The Memorial Wall

James A. Wilding, an airport executive who helped push for the transfer of Washington’s two major airports from federal control to an independent authority in the 1980s and was instrumental in their expansion to meet increased passenger demand as leader of that new body, died Feb. 24 at a rehabilitation center in Cary, N.C. He was 85.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease and hip surgery, said his daughter Patricia Wilding.

Trained in college as a civil engineer, Mr. Wilding was hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1959 and participated in the planning and development of Washington Dulles International Airport. He later became chief of the engineering staff at Dulles and National (later Reagan National) airports.

In 1979, he was named director of the FAA-owned and -operated authority overseeing Dulles and National, which were the only commercial airports in the country then owned and operated by the federal government. That meant the airports were susceptible to the cutback whims of legislators overseeing the federal budget, and investment in the two airports was much smaller than most others of comparable size.

Even the simplest of requests required going hat in hand to Capitol Hill. “Take something as simple as buying a new truck,” Mr. Wilding told The Washington Post at the time. “If the fire station at National needs a truck, we have to go to Congress to get the money.”

In 1984, with strong backing by Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole, a federal advisory commission she had appointed recommended the government renounce ownership and control of the two airports and hand it over to an independent public authority. According to the commission, the changeover would allow the airports, estimated to need nearly $200 million to finance new terminal and runway construction, to issue revenue bonds to fund improvements.

Some members of Congress reportedly were loath to give up control for fear of losing privileged access to National Airport, where they were guaranteed a parking spot after making the 15-minute drive from Capitol Hill.

Many airline industry officials marveled at Mr. Wilding’s self-effacing and even-temper in the most difficult of circumstances. The Post once called him a “quiet manager, a detail man who some employees say appears to feel more comfortable with computer printouts than with his colleagues.”

After the new Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority was formed in 1987, Mr. Wilding guided the organization through a multibillion-dollar capital development program that helped modernize the two airports, including a new terminal and an expanded runway at Reagan.

At Dulles, he led terminal and concourse expansions — helping, he said, transform the airport from “just a handful of overseas flights to London and Paris and little else to rank as a major gateway.” (The international arrivals hall, completed in 2011, was named in his honor.)

By the time he retired in 2003 as president and chief executive of the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority, he had led the two airports through the implementation of post-Sept. 11, 2001, security measures as well as bankruptcy filings by major carriers, an economic disruption that can have an impact on vital fees to the airports.

“Jim was savvy,” Edward Faggen, the airports authority’s former general counsel, wrote in an email. “Parking for members of Congress was preserved. Congressional skepticism stemmed as much from fear of local control, people who wanted to limit or close National Airport due to noise complaints. Congress needed much assurance to make sure that would not happen.

“Jim was instrumental in reaching compromises with the Congress and the community," Faggen added.

James Anthony Wilding was born in Washington on Dec. 22, 1937 . His father was chief of the supply division at the Smithsonian Institution, and his mother was a homemaker. He graduated in 1955 from the Priory School (now St. Anselm’s Abbey School) in the District and in 1959 from Catholic University.

He was a member of the federal Senior Executive Service and was an officer in professional and regional development groups. A longtime resident of Silver Spring, Md., where he was a member of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church, he relocated to Cary eight years ago.

In 1961, he married Marcella Gibbons. In addition to his wife, of Cary, N.C., and daughter, of Greensboro, N.C., survivors include three other children, Matthew Wilding of Arlington, Va., William Wilding of Evansville, Ind., and Marci Wilding of Cary; a brother; eight grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

In interviews, Mr. Wilding recounted the most dramatic moments of his career.

The worst day, he said, was the January 1982 Air Florida crash, which occurred moments after takeoff at National, when the plane — because of improper de-icing and other problems — could not gain enough height, clipped cars after it hit the 14th Street Bridge, and plunged into the Potomac River. Seventy-eight people died, including four motorists.

In large part motivated by that disaster, Mr. Wilding said, he successfully pushed to lengthen the overrun, an extension of the runway used to provide a safety margin in case an aircraft has to abort take off and needs more distance to stop.

Three years after the Air Florida disaster, an Eastern Shuttle jet ferrying 177 people rejected takeoff at National and came to rest, Mr. Wilding said, “at the very end of the extra 750 feet.”

