PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE • SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 • WWW.POST-GAZETTE.COM
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LATEST DEATHS

The Post-Ga­zette’s com­pre­hen­sive re­port of re­cent deaths in­cludes three types of obit­u­ar­ies. News obit­u­ar­ies, pre­pared by our staff, are pub­lished at the dis­cre­tion of our ed­i­tors. Clas­si­fied obit­u­ar­ies are paid death no­tices pre­pared by fu­neral home di­rec­tors. To place a clas­si­fied obit­u­ary, call 412-263-1371. To sug­gest a news obit­u­ary, call 412-263-1601. Funeral home di­rec­tors may also call 412-263-1601 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to note a death for which there is no clas­si­fied obit­u­ary. Those names will be listed un­der other deaths.


CLASSIFIED OBITUARIES

AFANESKO, Lucy “Alice,” Frank­lin Park

ARNOLD, Dean F., Pitts­burgh

BAIRD, James Wal­lace, Mt. Leb­a­non

BARWELL, Col­leen Marie, Green­ville, Mercer County, and Pitts­burgh

BELSTERLING, Ralph E., Over­brook

BRYNER, Mil­ton R. “Mickey,” Plum

BUCHNER, Jer­ome J. “Jerry,” Brookline

CAPUTO, Don­ald “Don,” Center

CASSIDY, Robert Patrick “Butch,” for­merly Penn Hills

CATON, Kath­leen L. “Kathy,” Shaler

CORSO, An­drea, Moon

DLUGOS, Phyl­lis M.

ESKEN, Jon “Jack,” Whi­taker

EVASHAVIK, Gi­rard N. “Bucky,” Wilkins

FOERSTER, Pa­tri­cia Weak­land “Pat­sie,” Regent Square

GAITO, Frank M. Sr., South Side

GANSTER, Phil­lip N. Sr., North Ver­sailles

GORMAN, John C. “Jack,” Oak­wood

HARBIN, Marie

HATTMAN, Betty Shew, Cran­berry, for­merly Moon

HELFRICH, Joan Theresa

HENDERSON, Pet­rina I. Man­zella, Hamp­ton

HOHAN, Mary Thein, Penn Hills

INTERTHAL, Da­nielle T. Mon­te­sano, Shaler

JARDINE, James V. Jr. “Jimmy,” Chap­ar­ral, N.M.

KOGER, Audrey B.

KRALL, Valerie Savorn, Bethel Park

KRAUTH, Ron­ald “Jaye”

LABBETT, Ed­win Samuel Jr., Pitts­burgh

LETTIERE, Brian M.

MACEJKA, Law­rence “Larry,” Dor­mont

MADDEN, Judy A. Fis­cher, Swiss-

vale

MAIHAN, Paul Rich­ard, Bal­ti­more, for­merly Troy Hill

MARTINAC, Chris­to­pher

MASTROMATTEO, Mary Frances Coco, Stan­ton Heights, for­merly Bloom­field

McAFEE, Wil­liam E. “Bucky,” Wex­ford

McDUNN, Mary Ann Ko­zlo­wski, Ross

McINTYRE, Joann P., Glen­shaw

McTALL, Joseph Edward, Mount Wash­ing­ton

MEARS, James E. Jr., Duquesne Heights

MICHALSKI, Dol­ores M., New Kens­ing­ton, for­merly Glass­port

MILLER, Carolyn E. Tegethoff, Cran­berry, for­merly North Side

MORIMOTO, Bertha Helen Kugel­man, Squir­rel Hill

NAGY, Wal­ter A., Plum

NAIL, Donna Kath­er­ine

O’LEARY, Wil­liam D., North Fay­ette

PATTERSON, Mar­ga­ret “Peggy,” Oak­mont

PAVLOSKY, Julia N.

