The Memorial Wall

Justin O. Schmidt, an intrepid entomologist who measured the agony of insect stings by allowing himself to be stung hundreds of times in creating a renowned and vividly descriptive pain scale that ranked them, died on Feb. 18 in Tucson, Ariz. He was 75.

His wife, Dr. Li Schmidt, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Schmidt, who brought a joyful exuberance to his work and gained a measure of pop culture fame from it, spent his career investigating the biochemistry and lethality of bee, wasp and ant venom, and how they used their natural weaponry to deter predators. And he suffered, willingly, for his research: He was stung, sometimes on purpose, more than 1,000 times by his count.

“Humans are fascinated by stinging insects,” he wrote in The Conversation, a nonprofit news website, in 2016. “Why? Because we have a genetically innate fear of animals that attack us, be they leopards, bears, snakes, spiders or stinging insects.”

Dr. Schmidt got over that fear. He studied stinging insects professionally for more than 40 years and wrote hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, earning the sobriquet “king of sting.” His 2016 memoir, “The Sting of the Wild: The Story of the Man Who Got Stung for Science,” brought him renown for his colorful Pain Index for Stinging Insects, which he began in 1983.

He ranked, from 1 to 4, the pain caused by the stings of 80 types of bees, wasps and ants that he had encountered, and gave vivid descriptions of what they felt like.

Anthophorid bee, Level 1: “Almost pleasant, a lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard.”

The bullhorn acacia ant, Level 1.5: “A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.”

Red-headed paper wasp, Level 3: “Immediate, irrationally intense and unrelenting. This is the closest you will come to seeing the blue of a flame from within the fire.”

Bullet ant, Level 4: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.”

“When Schmidt recalls a certain agonizing sting, a memory that remains vivid decades after the pain has faded, he’s not just spinning a tale,” Avi Steinberg wrote in a profile of Dr. Schmidt in The New York Times Magazine in 2016. “He’s documenting a theory about how sting pain functions: as a deterrent, whereby it creates a memory of pain that stays with a predator for life.”

Dr. Schmidt insisted that he didn’t necessarily want to be stung.

“Want is kind of a dual word,” he told NPR in 2016. “I want the data but I don’t want the sting.”

Justin Orvel Schmidt was born on March 23, 1947, in Rhinelander, Wis., and grew up in Boalsburg, Pa. His father, Orvel, was a forestry professor at Penn State University, and his mother, Jane (Groh) Schmidt, was a home economics teacher.

He grew up among weeds, wildflowers and insects. One day, he recalled, he and several other boys threw rocks at a hornet’s nest in an old apple tree, hoping to topple it.

After their attempts failed, Justin moved closer to the tree and delivered a direct hit. Half the nest fell to the ground. As he ran away, he was stung multiple times on his back.

“It felt like someone had repeatedly struck the back of my neck with a hot branding iron,” he wrote in his memoir. “That was my first experience with what would decades later become a 2 on the insect-sting pain scale.”

He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Penn State in 1969 and a master’s from the University of British Columbia three years later. But he turned to entomology for his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia because, he wrote, chemistry lacked “living, moving” nature — “insects to be exact.”

He studied harvester ants, collecting them on drives around the country with his first wife, Deborah Wragg, a zoology student.

“Wham, an ant stung me,” he wrote, as he started his travels around Georgia. “Serendipity had struck. This was no ordinary sting. This sting really hurt. The pain, delayed at first, became piercing and excruciating.”

A life’s work had begun. After postgraduate work at the University of Georgia and the University of New Brunswick, in Canada, he was hired in 1980 as a research entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, part of the United States Department of Agriculture, which works to improve the health of honey bee colonies.

He retired in 2005, but by then had also established his own nonprofit laboratory, where he conducted his research until recently. One project was recording the mating habits of vinegaroons, an arachnid that sprays a combination of acids that smells like vinegar, on property that he owned in a wildlife area in southeastern Arizona.

“He was one of the most insatiably curious people I’ve ever met,” Stephen Bachmann, a colleague at the Hayden center and a close friend, said in a telephone interview. “He questioned everything and didn’t suffer fools, especially administrators.”

Martha Hunter, a professor of entomology at the University of Arizona, where Dr. Schmidt was an adjunct scientist, called him “an amazing natural historian” with an extensive knowledge of the plants of the Sonoran desert, in addition to stinging insects.

“The story is that Justin once grabbed a tarantula hawk, just to see what the sting would be like,” she said. “It’s the last thing I would do.”

The tarantula hawk, a kind of wasp, ranked a 4 on the pain index:

“Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped in your bubble bath.”

“I know some people think me crazy, but I am no masochist, and only occasionally am stung on purpose,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “When it does happen, I initially react as anyone else would — cursing, more than I should admit. Then I get out my notebook and stopwatch, sit down and make notes.”

