The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-27)

C10 EZ RE K THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022

obituaries

CORRECTION

l The March 22 obituary of Wash-

ington Post photographer Ray

Lustig had the incorrect date of

the Air Florida Flight 90 crash in

the Potomac River. It was in 1982,

not 1981.

FUNERAL SERVICES

DIRECTORY

DC FUNERALSERVICES

5130 Wisconsin Ave, NW

Washington, DC 20016

Phone: (202)966-6400

Fax: (202)966-6186

http://www.josephgawlers.com

Stewart

Funeral Home Inc.

4001 Benning Road NE

Washington, DC 20019

202-399-3600

http://www.stewartfuneralhome.com

MD FUNERAL SERVICES

FORT

LINCOLN

FUNERAL HOME

3401 Bladensburg Road

Brentwood, MD 20722

Phone: (301) 864-509 0

Fax: (301) 864-32 77

http://www.fortlincolnfuneralhome.com

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Becauseyourloved oneservedproudly...

Military emblems are available with deathnoticesand in-memoriams

To placeanotice call202-334-4122or800-627-1150,ext. 44122

When theneed arises,let familiesfind you in

theFuneral Services Directory.

To be seeninthe FuneralServicesDirectory,

please call paid DeathNotices at 202-334-4122.

MD FUNERAL SERVICES

1091 Rockville Pike | Rockville, MD 2 0852

301.340.1400


  












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GHI

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MD FUNERAL SERVICES

Family owned & operated

Beall Funeral Home

6512 Crain Hwy,

Bowie, MD 20715

301-805-5544

http://www.beallfuneral.com

MD FUNERAL SERVICES

11800 New Hampshire Ave

Silver Spring, MD 20904

Phone: (301)622-2290

Fax: (301)622-1254

http://www.hinesrinaldifuneralhome.com

When the

need arises,

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MEMORIALSERVICE

EDWARDJ.MAUCK"Jack"

October11, 1926 -November1,2021

AMilitaryHonorsCommittalServicewillbe

heldat CrownsvilleVeterans Cemetery,1122

Sunrise Beach Rd., Crownsville,MDon

Wednesday,April 6, 2022at 11:30a.m.at

the Chapel.

MAUCK

DEATH NOTICE

CHRISTINEALLEN-SMITH

Peacefully passedawayon March20, 2022,

at the age of 92. She was the lovingwife of

RobertSmith,Jr.for 72 years.She is

survivedby six siblingsand otherrelatives.

Servicewill be heldon March30, 2022,at

CampSpringsCommunityChurch, 8040

WoodyardRoad,Clinton,MD.Viewingis at

10 a.m.,andserviceis at 11 a.m.Live

streamserviceat http://www.compassionand-

serenityfuneralhome.com

ALLEN-SMITH

SHELLEYDENISEWATKINS

BEDDINGFIELD

Enteredinto eternalrest on Sunday,March20,

2022,surroundedby family.She is survived

by her belovedhusbandof 47 years,Guthrie

“Duffy”Beddingfield; children,James“Kriston”

Beddingfield (Donna);AllisonGeter(James);

and Kelley Eiskant(Danny);sevengrandchil-

dren,DanielEiskant,ChloëGeter,Michael

Eiskant,BrianEiskant,James “Christian”Geter,

James“Kriston”Beddingfield,II, and Ellianna

Beddingfield; siblings,GeorgeWatkinsand

MelodyeBerry;and belovedfamilyand friends.

She was precededin deathby parents,George

and Lillian “Freda” Watkins,and sisters

PauletteBurtand NicolePowell.Funeral ser-

vicesprivate.

BEDDINGFIELD

NEALEUGENEBINGER

NealEugeneBingerwhomostrecently

residedin LexingtonPark, MD,passedaway

March24, 2022,at the age of 78 to join his

belovedwifeMargaret"Peggy"Elizabeth

Bingerwhopassedawayin 2015.Nealand

Peggytouchedmanylivesthroughtheirlife

journeywithkindnessand lovinghearts.

Theywill not be forgotten...maythey rest

in peace.Noservicesare beingheldper

Neal'swishes.

BINGER

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need arises,

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Directory.

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at 202-334-4122.

