WILLIAM GANZ, CATHETER INVENTOR
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Cedars Sinai Heart Institute
Dr. William Ganz, a cardiologist, in an undated photo.
His son Tomas confirmed the death.
The catheter, which is used more than one million times a year in the United States, is known as the Swan-Ganz because Dr. Ganz created it with Dr. Jeremy Swan at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It is inserted through a vein in the neck, shoulder or groin and fed into the right side of the heart. A balloon at the device’s tip allows it to be carried along by blood flow.
When in place, the balloon deflates and the catheter rests in the pulmonary artery, where it can measure the effects of a heart attack and a patient’s response to medication, among other factors. The device is also used in heart surgery. Before the introduction of the Swan-Ganz catheter, patients had to be catheterized in special surroundings, with X-ray images to guide placement, and not at their bedside.
Dr. Jeffrey W. Moses, director of the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy at Columbia University Medical Center, said in an interview on Thursday that the Swan-Ganz device had a “phenomenal impact on the understanding of cardiovascular disease.”
The inventors reported developing the catheter in 1970, and it was quickly adapted by other physicians. The following year, Dr. Ganz came up with a method for directly measuring blood flow in humans. The measurement technique was then incorporated into the Swan-Ganz catheter.
Dr. Moses said that Dr. Ganz’s measuring procedure, called thermodilution, involves gauging the temperature difference of blood as it moves from one chamber of the heart to the next. By plugging in Dr. Ganz’s mathematics, this temperature difference tells the amount of blood that changed chambers.
Dr. Ganz was born in 1919 in Kosice, Slovakia. His education at the medical school of Charles University in Prague was interrupted by the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. Like other Jews, he was incarcerated in a Nazi labor camp rather than being drafted into the army. He was eventually discharged and went to Budapest, where he thought hiding would be easier than in Kosice, his son said.
After the war, he returned to Prague and finished medical school. He became a cardiologist and began his work on thermodilution. In 1966 he emigrated to Los Angeles to escape communism. Dr. Swan, then chief of cardiology at Cedar-Sinai, hired him.
In 1982, Dr. Ganz collaborated with Dr. P. K. Shah, now director of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, to conduct early studies in treating heart attacks by dissolving coronary artery blood clots. Clot-dissolving therapy became a standard treatment for heart-attack patients.
The American College of Cardiology gave Dr. Ganz its distinguished scientist award in 1992.
Dr. Ganz’s wife, Magda, died in 2005. In addition to his son Tomas, he is survived by another son, Peter, and five grandchildren.
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DAVID LLYOD, WHO WROTE ‘CHUCKLES’ EPISODE
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David Lloyd in 1976.
The cause was prostate cancer, which was diagnosed 21 years ago, his son Christopher said.
Mr. Lloyd was an astonishingly productive writer by series television standards, not only generating scripts on his own but also working with other writers to doctor scripts in trouble. In addition to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” for which he had credits on more than 30 episodes between 1973 and 1977, Mr. Lloyd wrote for, among other shows, “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Lou Grant,” “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” “The Tony Randall Show,” “The Associates,” “Taxi,” “Dear John,” “Amen,” “Wings,” “Cheers” and “Frasier.”
In a trade where some are strongest in writing jokes and repartee, others in building characters and still others in shaping stories, Mr. Lloyd was gifted across the board.
“His own work was always in great shape, and he was very helpful on other people’s scripts,” said Bob Ellison, who worked with Mr. Lloyd on “Mary Tyler Moore,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and others. “He lit up the writer’s room when he came in. And that’s a big part of the job, bringing the room to life, resuscitating it.”
He was also the creator of the series “Brothers,” which ran for several seasons in the 1980s on the cable network Showtime after being rejected by broadcast networks because a main character was gay.
“He was maybe the most highly respected television comedy writer of all time, and very likely the most prolific,” said Les Charles, a producer of “Cheers,” “Taxi” and “Frasier,” among other shows. “He was the first writer we asked to write for ‘Cheers.’ ” He added: “You get an episodic writer to give you four or five shows a season, that’s tremendous. David would do 10 or 12.”
His enduring reputation was made relatively early in his career, two years into his tenure at “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” on Oct. 25, 1975, when “Chuckles Bites the Dust” was broadcast. The series, which was set in a television newsroom in Minneapolis, starred Ms. Moore as Mary Richards, an earnest news producer; Edward Asner as her boss, Lou Grant; Ted Knight as the self-admiring nitwit of a news anchor, Ted Baxter; and Gavin MacLeod as the news writer, Murray Slaughter.