PENCE, George

PETICCA, Ben­ja­min G., Wilkins

PISULA, Ruth Bar­bara Bun­tich

REINEMAN, Shir­ley Fol­lans­bee

RICHARD, Karen L., Natrona Heights, for­merly Wilkins­burg

RIDLEY, Si­grid G. Lip­in­ski, Penn Hills

SANDUSKY, Re­nee Moeller, Canon­s­burg, for­merly White­hall

SCARANO, Emil B., Mur­rys­ville

SCHULTHEIS, Joyce E., Ren­frew

SHORE, Doro­thy “Dor­rie”

SIGNORE, Rita M., for­merly Penn Hills

SMITH, Jar­rell B. “Jerry,” Mt. Leb­a-

non

SPERDUTI, Robert, Pitts­burgh

SULLIVAN, Doro­thy Fay Hilf, Markleys­burg, Fay­ette County, for­merly West­wood and Mt. Leb­a­non

TALLARICO, P. Tho­mas

THOMAS, Elmer L. Sr., North Ver­sailles

URBANEK, Joan T., Pitts­burgh

VERTOSICK, Frank T., Natrona Heights

WHITE, John H. “Jack,” Chippewa

WILHELM, Jerry G., Ches­wick

WOODSON, Mar­ga­ret Gilles­pie “Margo,” Char­les­ton, S.C.

YEAGER, Robert Douglas “Bob”

Howard Daniel Wactlar |
Generous technology pioneer at CMU
Dec. 29, 1943 - March 1, 2021

Howard Wact­lar was a mensch.

A vi­sion­ary in the field of tech­nol­ogy and com­puter sci­ence, he also gave freely of his time, his re­sources, and his love and at­ten­tion.

In more than half a cen­tury of teach­ing and re­search at Car­ne­gie Mel­lon Univer­sity and the Na­tional Science Foun­da­tion, Mr. Wact­lar is cred­ited with de­vel­op­ing tech­nol­ogy and soft­ware en­gi­neer­ing sys­tems with seem­ingly lim­it­less ap­pli­ca­tions, from ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to The His­to­ryMak­ers — the na­tion’s larg­est African Amer­i­can video oral his­tory ar­chive — to help­ing those with dis­abil­i­ties with in­no­va­tive tech­nol­ogy.

“Howard was a pro­foundly in­sight­ful sci­en­tist and a big thinker, whose abil­ity to con­nect com­puter sci­ence to other dis­ci­plines en­hanced our in­sti­tu­tion in in­nu­mer­a­ble ways,” CMU Pres­i­dent Far­nam Jahanian said in a state­ment. “Be­fore com­ing to CMU, I had the plea­sure of work­ing with him at the Na­tional Science Foun­da­tion, where he pro­vided vi­sion and lead­er­ship for in­for­ma­tion sci­ence and in­tel­li­gence sys­tems.

“His con­tri­bu­tions left a last­ing im­pact on the na­tion’s re­search agenda in ways that will ben­e­fit our so­ci­ety for de­cades to come.”

Mr. Wact­lar, of Squir­rel Hill, died March 1 of id­io­pathic pul­mo­nary fi­bro­sis. He was 77.

A na­tive of the Bronx, N.Y., he came to CMU in 1967 af­ter earn­ing un­der­grad­u­ate and mas­ter’s de­grees in phys­ics from the Mas­sa­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy and the Univer­sity of Mary­land.

Be­fore his re­tire­ment in 2019, Mr. Wact­lar held po­si­tions in var­i­ous CMU de­part­ments, in­clud­ing the School of Com­puter Science and the Ro­bot­ics In­sti­tute.

He helped to launch the Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing In­sti­tute, where he was as­so­ci­ate di­rec­tor, and he

served as di­rec­tor of the joint CMU/​IBM In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Center.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous with his work as a re­searcher and fac­ulty mem­ber at CMU, Mr. Wact­lar shared his ex­per­tise with the NSF in many ways, in­clud­ing as the pri­mary ar­chi­tect and proj­ect di­rec­tor of the In­for­me­dia Dig­i­tal Video Li­brary — part of a larger NSF cat­a­log­ing ini­tia­tive in the early days of the World Wide Web.

Much of his work also fo­cused on im­prov­ing mo­bil­ity and use­ful tech­nol­ogy for the el­derly and those with dis­abil­i­ties as sci­en­tific di­rec­tor of the NSF Qual­ity of Life Tech­nol­ogy Engi­neer­ing Re­search Center.

Mr. Wact­lar worked with the Clin­ton and Obama ad­min­is­tra­tions in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties, in­clud­ing as di­vi­sion di­rec­tor for In­for­ma­tion and In­tel­li­gent Systems and as an ad­viser within the Direc­tor­ate for Com­puter and In­for­ma­tion Science and Engi­neer­ing.

