The New York Times - USA (2020-08-01)

THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIESSATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2020 Y B11

John McNamara, who managed
the Boston Red Sox to within one
out of a World Series champi-
onship against the Mets in 1986 —
and whose strategy in the critical
sixth game has been questioned
ever since — died on Tuesday at
his home in Brentwood, Tenn., a
Nashville suburb. He was 88.
His wife, Ellen McNamara, who
confirmed the death, said the
cause had not been determined.
McNamara was hired by the
Red Sox in 1985 — it was his fifth
Major League managerial job —
and the next season guided them
to a 95-66 record and the Ameri-
can League pennant. Then, with
the Red Sox leading the Mets
three games to two in the World
Series, McNamara’s moves be-
came, at the time, the latest woeful
chapter in the saga of a team that
had not won a championship since
1918.
With the Red Sox leading Game
6, 3-2, McNamara removed his ace
pitcher, Roger Clemens, after sev-
en strong innings and replaced
him with Calvin Schiraldi, who let
the Mets tie the game in the
eighth. McNamara then kept Schi-
raldi in the game until the 10th,
when he gave up three hits.
McNamara might have re-
placed his hobbling first baseman,
Bill Buckner, late in the game with
Dave Stapleton, a better fielder, as
he had done in Boston’s three vic-
tories in the series. But he did not.

The Red Sox went ahead, 5-3, in

the 10th. But the Mets famously

won in the bottom of the inning

with three runs on a single off

Schiraldi; a wild pitch by Bob

Stanley, who had relieved Schi-

raldi; and a ground ball hit by

Mookie Wilson that skittered be-

tween Buckner’s legs, scoring Ray

Knight.

McNamara insisted that Clem-

ens had asked to be taken out of

the game after the seventh inning.

In “1986: A Postseason Remem-

bered,” an MLB Network docu-

mentary from 2011, he recalled

waiting on the dugout steps as

Clemens walked off the field.

“And he came down the steps

and he said, ‘That’s all I can pitch.’

Quote unquote,” McNamara said.

He was incredulous, he said, but

then Clemens showed him a paper

cut on his middle finger.

Clemens acknowledged in the

documentary that he had had

blood on his finger but denied that

he had asked to be taken out.

McNamara countered, “That is

not the truth, and I don’t lie.”

McNamara never second-

guessed himself for keeping Buck-

ner in the game, saying that Buck-

ner, not Stapleton, was his best

first baseman.

“Stapleton’s nickname was

Shakey,” he said in the documen-

tary. “And you know what that im-

plies.”

The Red Sox jumped to a 3-0

lead in Game 7, but the Mets re-

bounded to win, 8-5, and take the

Series. The Red Sox would not win

a World Series until 2004.

McNamara found some relief

from his heartbreak a few days

later, when he was voted the 1986

American League manager of the

year.

John Francis McNamara was

born on June 4, 1932, in Sacra-

mento. His father, John, was a rail-

road worker from Ireland. His

mother, Josephine (Lane) McNa-

mara, worked for the state of Cali-

fornia after her husband died in

1944. Young John played baseball
      and basketball in high school and
      signed with the St. Louis Cardi-
      nals in 1951 for a $12,000 bonus
      (the equivalent of about $120,000
      today).
      A catcher, he played 14 seasons
      in the minor leagues but never
      made it to the majors. “I could
      catch and throw with anybody, but
      I knew I wasn’t going to make the
      big leagues,” he told The Hartford
      Courant in 1985.
      His managerial career began in
      1959 in Lewiston, Idaho, whose
      minor league club became a low-

level farm team of the Kansas City

Athletics the next season. McNa-

mara eventually managed at

higher tiers in the A’s organiza-

tion, nurturing future major

leaguers like Reggie Jackson.

When Jackson was inducted

into the Baseball Hall of Fame in

1993, he recalled the decency that

McNamara had shown him in 1967

as the manager of the Birming-

ham A’s in Alabama, where Jack-

son, as a Black man, continued to

face discrimination.

“He wouldn’t allow the team to

eat in a restaurant where I wasn’t

welcome,” Jackson said.

McNamara joined the A’s as a

coach in 1968, the team’s first year

in Oakland, Calif., and replaced

Hank Bauer as manager late in

the following season. McNamara

himself was fired after the 1970

season.

Through the ’70s and early ’80s

he managed the San Diego Pa-

dres, the Cincinnati Reds (leading

them to the National League

Championship Series, which they

lost to Pittsburgh) and the Califor-

nia Angels. He left the Angels af-

ter the 1984 season to take over

the Red Sox from Ralph Houk,

who had retired.

The 1986 season was the high

point of McNamara’s time in Bos-

ton. The Red Sox slumped to fifth

place in the American League

East in 1987, and he was fired the

next season during the All-Star

break. He then managed the

Cleveland Indians in 1990 and

through part of the 1991 season be-

fore being dismissed by them as

well.