In addition to his wife, Dr. Schmidt is survived by their sons, Kalyan and Veris; a daughter, Krista Jewell Schmidt, and a son, Scott, from his marriage to his second wife, Pat Figuli, which ended in divorce; his sister, Freya Phillips; his brother, Dan; and three grandchildren. His marriage to Ms. Wragg ended in her death.

In recent years, Dr. Schmidt’s easy-to-understand insect pain scale brought him to a wider world outside entomology. It was mentioned in the 2015 superhero film “Ant-Man” and was central to the Ted-Ed animated cartoon “It Hurts” (2021), for which he was credited as the educator and was a character. The scale was cited in a clue on “Jeopardy!” this year.

When he appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2016, Dr. Schmidt wore a red T-shirt with the image of a bug on it and brought along several types of stinging insects, including red and black harvester ants.

“The black ones only hurt for four hours,” Dr. Schmidt said. “So if you can imagine someone taking some needle nose pliers and digging underneath your skin and grabbing tendons and nerve and kind of ripping them for about for four hours.”

But the pain of the red one, he said, “goes on for eight hours. You get the bonus with no extra charge.”

Longtime Wellfleet resident Robert DuBeau succumbed to Parkinson’s disease on Jan. 21, 2023 after trying to ignore the affliction for years.

Bob was born in Willimantic, Conn. in 1934, the third of four children of Conrad and Esther (Parent) DuBeau. He attended Windham Regional High School, where as a freshman he met his future wife, Marsha Turshen. He was admitted to Harvard, where he worked to pay his tuition by establishing a food concession at the residence houses. By the time he graduated in 1956, his multi-employee business was taken over by the college as part of its food service.

Bob first fell in love with the Outer Cape when, shortly after graduation, he was drafted and stationed at Camp Wellfleet — then an Army outpost near Marconi Beach in what is now the National Seashore. After his discharge, Bob attended the University of Connecticut Law School and entered practice in nearby Rockville. Bob, Marsha, and their growing family soon started vacationing in Wellfleet.

After several years of renting, they purchased a cottage on Lieutenant Island before it had electricity or telephone service. As their children reached driving age, the tide-ruled access to the island became untenable. Wishing to stay in the area, they were among the first to purchase a parcel of the former Camp Mar-Ven and Camp Chequessett, converting the old counselor and guest house into a summer cottage. When they retired, they renovated the house for year-round use and moved to Wellfleet.

Bob quickly became a member of the Wellfleet Housing Authority, helping to provide affordable housing for year-round local workers. He helped found Nauset Neighbors, the volunteer network to help aging residents stay in their homes. He was the first representative from Our Lady of Lourdes parish to the area interfaith council. He was an enthusiastic golfer at the Chequessett Yacht & Country Club and a volunteer at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.

Bob was full of wit and fun, once leading a passel of family kids down Commercial Street in Provincetown after a Marx Brothers movie at the Waters Edge Cinema, all striding like Groucho. Many friends from Rockville were invited to visit the DuBeaus on their Wellfleet vacations, and several, including Pat and Dick Dimock, established their own connections to the Outer Cape in part based on Bob’s enthusiasm.

“You don’t have a boat,” said one curious friend. “You don’t seem to like sitting on the beach. What is it about Wellfleet?” to which Bob answered, “I just love to look at it.”

Bob is survived by his wife, Marsha; his five children: Dr. Catherine DuBeau of Lebanon, N.H., Matthew and wife Leslie Haynes-DuBeau of Nyack, N.Y., Peter and Lisa DuBeau of Norfolk, Va., Adam and Lauren Love-DuBeau of Marcellus, N.Y., and Sarah DuBeau-Farley and Stephen Farley of Dorchester; his grandchildren, Madeline, Henry, Julia, Jack, August, Sam, and Elise; and the families of multiple nieces and nephews.

In a career that lasted more than 60 years and included decades on stage in Sarasota at Asolo Repertory Theatre and memorable film roles in “Moonstruck” and two Woody Allen films, David S. Howard built a connection with audiences and fellow actors who adored him.

“David and I worked together for over 30 years and did a lot of plays together and had a lot of laughs together,” said Howard Millman, the former producing artistic director of Asolo Rep. “He was one of the most brilliant actors I’ve ever known. He was so insightful in every role he played. He was an effortless actor and he was always ready.”

Howard, who had retired from acting due to the impact of Parkinson’s Disease, died on Tuesday at age 94.

From 1976 to 1982, he appeared in more than 40 plays at Asolo Rep and he returned in the mid-1990s when Millman, who had previously served as managing director, returned as artistic director. In more recent years, he appeared in Frank Galati’s production of “12 Angry Men,” “Visiting Mr. Green,” Martin Vanderhof in “You Can’t Take it With You,” Grampa Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath,” and Yogi Berra in the one-man play “Nobody Don’t Like Yogi.” He played Scrooge in the theater’s one-time annual production of “A Christmas Carol” and a judge in Joanna Glass’s “Trying.”

