Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
believed in poetry
as a force for
social change. As an author, pub-
lisher, and the proprietor for seven
decades of San Francisco’s City
Lights bookstore—a mecca for
literary bohemians and political
progressives—Ferlinghetti nurtured
and inspired generations of writ-
ers and artists. He was something of a godfa-
ther to the Beats, championing and publishing
Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, and Allen
Ginsberg. He earned national notoriety when he
was prosecuted for obscenity in 1957 for pub-
lishing Ginsberg’s explicit counterculture mani-
festo “Howl”—and acquitted due to the poem’s
“redeeming social significance.” More conserva-
tive in his personal life than the dissolute Beats,
Ferlinghetti wrote dozens of volumes of poetry
marked by simple language, wry humor, and
populist politics; his 1958 collection A Coney
Island of the Mind sold more than a million cop-
ies and was translated into numerous languages.
Poetry is “an insurgent art,” he said, that can
“save the world by transforming consciousness.”
Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, N.Y., the
youngest of five sons, said The Washington
Post. His Italian father died six months beforeFerlinghetti’s birth. His mother,
“disabled by grief, was institution-
alized when he was a toddler.”
Ferlinghetti was raised by relatives
in France and New York City
before being taken in by a wealthy
couple for whom his aunt worked
as a governess. He earned a jour-
nalism degree at the University of
North Carolina, then served as a
naval officer in World War II, an
experience that turned him into “a pacifist and
political activist,” said the Los Angeles Times.
After the war he earned a master’s degree at
Columbia University and a comparative litera-
ture doctorate at the Sorbonne before settling
in San Francisco. He tried to make a living as a
painter before opening City Lights with a part-
ner in 1953, each making a $500 investment.
In the decades that followed, Ferlinghetti pub-
lished poetry and fiction, “wrote essays and
political polemic,” and kept “honing his poetic
techniques,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.).
He never stopped writing, releasing the memoir-
ish experimental novel Little Boy in 2019, at
the age of 99. And “all the while he minded the
store.” In a 2018 interview, Ferlinghetti said of
City Lights, “I’m there in spirit all the time.”
But how often, he was asked, in reality? “As a
poet,” he replied, “I don’t deal in reality.”Dr. Bernard Lown
saved countless
lives. In 1962, the
Harvard cardiologist
invented the first effective direct-
current defibrillator, administering
a precisely timed electric jolt to cor-
rect abnormal heartbeats—and to
restart stopped hearts. Two years
later, he demonstrated how the
local anesthetic lidocaine could also
be used to control irregular heart rhythms; it
became a standard drug treatment. But Lown’s
work wasn’t confined to hospitals. Horrified
by the public-health implications of the nuclear
arms race, he joined with six American and
Soviet doctors in 1980 to found International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
(IPPNW). The group won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1985, by which time it had 135,000 members
in 41 countries. “To me, you cannot be com-
mitted to health,” Lown said, “without being
engaged in social struggle for health.”
Born Boruch Latz in Lithuania, he fled to
the U.S. with his family in 1935 to escape
“encroaching anti-Semitism,” said The
Washington Post. Finding himself in Maine,
the teenage Lown “taught himself English bymemorizing the pages of a diction-
ary.” In 1945, he earned a medi-
cal degree from Johns Hopkins
University, said The Boston Globe,
from which he was briefly expelled
after he intentionally broke hos-
pital policy by using blood from
black donors for white patients.
Drafted to serve as a doctor dur-
ing the Korean War, Lown refused
to declare that he’d never joined a
“subversive” organization, and “was dishonor-
ably discharged, drafted again, and put to doing
janitorial work at a military hospital.”
Lown rapidly climbed the ranks of academia
and medicine, becoming a professor of cardiol-
ogy at Harvard University and a senior physician
at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
His involvement in the IPPNW led detractors to
accuse him of playing into “the hands of Soviet
propagandists,” said The New York Times. He
dismissed such criticism as irrelevant considering
the cataclysmic threat posed by nuclear weap-
ons. “We are not indifferent to other human
rights,” he said in accepting the Nobel. “But first
we must be able to bequeath to our children the
most fundamental of all rights, which precondi-
tions all others: the right to survival.”Obituaries
Bernard
Lown
1921–2021Ge
tty
(^2
)
The poet who became a counterculture icon
The cardiologist who campaigned against nukes
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
1919–202135
These are some of the people,
famous and not, who have
recently died from Covid-19.
J.J. Boatman, active and fun-
loving elementary student from
Fort Worth, who suffered heart
failure only 24 hours after devel-
oping Covid symptoms, died
Jan. 26, age 9.
Anne Feeney, tireless folk musi-
cian and protest singer who
performed more than 4,000
shows over 30 years—playing at
anti-war rallies and picket lines,
union halls and punk clubs—and
whose fans included Pete Seeger
and the rock band Rage Against
the Machine, died Feb. 3, age 69.
Rep. Ron Wright, Republican
lawmaker who tested positive
for Covid-19 soon after return-
ing to his home in Arlington,
Texas, following the Capitol riot
on Jan. 6, and who became the
first sitting member of Congress
to succumb to the disease, died
Feb. 7, age 67.
Elizabeth Duff, who in 1974
broke through gender barriers to
become the first woman to drive
a bus for the city of Nashville,
died Feb. 13, age 72.
Fernando Hidalgo, Cuban-born
TV host who for 14 years hosted
El Show de Fernando Hidalgo—a
racy variety show filled with
scantily clad dancers, interviews,
and double entendres, which was
appointment viewing in many
Latino homes across the U.S.—
died Feb. 15, age 78.
Derek Khan, “ghetto fabulous”
stylist who in the 1990s stripped
hip-hop and R&B stars such as
Salt-N-Pepa, Mary J. Blige, and
Lauryn Hill of their street wear
and instead dressed them in
Fendi, Chanel, and Yves Saint
Laurent, died Feb. 15, age 63.
Antoine Hodge, bass-baritone
who performed with 15 profes-
sional opera companies over
the past two decades, recently
appearing in the chorus—and
singing a solo—in a revival
of Porgy and Bess at the
Metropolitan Opera, died Feb. 22,
age 38.
Mercia Bowser, oldest sister of
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel
Bowser, who spent her career
helping children, seniors, and
people with developmental dis-
orders while working for Catholic
charities and the city’s Office on
Aging, died Feb. 24, age 64.Farewell