The Boston Globe - 20.09.2019

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 The Boston Globe C11

Obituaries

By Marvin Pave
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
On the first day of Boston
Patriots training camp in 1963,
starting halfback Larry Garron
made it a point to walk over to
rookie receiver Art Graham.
“He said, ‘Hi, I’m Larry Gar-
ron. Welcome to the team,’ ” re-
called Graham, who had
starred at Boston College. “I
never forgot his kindness.”
Mr. Garron’s selflessness
and warmth were evident
countless times over the years
— to his martial arts students,
to his students at Bunker Hill
Community College, and to
youngsters in the Framingham
Pop Warner football program
that he founded with Patriots
teammates Ron Burton and
Charlie Long.
“I respected his amazing tal-
ent and his character,” said Pa-
triots legend Gino Cappelletti,
another former teammate. “He
was an important member of
those early Patriot teams. He
took great pride in the success
of the Patriots through the
years and that he had been a
part of that journey.”
Mr. Garron, a former team
Most Valuable Player whose 85-
yard touchdown run in Buffalo
in 1961 is still a Patriots record,
died of cardiac arrest Sept. 13
at his home in Framingham. A
four-time American Football
League All-Star, he was 82.
A three-sport athlete at
Western Illinois University, and
a star on its 1959 undefeated-
untied football team coached
by Lou Saban, Mr. Garron
joined the original Patriots
team the following season. The
team had hired Saban as head
coach.
“Looking back, I do feel I
was a pioneer,” Mr. Garron told
the Globe in 1999. “We were in
a league that we helped get off
the ground. We and the league
survived, so there is a special
bond you feel when thinking
back on those days.”
Mr. Garron suffered through
injuries and tonsillitis his rook-
ie season, but he never gave up.
He worked out at the South
End Boys Club, put on weight,
came back the following sea-
son, and played until 1968.
His 2,981 rushing yards
rank ninth all-time in the Patri-
ots’ record book. He ran for 14
career touchdowns, caught 185
passes for 2,502 yards and 26
touchdowns, and scored on two

kickreturns.Inthe 1968 AFL

All-Star Game, he caught a pass

from New York Jets quarter-

back Joe Namath and slipped

past the defense for 26 yards to

set up the East’s winning score.

“I like to receive. It’s a chal-

lenge — one on one — to see if

you can outsmart the other fel-

low,” Mr. Garron told the Globe

in 1967.

Patriots quarterback Babe

Parilli, in the same story, called

him “one of the best backs at

catching passes I have played

with.”

In the 1963 Eastern Division

tie-breaking championship

game at Buffalo, Mr. Garron

caught two touchdown passes

from Parilli, and Cappelletti

added four field goals in a 26-8

victory. In the AFL champion-

ship game, however, the Patri-

ots were blown out by San Di-

ego, 51-10. The Patriots’ only

touchdown was scored by Mr.

Garron.

A quiet leader on the field,

Mr. Garron proved to be the

same off the field in January

1965, prior to the AFL All-Star

Game in New Orleans. As one

of the spokesmen for the All-

Stars who were black, Mr. Gar-

ron protested that they were re-

fused rides in taxis, entrance to

movies and nightclubs, and the

use of public facilities in that

city.

“We found out that we

would be nothing but con-

fined,” Mr. Garron told the

Globe that week after the play-

ers boycotted the game, which

was moved to Houston.

Mr. Garron’s son Andre of

Bedford, N.H., who played for

the Kansas City Chiefs, said the

boycott was “a significant mo-

ment in the fight for civil rights.

I can’t imagine the pressure

those players and my dad felt.

He often said you don’t have to

be the loudest voice in the room

to be a leader.”

Born in Marks, Miss., Mr.

Garron was the oldest of 10

children and a son of Lawrence

Garron Sr., a police officer, and

the former Savannah Sykes.

The Garrons moved to Argo,

Ill., and when Mr. Garron’s par-

ents separated, his mother

worked at the local Corn Prod-

ucts Refinery to support the

family while Mr. Garron kept

an eye on his siblings and made

sure that household chores

were done.

“Larry was my first hero,”

said his brother Troy of Halifax.

“He knew where he was going

in life and how to get there.”

Mr. Garron arrived at West-

ern Illinois with $50 in his

pocket, but he was money in

the bank for the Leathernecks

football team.

“If you stopped Larry, you

stopped their offense,” said

Chuck Shonta, a Patriots team-

mate of Mr. Garron who previ-

ously played against him on de-

fense for Eastern Michigan

University. “Unfortunately, they

beat us for the conference

championship largely because

of him. Larry was a natural

runner who could stop on a

dime and he was a humble guy

who always gave credit to oth-

ers.”

Mr. Garron met LaBerta

Harris when he was a high

school sports star in Argo and

she was on the track team at

nearby Lions Township High.

They married in 1959.

Their three sons — Andre,

John of Waltham, and Arnold

of Bedford, N.H. — all played

high school football in

Framingham. Andre and Ar-

nold went on to star at the Uni-

versity of New Hampshire.

LaBerta, who once tossed

passes in the backyard to her

husband while he recovered

from a football injury, died in

1998.