He next worked in the Angels

organization for five years before

briefly taking over as interim

manager in 1996 — his last assign-

ment as a skipper. He retired with

a career record of 1,160 wins and

1,233 losses.

Soon after the 1996 season, two

of McNamara’s grandsons, ages 6

and 4, were killed by their father,

McNamara’s son-in-law, who then

killed himself.

McNamara married Ellen

Goode in 1984. His previous mar-

riage had ended in divorce. In ad-

dition to his wife, he is survived by

his daughters, Peggy McNamara

and Susan Salsbery, and a son, Mi-

chael — all from his first marriage

— as well as eight grandchildren

and a great-grandson.

After the Mets celebrated their

crushing victory over the Red Sox

in Game 6 of the 1986 series, a dis-

appointed McNamara was asked

by reporters about his team’s long

history of not having won a title in

68 years.

“I don’t know anything about

history,” he replied, his voice tone-

less and his expression described

as a clenched fist, “and don’t tell

me anything about that choke

crap."

John McNamara, 88, Boston Skipper in ’86 Series Loss

John McNamara arguing with the umpire Derryl Cousins in

1985. He led Boston to the American League pennant in 1986.

FRED JEWELL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Making moves in

Game 6 against the

Mets that still rankle.

Alan Parker, who was nomi-
nated for the best-director Oscar
for the 1978 film “Midnight Ex-
press” and again 10 years later for
“Mississippi Burning,” died on
Friday in South London. He was
76.
His death followed a long, un-
specified illness, a spokeswoman
for the British Film Institute said.
Mr. Parker directed a number of
other well-regarded films, work-
ing in a range of styles and genres.
“Fame” (1980) was a musical
about a performing arts high
school in New York. “Birdy”
(1984) was based on a William
Wharton novel about a boy who
had an erotic fascination with avi-

an life. “Angel Heart” (1987) was a
sexy noir that flirted with an X rat-
ing but ended up with an R. “Ange-
la’s Ashes” (1999) was based on
Frank McCourt’s popular autobi-
ography.
Music underpinned some of Mr.
Parker’s best-known work. His
first feature film was the gangster
satire “Bugsy Malone” in 1976, in
which adolescents played the
gangsters and Paul Williams
songs punctuated the action. Two
years after “Fame,” he directed
“Pink Floyd: The Wall,” an im-
agery-filled story about a British
rock star that was written by
Roger Waters of the band Pink
Floyd and based on the band’s al-
bum of the same name. In 1991
came “The Commitments,” a
lighthearted tale about a band in
Dublin. In 1996 he directed the
film version of the stage musical
“Evita,” with Madonna in the role
of Eva Perón.
Madonna, he told The Mirror in
1996, wasn’t the easiest person to
work with, but he found a way to
get the best out of her.
“My secret was to let her moan
to my assistants to get it out of her
system so that by the time she
stepped in front of the camera she
was all complained out,” he said.
The performance won her a

Golden Globe.

Alan William Parker was born

on Feb. 14, 1944, in the Islington

district of London. He started his

career as a copywriter and then

moved into making television

commercials.

“The only way anybody would

give me a chance to say ‘Action!’

and ‘Cut!’ was by doing commer-

cials,” he told The New York

Times in 1980. “That’s how I

learned the craft. I’ve done ridicu-

lous things, like re-create — frame

by frame — ‘Brief Encounter’ for

Birds Eye Dinner for One.”

That background, he said, gave

him a certain disdain for the au-

teur theory of filmmaking, which

holds that the director is the main

creative force of a project.

“A film is never myfilm,” he

said, “because I’m part of a tal-

ented lot of people.”

In the early 1970s, with hun-

dreds of commercials under his

belt, he began moving into feature

films, first as the screenwriter on

a 1971 British movie, “Melody.” In

1974 he directed a BBC Television

movie called “The Evacuees,”

about Jewish children being evac-

uated from London during the

Blitz in World War II.

Soon, though, Mr. Parker was

thoroughly identified with films

about American subjects.

“Midnight Express,” with a

screenplay by Oliver Stone, is

about an American college stu-

dent who is thrown into a Turkish

prison on a drug smuggling

charge. “Fame,” about students at

the High School of Performing

Arts in New York, brought Mr.

Parker some criticism in his home

country, where, he said, people

asked, “Why don’t you make a film

about London, about the Royal

Academy of Dramatic Art?”

“The exciting thing about the

High School of Performing Arts,”

he told The Times in 1980, “is that

it has a social and ethnic mix that

you couldn’t possibly find any-

where in the world, especially not

England.”

