democracy in the death notices / from Agel to Ballard with a stop at Astor
I must have been stuck on the subway on Tuesday, too crowded to turn pages on my NY Times Metro section. The last page of the Metro included Death Notices, which I usually don’t read but which was reachable for me by just folding that section differently.
I have not been reading the many many many articles in all the papers about the death, life, will and wealth of society doyenne Brooke Astor, but there she was in the fine type under Deaths, right after Agel, Jerome and right before Ballard, David.
I still have read nothing about the Lady Astor, but I learned that her Notice-neighbors also lived long and productive lives. Mr. Agel was 77, had been married 51 years, was “devoted to and loved by” … [his family] and his devoted caregiver Bernadette”. (Way to go Bernadette!) He “wrote and produced more than 60 books with such cerebral thinkers as Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and Buckminster Fuller.” Below Ms. Astor, Mr. Ballard was 89 and worked for Time, Inc. for 43 years, retiring to Mexico after being president of Time in Mexico.
The other 29 notices Tuesday included a rabbi, a priest (second oldest in New York!), a “former Copacabana girl” (with photo from back in the day), and a mother, grandmother and “for twenty days” great-grandmother.
Maybe Gothamist should do a death census the way they do one for the weddings and engagements page….
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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