Michael Donald Edwards, the current producing artistic director, chose “Yogi” to give him a chance to work with Howard.

“What I experienced with him was the most generous, wonderful, inspiring partner. I was a newbie compared to him and so grateful for that whole experience with him to work on a play about an American iconic figure like Yogi Bera with an American theater icon like David Howard,” said Edwards, who later directed Howard in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Lesley Elliott’s husband of 50 years has paid tribute to the domestic violence campaigner, who has died following an “incredibly difficult” battle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

The 76-year-old, who was the mother of Sophie Elliot, died at Ross Home in Dunedin on Sunday.

Following the brutal murder of Sophie by her former boyfriend Clayton Weatherston in 2008, Lesley set up the Sophie Elliott Foundation and toured New Zealand teaching young people about safe and healthy relationships and the warning signs of abuse.

Gil ​Elliott paid tribute to his former wife of 50 years, who became a tireless campaigner after their daughter’s death.

That included talking to young women around the country about abusive relationships.

He will deliver a eulogy at Friday’s service and noted their two sons “had been robbed of the two women in our family”.

Her declining health over the past two years had been “incredibly difficult” for the family, he said.

Lesley Elliott co-authored a best-selling book about her daughter’s death, Sophie's Legacy, with Bill O’Brien. At least eight women credited it as being the catalyst for them leaving their violent partners.

O’Brien, a Dunedin-based author, said he approached Elliott about writing the book “to give her a voice” after the high-profile court trial.

“There were days when I would sit down at her home to do an interview, and she would take out a note that Sophie had written and just lose it ... So we would go for a walk on the beach and have another go the next day.”

The book, and the Loves-Me-Not programme designed to prevent abusive behaviour in relationships, resulted in the pair receiving hundreds of positive responses from people who had been in unhealthy relationships.

“I firmly believe if Sophie had a programme like Loves-Me-Not in her final years at school she would have known when things went wrong in her relationship,” Elliott told Stuff in 2014.

Her ill health led to the police taking over as lead agency for the programme and its resources. Loves-Me-Not continued to cater for year 12 students across New Zealand.

“An incredible lady, she used to say ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about – I’m just a nurse and a mother,’” O’Brien said.

She would go on to receive the NEXT magazine Woman of the Year Award, which celebrates outstanding achievements of Aotearoa women, in 2011. She then took out the supreme award at the 2014 Women of Influence Awards.

In the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours, she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to the prevention of domestic violence.

Nicholas Charles Moore was an English blues, rock and heavy metal singer, who was best known as a member of the British band Samson. He replaced Bruce Dickinson who left the band to join Iron Maiden in 1982. Moore left Samson in the late 1980s and rejoined in the late 1990s.

After his initial departure from Samson, Moore sang in the band Mammoth, which also featured former Gillan bassist John McCoy. Mammoth released two albums before splitting up in 1989.[1]

In 2006, Moore teamed up with former Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton and three musicians from the Swedish band Locomotive Breath to record an album under the band name "From Behind".[2] The band performed at the Sweden Rock Festival on 9 June 2006.

From 1994, Moore worked with his own band, Nicky Moore and the Blues Corporation, who were voted 'Top Live Blues Band' by BBC Radio 2 listeners in the year 2000.

On 3 August 2022, Moore died at the age of 75 from Parkinson's disease.

The British musician, who was regarded as a pioneer of heavy metal. 

Moore’s death was confirmed by his team in a statement on Facebook, which read: ‘It is with immense sadness and almost unbearably heavy hearts that we have to let you all know that Nicky – a man larger than life in body and spirit – has sadly passed away this morning. 

‘A man that lived a thousand lifetimes in just one has decided he needed a rest. Rest well, dear friend. 

‘We will all miss you x.’ 

According to Louder, Moore had lived out his final days in a nursing home. 

Moore, who hailed from Devon, found his passion for music after becoming a choir boy before launching his rock music career in bands such as Hackensack, formed in 1969. 

In 1974, he became a member of Tiger alongside ‘Big’ Jim Sullivan. 

However, he then found his permanent home with Samson in 1981 and went on to change the direction of their sound with albums such as Before The Storm and Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.

Their journey recording and touring the two albums was featured on a live album, Thank You and Goodnight. In addition to Samson, Moore was known for performing with other bands, including Mammoth alongside Gillan bassist John McCoy, From Behind with late Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton and Electric Sun which also featured Scorpions’ Uli Jon Roth.

Samson has also mourned the death of guitarist Paul Samson, who died in 2002 following a battle with cancer, while bassist Chris Aylmer died five years later.