Theodore J. Forstmann, American financier (IMG, Topps, Gulfstream) and philanthropist, died from brain cancer he was 71.

Theodore Joseph "Ted" Forstmann  was one of the founding partners of Forstmann Little & Company, a private equity firm, and chairman and CEO of IMG, a global sports and media company  died from brain cancer he was 71..^[2] A billionaire, Forstmann was a Republican and a philanthropist. He supported school choice and funded scholarship programs for the disadvantaged.

(February 13, 1940 – November 20, 2011)

Early life

Forstmann grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, the second of six children. His father, Julius, ran a wool business that went bankrupt in 1958. Julius Forstmann had inherited Forstmann Woolen Co. from his own father, one of the world's richest men.^[3] Forstmann was a graduate of Greenwich Country Day School and Phillips Academy. He then played goalie on the ice hockey team at Yale University where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Forstmann later attended Columbia Law School where he earned a juris doctorate, which he financed through gambling proceeds.^[4]

Forstmann Little & Company

Forstmann, an attorney, founded Forstmann Little in 1978 with his younger brother Nicholas, and Brian Little. Forstmann's second brother, J. Anthony Forstmann, founded ForstmannLeff.
Under Forstmann's leadership, Forstmann Little & Company made 31 acquisitions and significant investments and returned more than $15 billion of profits to investors. In addition to IMG, some of the firm's investments include Gulfstream Aerospace, Dr. Pepper, The Topps Co., Stanadyne Corp., Community Health Systems, Ziff Davis, Yankee Candle, General Instrument Corporation, and most recently, Citadel Broadcasting and 24 Hour Fitness.

Career

Critic of junk bonds

While playing golf in the late 1980s, Ted Forstmann inadvertently coined the term for which he became best known. His golf partner asked Forstmann what it meant for a company to be taken over by a buyout firm. "It means the barbarians are at the gates," replied Forstmann. The term became part of Wall Street lore and was connected inseparably to the private equity industry that Forstmann pioneered and flourished in.^[5] Forstmann was featured prominently in the book Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, as he and his company attempted to acquire RJR Nabisco. In the subsequent film adaptation, he was portrayed by actor David Rasche. The book portrayed Forstmann as a critic of KKR's Henry Kravis and his investment methods.^{[citation needed]}
Forstmann's criticism of Kravis (and much of the rest of the financial industry during the 1980s) centered on the issuance of high yield "junk" bonds to finance mergers and acquisitions. (Forstmann referred to junk bonds as "wampum") When the junk bond market later fell into disfavor as a result of scandal, Forstmann's criticism was seen as prescient, as his more conventional investment strategy had been able to maintain nearly the same level of profitability as companies such as KKR and Revlon that built their strategy around high-yield debt.^{[citation needed]}

Credit crisis

Forstmann accurately predicted the worsening of the credit crisis in July 2008, when most pundits believed the crisis had reached its peak. Forstmann argued that the excess of money pumped into the economy after the September 11 attacks in 2001 distorted the decision-making abilities of nearly everyone in finance. With an oversupply of money, bankers and other financiers took on more risk with less return. While this allowed many to make money for a time, eventually this risk accumulated, and the consequences led to the credit crisis.^[6]

Civic life

In 1995 Forstmann was given the "Patron of the Arts Award" by the National Academy of Popular Music at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.^{[citation needed]}
Forstmann dedicated significant personal resources to the cause of education reform. He was a prominent supporter of school choice. In 1998 he and friend John T. Walton established the Children's Scholarship Fund to provide tuition assistance for low-income families wanting to send their children to private school.^{[citation needed]}
In February 2011, Forstmann became a signatory of The Giving Pledge.^[7]
He was an active member of the Republican Party.^[8]

Personal life

Although Forstmann never married, he adopted two boys in the 1990s after meeting them at an orphanage in South Africa: Everest and Siya.^[9] From 1994–1995, Forstmann was involved with Princess Diana. Between 1999 to 2000, Forstmann was rumored to be dating Tracy Richman and Elizabeth Hurley. In 2008, he dated Allison Giannini, a 38 year old actress who was in Mission Impossible III. Finally, from 2009 until his death, Forstmann was known to be dating Padma Lakshmi, the 38 year old Indian-American host and judge of Top Chef.^[10]
During Lakshmi and Forstmann's time together, Lakshmi gave birth to a baby girl, Krishna Thea Lakshmi. At first, Lakshmi was unclear as to the identity of the father. It was later revealed that Adam Dell was the father.^[11]
Forstmann was Roman Catholic.^[12]
In December 2006, newspaper reports on the inquiry into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales alleged that U.S. intelligence agencies had bugged Forstmann's phone or plane and monitored his relationship with Diana. She and her sons were said to have planned to visit him in summer 1997, but British security reportedly blocked the visit over security concerns related to the bugging.^[13]
In May 2011, Forstmann was diagnosed with brain cancer and received treatment at the Mayo Clinic.^[14] Forstmann died on November 20, 2011 due to complications from brain cancer.^[4] He had a net worth of US$1.6 billion as of 2011.^[15]


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Lasse Brandeby, Swedish journalist, actor and television personality, died he was 66.