“Mississippi Burning” is a fic-

tionalized treatment of the real-

life case involving the murder of

three civil rights workers in Mis-

sissippi in 1964. Vincent Canby, re-

viewing it in The Times in 1988,

called it “one of the toughest,

straightest, most effective fiction

films yet made about bigotry and

racial violence, whether in this

country or anywhere else in the

world.”

Some of Mr. Parker’s films gen-

erated controversy. “Midnight

Express” was accused of demon-

izing Turkey and its people. “An-

gel Heart” featured a steamy sex

scene between Mickey Rourke

and Lisa Bonet, who was then best

known for her role as Denise

Huxtable on the family-friendly

sitcom “The Cosby Show.” “Mis-

sissippi Burning,” starring Gene

Hackman and Willem Dafoe, was

faulted for, among other things,

not having strong Black charac-

ters even though it was a civil-

rights-era story. “Angela’s Ashes”

was criticized as misrepresenting

Irish life.

“It would be nice to do a film

that isn’t controversial,” Mr.

Parker told The Chicago Tribune

just before the relatively benign

“The Commitments” was re-

leased, “although I’m sure some-

one is bound to find controversy in

‘The Commitments.’ ”

Mr. Parker received a lifetime

achievement award from the Di-

rectors Guild of Great Britain in

1998 and was knighted in 2002.

He is survived by his second

wife, Lisa Moran-Parker; a son

from their marriage, Henry; four

children from his marriage to An-

nie Inglis, Lucy, Alexander, Jake

and Nathan Parker; and seven

grandchildren.

In a 2003 discussion organized

by the British Film Institute in

conjunction with the release of his

final film, “The Life of David

Gale,” about a death-penalty op-

ponent (Kevin Spacey) facing ex-

ecution for murder, Mr. Parker

talked about the intuition and ser-

endipity that play a part in the di-

rector’s art.

“It seems to me that a director’s

job is to look for wherever the

magic may be in any scene,” he

said, “and sometimes it’s not

where you think.”

“Sometimes the images in your

head are better than what you end

up with,” he added. “Sometimes

they’re nowhere near as good as

what happens in front of you.”

Alan Parker, 76, Versatile Movie Director With 2 Oscar Nominations, Is Dead

Clockwise from top: Alan Parker, right, on the set of “Mississippi Burning” in 1988; with Gene Hackman in the same film; and Irene

Cara and Gene Anthony Ray in “Fame” (1980), a musical about students at the High School of Performing Arts in New York.

By NEIL GENZLINGER

Alex Marshall contributed report-
ing from London.

Working on a number

of well-regarded films

in a range of styles

and genres.

Beimfohr, Edward

Bloch, Howard

Chazanoff, Lucille

Karr, Patti

Madonia, Ann

Walker, Jane

Scholarship from Washington

University in St. Louis from

which he graduated in 1953.

He also graduated from the

Law School there in 1956. He

was valedictorian of each of

his classes from high school

through collegeand law

school. He received the Phi

Kappa Beta award as a junior

in college and in Law School

wasEditor-in-Chiefofthe

Law Quarterly. He also parti-

cipated in athletics at Wash-

ington University, lettering in

basketball and baseball, and

serving as captain of the bas-

ketball team. Following his

graduation from law school,

after a brief period of legal

practice in St. Louis, he ac-

cepted an offer to join the

firm of Sullivan & Cromwell

in New York City, where he

practiced from 1957 to 1965.

Thereafter, he joined and ulti-

mately became a managing

partner at Casey, Lane & Mit-

tendorf(subsequentlyWin-

dels Marx Lane & Mitten-

dorf). Ed specialized in pro-

viding high-level legal and

businessadviceinmany

areas to major family groups

and ultimately served as an

executor, trustee and trusted

advisortogenerationsof

prominent families. Over the

course of his career, he also

served as a director or trus-

tee of more than a dozen cor-

porations and charitable or-

ganizations. Ed was an enthu-

siastic and dedicated golfer in

his spare time at his main

club, Baltusrol Golf Club in

Springfield,NJwherehe

servedontheBoardfor

many years and was Pres-

ident from 1996 to 1999. He

was also actively involved at

Pine Valley Golf Club in New

Jersey where he maintained

a home and served on the

Board of Directors and

Trustees, as well as Admis-

sions Chairman and Secreta-

ry for many years. Ed's mar-

riage to Joella White in 1951

continued until she passed

away in 2005. He married

again and is survived by his

spouse, Silvia Netter, of Flori-

da. He is also survived by

children Cathy (Wilson), Lar-

ry and Douglas, 10 grand-

children, three great -

grandchildren and a sister Ca-

rol Munsell. A celebration of

life ceremony will be held at a

later date. In lieu of flowers,

the family requests that you

make a contribution to a cha-

rity or organization of your

choice in his memory. To sign

his guest register or to leave

online condolences, please vi-

sit the website of Shikany's

Bonita Funeral Home

at http://www.shikanyfuneralhome.

com.

