The Boston Globe - 19.09.2019

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 The Boston Globe A

Obituaries

By Bryan Marquard GLOBE STAFF To understand Ken Bader’s approach to his life working in public radio and cultivating endless friendships, you could begin with Bugs Bunny. A devotee of the annual Brattle Theatre film festival de- voted to the cartoon rabbit, he saw in Bugs a character who knew how to focus on the es- sentials, and do so with a smile. “What does he want out of life? He wants carrots. And he wants to be left alone,” Mr. Bad- er told the Globe a decade ago. “The humor is quite sophisti- cated,” he added. “It’s hysteri- cal. I’m sure a lot of it goes over kids’ heads.” A longtime editor, producer, and writer for public radio pro- grams and stations including The World, WBUR, and Moni- tor Radio, Mr. Bader died Aug. 24 of complications from pan- creatic cancer. He was 70 and had lived for many years in North Cambridge. He found entertainment and ample wisdom in so many old movies that he created an organization to pick what to see next — though he conceded he was the president and sole member of what he dubbed the ClassicMovieoftheWeekClub. Mr. Bader was also a serious journalist who would take a stand, even if it meant parting ways with a job. “He was a profoundly principled and ethical person,” said his brother Jeffrey Bader, a former senior Asia adviser to Pres- ident Obama, and a former US ambassador to Namibia. “Both our parents were law- yers,” Jeffrey added. “They were, I would say, extremely ethical and principled people. My father set an example in life and you absorbed it. And Ken fully absorbed it.” In 1993, Mr. Bader made news himself, when he and a couple of WBUR colleagues traveled to Albania to train re- porters how to cover the coun- try’s emerging democracy. They needed a translator and found a top-notch candidate in the home of the family with whom they were staying. Emira Gjata was 11 and in- telligent beyond her years. Up- on finishing her translator du- ties, she traveled with the WBUR staff back to the United States, where Mr. Bader was her legal guardian for four years, until her parents secured green cards to come to Greater Boston — a journey later re- counted in a 2007 Globe feature. In the meantime, Mr. Bader encouraged her to apply to No- ble and Greenough in Dedham, where she earned a scholarship and boarded during the week. She went on to graduate from Harvard University. Along with her parents, one of her sisters emigrated from Albania, as did extended family and many friends — a vast number of lives bettered, Gjata said, because Mr. Bader offered assistance. Gjata added that his influ- ence has continued through the example he set. “What a great role model for me to be around,” she said. “His

sense of morality is something I took away very early on, and it will remain with me. It was un- wavering. If something was right, it was right, and he was going to stick with it always.” The youngest of three broth- ers, Mr. Bader was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island, in Hewlett, N.Y., a son of Samuel Bader and Grace Rosenblum. “He was always very gentle,” his brother Jeffrey said. “He was a warm, caring, gentle child all along.” Early on, Mr. Bader became fascinated by music, accumu- lating “one of the world’s larg- est 45 collections, I suspect,” his brother said. “That led somewhat naturally to his in- terest in radio.” Mr. Bader graduated from George W. Hewlett High School, and his mother was a pioneering woman as president of the district’s Board of Educa- tion. He went on to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University in Hamil- ton, N.Y., and a master’s in edu- cational media from the Uni- versity of Iowa. His radio career also took him to the University of Wyo- ming, where he taught produc- tion and was program director at the college’s station. He then spent more than a decade as a writer,editor, andproducerfor Voice of America and National Public Radio. In 1989, he went to work at Monitor Radio, moving to WBUR in 1992 and The World in 1997. Mr. Bader drew news cover- age during his departures from Monitor Radio (he declined to participate in an apology Moni- tor Radio broadcast after a report about AIDS prevention that management found too graphic) and WBUR (a leave- taking due in part to him cor- recting the grammar in the un- derwriters’ tagline without ap- proval). During his Boston radio years, he met Lisa Mullins, who is now an anchor of WBUR’s “All Things Considered” and a guest host of NPR’s “Here and Now.” They started dating 27 years