“Howard Wact­lar was a source of ad­vice and wis­dom for many of us work­ing on the na­tional strat­egy,” said Tom Kalil, chief in­no­va­tion of­fi­cer at Sch­midt Fu­tures, who served in se­nior White House sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy pol­icy roles for for­mer pres­i­dents Bill Clin­ton and Barack Obama. Mr. Wact­lar “was in­valu­able as we worked to im­prove the com­put­ing land­scape in ar­eas such as dig­i­tal li­brar­ies, ro­bot­ics and im­prov­ing the qual­ity of life for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties.”

A hum­ble man who never sought credit for his work, Mr. Wact­lar’s im­pact on The His­to­ryMak­ers proj­ect can­not be ex­ag­ger­ated, said pres­i­dent and founder Julieanna Rich­ard­son.

“I call him our god­fa­ther,” Ms. Rich­ard­son said. “He gave life to our proj­ect. He didn’t ask for any­thing, and he con­trib­uted a great deal.”

When she ap­proached him in 2001 with a re­quest to com­bine new tech­nol­ogy with the oral his­tory proj­ect — which at that point had recorded about 200 in­ter­views with in­flu­en­tial, un­sung and well-known African Amer­i­cans — his cu­ri­os­ity was in­stantly piqued, Ms. Rich­ard­son said.

“We had no money, and I asked him if he would adopt us,” she said. “I lit­er­ally just called him on the phone one day, and he swept in and with his team de­vel­oped mil­lions of dol­lars of tech­nol­ogy for us. He was gra­cious and giv­ing — there’s no word to de­scribe what he did for us.”

Mr. Wact­lar and his team at CMU de­vel­oped tech­nol­ogy that en­abled key­word searches for the video files through the use of tran­scripts.

“This is ground­break­ing tech­nol­ogy — it was then and it is now, and this is what that won­der­ful man did for us,” said Ms. Rich­ard­son, a Pitts­burgh na­tive and Har­vard Law School grad­u­ate. “The dig­i­tal ar­chive that he helped us cre­ate is now in 90 col­leges and uni­ver­sities across the United States. We have 11,000 hours of tes­ti­mony from 3,400 peo­ple, and it’s in all 22 read­ing rooms at the Li­brary of Con­gress. That is what Howard Wact­lar made pos­si­ble.”

Thanks to his ef­forts, The His­to­ryMak­ers proj­ect is read­ily avail­able for any­one who wants to en­joy it, Ms. Rich­ard­son said.

“He was my an­swer to giv­ing peo­ple ac­cess to the col­lec­tion,” she re­called. “He was a de­fin­ing mo­ment for us, and he him­self was a game-changer. He has given voice to Black peo­ple — thou­sands

of them — whose sto­ries would never have been heard or ac­ces­sible. That’s no joke. He was a great man and I was proud to call him friend.”

His col­leagues at the uni­ver­sity weren’t sur­prised by Mr. Wact­lar’s gen­er­os­ity, which was ex­pressed in other ways, too.

“Howard was an ex­em­plar of peo­ple who qui­etly got things done and fo­cused on the work, with­out draw­ing at­ten­tion to them­selves,” said Mar­tial Hebert, pro­fes­sor of ro­bot­ics and dean of the School of Com­puter Science, in a state­ment. “For Howard, it was al­ways about the greater good of the in­sti­tu­tion. For ex­am­ple, he and his wife, Mary, do­nated a seat in the Rashid Au­di­to­rium that hon­ors ‘stu­dents, staff and fac­ulty that are the great­ness of SCS.’ He will be greatly missed.”

His daugh­ter, Sarah Lang­bein, re­called the father who built her a self-con­tained video gam­ing sys­tem in his CMU lab be­fore the ad­vent of Atari.

“He used to take me to work and we’d hang out, put­ting to­gether all of these cool things,” said Mrs. Lang­bein, of Dan­ville, Calif. “My Hal­low­een cos­tumes al­ways had lights and me­ters and things.”

Ma­terial things meant lit­tle to Mr. Wact­lar, who loved to learn and al­ways gave more of him­self than he re­quired of oth­ers, she said.

“He was this gen­tle soul. He was so gen­er­ous, and he was witty and a great lis­tener,” Mrs. Lang­bein said. “He was the great­est role model and men­tor, and he was just a rock. It was never about him — he put ev­ery­one else be­fore him­self.”