In the episode, Ted is invited to be the grand marshal of a circus parade, but Lou forbids it as undignified. Ted’s replacement is Chuckles the Clown, the host of a children’s show on the same television station. But on the day of the parade, Lou rushes into the newsroom, stunned, and explains that Chuckles, who attended the parade dressed as one of his characters, Peter Peanut, had been crushed to death. As Lou explains it, “a rogue elephant tried to shell him.”
For the remainder of the episode the newsroom denizens deal with the shock of the death by joking about it. Mary finds this distasteful, but at the funeral, when the priest leading the service lists Chuckles’s silly-sounding characters (Mr. Fe Fi Fo was one) and recites his catchphrase, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants,” Mary can’t keep herself from guffawing.
At the height of her embarrassment, the priest tells her to let it all out, that Chuckles would have approved of her laughter. At that point Mary bursts into tears.
The hilarity derived from Mary’s discomfort (and Ms. Moore’s boffo rendering of a woman in full squirm), but the power of the episode was Mr. Lloyd’s exploration of how people deal with shock over a death, by deflecting it with humor or stifling it with somberness.
The episode won Mr. Lloyd an Emmy Award, became legendary among Hollywood script writers and was named by TV Guide this year as the third-best episode of any show in television history. (The Top 2 came from “Seinfeld” and “The Sopranos.”)
David Gibbs Lloyd was born in Bronxville, N.Y., on July 7, 1934. His father, H. Wilson Lloyd, worked in public relations and advertising but was also a songwriter and humorist who passed on the show business gene to his son.
David Lloyd graduated from Yale and thought about entering drama school afterward, but enlisted in the Navy instead. He was a schoolteacher before landing jobs in television, writing monologues for Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s after a friend, Ed. Weinberger, a writer and producer for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” suggested he write a script on spec for the show. He did, and sold it.
Mr. Lloyd is survived by his wife, Arline, whom he married in 1958; a sister, Sally; two daughters, Julie and Amy; and three sons, Douglas, Christopher and Stephen, the last two of whom are television writers. Christopher Lloyd said that his father’s wit and restless intelligence created an intellectually competitive household that was especially focused on what was funny.
“And now I’ve learned myself that that’s what the writers’ room is like,” he said. “That’s the environment he thrived in.”
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THOMAS J. O’MALLEY, WHO HELPED LAUNCH GLENN INTO ORBIT
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NASA
Thomas J. O’Malley with John Glenn on Jan. 24, 1962.
The cause was pneumonia, his daughter, Kathleen O’Malley, said.
At the height of the cold war, with the United States still reeling from the haunting beep-beep-beep of Sputnik — the first artificial satellite, launched into space by the Soviet Union in 1957 — Mr. O’Malley was sent to Cape Canaveral by his company, General Dynamics, as its leading test engineer.
The company’s Convair division had built the Atlas, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and then received a federal contract to convert it into a spacecraft capable of lifting astronauts into orbit. Too often, to the further frustration of America’s space dreams, the Atlas had blown up on the launching pad. The company feared it would lose the contract.
Mr. O’Malley was “Convair’s toughest test conductor,” the astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Deke Slayton wrote in their history of the space program, “Moon Shot” (Turner Publishing, 1994). He “took no lip from anyone” and created a team that was “anxious to work day and night and turn the Atlas into a fine piece of reliable machinery,” they wrote.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2007, Mr. O’Malley said, “We had one goal: to get something up there as soon as possible.”
On the morning of Feb. 20, 1962, Mr. O’Malley pressed the button that fired the Atlas booster rockets and sent Mr. Glenn on his way to becoming the first American to orbit the Earth.
Tape recordings caught Mr. O’Malley’s words at that moment: “May the good Lord ride all the way.”
Five years later Mr. O’Malley was summoned again to handle a difficult situation. On Jan. 27, 1967, three astronauts — Virgil I. Grissom, who was known as Gus, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee Jr. — were killed when fire engulfed their Apollo command module during a training exercise on the launching pad.
The command module had been built by North American Aviation. NASA officials recommended that Mr. O’Malley, who was still working for General Dynamics, be hired by North American as its new director of command module launch operations. The command module is the vehicle that carries the crew to and from the vicinity of the Moon, as opposed to the lunar module, which lands on the Moon.
