The Memorial Wall

Respected mathematician Dr. David Flannery, who was the father of acclaimed Cork singer-songwriter Mick, has died aged 71.

Dr. Flannery, a father of five, had helped found Munster Technological University's (MTU) (then Cork Institute of Technology’s) flagship engineering program and maths department, which he headed for some time.

He had suffered from Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurological condition that is similar to Parkinson's.

His wife, fellow academic Elaine, died aged 59 from metastatic cervical cancer in October 2014. Last year, Dr. Flannery settled a High Court action over the alleged misdiagnosis of her smear slide.

Dr. Áine Ní Shé said Dr. Flannery was a “fantastic mathematician and a fantastic teacher”. Dr. Ní Shé is MTU's Registrar and Vice President of Academic Affairs in the Cork campuses, and she took over as Head of the Department of Mathematics from Dr. Flannery in 2012.

Paying tribute, she said: “He was really honest. Integrity is a noun I associate with David. He had huge integrity and would always stand up for his principles. He was always trying to do the right thing.

“He was humble and was always quick to recognize other people’s work and identify talent. He was hugely generous with his knowledge, expertise, resources, and insights. He had an impact on thousands of students. It’s a sad day today.” 

Dr. Flannery joined the college in the 1970s and was instrumental in developing the college’s engineering program which proved key to building MTUs’ academic and professional reputation.

“MTU is now known as an engineering school of renown in Ireland," Dr Ní Shé said. “David was someone who left his mark on CIT/MTU. He was a fantastic mathematician, but also a fantastic pedagogue, and a fantastic teacher. 

"He was really dedicated to MTU producing top-quality candidates and he minded his students; he knew them by name. He was also key in driving the establishment of the mathematics department at CIT.

“He was Head of the Department from 2010 to 2012 and really put his stamp on it developing a good, sound curriculum. And he was a fantastic customer of the library, he was always looking for new knowledge.” 

Dr. Ní Shé said that his late wife Elaine was “a dearly loved colleague too”. She remembers them waiting for her in her new office with a vase of sunflowers when she took over from Mr. Flannery as head of the mathematics department. Mr. Flannery had thoroughly cleaned out his office for her and he had even put her name on the door, "with every fada correct" on her name.

“He called me one sunny May evening to say my office was ready and to come over. Elaine was there. They had a bunch of sunflowers in a vase on the table for me. I still have that vase. He had changed the name on the door to mine, with all the fadas perfect.

When they left, they walked off down the corridor into that warm May sunlight together like love’s young dream.

“She was diagnosed a short time later.” 

Mrs. Flannery, a microbiologist from Blarney in Cork, died of cervical cancer in 2014. A High Court action was settled last October, but the HSE did not admit liability after Dr. Flannery sued over his wife’s care. He criticized the HSE for never apologizing to the family.

Pat Ahern, who has been a close friend and colleague of Dr. Flannery’s for 53 years, met studying math in UCC in 1970. Mr. Ahern said Dr. Flannery was “an extraordinary man” who "was out of pain now."

They later worked together at Cork Regional Technical College which became CIT, now MTU.

“I knew him as a friend, as a man, and as an educationalist. As an educationalist, he always thought the subject was hugely important but that the students were of paramount importance.

“When we started there, we felt like pioneers. We were doing things that had not been done before, writing a syllabus and teaching it.

“He was an inspiration to his students and other teachers. He developed courses that were tailored to the student’s needs in their fields, like in engineering, but he also gave them space to investigate the side roads, if they were interested.” 

'He was kind'

Dr. Flannery was not long retired when his wife died, Mr. Ahern said.

“Elaine’s loss was an enormous blow. I was worried about him; he was like a shadow of himself. But he knew he had to move on. 

“He was a brilliant chess player. He caused me to give up because he would always win. He loved playing cards and was so good he was almost at a professional level. He loved building stone walls. He loved hurling and would support Tipperary, where his family was rooted.

He was kind, gentle, and had the most extraordinary intelligence I ever came across.

“He was dedicated to his family, to Elaine, to his new wife Ann, and to his children.

“He managed to fit a lot into his life and was still fascinated by everything right up to the end.”

David LaFlamme, whose electric violin helped introduce a new sound to San Francisco’s music scene in the 1960s and shaped one of the hits that captured the era’s spirit, “White Bird,” a dreamy meditation on breaking free, died Aug. 6 at a health-care facility in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 82.

Mr. LaFlamme’s died of health problems related to Parkinson’s disease, said his daughter, Kira LaFlamme.

Mr. LaFlamme and members of his band, It’s a Beautiful Day, sampled from the mix of folk, rock and psychedelia in San Francisco as they shared gigs and swapped ideas with groups such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Mr. LaFlamme’s addition of the five-string electric violin — with driving crescendos and soulful adagio — brought flowing subtleties different than anything guitars or keyboards could match.

