The Boston Globe - 20.08.2019

TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2019 The Boston Globe C7

Obituaries

By Richard Goldstein
NEW YORK TIMES
NEW YORK — Al Jackson,
the slender left-hander whose
pitching provided a semblance
of hope for the historically woe-
ful New York Mets of the early
1960s, died on Monday in Port
St. Lucie, Fla. He was 83.
His death was announced by
the Mets, who did not specify
the cause. Mr. Jackson, who al-
so served as the pitching coach
for the Boston Red Sox under
manager Don Zimmer in the
late 1970s, had a stroke in
2015.
The 1962 Mets, an expansion
team in its first season, won 40
games and lost a record 120, but
Little Al Jackson, as he was
known — he was 5 feet 10 and
weighed 165 pounds — was a
bright spot. He threw all four of
the Mets’ shutouts that season,
among them a one-hitter.
He won eight games and lost
20, but he did not lead the team
in losses. The former Dodger
right-hander Roger Craig, also
victimized by the Mets’ dreary
lineup, went 10-24.
Mr. Jackson was a mainstay
for the Mets through their first
four seasons. He then was trad-
ed to the St. Louis Cardinals
and was a member of their pen-
nant-winning 1967 team.
He pitched for the Mets
again in 1968 and briefly at the
beginning of their “Miracle”
season of 1969, when they rose
up to become World Series
champions. He was later an in-
structor, mostly in the Mets or-
ganization.
Mr. Jackson was a cheerful
sort, but when he took part in
Old-Timers’ Day at Shea Stadi-
um in June 1972, the memory
of his many frustrating outings
continued to vex him.
“How do I explain to my kids
what losing was like?” he la-
mented. “Every time you put on
a uniform you want to win, but
something would always hap-
pen to us.”
Mr. Jackson’s most remark-
able outing came at the Polo
Grounds, the Mets’ home for
their first two seasons, when he
went all 15 innings against the
Philadelphia Phillies, throwing
215 pitches, on the afternoon of
Aug. 14, 1962. He gave up just
six hits but lost, 3-1, when the
Phils rallied for a pair of runs
after a two-base error by first
baseman Marv Throneberry,
known derisively as Marvelous
Marv for his fielding and base-
running mishaps.
Mr. Jackson got the Mets’
first victory at Shea in April
1964, shutting out the Pitts-
burgh Pirates, and he threw a
two-hitter against the Cincinna-
ti Reds that May. He outpitched
the future Hall of Famer Bob
Gibson, 1-0, on the final week-
end of the season, when the
Cardinals were fighting for a
pennant — which they none-
theless went on to win.
He was a favorite of manag-
er Casey Stengel going back to
the Mets’ first spring training
camp at St. Petersburg, Fla.
“He’s artistic,” Stengel was
quoted as saying by the sports

writer Leonard Shecter in his book “Once Upon the Polo Grounds” (1970). “I know this because he was fielding the bunted balls. He’s got a chance because how many pitchers have I got? He’s very intelligent and his wife’s a school teacher. He looks like he’s been pitching baseball for 10 years.” “He rambles a little bit,” Mr. Jackson said of Stengel. “But I think I understand him.” Alvin Neill Jackson was born on Dec. 26, 1935, in Waco, Tex- as, and grew up there. He was signed by the Pirates in 1955 out of historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and pitched briefly for them in 1959 and 1961. The Mets selected him for a $75,000 fee in the expansion draft. Mr. Jackson tossed 10 shutouts for the Mets from 1962 to

He was 8-20 for the sec-
ond time, in 1965, but that
year, as in the Mets’ inaugural
season, he didn’t lead the team
in defeats: Jack Fisher, like
Craig, lost 24 games.
Mr. Jackson was traded to
the Cardinals after that season
in a deal that brought them the
third baseman Ken Boyer, a for-
mer National League Most
Valuable Player.
He posted a 13-15 record
with a sparkling 2.51 earned
run average for the 1966 Cardi-
nals, then went 9-4 for their
pennant-winners of 1967 and
threw a one-hitter against
Houston. But he was not in-
cluded on the Cardinals’ World
Series roster.
Mr. Jackson concluded his
pitching career with the Mets
and the Reds in 1969. He had a
career 67-99 record with 14
shutouts.
Zimmer, another original
Met, hired Mr. Jackson as pitch-
ing coach for his first season
managing the Sox in 1977.

