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BUD WARD
1925 — 2019Executive Helped Marriott
Open Doors for Minorities
B
ud Ward, an African-Ameri-
can consultant, stepped up
to a lectern in January 1967
to address Marriott-Hot Shoppes
Inc. hotel and restaurant managers
about how to develop better rela-
tionships with minority employees.
Peering at his audience, Mr. Ward
saw only white faces, so he di-
verged from his prepared remarks
to make a little joke:
“I feel like a fly in a bowl of
buttermilk.”
Though no one else seemed to
appreciate his quip, Mr. Ward
gamely went on with his speech,
arguing that Marriott could im-
prove its efforts to make minority
workers feel welcome and eligible
for promotion. For starters, he
suggested, they should be told
about the profit-sharing plan.
Bill Marriott, the son of the
company’s founder, soon offered
Mr. Ward a job at what became
Marriott International Inc. He
stayed 18 years, first as a consul-
tant and later as a vice president
and corporate officer with respon-
sibilities including management
training and human resources.
In an oral history, he recalled
meeting a Marriott restaurant
manager known for rude treat-
ment of his black kitchen staff. In-
stead of berating the manager, Mr.
Ward asked about his career goals,
and then explained that those aims
couldn’t be achieved unless the
manager was able to rally the
workers to improve the restau-
rant’s performance.
Mr. Ward, who died July 31 at
age 94, believed that corporate ca-
reers like his were an important
part of the civil-rights movement.
“You do the marching and raising
hell and whatnot,” he told Fortune
magazine in 2005, “but you’ve got
to have somebody on the inside (of
corporations) to interpret that to
the individuals that you’re trying
to reach. I saw that as my role.”
James Harold Ward Jr., known
as Bud, was born on June 4, 1925,
in Worcester, Mass. His father, who
did maintenance work by day and
played the drums in a band by
night, died when Bud was a child.
His mother worked as a cook.H
e was the only black student
in his high school graduat-
ing class of 1943. The other
boys on the basketball team stayed
in a hotel during a tournament in
Rhode Island; he was sent to bunk
with a black family.
After graduating, when he tried
to enlist in the Army Air Forces, he
was told blacks could be trained
only in Tuskegee, Ala., and there
were no openings at the time. A
draft board then assigned him to
the Navy, which trained him to
work on diesel engines. He was put
on an escort ship heading for the
South Pacific. When an officer dis-
covered a rule that blacks could
serve only in certain menial roles,
he was sent ashore in Alaska,
where he completed his military
service with little to do.
Following the war, he worked
briefly in a foundry, then decided to
use his benefits under the GI Bill to
attend college. He studied for twoBYJAMESR.HAGERTY years at Howard University—where
he met his future wife, Eulah Rich-
erson—and then transferred to Cor-
nell University to study hotel ad-
ministration. He graduated from
Cornell in 1952 and found that big
hotel companies weren’t recruiting
black managers.
Howard University hired him to
manage cafeterias. Later, he was
hired to run the Booker Terrace
Motel in Miami, described by a lo-
cal newspaper as a “colored mo-
tel,” serving blacks. Mr. Ward ini-
tially enjoyed the challenge but
was shocked when one of the hotel
owners insisted on saving money
by changing only the bottom sheet
when guests checked out. Mr.
Ward quit in protest.
After moving to Washington,
D.C., in 1958, he worked for a pub-
lic-relations firm that helped cor-
porations reach minority audiences
and then set up his own market-re-
search and consulting business. His
work eventually attracted the in-
terest of Marriott.
By 1985, Mr. Ward believed he
had hit a glass ceiling at Marriott.
“When you’re black in a white cor-
poration, you know you’re black in
a white corporation,” he told the
New York Times. “And no matter
how well you do in your position,
there is a limit to how far you’ll go
and how much you’ll earn in the
next year. I thought I could do bet-
ter than that.”
He set up a consulting company
and helped found Symbiont Inc., a
firm providing information-tech-
nology services.
Mr.Wardissurvivedbyhiswife
of 68 years, Eulah; a sister, a son,
three grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren.
One of his role models, he said in
an oral history, was Jackie Robin-
son. “You don’t get confrontational;
you get even,” he said. “You per-
form, and that’s what I try to do.”
Read a collection of in-depth
profiles atWSJ.com/Obituariesfunds.
In the mid-2000s, he and a
tennis buddy, John Paulson,
agreed that the housing market
was heading for a fall. Mr. Tar-
rant persuaded skeptical clients
and partners to invest $60 mil-
lion in a hedge fund Mr. Paulson
created to bet on a surge in mort-
gage defaults. When that surge
occurred in 2007 and 2008, in-
vestors in Mr. Paulson’s fund
made profits totaling around $
billion.
Mr. Tarrant lost when he and a
partner bet with Warren Buffett
that a hedge-fund portfolio would
outperform the S&P 500 index in
the 10 years through 2017. Mr.
Buffett donated his $2.2 million
proceeds from the bet to charity.
—James R. HagertyJEFFREY TARRANT
1956 — 2019AI Strategies Intrigued
Fund Manager
E
ven while being treated for
the brain cancer that would
cut his life short, Jeffrey
Tarrant was searching for the
next frontier in investing.
He figured it would involve
the use of artificial intelligence
and machine learning to scour
data and discover investment
strategies that elude the individ-
ual human mind. In November
2016, he launched MOV37 LLC to
invest in hedge funds that use
what he called autonomous
learning to decide where to put
their money.
Mr. Tarrant, a Harvard Busi-
ness School graduate who died
Aug. 5 at age 63, also was a
founder of Protégé Partners LLC,
a New York-based manager of
funds investing in small hedgeBUNNY BECKER
1940 — 2019Texan Promoted Wine
From the Hill Country
B
unny Becker and her hus-
band, Richard Becker,
wanted a weekend getaway
30 years ago when they bought
land in the Hill Country near
Fredericksburg, Texas. Then one
thing led to another.
The couple, who lived in San
Antonio, noticed two wineries in
the Fredericksburg area. Wine
paired well with Ms. Becker’s in-
terest in French cooking and Dr.
Becker’s love of botany. In 1992,
they planted grapes and founded
their own winery. Becker Vine-
yards became one of the biggest
and best known in Texas and
helped establish the Hill Country
as a serious wine-producing area.
Their timing coincided with
growing interest in wine among
Americans and a revival of Freder-icksburg as a tourist destination.
Ms. Becker, a speech patholo-
gist, loaded up her Buick with
wine and offered tastes to restau-
rateurs. Dr. Becker continued
working as an endocrinology spe-
cialist in San Antonio while fre-
quently making the 50-mile drive
to the winery.
The wines retail for about $
to $40 per bottle. Production ex-
ceeds 140,000 cases per year.
Ms. Becker, who died Aug. 5 of
cancer at age 78, diversified the
farm into lavender and introduced
an annual “grape stomp” to let
visitors crush grapes with their
feet and make wine-footprint T-
shirts. Dr. Becker initially thought
the stomp was hokey but said his
wife was right: It’s popular.
—James R. HagertyOBITUARIES
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