and four months ago, “and for 27 years and four months he would give me a ‘monthaver- sary’ gift — a concert at Passim, a brunch out someplace,” she said. They were life partners and at times colleagues. In media, where the editor- reporter relationship can some- times be heated, Mr. Bader “was a major collaborator,” she said. “You think of the red pen of an editor. Ken used a pencil and eraser. He felt like his word should not be the last word, un- less it was a matter of basic facts or clarity or ethics. He just wanted to tell a good story.” Among the best stories in Boston’s public radio news- rooms were those Mr. Bader en- gendered through his creativi- ty. He held an annual barbecue at which he prided himself on predicting the exact number of hamburgers and buns needed. And he designed the gather- ing’s soundtrack to feature an in memoriam of artists who had died the previous year. Mr. Bader also met with friends regularly at Frank’s Steak House in Cambridge. “They called themselves the ‘manly men,’ and they said that with a big smirk because they were all from public radio,” Mullins said. “He never saw himself as a galvanizer, but he made these human connections,” she added. “He did it all his life.” Although Mr. Bader worked in media, “he didn’t think the progress of technology added

anything to his life,” his brother Jeffrey said. Mr. Bader used a rotary phone longer than anyone he knew, kept a pinball machine in his home, and filled every available space on countless postcards he mailed to friends and family. And when his youngest niece, Lexy, graduated from college, he “showed up with this beautifully wrapped gift,” she recalled. “Ken explained that it was the Bader family heirloom toaster. It has a cloth cord,” she said. “I think of it as the most beautifully quirky Ken gift. You don’t need anything from the modern era. You need this toaster that worked in 1953 and still works in 2019.” In addition to Mullins, his brother, and his niece, Mr. Bad- er leaves another brother, Larry of Cary, N.C. Family and friends will gather to celebrate his life and career at 10:30 a.m. Sunday in the Linda K. Paresky center at Simmons University. Among family and friends, andeveninthesometimescon- tentious media world, Mr. Bad- er “held no grudges. That wasn’t his nature,” Jeffrey said. “There was just a pure quali- ty to him,” he added. “Ken did not know how to take advan- tage of anyone or do anything at anyone else’s expense.”

Bryan Marquard can be reached at [email protected].