“There were all sorts of recriminations after the fire,” John Tribe, who worked closely with Mr. O’Malley, said in an interview on Tuesday, “and NASA knew what Tom could do.”
A new command module, incorporating a raft of safety modifications, was built at the North American Aviation plant in Downey, Calif. “Tom was responsible for setting up the operation in Florida that prepared all the equipment, putting the propellants on board, checking it all out — a complex operation,” said Mr. Tribe, who later became chief engineer for the Boeing-Rockwell Company. “We were working seven days a week, 24 hours a day, evaluating and tracking every task.”
“He was a big guy,” Mr. Tribe added. “He could intimidate people, be foulmouthed; but, by golly, he led.”
On Oct. 11, 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned mission in the Apollo program, was launched. It orbited the Earth for 11 days.
Thomas Joseph O’Malley was born on Oct. 8, 1915, in Montclair, N.J., to Thomas and Alice Martin O’Malley. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1936 from the Newark College of Engineering, now the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and first worked in aviation at the Wright Aeronautical Corporation in Paterson, N.J. He joined General Dynamics in 1958.
Besides his daughter, Mr. O’Malley is survived by his wife of 65 years, the former Anne Arneth; two sons, Thomas Jr. and James; three sisters, Winifred Dean, Eileen Lohr and Dorothy Ihde; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Memorabilia from the early days of the space age surrounded Mr. O’Malley at his home in Cocoa Beach, not far from the launching pads. Mounted on a piece of varnished wood was the black starter button from the 1962 Glenn flight.
At Cape Canaveral, a plaque bolted to the base of a streetlight on the road leading to Pad 14, the site of the Glenn launching, reads, “O’Malley’s Guiding Light.”
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CARL BALLANTINE, COMEDIAN WHO PLAYED A MAGICIAN
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Carl Ballantine was a regular on the television show “McHale’s Navy.”
He died of age-related causes, his daughter Saratoga Ballantine said.
“As my father always said to me about why anybody died, ‘He stopped breathing,’ ” Ms. Ballantine said.
Over the course of a six-decade career, Mr. Ballantine became familiar to audiences as a comic actor, especially after landing the role of the scheming, profiteering seaman Lester Gruber on the television series “McHale’s Navy” in 1962. But it was his fusing of comedy and prestidigitation (or the lack of it) that made him memorable. He wasn’t, in fact, an inept magician, but he wasn’t a great one, and he learned early on — when a trick went flat and his joke about it got laughs — that his originality lay in the combination of entertainment genres.
Onstage he was a rapid-fire jokester, an instinctive commentator on his own actions, the verbal repartee as much a part of his act as the rope ends that refused to rejoin, the rabbits that refused to materialize from a top hat, the bodies that refused to levitate on command. Bounding before an audience, he’d unfurl a banner that announced “Ballantine: The World’s Greatest Magician” (or “Magishen,” or something like that), and the banner would slip from his grasp.
“Name dropper,” he’d mumble.
Meyer Kessler, as he was known as a boy, was born in Chicago on Sept. 27, 1917, and according to family lore he learned his first tricks from a barber who came to the family apartment to cut his hair. His career began in the waning days of vaudeville, when, as a young magician who actually could perform tricks, he was helping support his family. An early stage name, at a time when he was working with playing cards, was Carl Sharp; the name Ballantine he stole from a brand of Scotch.
“He thought it sounded show-businessy and classy,” his daughter said.
By the age of 18 Mr. Ballantine had moved to New York City, where he performed in clubs and on television variety shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Steve Allen Show.” He moved to Los Angeles when he landed the job on “McHale’s Navy.”
He was cast in several movies, including Billy Crystal’s directorial debut, “Mr. Saturday Night,” and in numerous other television series, including “Car 54, Where Are You?,” “That Girl,” “The Monkees,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Night Court” and “The Cosby Show,” on which he appeared as himself as the entertainer at a children’s birthday party. He made one appearance on Broadway, as Lycus in a 1972 revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
Mr. Ballantine’s first marriage ended in divorce. He was married to Ceil Cabot, a cabaret singer and actress, for 46 years, until her death in 2000. He is survived by a sister, Esther Robinson, of Chicago, and two daughters, whom Mr. Ballantine, an inveterate horse player, named for his favorite racetracks: Saratoga Ballantine, of Hollywood, and Molly Caliente Ballantine, of Pacific Palisades, Calif.