“White Bird” emerged as a collaboration with his then-wife and keyboardist, Linda Rudman, for the group’s debut album in 1969, “It’s a Beautiful Day” — a name taken from the joyful cry of a passing motorist one sunny afternoon. The song became the group’s signature work and part of the soundtrack of the 1960s from its opening harmony by Mr. LaFlamme and vocalist Pattie Santos:

White bird

In a golden cage

On a winter's day

In the rain

And then the song’s message as a refrain: “White bird must fly/Or she will die.”

Mr. LaFlamme, who also played guitar, described the song as a struggle between the pull of freedom and the compromises of conformity. “The white bird in a golden cage represents someone trying to break out of the constraints of the affluent middle class,” he later said.

The song’s setting — a dreary day as “leaves blow across the long black road” — was drawn from personal experience. Mr. LaFlamme and his wife were living in a Victorian house in Seattle during a series of performances in the winter of 1967-68, working on music in the attic with a Wurlitzer portable piano under a window. “We were looking out from the attic window over the street in front of this old house … It’s describing what I was seeing out the window,” Mr. LaFlamme wrote on his website.

At first, “White Bird” struggled to find an audience. It didn’t rise far on the charts and was a difficult fit for AM radio at the time because of its length, more than six minutes, and the novelty of Mr. LaFlamme’s violin solo in the middle. But FM stations, particularly the counterculture formats on college radio, embraced the song and the group as hippie troubadours, including other tracks from the album such as “Wasted Union Blues,” “Girl With No Eyes,” and the instrumental “Bombay Calling.”

“White Bird” gradually was adopted as part of the 1960s musical canon, and Mr. LaFlamme was credited as an influence on violinists including bluesman Papa John Creach and his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna; Robby Steinhardt with the rock group Kansas, and Scarlet Rivera with Bob Dylan on songs such as “Hurricane,” released in 1976.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Mr. LaFlamme showed no surprise that the violin found a niche alongside rock guitars and thumping bass lines.

“I think that the violin probably more than any other instruments closely mimics the voice and my first love was singing and the voice,” he said in a 1998 interview with music writer John Barthel, “and I think violin an extension, the closest extension of that.”

David LaFlamme was born on May 4, 1941, in New Britain, Conn., and spent much of his boyhood in Salt Lake City. His father worked in a copper mine, and his mother was a homemaker.

He received his first violin at 5 years old as a gift from an aunt and uncle, whose daughter lost interest in the instrument. “So I began fooling around with it on my own and taught myself to play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’” he recalled. His parents were impressed and arranged for a teacher, who introduced him to classical violinists and composition.

Mr. LaFlamme served in the Army in the early 1960s at Fort Ord, near Monterey, Calif., and was discharged after experiencing some hearing loss from test-firing weapons. He had spent time in San Francisco while on military leaves and headed back to the city in 1962 with a duffle bag — “mostly just Army clothes” — and a “few bucks in my pocket,” he told the music site Exposé in 2003.

He began jamming on guitar and violin in parks and clubs with musicians shaping the San Francisco sound: Jerry Garcia; Janis Joplin and Country Joe and the Fish. Mr. LaFlamme formed his first band, the Electric Chamber Orkustra, in 1966 and then was part of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks.

In the summer of 1967 — what became known as the “Summer of Love” — Mr. LaFlamme and his wife put together It’s a Beautiful Day with vocalist Santos, guitarist Hal Wagenet, bassist Mitchell Holman and drummer Val Fuentes.

A major break came in October 1968 when singer and guitarist Stevie Winwood of the band Traffic came down with a throat condition and couldn’t perform in a joint gig with Cream at the Oakland Coliseum. The concert promoter, Bill Graham, contacted It’s a Beautiful Day as a fill-in. A record deal with Columbia soon followed.

The group released its second album, “Marrying Maiden,” in 1970, which included Garcia playing banjo on the song “Hoedown” and pedal steel guitar on “It Comes Right Down to You.”

The band broke up in 1973 after two more albums and tours that included once opening for the Who in Paris. It’s a Beautiful Day was booed and the crowd started chanting “Tommy” for the Who’s 1969 album, Mr. LaFlamme recalled.

“The funny thing was,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune in 1983, “I wanted to hear the Who just as much as they did.”

A legal battle over ownership of the band’s name forced Mr. LaFlamme to build new groups under different banners, including Edge City. He released a solo album in 1976, “White Bird,” with a new version of the title song, which peaked at No. 89 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Over the next two decades, he was part of more than 10 other albums as a solo artist or under It’s a Beautiful Day after wrangles over the name ended.

