{"id":24547,"date":"2022-04-15T09:13:52","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T14:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24547"},"modified":"2022-04-15T09:13:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T14:13:52","slug":"obit-watch-april-15-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24547","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: April 15, 2022."},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Newton<\/a>, noted golfer.<\/p>\n

Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour\u2019s match play championship.<\/a>
\nThe Australian\u2019s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after Watson had a few rather fortuitous shots. A wire fence kept Watson\u2019s ball in bounds on the eighth hole and the American chipped for eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then, on July 24, 1983, he walked into an aircraft propeller.<\/p>\n

His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye and also sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care and required lengthy rehabilitation from his injuries.<\/a>
\n\u201cThings weren\u2019t looking too good for me. I knew that from the priest walking around my (hospital) bed,\u201d Newton said later. He was 33 at the time of the accident.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

Not to be denied from playing the game he loved, he taught himself to play golf one-handed, swinging the club with his left hand in a right-handed stance. He regularly had scores in the mid-80s for 18 holes. That translates to a handicap of about 12 or 14, one that most able-bodied amateur players would aspire to.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mike Bossy<\/a>, of the New York Islanders.<\/p>\n

Bossy played the entirety of his 10-year career on Long Island, earning a place as both a franchise great and one of the best goal scorers the sport has ever seen, before retiring with a chronic back injury. He finished his career with 573 goals, scoring over 50 in nine straight seasons, an all-time record. Famously, he scored 50 goals in 50 games during the 1980-81 season, matching Maurice \u201cRocket\u201d Richard\u2019s record.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Franz Mohr<\/a>, who the paper of record describes as the “piano tuner to the stars”. He was Steinway\u2019s chief concert technician for 24 years.<\/p>\n

For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz\u2019s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.<\/a>
\nMr. Gorbachev\u2019s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous \u2014 Tchaikovsky\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 1 \u2014 but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody \u201cMoscow Nights.\u201d<\/a>
\n\u201cI was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,\u201d Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, \u201cMy Life with the Great Pianists,\u201d written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). \u201cThe Russians just melted.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was also Glenn Gould’s New York piano tuner.<\/p>\n

Mr. Mohr not only worked on the piano at the recording studio, he also rode around New York with Gould. \u201cHe loved Lincoln Town cars,\u201d Mr. Mohr wrote in his memoir. \u201cThat is all he would drive. He once said to me: \u2018Franz, I found out that next year\u2019s model will be two inches shorter. So, you know what I did? I bought two Town Cars this year.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And (as noted in the obit) he wrote a book, My Life with the Great Pianists<\/a><\/strong> (affiliate link).<\/p>\n

He also attended to performers\u2019 personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway\u2019s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr\u2019s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.<\/a>
\n\u201cIf he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,\u201d Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed \u2014 if Mr. Graffman\u2019s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example \u2014 \u201che would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.\u201d (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist\u2019s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Mohr was 94 when he passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Newton, noted golfer. Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour\u2019s match play championship. The Australian\u2019s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,16,21,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-obits","category-planes","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24547"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24549,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions\/24549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}