Along with his daugh­ter, Mr. Wact­lar is sur­vived by his wife, Mary Solodar Wact­lar; a step­son, Ben Co­hen, of Chevy Chase, Md.; a step­daugh­ter, Sarah Co­hen, of Los An­ge­les; a sis­ter, Linda Feller, of Mi­can­opy, Fla.; and five grand­chil­dren.

Jan­ice Cromp­ton: jcromp­ton@post-ga­zette.com.

By Janice Crompton
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Howard Wactlar
News Obit­u­ar­ies
Marvin Hagler |
Boxing great who reigned among ’80s middleweights
May 23, 1954 - March 13, 2021

Marvel­ous Marvin Hagler stopped Tho­mas Hearns in a fight that lasted less than eight min­utes yet was so epic that it still lives in box­ing lore. Two years later, he was so dis­gusted af­ter los­ing a de­ci­sion to Sugar Ray Leo­nard — sto­len, he claimed, by the judges — that he never fought again.

One of the great mid­dle­weights in box­ing his­tory, Mr. Hagler died Satur­day. He was 66. His wife, Kay, an­nounced his death on a Face­book page for Mr. Hagler’s fans.

“I am sorry to make a very sad an­nounce­ment,” she wrote. “To­day un­for­tu­nately my be­loved hus­band Marvel­ous Marvin passed away un­ex­pect­edly at his home here in New Hamp­shire. Our fam­ily re­quests that you re­spect our pri­vacy dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.”

Mr. Hagler fought on box­ing’s big­gest stages against its big­gest names, as he, Mr. Leo­nard, Mr. Hearns and Roberto Duran dom­i­nated the mid­dle­weight classes dur­ing a golden time for box­ing in the 1980s. Quiet with a brood­ing pub­lic per­sona, Mr. Hagler fought 67 times over 14 years as a pro out of Brock­ton, Mass., fin­ish­ing 62-3-2 with 52 knock­outs.

“If they cut my bald head open, they will find one big box­ing glove,” Mr. Hagler said. “That’s all I am. I live it.”

Mr. Hagler was un­mis­tak­able in the ring, fight­ing out of a south­paw stance with his bald head glis­ten­ing in the lights. He was re­lent­less and vi­cious, stop­ping op­po­nent af­ter op­po­nent dur­ing an eight-year run that be­gan with a dis­puted draw against Vito An­tuo­fermo in 1979 that he later avenged.

He fought with a pro­ver­bial chip on his shoul­der, convinced that fans and pro­mot­ers alike didn’t give him his proper due. He was so up­set that he wasn’t in­tro­duced be­fore a 1982 fight by his nick­name of Marvel­ous that he went to court to le­gally change his name.

“He was cer­tainly one of the great­est mid­dle­weights ever but one of the great­est peo­ple that I’ve ever been around and pro­moted,” pro­moter Bob Arum said. “He

was a real man, loyal and just a fan­tas­tic per­son.”

Any doubts Mr. Hagler wasn’t in­deed Marvel­ous were erased on a spring night in 1985. He and Mr. Hearns met in one of the era’s big mid­dle­weight clashes out­doors at Cae­sars Palace in Las Vegas. When the open­ing bell rang, they traded punches for three min­utes in an open­ing round many con­sider the best in box­ing his­tory.

Mr. Hagler would go on to stop Mr. Hearns in the third round, crum­pling him to the can­vas with a bar­rage of punches even as blood poured out of a gash on his fore­head that nearly caused the ref­eree to stop the fight.

“When they stopped the fight to look at the cut, I re­al­ized they might be play­ing games, and I wasn’t go­ing to let them take the ti­tle away,” Mr. Hagler said later.

Mr. Arum said Mr. Hagler sim­ply willed him­self to vic­tory over Mr. Hearns.

“That was an un­be­liev­able fight,” Mr. Arum said. “Prob­a­bly the great­est fight ever.”

Mr. Hagler would fight only two more times, stop­ping John Mug­abi a year later and then meet­ing Mr. Leo­nard, who was com­ing off a three-year lay­off, in his fi­nal fight in 1987. Mr. Hagler was fa­vored but lost in a con­tro­ver­sial split de­ci­sion.

Mr. Hagler left the ring in dis­gust and never fought again. He moved to Italy to act and never re­ally looked back.

He was in­ducted into the In­ter­na­tional Box­ing Hall of Fame and World Box­ing Hall of Fame in 1983.

The Associated Press
Marvin Hagler in 2020.