By Douglas Martin
NEW YORK TIMES
NEW YORK — Sander Vano-
cur, the television newsman
who became familiar to Ameri-
can viewers as a prominent
White House correspondent
during the Kennedy adminis-
tration and as a tough question-
er in presidential debates, died
Monday night in a hospice facil-
ity in Santa Barbara, Calif. He
was 91.
His son Christopher said the
cause was complications of de-
mentia. Mr. Vanocur lived near-
by in Montecito.
Mr. Vanocur was the last
surviving journalist of the four
who, as a panel, questioned
then-Senator John F. Kennedy,
Democrat of Massachusetts,
and then-Vice President Rich-
ard M. Nixon in America’s first
televised presidential debate,
on Sept. 26, 1960. (The others
were Robert H. Fleming of
ABC, Stuart Novins of CBS, and
Charles Warren of Mutual
Broadcasting. Howard K.
Smith, then of CBS, was the
moderator.)
In a memorable moment,
Mr. Vanocur asked Nixon about
a damaging remark that Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower
had made about his vice presi-
dent — that he could not re-
member a single idea of Nixon’s
that was adopted.
Nixon replied that it was
“probably a facetious remark.”
But in his 1962 book, “Six Cri-
ses,” Nixon admitted that Vano-
cur’s question had hurt.
“I am sure,” he wrote, “that
to millions of televiewers, this
question had been effective in
raising a doubt in their minds
with regard to one of my stron-
gest campaign themes and as-
sets—myexperienceasvice
president.”
Mr. Vanocur also asked Ken-
nedy a tough question: How
could he fulfill his promise to
push legislation through Con-
gress when he had failed to do
so as a member of the House
and then the Senate? (Kennedy
deftly shifted the blame to Re-
publicans, saying the main rea-
son for his thin legislative résu-
mé was the threat of a Republi-
can presidential veto hanging
over legislation proposed by
Democrats — a situation that
would be remedied, he said, by
the election of a Democrat.)
Mr. Vanocur went on to cov-
er the Kennedy White House,
becoming a regular presence at
the president’s nationally tele-
vised news conferences. He was
granted the first televised inter-
view with Jacqueline Kennedy,
the first lady, prompting some
competitors to view his access
as evidence of a questionable
closeness to the Kennedys.
Mr. Vanocur was the first re-
porter to ask a chastened Ken-
nedy about the failure of the
Bay of Pigs invasion by a CIA-
sponsored Cuban paramilitary
group in 1961. The question
elicited one of the president’s
more well-remembered quota-
tions: The episode, he said, re-
called “an old saying that victo-
ry has a hundred fathers and
defeat is an orphan.”
Mr. Vanocur, along with
John Chancellor, Frank McGee,
and Edwin Newman, was one
of NBC’s “four horsemen” —
correspondents who prowled
the floor of national conven-
tions in the 1960s in search of
news and tantalizing tidbits to
report. (He was also the last
survivor of those four.)
Mr. Vanocur reported on
politics for NBC from 1957 to
1971, along the way conducting
one of the last interviews with
Senator Robert F. Kennedy of
New York, a candidate for the
Democratic presidential nomi-

nation, before he was assassi- nated in Los Angeles in 1968. After a brief interlude at the Public Broadcasting Service in the early 1970s, he was a television columnist for The Wash- ington Post in the mid-1970s. He then returned to political re- porting, for ABC News, where he was also a vice president. As a senior correspondent for ABC in 1984, he moderated the vice-presidential debate between the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, and then-Represen- tative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York. In 1992, as a freelance correspondent, he was a panelist for a presidential debate between Bush, then-Gov- ernor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, and Texas tycoon Ross Perot. In his 1991 book, “Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News,” Reuven Frank, a pioneering news producer for NBC, called Mr. Vano- cur “the best political reporter I ever worked with.” He was born Sander Vinocur in Cleveland on Jan. 8, 1928, to Louis and Rose (Millman) Vi- nocur. His father was a lawyer. After his parents divorced in 1941, his mother took Sander and his sister, Roberta, to Illi- nois to live and changed the spelling of their surname to Vanocur because she “was mad at the old man,” he told the Eve- ning Independent of St. Peters- burg, Fla. He graduated from the Western Military Academy in Alton, Ill., now closed, in 1946 and then from Northwestern University with a degree in po- liticalscience.Hestudiedatthe London School of Economics in 1951 and 1952. After serving two years in the Army in Germany and Aus- tria, he was discharged as a first lieutenant and returned to Eng- land to be a reporter for the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian). He also did freelance work for CBS News. (“What other job lets you sit around drinking beer and read- ing newspapers all day while you get paid for it?” he told the Evening Independent.) Still in his mid-20s, he was hired by The New York Times in 1955 after a series of well-po- sitioned newsmen had paved the way with their endorse- ments: the paper’s London bu- reau chief, Drew Middleton; Washington columnist James Reston; and CBS commentator Eric Sevareid. His stint at the Times, as a reporter on the New York met- ropolitan staff, was relatively short. He joined NBC News in Washington in 1957 and was sent to Chicago the next year to cover the Midwest. He became acquainted with John Kennedy and his family when Kennedy, then a senator from Massachu- setts, visited Wisconsin to com- pete in the presidential primary there in 1960. In response to critics who said both he and the Kennedys had abused their relationship, Mr. Vanocur said fawning on the family would have been counterproductive. “They would know they owned you and need give you nothing,” Frank quoted him as saying. Mr. Vanocur’s first wife, Edith Pick Vanocur, a fashion designer who became a food columnist for The Washington Post, died in 1975. He married Virginia Backus that same year, and she survives him. In addition to her and his son Christo- pher, from his first marriage; he is survived by a stepdaughter, Daphne Wood Hicks; and two grandchildren. Another son, Nicholas, also from the first marriage, died in 2015.

