Bill Wendell, 75, Announcer on David Letterman Show
By Anthony Ramirez, courtesy of The New York Times
April 15, 1999 - Bill Wendell, a radio and television announcer whose crisp authoritative voice provided an ironic foil to entertainers from Ernie Kovacs to David Letterman, died Wednesday at a hospice in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 75.
The cause of death was complications from cancer, said one of his daughters, Francette Nunziata.
Until his retirement in 1995, Wenzel was most recently known for the off-stage introduction of guests at the beginning of Letterman's show at NBC and later CBS. The introductions typically began with a municipal characterization like, "From New York, mountain fortress of the ancient Incas, it's 'Late Night With David Letterman . . .' "
But Wendell also worked with Bob Hope, Dave Garroway, Jack Paar, Merv Griffin, Gary Moore, Alan King, Tom Snyder, Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld. But what brought him the earliest and widest attention was his work in the 1950's as the on-air sidekick for Ernie Kovacs, Mrs. Nunziata said.
"They were always playing practical jokes on each other," his daughter recalled. "One time Ernie was supposed to gulp a big martini, but it was supposed to be filled with water, only it was really filled with vodka. He spit it out and started coughing like crazy on live national television. Dad and his cronies were laughing their heads off."
Wendell was born William Joseph Wenzel, Jr. on March 22, 1924, in New York City to William J. Wenzel , a beverage distributor and an owner of several Manhattan fruit stands, and Mildred S. Wenzel, a housewife. After serving in the United States Army Air Corps in World War II, he worked in radio and early television. He had taken the professional name of Wendell "because he wanted to give his family some privacy and maybe a German name at that time wasn't that popular," Mrs. Nunziata said.
Wendell then went on to work as a staff radio and television announcer for NBC, on call for network promotions, special news bulletins and network identifications.
In addition to his daughter Mrs. Nunziata of Pelham Manor, NY, Wendell is survived by his wife, Anne Wenzel; two other daughters, Anne Wenzel Markgraf of Burbank, California, and Elizabeth Hansbury of White Plains; two sons, William J. Wenzel 3d of Southport, Conn., and Richard Eustace Wenzel of Mount Vernon, NY, and 14 grandchildren.
Arnold Hutschnecker, Therapist to Nixon, Dies at 102
By Erica Goode, courtesy of The New York Times
January 3, 2001 - Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker, who for many years served as Richard M. Nixon's psychotherapist and who once said that Nixon "didn't have a serious psychiatric diagnosis" but had "a good portion of neurotic symptoms," died on Thursday at his home in Sherman, Conn. He was 102.
Dr. Hutschnecker, whom Nixon began seeing in the early 1950's and who visited the president twice at the White House, was the only mental health professional known to have treated a president. Although he would not talk about it while Nixon was alive, in recent years Dr. Hutschnecker had discussed the treatment in several interviews, most notably those quoted in "The Arrogance of Power," by Anthony Summers, a biography of Nixon published last year.
In his book, Mr. Summers reported that Nixon first visited Dr. Hut schnecker, a specialist in psychosomatic illnesses, in 1951, after reading the doctor's best-selling book, The Will to Live, which dealt with complaints like insomnia and hypertension, impotence and chronic fatigue.
Initially, Nixon, then a senator, consulted Dr. Hutschnecker because of pain in his neck and back, Mr. Summers wrote. But Nixon continued to travel to New York to visit the doctor's Park Avenue office, and the doctor visited Nixon in Washington.
When Nixon became president, his aides urged him to sever the relationship with Dr. Hutschnecker, but the two men maintained contact by telephone, and Dr. Hutschnecker twice visited the White House, ostensibly to discuss national issues.
In the meetings with Nixon, Mr. Summers wrote, Dr. Hutschnecker apparently acted not only as therapist but also as adviser and confidant.
Harriet Van Horne, a journalist who lived next to the building where Dr. Hutschnecker had his office, is quoted in the biography as saying: "I once asked a building employee, `Does Mr. Nixon visit friends at 829?' `Naw,' came the reply. `He comes to see the shrink.' "
The doctor last met with Nixon in 1993, according to the biography, when Nixon asked him to accompany him to Pat Nixon's funeral.