Mr. Garron, who left West-

ern Illinois to turn pro after his

junior year, received a bache-

lor’s degree from Boston State

College and a master’s from

Cambridge College.

He went on to teach market-

ing, writing, economics, and

management courses at Bunker

Hill Community College and al-

so attained the highest degree

in World Martial Arts, teaching

the discipline at his academies

in Southborough and Framing-

ham.

In 2006, he married Evelyn

Nahme, a hairdresser and po-

larity therapist in Framingham.

“Larry never had a negative

opinion of anyone,” she said.

“He accepted everyone for who

they were, gave them the free-

dom to be themselves, and was

the greatest listener — ever. I

feel blessed he picked me.”

In addition to his wife, sons,

and brother, Mr. Garron leaves

a daughter, Dawn Dellasanta of

Milford; four other brothers,

Donald of Sanford, N.C., Norris

and Chester, both of Framing-

ham, and Solomon of Woburn;

a sister, Verlean Hinton of En-

field, Conn.; 11 grandchildren;

and two great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held

at 10 a.m. Friday in Greater

Framingham Community

Church.

Mr. Garron was an inductee

to the Western Illinois Universi-

ty Athletic Hall of Fame and

was selected to the Patriots All-

Decade team of the 1960s.

“He always tried to set the

right course for us,” Andre said,

“and urged us to go after what

you want with everything you

have.”

Marvin Pave can be reached at

[email protected].

LarryGarron,82,topbackforearlyPatriots

PHOTOS BY SUZANNE KREITER\GLOBE STAFF

Mr. Garron was one of the team’s most-feared threats in the early 1960s, including as a receiver out of the backfield.

After retiring from football, Mr. Garron opened self-

defense studios in the Greater Boston area.

By Harrison Smith

WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — David

Jones, a Kentucky lawyer who

turned a $1,000 investment in-

to America’s largest nursing-

home chain, then transformed

his business into a hospital gi-

ant and finally into the $37 bil-

lion health insurance corpora-

tion Humana, died Wednesday

in Louisville. He was 88.

Mr. Jones was the chief exec-

utive of Louisville-based Huma-

na until 1997 and served as

chairman for 44 years, retiring

in 2005 only after reaching the

company’s 73-year-old age limit

for board members. Humana

announced his death in a state-

ment, and spokesman Jim

Turner cited complications

from multiple myeloma as a

cause.

Raised in poverty on the

west side of Louisville, Mr.

Jones was a Golden Gloves box-

er turned pugilistic executive

whose take-no-prisoners busi-

ness style helped make Huma-

na one of the country’s biggest

for-profit hospital chains and

eventually a health insurance

colossus.

Buthewasalsoknownasa

generous philanthropist in his

hometown. He co-owned the

former Kentucky Colonels bas-

ketball team, worked to bolster

public education, helped raise

$120 million to build a 3,700-

acre park system, and influ-

enced state and local politics

from his office in Humana’s 27-

story headquarters, a granite

skyscraper dubbed ‘‘the pink

cash register.’’

In a statement, Senate ma-

jority leader Mitch McConnell,

Republican of Kentucky, de-

scribed Mr. Jones as ‘‘the single

most influential friend and

mentor I’ve had in my entire ca-

reer,’’ adding: ‘‘I’ve never forgot-

ten something he told me when

I was starting out in Jefferson

County — ‘The most important

word in the English language is

focus.’ ”

For decades, Mr. Jones was

half of a corporate odd couple,

locked in what he described as

a professional marriage with

his friend Wendell Cherry, who

served as a president and chief

operating officer of Humana

before his death in 1991. Mr.

Jones was considered the vi-

sionary, Cherry the pragmatist.

The duo met while working

at the Louisville law firm Wyatt,

Grafton & Sloss, where Mr.

Jones was one day surprised by

a conversation with a once-im-

poverished client, now prepar-

ing to buy a mansion. ‘‘It turned

out he owned a nursing home,’’

Mr. Jones later told Forbes, ‘‘so

we decided to build one our-

selves.’’

Securing $1,000 in financ-

ing, Mr. Jones joined Cherry

and four friends in constructing

a 78-bed nursing home in 1961.

With the passage of Medi-

care and Medicaid, nursing

homes became increasingly

popular, and Mr. Jones and

Cherry built or acquired about

40 other facilities over the next

decade. Deeming the market

oversaturated, Mr. Jones and

his partner tried developing

trailer parks.

Mobile homes proved a bust.

But with hospitals, their com-

pany — then known as Extendi-

care — began to take off. They

built or acquired about 40 hos-

pitals in seven years, then aban-

doned the nursing-home sector

altogether. Renaming them-

selves Humana in 1974, they

took on debt to compete with

burgeoning for-profit health-

care operators such as Hospital

Corp. of America.

Mr. Jones went on to draw

praise for his company’s cen-

tralized operations and medical

technology, and he boasted that

Humana was the lowest-cost

health care company in the

country. But he drew increasing

criticism from rivals and peers

for his hard-charging style, and

for the company’s inescapable

influence in Kentucky. Humana

took over the University of Lou-

isville’s teaching hospital — and

reportedly turned a profit for

the first time in years, without

turning away indigent patients.