BLOCH—Howard M.

On Tuesday, July 28, 2020,

HowardMarks Bloch of

Rockville, MD passed away

at the age of 92. Beloved hus-

band of Eleanor Bloch; devot-

ed father of Michele Bloch

(JeffreyRubin)andElise

Bloch; loving grandfather of

Ruth Bloch-Rubin, Ted Bloch-

Rubin, Sarah Sklar and Frank

Sklar. He is also survived by

his great - granddaughter,

Zora Eve Elinson and nume-

rousniecesandnephews.

Graveside services will be

held privately at Garden of

Remembrance Memorial

Park in Clarksburg, MD. Do-

nations may be made to the

Jewish National Fund. Servi-

ces entrusted to Sagel Bloom-

field Funeral Care.

CHAZANOFF—Lucille.

Our Dear Lu, Our world will

never be the same. A unique

and remarkable woman who

did it all and lived life to its ful-

lest.Loved, admiredand

cherished by all who knew

her.Wewereblessedto

share 50 wonderful years of a

very special friendship with

you and Jay. Rest In Peace

our dear Lucia.

Love Hedy and Arthur

KARR—Patti K.

Actress, Dancer, Singer - died

July11, 2020 of natural

causes. She was 88 years old.

Born Patsy Lou Karkalits in

St. Paul, MN, July 10, 1932, she

was the youngest child of

Charles and Estelle (Klebold)

Karkalits. Patti enjoyed a va-

riedcareerperformingin

over 25 Broadway produc-

tions, National Tours, Off-

Broadwayshows,regional-

/stock productions through-

out the country as well as film

and television — from

1950-2006. Her parents, broth-

erandtwosisterspre-

deceased her. Patti is sur-

vived by nieces and nephews,

includingDagnyHenryof

Alexandria, VA and Richard

Karkalits of Hightstown, NJ.

Memorial donations to North

Shore Animal League, 25 Da-

vis Ave, Port Washington, NY

11050-www.animalleague.org

MADONIA—Ann Constance,

age 89, died on July 14 with

her sister, Barbara Maste-

llone, and niece, Nicole

Mastellone by her side. Her

passion for art led to degrees

in Art History and Appraisal

specializing in American Art.

Starting at David Findlay Gal-

leries in New York City, she

went on to become Curator

of Collections at the Daven-

port Museum of Art in Iowa.

In 1989, she became the Cura-

tor of Collections, then Acting

Director, at the Muscarelle

Museum of Art at the College

of William and Mary. One of

her passions was to stimulate

public interest in the arts and

she worked diligently to in-

crease attendance at exhibi-

tions by offering lectures and

workshops.Shementored

many students and helped

develop their appreciation of

art and further their career.

Her wry sense of humor and

keen intellect kept her in-

volved to the end. She was

one of a kind.

WALKER—Jane H.

Jane H. Walker, of Newtown

Square, Pennsylvania, died at

home on July 22, 2020, with

her children by her side. She

was 65. Jane grew up in Dov-

er, New Hampshire, and at-

tended Sacred Heart College

where she received a BS in

nursing. She went on to work

in the NICU at the Johns Hop-

kins Hospital and continued

to care for children as an ele-

mentary school nurse. She

retired from nursing in 2008 to

pursue her passion as an ar-

tist,ultimatelyreceivinga

Masters of Fine Arts from the

PennsylvaniaAcademyof

theFineArts.Twicewi-

dowed, she was preceded in

death by her late husband Dr.

Mark S. Winter in 1993, and

her late husband Douglas C.

Walker in 2013. Jane is sur-

vived by her three children:

Olivia Winter, Colin Winter,

and Madeline Winter. All of

whom loved her dearly and

will never forget her resi-

lience, humor, grace, and un-

dying love and caring for

them. Jane took pride in her

manicured gardens and cur-

ated homes. She never

walkedoutofanantique

store empty-handed. Her

home was always full of ram-

bunctious pups who were as

devoted as they were poorly

behaved. She was a master

cook who taught her children

how to make her signature

dishes of pasta Bolognese,

buttermilk pancakes, and

roasted chicken dinner.

Above all else, Jane loved

spending time with her

children.

PERSON—Oliver (John).

Aug. 1, 1920 - Aug. 31, 2014

Missing your worldly advice.

Your Family

BEIMFOHR—Edward G.

Edward G. Beimfohr passed

away on July 26, 2020. He was

born on December 31, 1932 in

the small farming and coal

mining town of Marissa, Illin-

ois. After graduating from

Marissa High School in 1950,

he received a National Honor

Deaths Deaths Deaths Deaths Deaths Deaths Deaths

In Memoriam