Lasse Brandeby was a Swedish actor, comedian and journalist died he was 66..

(27 April 1945 – 20 November 2011) 

Biography

Brandeby was born in the Majorna district of Gothenburg. After receiving his degree in journalism he worked for Radio Sjuhärad. He debuted as actor in the early 1980s on Nationalteatern in Gothenburg. He was best known for his quirky character Kurt Olsson, around whom several TV-shows were made in the 1980s and 1990s. He was also known for his other comedic character Rolf Allan Mjunstedt in the TV series Rena rama Rolf where audiences also saw the breakthrough of comedian Robert Gustafsson.^[1]
During early 2007 he participated in the Swedish TV show Let's Dance with dance partner Ann Lähdet where he failed to reach the final three.^[2]
Brandeby died in Gothenburg on 20 November 2011 after suffering from an illness.^[3][4] He was 66.


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Roy West, Australian football player, died from lung cancer he was 70.

Roy West  was an Australian rules footballer for the Geelong Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) during the 1960s died from lung cancer he was 70..

(31 March 1941 – 19 November 2011)

West was a fullback and won the 1961 Carji Greeves Medal for Geelong's best and fairest player. He was a premiership player in 1963 and represented Victoria at interstate football.
Following a year-long battle with lung cancer, West died in a Ballarat hospital on 19 November 2011, aged 70.^[1]


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Ruth Stone, American poet, died he was 96.

Ruth Stone was an American poet, author, and teacher died he was 96..^[3]

 

^{(June 8, 1915 – November 19, 2011)} 

Life and career

She was born in Roanoke, Virginia. She raised three daughters alone after her husband, professor Walter Stone, committed suicide in 1959. She wrote that her poems are "love poems, all written to a dead man" whose death caused her to "reside in limbo" with her daughters. For twenty years she traveled the US, teaching creative writing at many universities, including the University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, University of California, Davis, Brandeis University, and finally settling at State University of New York Binghamton. She died at her home in Ripton, Vermont, on November 19, 2011.^[4]
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert tells a story about Stone's writing style and inspiration, which she had shared with Gilbert:

As [Stone] was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out, working in the fields and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barrelling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming...cause it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, "run like hell" to the house as she would be chased by this poem.

The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. Other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she would be running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it, and it would "continue on across the landscape looking for another poet".

And then there were these times, there were moments where she would almost miss it. She is running to the house and is looking for the paper and the poem passes through her. She grabs a pencil just as it's going through her and she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. In those instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first.^[5]

Writing

Ruth Stone is the author of thirteen books of poetry.^[6] She is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the 2002 National Book Award for Poetry (for her collection In the Next Galaxy),^[7] the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Eric Mathieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, a Whiting Writers' Award (with which she bought plumbing for her house), two Guggenheim Fellowships ^[2][8] (one of which roofed her house), the Delmore Schwartz Award, the Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award from the state of Vermont, and the Shelley Memorial Award. In July 2007, she was named poet laureate of Vermont. The voice of Ruth Stone reading her poem "Be Serious" is featured in the film, USA The Movie.^[9] Paintbrush: A Journal of Poetry and Translation 27 (2000/2001) was devoted entirely to Stone’s work. The Ruth Stone Poetry Prize awarded by The Vermont College of Fine Arts and their literary journal Hunger Mountain is in its sixth year.^[10] Her work is distinguished by an unusual tendency to draw imagery and language from the natural sciences:

this scientific habit of rendering looms larger, becomes not the whole of Stone’s poetic, but an essential component of its complex dynamic. The thematics suggest an ongoing byplay between science and some mode of intellection which is not science ... This is a philosophically serious writer, maybe one of the few instances of a genuinely integrated poetic sensibility we have seen in a very long time.^[11]

Bibliography

• What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, UK edition, 2009, ISBN 978-1-85224-841-3
• What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems. Copper Canyon Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-55659-327-7. —finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize^[12]
• In the Dark. Copper Canyon Press. 2004. ISBN 978-1-55659-210-2.; Copper Canyon Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-55659-250-8
• In the Next Galaxy. Copper Canyon Press. 2002. ISBN 978-1-55659-207-2. winner of the National Book Award^[7]
• Ordinary Words, Paris Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-9638183-8-6
• Simplicity, Paris Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-9638183-1-7
• Who is the Widow’s Muse?, Yellow Moon Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-938756-32-3
• The Solution Alembic Press, Ltd., 1989, ISBN 978-0-9621666-3-1
• Second Hand Coat: Poems New and Selected 1987; Yellow Moon Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-938756-33-0
• American Milk, From Here Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-89120-027-7
• Unknown Messages Nemesis Press (1973)
• Cheap: New Poems and Ballads, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, ISBN 978-0-15-117034-0
• Topography and Other Poems Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, ISBN 978-0-15-190495-2
• In an Iridescent Time, Harcourt, Brace, 1959

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Ronald E. Poelman , American religious leader, head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died from age-related causes he was 83.