In a statement to The Los Angeles Times after his death, Steve Martin acknowledged the debt that he and many others owe to “the Amazing Ballantine.”
“Carl Ballantine influenced not only myself but a generation of magicians and comedians,” Mr. Martin said. “His was also the most copied act by a host of amateurs and professionals.”
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BOB LEWIS, A PRANKSTER IN A SOMBER BUSINESS
By BRIAN ROGERS
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Nov. 14, 2009, 9:54PM
Handout photo
Bob Lewis’ wife and daughter say he enjoyed a full life.
Bob Lewis, a fun-loving prankster and the fourth and last surviving son of the founders of Geo. H. Lewis & Sons, a funeral services institution in Houston since 1936, died Tuesday after a long fight with Alzheimer’s. He was 86.
“He was a prankster — all the Lewises were,” Lewis’ wife of 63 years, Dolores, said. “They were a fun-loving family even though they were in a business that was sort of somber.”
The couple’s daughter said her father loved a good joke. During business meetings, he would inconspicuously drop lit firecrackers in metal trash cans to give his brothers a scare.
“Daddy would laugh, then they would all laugh … after they cussed him out,” said Carol Lewis Blackwell.
She also said he was tender with her, especially about his work.
“I came home from school one day and asked how he did what he did and his only response was, ‘I’m helping people,’ ” she said. “He just had a kind heart.”
A third generation Houstonian, Lewis was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, two Gold Stars for major battles and the Presidential Unit Citation for completing 28 combat missions with the 305th bombardment group, 8th Air Force during World War II.
After returning to Houston in 1945, he obtained his funeral directing license and joined his parents and his three brothers, Geo, Jr., Gus and Norman in the business.
“In those days, there had to be a Lewis at every funeral,” Dolores Lewis said. “That made the business — because there was always a Lewis there.”
The couple met at a picnic after he returned from World War II and she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. They married six months later.
They enjoyed shooting skeet and trap, and he was an avid hunter and deep sea fisherman.
His wife even tells the obligatory “fish story” about their adventures.
During a fishing excursion in Panama in 1967, her husband hooked a massive marlin that would have won a contest netting him a new Cadillac, Dolores Lewis said.
“That fish came up to the boat and cut that leader just like you’d cut it with a knife and we hadn’t seen him since,” Dolores Lewis said. “We often laughed and said Bob dropped my Cadillac in the Pacific.”
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ARTHUR WALKER, LIBERTY COUNTY COWBOY WHO BLAZED A TRAIL
By PEGGY O’HARE Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 11, 2009, 9:07PM
Houston Chronicle file
Arthur Walker, who was among a handful of black cowboys to present oral histories 15 years ago to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., wore his beloved cowboy hats even in his final days while resting in bed or sitting in his wheelchair.
Arthur “A.J.” Walker Sr., a legendary black cowboy who performed around the country and hosted rodeos at his 40-acre Liberty County ranch for years, died Sunday of complications from dementia. He was 79.
Walker, who was among a handful of black cowboys to present oral histories 15 years ago to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., wore his beloved cowboy hats even in his final days while resting in bed or sitting in his wheelchair.
“I’d go over sometimes, and he’d still be wearing them. He loved wearing his old hats,” said Walker’s home health care nurse, Greg Sonnier.
Walker claimed to be the first black cowboy to win a buckle for bull riding in Madison Square Garden, Sonnier said, capturing the $800 first prize at age 22. During his adventurous life, he performed in rodeos across Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Massachusetts and New York.
Walker’s Circle 6 Ranch, located in the Liberty County town of Raywood, features a 200-foot arena he built himself that can seat hundreds of people. He hosted monthly rodeos at his ranch, followed by zydeco dances in the ranch’s dance hall, until his illness sidelined him three years ago, said his wife, Pam Walker.
A.J. Walker Sr. was born in Raywood in 1930, and came from humble beginnings, working long days on his sharecropper father’s ranch with no electricity or running water. As a child, Walker wore clothes made from flour sacks.
“I’d milk four or five cows, feed the chickens, then walk two miles to school,” Walker told the Houston Chronicle in 1995. “Saw wood at night to start the wood stove and shell corn. All we’d eat was milk and corn bread.”
He told the Chronicle he quit school in the ninth grade to help out on the family ranch and began riding in rodeos when he was 16.