Dr. Hutschnecker was born in Austria and educated in Berlin. After reading "Mein Kampf," he became a vocal critic of Hitler, family members said, referring to him in public as a pig. Patients who had joined the SS warned Dr. Hutschnecker that he was in danger, and in 1936, he left Germany for New York.
He was certified in internal medicine and psychiatry, and practiced as an internist for many years, but he was intrigued with the interrelationship between mental and physical problems and by the early 1950's was specializing in psychotherapy.
He married Florita Plattring in 1934; she died in 1966. He is survived by a sister, Greta Hutschnecker Plattry, and nine nieces and nephews.
To his family, Dr. Hutschnecker was known as an enthusiastic disciplinarian, who chided his younger relatives to "chew each bite 33 times for proper digestion."
In 1973, in Senate committee hearings on the nomination of Gerald R. Ford to be vice president, the committee questioned Mr. Ford about rumors that he had been treated by Dr. Hutschnecker. Mr. Ford emphatically denied it, calling the idea "way-out unreliable."
The doctor was outspoken about the emotional pressures on politicians. In the 1950's, he suggested that "mental health certificates should be required for political leaders, similar to the Wasserman test demanded by states before marriage."
But he objected to the notion that neurotic men could not be great leaders. "Is there one man of stature who has not gone through the tortures of the damned and who has not gone to the rim of an abyss before his upturn to a meaningful and creative life began?" he asked in a 1972 Op-Ed piece in The New York Times.
The key to whether neurosis was a problem, he continued, lay "in the personality structure of the man who strives for leadership, and whether his drive to power is motivated by creative or destructive forces, whether he wants to serve the people or whether he needs the people to serve him and his ambition."
In a Times piece written at the time of Mr. Ford's confirmation hearings, Dr. Hutschnecker denied treating Mr. Ford but contended that "the help a political leader might seek under stress to secure his emotional stability is not weakness but courage, and is as much in our national interest as it is in his."
In 1970, Dr. Hutschnecker achieved notoriety as the author of a confidential White House report on crime prevention. In news reports of the time, the report was cited as urging that all 7- and 8-year-olds be tested for violent and homicidal tendencies, and recommending that the most serious juvenile offenders be treated in camps. But in a 1988 letter to The Times, Dr. Hutschnecker said his report fell victim to "malevolent distortion" by the media.
"It was the term `camp' that was distorted," he wrote. "My use of it dates back to when I came to the United States in 1936 and spent the summer as a doctor in a children's camp. It was that experience and the pastoral setting, as well as the activities, that prompted my use of the word 'camp.' "
Dr. Hutschnecker remained active into his 90's, but his last years were spent in a wheelchair and he had difficulty speaking. His study, Mr. Summers said, was "cluttered with the bric-a-brac of a long professional life, including a photograph of Richard Nixon Ð inscribed in 1977 `in appreciation of friendship' - and a Nixon gift of ivory elephants."
Pops Staples, Patriarch of the Staple Singers, Dies at 85
By Jon Pareles, courtesy of The New York Times
December 22, 2000 - Roebuck (Pops) Staples, whose family gospel group, the Staple Singers, carried message songs to a huge pop audience, died on Tuesday at his home in Dolton, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He was 85.
The Staple Singers were Mr. Staples and his children: first a son and two daughters, later three daughters. With hits like "I'll Take You There" and "Respect Yourself," featuring the husky lead vocals of Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers linked gospel, blues and soul behind messages of hope and dignity. The songs envisioned better times and racial harmony amid the discord of the late 1960's and early 70's. Mr. Staples made two albums on his own in the 1990's; the second, "Father Father," won a Grammy Award in 1995.
With his high, pensive, admonitory voice and his pointed guitar picking, Mr. Staples was a link between the Delta blues and the thoughtful soul songs of Curtis Mayfield.