Ronald Eugene Poelman was a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1978 until his death. In 1984, he delivered a controversial sermon in the LDS Church's general conference which the church redacted before publishing  died from age-related causes he was 83..

(May 10, 1928 – November 19, 2011)

Biography

Poelman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to a Latter-day Saint family. As a young man, he served as a Mormon missionary in the LDS Church's Netherlands Mission. He began his college studies at what is now California State University, Long Beach and later transferred to the University of Utah completing a degree in history.^[1] In 1955 he graduated from the law school at the University of Utah and in 1965 he graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA degree.^[2]
Poelman lived in San Francisco, California and was a vice president of Consolidated Freightways. He was a bishop of the LDS Church over the Stanford Ward. Poelman also served in several other callings including in the Palo Alto Stake presidency. In April 1978, Poelman became a member of the church's First Quorum of Seventy.^[2] During his time of service, Poelman has served as a counselor to Hugh W. Pinnock in the general presidency of the Sunday School from 1979 to 1981 and from 1985 to 1986. From 1992 to 1994 he again served in the Sunday School General Presidency.^[3] In 1998, Poelman was released from active duties and granted general authority emeritus status.
Poelman was married to Claire, who was for a time a consultant with Stanford University.^[2] After she died, he married Anne G. Osborn, a doctor connected with the University of Utah.^[4]
At the age of 83, Poelman died of "causes incident to aging" at his home in Salt Lake City, Utah.^[1][5]

Controversial sermon

In the October 1984 general conference of the LDS Church, Poelman delivered a sermon entitled "The Gospel and the Church". Controversy ensued when the version of his sermon that was published in the November 1984 Ensign magazine differed from the sermon Poelman had delivered orally. According to Poelman's brother, after Poelman had delivered his sermon, it had been pointed out to him by apostles that have dealt with apostate, often pro-polygamy groups, that the text of his talk might support these groups' claims that people do not need the LDS Church. In response, Poelman decided to revise the text of the sermon.^[6] Videotape copies of general conference that were included in church archives and distributed throughout the church contained Poelman delivering the revised version of his sermon. A "cough track" was included in the retaping to make it appear that the revised sermon was delivered in front of an audience.^[7]
One commentator has criticised the changes to the sermon as a dramatic shift in the meaning of Poelman's address:

"The rewriting and refilming of Elder Ronald Poelman's October 1984 Conference address, originally a rare and inspiring defense of free agency, so that it became yet another cry for obedience. His text was not edited — his ideas were turned inside out."^[8]

Poelman spoke again in general conference after four and a half years.^[7]


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John Neville, British-born Canadian actor (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The X-Files), died from Alzheimer's disease he was 86.

John Neville, CM, OBE was an English theatre and film actor who moved to Canada in 1972  died from Alzheimer's disease he was 86.. He enjoyed a resurgence of international attention in the 1980s as a result of his starring role in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).

(2 May 1925 – 19 November 2011)^[1] 

Early life

Neville was born in Willesden, London, the son of Mabel Lillian (née Fry) and Reginald Daniel Neville, a lorry driver.^[2] He was educated at Willesden and Chiswick County Schools for Boys, and after war service in the Royal Navy trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,^[3] before starting his professional career as a member of the Trent Players.

Career in the UK

Neville was a West End idol of the 1950s, hailed as "one of the most potent classical actors of the Burton-O'Toole generation".^[4] A leading member of London's Old Vic Company, he played many classical leading roles, including Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (a role he repeated on American television for the anthology series Producers' Showcase), and an acclaimed Richard in Richard II, with Virginia McKenna as Queen Anne. He also alternated with Richard Burton the parts of Othello and Iago in Othello.^[5] He was a frequent visiting player at the Bristol Old Vic. He received good reviews in the musical adaptation of Lolita, called Lolita, My Love, which closed in Boston en route to Broadway.
Noted for his classical good looks and mellifluous voice, the young Neville was frequently described as the young John Gielgud's natural successor. For a while, he took over the leading role of Nestor Le Fripé from Keith Michell in the original West End production of the musical Irma La Douce, playing opposite Elizabeth Seal as Irma. For a brief period in 1963, he returning to the London stage, playing Alfie in the stage version of the play by Bill Naughton,^[3] but by then his theatrical commitment laid outside London.
In 1961, his weekly pay declining from £200 to £50,^[3] he joined the Nottingham Playhouse, becoming joint artistic director with Frank Dunlop and Peter Ustinov when the current building in Nottingham opened in 1963.^[3] It became one of Britain's leading provincial repertory theatres.^[4] Though Dunlop and Ustinov soon left, Neville remained at the theatre until 1967.^[5] He resigned over funding disputes with the local authority^[5] and the Arts Council.^[3][6]
Neville starred as the Duke of Marlborough in the 1969 BBC2 serial The First Churchills, a major television role which also maintained his international profile when the show was broadcast as the very first Masterpiece Theatre series in the United States in 1971.^[7][8][9]

