalle Stein, AKA Stoney Burns, was born Dec. 4, 1942 and died April 28th, 2011. Those of us who knew him will always appreciate the mark he made on Dallas, and the changes that brought.

###

Billy bought it

Dennis Hopper, that oh so iconic actor of the 50’s and 60’s, Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, died Friday at his home in Venice, California.

Billy is dead. RIP Easy Rider.

~~