‘‘The company’s philosophy

toward their competitors is,

‘We’ll run over them, or

through them, or around them.’

It’s almost a Vince Lombardi

thing,’’ Richard Abell, adminis-

trator of St. Anthony Hospital

in Louisville, told The Washing-

ton Post in 1985.

Mr. Jones found mixed suc-

cess stepping into the health in-

surancemarketin 1984 ,witha

strategy to offer insurance

plans to patients Humana later

served in hospitals. But after

spinning off its hospitals as a

separate company, Galen

Health Care, in 1993, its insur-

ance business soared. Revenue

grew from $3.7 billion in 1994

to $13.1 billion when Jones re-

tired as chairman.

In interviews and business

roundtables, he was often

called upon to defend for-profit

health care. Mr. Jones preferred

the term ‘‘taxpaying’’ when de-

scribing his business. ‘‘The no-

tion that being nonprofit adds

some kind of weight to what

you do is baloney,’’ he said, ac-

cording to the Courier-Journal.

‘‘Whoever is not paying taxes

on profits has the moral issue,

not those of us who are paying

taxes.’’

David Allen Jones was born

in Louisville on Aug. 7, 1931.

His father was a contractor, his

mother a schoolteacher.

After stepping down from

his day-to-day duties at Huma-

na, Mr. Jones returned in 1999

to work as interim chief execu-

tive for six months, amid a

stock skid of 40 percent that

year. His son David Jones Jr.

chaired the company for five

years after Mr. Jones’s retire-

ment, and in 2015 Humana

agreed to be acquired by Aetna

for $37 billion. A federal judge

later blocked the deal, saying it

would hurt competition.

Mr. Jones married Betty

Ashbury in 1954, and she died

last month. In addition to his

son David, survivors include

four other children, Sue, Dan,

Matt and Carol Jones; a broth-

er; a sister; and 11 grandchil-

dren.

Even as his company’s stock

price soared in the 1980s, Mr.

Jones maintained a relatively

modest lifestyle, riding a Honda

Civic to work. ‘‘I never set out to

be a corporate mogul,’’ he told

The Post in 1985. ‘‘I guess what

I wanted was independence.’’

By Adam Bernstein
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — Zine el-
Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian
despot whose ouster in 2011 af-
ter a public uprising exposed
long-simmering public rage
against corruption, economic
tumult, and dictatorial rule and
sparked the Arab Spring, a re-
volt that ricocheted across
North Africa and the Middle
East, died Thursday in Jiddah,
Saudi Arabia. He was 83.
His lawyer, Mounir Ben Sal-
ha, confirmed his death to the
Associated Press. Mr. Ben Ali
was being treated for prostate

cancer.

Mr. Ben Ali and his family

fled from the capital city of Tu-

nis on Jan. 14, 2011, to Saudi

Arabia, after weeks of protests

over high unemployment, ris-

ing food prices, corruption, and

political repression.

Security forces wielding ma-

chine guns and clubs were un-

able to crush thousands of non-

violent demonstrators who

flooded the capital’s broad ave-

nues. Mr. Ben Ali’s lack of sup-

port from the Tunisian army,

which declined to fire on the

citizenry, was a crucial factor in

his plummet from power.

His downfall, after more

than 23 years as president, was

widely credited as a transfor-

mative moment in the region

and sent a wave of revolution-

ary fervor coursing through the

streets of Egypt, Bahrain, Iran,

Libya, and Jordan. Unable to

stop anti-government protests,

embattled Egyptian President

Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s

Moammar Gaddafi were forced

from office.

Mr. Ben Ali’s government

was ranked among the most

brutal in the region, according

to Amnesty International and

other experts.

Mr. Ben Ali, a burly, dark-

haired man with a stern bear-

ing, was Tunisia’s second leader

since independence from

France in 1956.

He held the rank of general

but never held an operational

command that would have

earned him allegiance from the

quasi-independent military,

said Noureddine Jebnoun, a Tu-

nisian-born scholar at George-

town University. As a founder

of Tunisia’s military security

agency, he made it his chief

business to spy on countrymen.

The West initially greeted

Mr. Ben Ali as a savior when, six

weeks into his job as prime

minister, he led a bloodless

coup that toppled President

Habib Bourguiba in 1987.

Tunisia, a tiny Mediterra-

nean country squeezed between

oil-rich neighbors Algeria and

Libya, remained a favorite win-

ter destination for wealthy Euro-

peans and aligned itself with the

West in the fight against Isla-

mist terrorism. Yet the veneer of

a republic — on what was in re-

ality an authoritarian state with

a secular gloss and a rare degree

of freedom for women — contin-

ued to be stripped away under

Mr. Ben Ali.

Zineel-AbidineBenAli,formerpresidentofTunisia,83

DavidJones;builtHumana

intohealthinsurancegiant

ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 2004

Mr. Jones was the chairman

of Humana for 44 years.

MICHEL CLEMENT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The ouster of Mr. Ben Ali

led to 2011’s Arab Spring.