Career in Canada

With his family, he left Britain in 1972 and devoted his later career to the Canadian theatre, taking up the post of artistic director at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta (1973–78).^[6] He later took similar positions with the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia (1978–83)^[6] and other Canadian theatre companies, including as artistic director of the Stratford Festival of Canada from 1985–89,^[6] as well as continuing his acting career. On top of his artistic decisions, Neville distinguished himself such as when he helped eliminate the Neptune's deficit with canny promotions such as giving free tickets to the local taxi drivers and their families, correctly anticipating the recipients to enthusiastically discuss the theatre to passengers and tourists.^[10]
From 1995-98, Neville had a prominent recurring role in The X-Files television series as the Well-Manicured Man, and in 1998, he reprised his role in the feature film The X-Files: Fight The Future. Although he made numerous other television appearances and occasional film roles, the main focus of Neville's career was always the theatre.
He was cast as Baron Münchhausen by Terry Gilliam. In the film, Neville plays the character at three different stages of his life; in his 30s, his 50s and his 70s. In his later years, Neville had numerous cameo appearances in films, including Primate of the Anglican Church in Australia in The Man Who Sued God and an Admiral in the Earth Space Navy in The Fifth Element. He had a small role as "Terrence" in David Cronenberg's 2002 Spider. In the same year he also appeared alongside Vanessa Redgrave in the 2002 film adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
In 2003, Neville did a stage reading of John Milton's Samson Agonistes, opposite Claire Bloom at Bryn Mawr College at the behest of poet Karl Kirchwey.^[11]
He was appointed to the Order of Canada, that nation's highest civilian honour, in 2006.^[12]

Death

According to publicists at Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Neville died "peacefully surrounded by family" on 19 November 2011, aged 86.^[13] Neville suffered with Alzheimer's disease in his latter years.^[14] He is survived by his wife, Caroline (née Hopper), and their six children. His grandson is actor Joe Dinicol. He was added in In Memoriam at the 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Selected filmography

• A Study in Terror (1965): Neville played Sherlock Holmes
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
• Stark (1993)
• Little Women (1994)
• The Road to Wellville (1994)
• Regeneration (1997)
• The Fifth Element (1997)
• The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
• Time of the Wolf (2002)

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Michael Hastings, English playwright, died he was 73.

Michael Gerald Hastingswas a British playwright, screen-writer, and occasional novelist and poet died he was 73..
He is probably best known for his 1984 play about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Tom & Viv, which became a motion picture released in 1994.
Hastings was born in London. His early plays (Don't Destroy Me (1956), Yes And After (1957)) reflected the influence of the Angry Young Men movement and his brief involvement with the circle surrounding Colin Wilson.^[2][3]

^{(2 September 1938 – 19 November 2011)[1]} 

 

He later enjoyed mainstream West End success with Gloo Joo (1978), a farce about a West Indian threatened with deportation from the United Kingdom, which won the Evening Standard Comedy of the Year Award in 1979. He wrote numerous stage plays, television screen plays, and in addition to Tom & Viv, scripts for two motion pictures, The American and The Nightcomers (based on Henry James' short story "The Turn of the Screw" and starring Marlon Brando). He also wrote two libretti for Michael Nyman, Man and Boy: Dada (2003, assisted by Victoria Hardie) and Love Counts (2005).
He published his first novel, The Game in 1957, followed by The Frauds. His 1970 novel Tussy Is Me - about Eleanor Marx - won him the "Somerset Maugham Award". A poetry collection, Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems appeared in 1961.
Hastings died aged 73 on 19 November 2011.^[1]

Books

Fiction

• The Game (1957)
• The Frauds (1960)
• Tussy Is Me (1970)
• The Nightcomers (1971; based on his own screenplay)
• And in the Forest the Indians (1975)
• Bart's Mornings and Other Tales of Modern Brazil (1975) (short stories)

Non-fiction

• Rupert Brooke: The Handsomest Young Man in England (1967)
• Sir Richard Burton: A Biography (1978)

Poetry

• Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems (1961)

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