"His gentle, undulating style was the backbone of the Staples' magic, his deep and unwavering faith bear wings," said Bonnie Raitt, who produced part of Mr. Staples's album Peace to the Neighborhood.
Mr. Staples was born in Winona, Miss., on Dec. 28, 1914, the 13th child in a family of seven sons and seven daughters. Reared in Drew, Miss., he grew up picking cotton as a young man and hearing a cappella gospel singing at home and in church. As a teenager he began listening to Delta bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Charley Patton, who was a fellow cotton picker at the Dockery plantation. He started playing guitar at 16, learning from his Delta neighbors and from records by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Slim. He developed a spiky, syncopated fingerpicking style, which he would later amplify with a distinctive reverb. But he devoted himself to gospel, and sang with the Golden Trumpets, a local gospel group.
In 1936 Mr. Staples moved to Chicago with his wife, Oceola, and their daughter, Cleotha; in Chicago they had four more children, Pervis, Yvonne, Mavis and Cynthia. He is survived by all of his children except Cynthia, and by 14 grandchildren.
While he worked in steel mills and meatpacking plants, he also performed with the Trumpet Jubilees gospel group. He began singing at home with Pervis, Mavis and Cleotha, and in 1948 they became the Staple Singers, performing in Chicago churches and then around the South.
The Staple Singers began recording in 1953, making singles for the United and VeeJay labels, and they had their first gospel hit, "Uncloudy Day," in 1957. When Mavis Staples finished high school, Pops Staples quit his day job to lead the Staple Singers full time.
The group allied itself with the civil rights movement and the folk revival in the early 1960's, recording positive-thinking protest songs for the Riverside label and performing at folk festivals. Gospel traditionalists initially rejected the group, considering its music too secular.
"We just kept singing and praying, and we let our music carry our message," Mr. Staples once said.
The group moved to Epic Records, for which they recorded versions of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie songs. "Why? (Am I Treated So Bad)," a bluesy song that protested segregation, reached No. 95 on the pop charts in 1967. They traveled and performed with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and when King was assassinated in 1968, the Staple Singers released "Long Walk to D.C." as a memorial.
The group signed to Stax Records in 1968, and its sound turned to soul music. It had a No. 2 hit with "Respect Yourself" in 1971, a No. 1 hit with "I'll Take You There" in 1972, and other Top 40 hits with "Heavy Makes You Happy" and "If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)."
Pervis Staples left the group for military service in 1971, and was replaced by Yvonne. While the Staple Singers were recording for Stax, Pops Staples also released his own singles: thoughtful, socially conscious songs like "Black Boy" and "Whicha Way Did It Go."
The Staple Singers signed with Mr. Mayfield's Curtom Label in 1975, and had another No. 1 hit, "Let's Do It Again." The group appeared in the music documentaries Soul to Soul, Wattstax and The Last Waltz, and toured worldwide. During the 1980's, the Staple Singers tried dance music, and had dance-floor hits with versions of the Talking Heads' "Slippery People" and "Life During Wartime."
Mr. Staples played a voodoo doctor in David Byrne's 1986 film, True Stories. He made his first solo album in 1987, and in 1990 he played King Creon in Chicago and San Francisco productions of "The Gospel at Colonus." In 1997 he appeared in the movie Wag the Dog.
While he continued to lead the Staple Singers, Mr. Staples also maintained his solo career. He released Peace to the Neighborhood (Pointblank) in 1992, with songs produced by Ms. Raitt, Jackson Browne and Ry Cooder. Mr. Cooder also produced Father Father (Pointblank) in 1994, which won the Grammy award for best contemporary blues album.
In the 1990's the Staple Singers received the Rhythm-and-Blues Foundation's Pioneer Award and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mr. Staples was named a National Heritage Fellow in the folk and traditional arts, and Pops Staples Park was established in Drew.
"We've always tried to make music that is affirmative, happy music that makes a positive point," Mr. Staples once told an interviewer. "We want people to enjoy the music, but we also want them to hear the lyrics and hear our message - love."
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