He was fired at the tail end of the 1979 season, as an inju- ry-depleted pitching staff stum- bled in the second half of the season and the Sox finished third in the AL East, with a 91- 69 record. Several Sox players expressed disappointment at the firing. “He made a big difference,’’ said Bob Stanley, who credited Mr. Jackson with helping him mature from a young thrower into a consistent pitcher. Catcher Carlton Fisk said, simply, “How come it's always the nicest guys who get fired?’’ Mr. Jackson was pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles from 1989 to 1991. He was later a bullpen coach for the Mets under Davey Johnson and a manager, pitching coach, and roving instructor in their farm system. The Mets said in a statement it would be ‘‘impossible to cal- culate the number of players and staff he touched and influ- enced during his career.’’

His survivors include his wife, Nadine; his sons, Reggie, who pitched in the Mets’ minor league system, and Barry; and two grandsons. Ron Darling, the former Met pitcher and current Met broad- caster, recalled that when he was with New York’s Tidewater farm team in the early 1980s, Mr. Jackson, then the pitching coach, taught him to throw a split-fingered fastball. More important, Darling said, was Mr. Jackson’s emphasis on the need for devotion to the craft in a se- rious, professional way. In his book “The Complete Game” (2009), written with Daniel Paisner, Darling related how Mr. Jackson spoke of the times when black players were barred from segregated hotels and restaurants. Darling took a lesson from that. “I had no choice but to take the gift of my situation more seriously,” he wrote. “I couldn’t take anything for granted.”

AlJackson,83,Metshurler,pitchingcoachforSox

By Katharine Q. Seelye NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK — Dr. Liane Russell, a pioneer in the study of the dangers of radiation on developing embryos, whose findings are the reason doctors today ask women if they are pregnant before giving them X- rays, died on July 20 in a hospi- tal in Oak Ridge, Tenn. She was 95. The cause was pneumonia following treatment for lung cancer, her son, David Russell, said. Dr. Russell spent more than a half-century at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee, starting in 1947. The lab had a history; it had beentheheadquartersforthe Manhattan Project, the secret World War II program that de- veloped the atomic bomb. Dr. Russell arrived just two years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hi- roshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated quarter of a mil- lion people instantly while tens of thousands more eventually died of radiation poisoning. The effects of radiation were of intense interest in the post- war period. Scientists every- where were exploring the peaceful uses of nuclear capa- bility while also studying its dangers, including the effects of atmospheric fallout from atomic bomb tests and the effects on those who worked with radio- active materials. Against this backdrop Dr. Russell, a geneticist, undertook her studies, which included the field of teratology — the study of congenital deformities and abnormal formations. Shortly after their arrival, she and her husband, William Russell, established the storied “mouse house” at Oak Ridge, an extensive colony of mutant mice bred to show the effects of radiation exposure. There she helped identify the harmful effects of radiation and chemicals on mice embryos and the genetic implications of such damage. In time, the “mouse house” would hold more than 200,000 mice and help to drive discovery in mammalian genetics research for decades. In 2001, Oak Ridge dedicated a new lab to mouse research, naming it the William L. and Liane B. Russell Laboratory for Compar- ative and Functional Genomics. In studying embryos, Lee Russell, as she was known, identified the stages at which specific body parts develop. She also found a pattern of when deformitieswouldoccur. Through extrapolation, Dr. Russell determined that in hu- mans, developing fetuses were most vulnerable to radiation during the mother’s first seven weeks of pregnancy. Because women generally don’t know right away whether they are pregnant, Dr. Russell recom- mended that non-urgent diag- nostic X-rays be taken in the 14 days after the onset of a wom-

an’s menstrual period. Women don’t ovulate for those two weeks, so Dr. Russell reasoned that they could not become pregnant and doctors could avoid potentially causing harm to a fetus by using radiation. That recommendation was adopted around the world and is the reason doctors, before taking X-rays, ask women of childbearing age if they are pregnant or if they think they might be pregnant. In her experiments with mu- tated mice, Dr. Russell made another important discovery — that the presence of the Y chromosome meant a mammalian embryo was male. Other scientists had discov- ered decades earlier that chro- mosomes determined sex, but had done so in lower-level or- ganisms, like mealworms. Dr. Russell was the first to find that the Y chromosome determines maleness in mammals, setting off a scramble among scientists to see if this was the case in hu- mans too, which it was. The discovery quickly opened up new avenues of research in genetics and genetic abnormalities. So significant were Dr. Rus- sell’s findings that in 1994 she received the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award from the Depart- ment of Energy, the depart- ment’s highest research honor. Her findings, the depart- ment’s announcement said, “have been the benchmark for the study of mutations in mammals and genetic risk assess- ment worldwide.” Liane Brauch was born on Aug. 27, 1923, in Vienna, the oldest of three children. Her fa- ther, Arthur, was a chemical en- gineer and her mother, Clara (Starer) Brauch, was a singing teacher. Lee was 14 when Germany invaded Austria in 1938. The family, which was Jewish, was able to escape by surrendering their home and Arthur Brauch’s business and leaving behind all their belongings. They fled to London, sur- vived the Blitz, and in 1941 moved to New York, where Lee studied chemistry at Hunter College, graduating in 1945. She had planned to go to medical school. But after a summer job at the Jackson Lab- oratory, an independent bio- medical research institution in Bar Harbor, Maine, she changed her mind. Her mentor there was Wil- liam Russell, a prominent geneticist and the man who would become her husband in