BY HARRISON SMITH

Stephen Wilhite, a computer
programmer who invented the
GIF, the humble but versatile file
format that became an Internet
mainstay, helping people share
charts, photographs and viral
animations — including one of
Mr. Wilhite’s personal favorites, a
looping image of a dancing baby
— died March 14 at a hospital in
Cincinnati. He was 74.
The cause was covid-19, said
his wife, Kathaleen Wilhite.
Mr. Wilhite was working at
CompuServe, the nation’s first
big online service provider, when
he created the Graphics Inter-
change Format in 1987, a few
years before the advent of the
World Wide Web. The company’s
chief technical officer, Alexander
“Sandy” Trevor, had enlisted him
to make an image file format that
used lossless compression and
could work across an array of
computer systems, enabling us-
ers to share photos, stock charts,
weather maps and other files
across the slow communication
lines of the dial-up age, regard-
less of whether they were using
an Apple, Atari, Commodore,
IBM or Tandy computer.
Within a month or so, Mr.
Wilhite had created the first GIF,
a picture of an airplane. Today
the file format is typically used
for looped videos or animations,
which populate social media and
office Slack channels and serve as
a pop culture shorthand — a fast,
wordless way to express emo-
tions like joy (Brad Pitt dancing
in “Burn After Reading”), embar-
rassment (Homer Simpson re-
treating backward into a hedge),
excitement (Michael Jackson eat-
ing popcorn) or approval (a
bearded Robert Redford in “Jere-
miah Johnson,” nodding with a
smile as the camera zooms in).
The GIF “caught on pretty fast
with developers,” Trevor recalled
in a phone interview, adding that
Mr. Wilhite “was the architect of
GIF, no question about it.” He
said that while the file format
was not originally created for
animation, Mr. Wilhite had de-
signed the GIF so that it could be
stretched and extended, helping
to turn it into an animated medi-
um. The format endured even
after the creation of rivals such as
PNG, and became ubiquitous

with the advent of Netscape and

other Internet browsers, with

“Under Construction” GIFs pop-

ulating new websites and ani-

mated GIFs popping up on Mys-

pace pages in the early 2000s.

By 2012, when Oxford Diction-

aries named GIF the U.S. word of

the year, the term was being used

as a verb, not just as a noun. The

word had also sparked a fierce

debate over its pronunciation,

which the magazine Mother

Jones once described as “the

most absurd religious war in

geek history”: Was it a soft g like

Jif, the peanut butter brand? Or a

hard g, as in “gift?”

Mr. Wilhite weighed in on the

issue in 2013, shortly before he

was awarded a Webby Lifetime

Achievement Award for his in-

vention. “The Oxford English

Dictionary accepts both pronun-

ciations,” he told the New York

Times. “They are wrong. It is a

soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of

story.”

Stephen Earl Wilhite was born

in West Chester Township, Ohio,

on March 3, 1948. At age 17, he

was shot in the face during a

reenactment of a Civil War raid at

a town sesquicentennial celebra-

tion, where one actor apparently

used a real bullet instead of a

blank cartridge. Mr. Wilhite was

hospitalized for about six weeks

but went on to graduate from

high school as one of the state’s

“10 top science students,” accord-

ing to an Associated Press report

about his recovery.

He studied computer science

and engineering at Ohio State

University before joining Com-

puServe, shortly after the compa-

ny was founded in Columbus,

Ohio, in 1969. In addition to

creating the GIF, he developed

compilers and designed the ar-

chitecture for the company’s cli-

ent-server environment, which

Trevor described as a kind of

precursor to Web browsers. “Per-

sonally I think that was his

greatest accomplishment,” he

said. “CompuServe ended up

with maybe 2 million subscrib-

ers, and we wouldn’t have any-

thing like that without” Mr. Wil-

hite’s software work.

In addition to his wife of 12

years, the former Kathaleen Bau-

er, survivors include a son, David,

from an earlier marriage that

ended in divorce; four stepchil-

dren, Rick Groves, Robin Lan-

drum, Renée Bennett and Rebec-

ca Boaz; four sisters; 11 grand-

children; and three great-grand-

children.

Mr. Wilhite remained at Com-

puServe after its online services

branch was sold to AOL, and

retired after suffering a stroke in

2000. He kept busy by going on
      weeks-long RV trips and expand-
      ing his model train collection,
      which occupied an entire room at
      the country home he built in
      Milford, Ohio. For years, he also
      rode dirt bikes, sometimes fright-
      ening friends who saw him rac-

ing up dirt hills and pathways.

As Trevor told it, Mr. Wilhite

had once enjoyed riding up a

steep hill near Mansfield, Ohio,

where he would fly over the top

and race down the other side. On

one such ride, he decided to stop

at the summit rather than con-

tinue on, only to realize as he

braked that the far side of the hill

had been “dug out,” as Trevor put

it.

“If he had just kept going, he

would have gone right over the

edge and there would have been

no GIF.”

STEPHEN WILHITE, 74

Computer programmer created Internet’s GIF

WEBBY AWARDS /ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stephen Wilhite accepts his Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in May 2013. Mr. Wilhite created the Graphics Interchange Format

(GIF) while working at CompuServe in 1987. He weighed in on the pronunciation debate in 2013, saying it was “jif” with a soft g.