In the 1940s and ’50s, black cowboys were treated differently from their white counterparts. While traveling to rodeos, Walker and other black cowboys had to ride in the backs of trains with the livestock because of discrimination. Black cowboys also had to perform in the arena at the end of the night — only after all the white cowboys had finished competing.
“When they went to places, they were escorted to the back of the places to eat,” said his wife. “He accepted it as it was. He said he was never treated badly — he was always treated with respect.”
Hosted trail riders
Back home in Texas, Walker continued to promote rodeos and host annual trail rides to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. Each year, numerous trail riders camped out overnight at the arena at his Raywood ranch on their way to Houston.
For years, he was president of the Anahuac Saltgrass Cowboy Association, a group with a largely African-American membership.
“I think the world has lost a legend,” Pam Walker said. “He paved the way for our black cowboys to compete and to learn, and he mentored many, many young men.”
Another Liberty County cowboy, Gene Roberts, 45, of Dayton, who is believed to have drowned earlier this month after he disappeared while helping friends round up cattle near the swollen Trinity River, “was like a grandson” to Walker, she said.
Walker is also survived by 10 children, three stepchildren and numerous grandchildren.
Visitation will take place today from 8 to 10 a.m. at the St. Miles Missionary Baptist Church on U.S. 90 in Ames, with the funeral service beginning at 10 a.m. Burial will immediately follow at the New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Raywood.
By EVERETT EVANS Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 11, 2009, 2:18PM
Margaret C. Skidmore, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston executive who led the fundraising that greatly expanded the museum’s campus, died Monday after a long illness. She was 71.
Each year, she oversaw three drives and 10 special events, which contributed significant funds for the operating budget and acquisitions.
As development director from 1981 through her retirement in 2005, Skidmore also headed the museum’s education and community outreach programs. Each year, she oversaw three drives and 10 special events, which contributed significant funds for the operating budget and acquisitions.
“Margaret Skidmore was a hardworking team player who never lost sight of the MFAH’s mission: to bring the art of the world to all the citizens of Houston,” MFAH director Peter Marzio said. “As director of development, she distinguished herself by her civilized, caring manner and her profound sense of right and wrong. She was aggressive as a fundraiser but never stepped over that elusive line where ego and money exist for their own sake. She is an eternal role model.”
When Skidmore joined the MFAH in 1978, the museum consisted only of the Caroline Wiess Law Building and Bayou Bend. During her 27 years there, the museum added the Glassell School of Art, in 1979; the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, in 1986; a 40,000-square-foot conservation facility, in 1991; and the new Junior School of Art and central administration building, in 1994.
Active in retirement
Skidmore also oversaw the $127 million capital campaign for the Audrey Jones Beck Building, which opened in 2000. The addition of the Beck Building more than doubled the museum’s exhibition space, making it the largest museum in the South.
“Nothing could be more exciting than to raise money for an institution you really believe in — and one that (I) would be involved in whether I was on staff or not,” Skidmore told the Houston Chronicle in 1992.
As a member of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, Skidmore delivered lectures, led workshops, and served as a panelist on fundraising and development for arts and nonprofit organizations. The society recognized her with its outstanding fundraising award from 1980 to 1982 and named her its first fundraiser of the year in 1985.
Skidmore was also on the Cultural Arts Council of Houston board of directors from 1990 to 1996. She also served on the board of the Rice Design Alliance and as a trustee of Pittsburgh’s Chatham College and the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York.
Skidmore began her career as a development assistant at Yale University in 1960, later holding the same job with the Chicago Symphony. In the 1970s, she served as director of development for Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. After her retirement from MFAH in 2005, Skidmore worked as fundraising consultant for various organizations and projects.
She is survived by her loving husband of 49 years, Louis Skidmore, Jr. of Houston, Texas; brother Geoffrey Bernard Cooke of Franklin, Tennessee; son Christopher Alexander Skidmore and his wife Anne (Stuart Goettee) of Houston, Texas; daughter Elizabeth Park Skidmore of Boston, Massachusetts; daughter Heather Cooke Skidmore Howard and her husband Christopher Tenney Howard of San Francisco, California, and grandchildren: Madeleine Park Skidmore, Alexander Owings Skidmore, Addison Tenney Howard and Taylor Skidmore Howard.
A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday at Christ Church Cathedral, 1117 Texas. A reception will follow in the cathedral’s great hall.
Ann