He encouraged her to at-
tend graduate school at the
University of Chicago, his alma
mater, which she did. She grad-
uated in 1949 with a doctorate
in zoology.
Her husband died in 2003.
In addition to her son, Dr. Rus-
sell leaves her daughter, Evelyn
Russell; two stepsons, Jack and
Jim Russell; a stepdaughter, El-
len Gilmore; and four
stepgrandchildren.

LianeRussell,at95;studied

effectsofradiationonembryos

ASSOCIATED PRESS/1965 Mr. Jackson was one of the top pitchers for the New York Mets in their inaugural season.

FRANK O’BRIEN/GLOBE STAFF/1978 Mr. Jackson (second from right) watched the action against the New York Yankees in the bottom of the 9th inning with, from left, manager Don Zimmer, Butch Hobson, Bob Bailey, trainer Charlie Moss, and Mike Torrez in the Sox dugout.

By Jason Gutierrez
NEW YORK TIMES
MANILA — Gina Lopez, a
former environmental activist
who introduced a broad crack-
down on Philippine mining
companies after she was ap-
pointed the country’s environ-
mental secretary in 2016, died
Monday. She was 65.
Her death, from multiple
organ failure, was confirmed
by the ABS-CBN Foundation, a
social development group of
which she was the longtime
chairwoman.
The outspoken Ms. Lopez
landed the job of acting envi-
ronment secretary when Presi-
dent Rodrigo Duterte came to
power in 2016. And she wast-
ed no time in going after major
mining companies that she
said had flagrantly violated the
country’s environmental laws.
She ordered 23 mines to
shut down and about five oth-
ers to suspend operations. She
also canceled 75 lucrative con-
tracts for mines that she said
threatened watersheds.
In moving to halt the opera-
tions of 28 of the country’s 41
mining companies, she was
taking aim at businesses that

accounted for about half of Philippine nickel production, which environmentalists said had left rivers, rice fields, and watersheds stained red with nickel laterite. “I’m going to do the right thing and let the dice fall where it may,” Ms. Lopez said when she canceled the mining permits. “And I am going to hope that maybe these politi- cians, even if they’re funded by mining money, must have love for God and country in their hearts.” But Ms. Lopez’s swift as- sault on the industry faced stiff opposition from influen- tial mining groups, and she was forced from her job when the Philippine Congress denied her confirmation to the post just 10 months after Du- terte appointed her. “What a waste,” she said after she was forced out. “Every- one would have benefited from the management and care of the environment.” Salvador Panelo, a spokes- man for Duterte, called her one of the country’s “most pas- sionate Cabinet members” and said her “environmental advo-

cacy and legacy remains un- paralleled to this day.” “She fiercely fought power- ful interests in the mining sec- tor, as well as in industries having negative effects on our ecology,” he added. A scion of the family behind the country’s storied ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., Ms. Lopez was the longtime head of the ABS-CBN Foundation, the me- dia conglomerate’s charitable arm, which spearheaded vari- ous notable environmental projects. Until Ms. Lopez took the job of environmental secretary, advocates say that government corruption had for decades let Philippine mining companies skirt environmental regulations, resulting in de- forestation, flattened moun- taintops, and heavy metal con- tamination of water and soil. After her brief foray into government, Ms. Lopez continued with her environmental advocacy, promoting sustain- able tourism in the Philippines before she died, according to the ABS-CBN Foundation. “What I do is I follow my heart and right now, my heart

wants to do this,” Ms. Lopez said, according to ABS-CBN. Born Dec. 27, 1953, Ms. Lo- pez was the second of seven children of Eugenio Lopez Jr., the former chairman and chief executive of ABS-CBN, and Conchita La’O. The Lopez family founded ABS-CBN, which was seized by the military un-

der the rule of dictator Ferdi- nand Marcos in the 1970s. At the ABS-CBN Founda- tion, she oversaw many projects, including rescuing children from domestic violence with the country’s first hot line against child abuse and promoting educational television. But it was the danger mining

operations posed to human health that drew her greatest attention. Calling any mining opera- tion in a watershed dangerous, she said allowing such activity was “like saying that gold and nickel are more important than the water that our people drink.”

GinaLopez,at65;environmentalactivist

BULLIT MARQUEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 2017 Ms. Lopez was denied confirmation as environment secretary by the Philippine Congress.

The Boston Globe - 20.08.2019

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