His marriages, first to Linda Rudman and then Sharon Wilson, ended in divorce. He married singer Linda Baker in 1982. Survivors include two daughters, Kira LaFlamme from his first marriage and Alisha LaFlamme from his second, and six grandchildren.

The creation of “White Bird” took about two hours, said Mr. LaFlamme’s first wife. She worked on the chords while he crafted the lyrics. They shared duties on the melody.

“The song kept evolving, but that was the birth of ‘White Bird,’” she told the music site Please Kill Me in 2020. “When we finished after two hours, David and I looked at each other, and we knew we had a beautiful song.”

Actress Apple Hong has disclosed that her father died at the age of 76.

“Although I should be mentally prepared after seeing dad’s Parkinson’s disease getting worse over the years, I didn’t expect that July 22 would be the last time I saw him,” the Malaysia-born actress wrote on social media.

“There were missed opportunities, moments of helplessness and regrets, but Dad can now rest in peace. May I be able to meet my dad again in heaven someday.”

She ended the post with: “The dad I love 08.12.1946 - 11.08.2023.”

In his 86 years, Richard was known to his family and friends by many names: Dick, Rich, Ricardo, Rainbow Man, Dad, Pops, and Gramps. He will be profoundly missed.

Richard treasured his family: the love of his life, Linda, his wife of 54 years, his children John Reiss (Karen) and Laurel Perry (Grant), and his sisters, Ann Reiss Lane (Bert) and the late Jean Berlfein (Harold). To his grandkids Rachel, Owen, Sophia, and Zoë, he was their fun-loving 'Gramps,' to his nieces and nephews he was always their favorite 'Uncle Dick.'

A native of Los Angeles, he graduated from Beverly Hills High, studied at UCLA (a Bruins fan all his life), and then UC Berkeley, where he earned a B.S. in Engineering. In 1959 he and a friend started their own consulting engineering firm in L.A., now Reiss Brown Ekmekji.

Though a civil engineer by profession, he had the soul of an artist. He loved creating furniture in his garage workshop and was a gifted calligrapher and draftsman. In later years he turned to sculpture, exploring the beauty of the human form.

He was an avid gardener and a sportsman: he loved skiing, cycling, backpacking, and playing tennis with his friends. Music and dancing were also a big part of his life: swing dancing with Linda to the sounds of the Big Bands, or slow dancing to a mellow jazz trio.

Rich was quiet, yet thoughtful, a man of integrity, sincerity, and kindness. He had a fine sense of humor, a spirit of playfulness, and was always willing to help a friend.

The family thanks Cindy Malek for the amazing love, care, and joy that she brought to Richard, and to our home, over the past three-plus years. We also want to thank Gloria Aguilar for the warmth, love, and happy heart she has shown Richard throughout many years, and Adelina Elle, for her smiles and her kindness.

Veteran singer, Prince Bola Agbana, also known as Prince B, died at the aged of 77.

The singer died on Wednesday, August 16th, 2023 at his residence in Ijanikin, Lagos State, after a protracted illness.

The singer’s first son, Sunmisola Agbana, confirmed his death. According to his son, the singer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015, he battled with the illness for four years and became bedridden in 2019.

Sunmisola revealed that after being diagnosed, he had a series of treatments but his condition continued to deteriorate, which led to his eventual death on Wednesday.

“It is with profound gratitude to the will of God that we announce the passing of the legendary musician, Prince Bolarinwa Agbana, aka Prince B, on Wednesday, August 16, 2023.

“Prince B, as he was fondly called, was a beloved figure in the music industry, whose timeless melodies touched the hearts of millions around the world.

“He succumbed to complications related to Parkinson’s disease, an ailment he had valiantly battled for several years. He approached this challenging journey with the same grace, resilience, and unwavering spirit that characterized his music. His courage in the face of adversity served as an inspiration to all who had the privilege of knowing him.

“We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the doctors, caregivers, family members and well-wishers, who supported Prince Bolarinwa during his battle with ill health.

“We request privacy during this difficult time as we grieve the loss of our beloved father, husband, and friend.

“As we mourn his loss, we celebrate the enduring impact of his music and the indelible mark he has left on our hearts.

“Details regarding burial arrangements will be announced in due course,” he stated.

Born on September 23, 1946, Prince B embarked on his musical journey at a young age with the Moon Rakers Band in the early 70s.

He is an early and respected exponent of funk, a catalyst in the retrofit of drums into juju as a modern genre. He is recognised as the founder, leader, drummer and principal vocalist of the SJOB Movement.

Prince B eventually achieved international acclaim for his popular hit song, “Mother Africa” with his Jambos Express Band. His soulful compositions will forever be etched in the annals of Nigerian music history.

Prince B used his music artistry to entertain and also to advocate causes close to his heart. He was an ardent advocate of peace, love & prosperity for the African continent.