Sander Vanocur, newsman

who covered Kennedy, 91

WILLIAM E. SAURO/NEW YORK TIMES FILE 1977

Mr. Vanocur (right) with producer Av Westin at the ABC
News Studios, served as a political reporter for decades.

Ken Bader, a collegial, principled force in public radio

SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF /FILE 2009 Mr. Bader was a regular at the Brattle Theatre’s annual Bugs Bunny film festival.

Emira Gjata was 11 when she served as a translator in Albania for Mr. Bader and others. He facilitated her move and that of her family’s to Greater Boston.

By Mihir Zaveri NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK — Phyllis New- man, the Tony Award-winning Broadway star who began her acting career as a young child and, driven by her own later struggles with breast cancer, raised millions of dollars to help women in entertainment deal with serious health prob- lems, died Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 86. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Amanda Green. Ms. Newman’s career would come to include acting, writing, and directing roles in movies, television, and on Broadway. Her wit drew many admirers, including talk show host John- ny Carson, who invited her to be the first woman to guest host “The Tonight Show.” But her acting career began as a young child in Atlantic City. Ms. Newman’s mother, Ra- chel Newman, immigrated from Lithuania and worked as a fortune-teller on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Her father, Sig-

mund Archur, came from War- saw and was a hypnotist. At age 4, Ms. Newman per- formed in a Carmen Miranda routine at hotels, Green said. “We were just your ordinary all-American family trying to make a buck in the summer before the ‘big war,’ ” Ms. New- man recalled in her 1988 book, “Just in Time: Notes From My Life.” Ms. Newman got her start on Broadway as Judy Holliday’s understudy in “Bells Are Ring- ing.” In 1960, she married lyricist and playwright Adolph Green, who died in 2002. She leaves their two children: Amanda Green, 55, a Broadway lyricist and composer; and Ad- am Green, 58, a theater critic and writer. Both children’s careers were inspired by their parents, Amanda Green said. “We saw how much fun they were hav- ing, doing what they were doing,” she said. Ms. Newman won a Tony in 1962 for her supporting role in

the musical “Subways Are for Sleeping,” which featured a book and lyrics written by her husband and his regular collaborator, Betty Comden. Ms. Newman spent the en- tire musical in a bath towel. And in winning the Tony, she bested Barbra Streisand in her breakthrough role. The night Ms. Newman won the Tony, she was seated next to producer David Merrick, who,

she recalled in a 2004 interview with The New York Times, “turned to me and said, ‘I voted for Barbra Streisand.’ And then they announced my name. It was one of the sweetest mo- ments in life.” Her other Broadway appear- ances included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and “The Ap- ple Tree.” In 1979, Ms. Newman starred in a one-woman show, “The Madwoman of Central Park West,” which she wrote with Arthur Laurents. She appeared in the television series “Coming of Age” and the soap opera “One Life to Live,” and was nominated for another Tony in 1987 for play- ing Aunt Blanche in Neil Si- mon’s “Broadway Bound.” In 1995, Ms. Newman founded the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative, a program of the Actors Fund of America. She would raise millions of dollars as part of the fund, and her efforts earned her a special Tony, the Isabelle Ste- venson Award, in 2009.

Phyllis Newman, at 86; Tony Award-winning Broadway star

PETER KRAMER/AP/FILE 2009 Ms. Newman won a Tony in 1962, besting Barbra Streisand.

The Boston Globe - 19.09.2019

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