As he recalled to The Post, he and one of the staff engineers, Frank Conlon, “just stood there looking at the plane, and I said, ‘Frank, I don’t know what would have happened to those people if the overrun hadn’t been there, but it wouldn’t have been good.’ That’s probably the most satisfied I’ve ever felt.”

Ned Phillippe was born in 1946, and died peacefully in his home of Parkinson's disease on Fed 10, 2022. He was the oldest son of Don and Ruth Phillippe of Indiana and is survived by two brothers, John and Tom. Ned earned a MS degree in education from Indiana University. He worked as a teacher, and in transportation with Northwest Airlines and Amtrak.

 Peter ("Pete") Craig was born April 11, 1945 in New York City and passed away at home in Laguna Niguel on February 9, 2023, at age 77, surrounded by his family.

Born to Donald Edward Craig and Patricia Marie Dailey, Pete spent his childhood in Ithaca and Manhasset, New York. His father Don was an opera singer, choral conductor, and professor of music at Cornell University. His mother Patricia was a design artist and hatmaker in Hollywood during the golden age of film.

Pete grew up in New York City during the 1950's and was a Yankees fan in the era of Mickey Mantle. He was a Life Scout, one of the highest leadership ranks in Boy Scouts of America, and a member of their honor society, Order of the Arrow.

He graduated from Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1967. At Case, he was a member of Phi Kappa Tau, managed the college radio station jazz programming and played drums in the Case orchestra.

In 1967, after college, he married Penelope Ford, the clarinet player from the orchestra. They settled in Minnesota, where he worked at Honeywell International developing aerospace components, including for the Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia". They had a beautiful daughter, Gretchen, in 1971.

In 1973, he was transferred with his family to Cologne, Germany to integrate foreign computer communication networks. When Pete returned to the U.S. in 1974, he pursued a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He had keen foresight into the evolution of technology; his 1975 graduate thesis focused on the "Application of Queuing Theory to the Analysis of Computer-Communications Systems". The work analyzed uses of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPANET) technologies that ultimately became the technical foundation of the Internet.

In 1976, he relocated to Orange County, California, to join the burgeoning computer revolution. He joined Printronix, a supplier of line matrix printers, where he rose to the position of Vice President, International, managing joint ventures and distribution channels in 40 countries.

In 1977, he married Patricia Brown and welcomed Kent and Jerry as loving stepsons; he and Pat were married for 43 years until her passing in 2021.

Pete ultimately led a distinguished 50 year career as a technology executive. He was proud that his business engagements in the 1980's led to personal interactions with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. From 1986-1989, he served as CEO of Promod, Inc., a supplier of software development tools. From 1989-1999, Pete was a Director and Vice Chairman of Rainbow Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: RNBO), a supplier of information security products for the Internet and eCommerce. While at Rainbow, he led work on cryptography solutions for the U.S. government intelligence community.

His extensive operating experience in the electronics and software industry, and primarily in IT infrastructure and enterprise applications products and services, lent immense value to both public and private sector clients, as the world embraced the information technology revolution.

Pete completed post graduate business programs at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Wharton/Spencer Stuart Directors training programs. He was certified by Institutional Shareholder Services as a qualified independent director.

From 1993-1997, and again from 2005-2007, Pete served on the National Board of Directors and Executive Advisory Board of the American Electronics Association. He later served as a Board member for many technology companies, focusing on corporate governance issues. In recognition of his many years of service, the Forum for Corporate Directors (Orange County) named Pete 'Director of the Year'.

Pete also contributed his time and energy to many charitable causes, including serving on the Board of Trustees for the South Coast Medical Center Foundation in Laguna Beach.

In fact, the only thing Pete ever failed at was retirement. He continued to work, mentoring people about their career paths and helping individuals and companies navigate the complexities of the technology industry.

Pete's professional accomplishments and community services were notable, but his biggest source of pride was his role in loving and mentoring his family and friends. Pete was a loving husband, father, and grandfather to his wife Pat, daughter Gretchen, son-in-law James, stepsons Jerry and Kent, daughter-in-law Judy, and grandchildren Orion, Gwen, and Charlotte.

In 2017, Pete & Pat celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, surrounded by close friends and family. He and Pat enjoyed attending concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. He loved taking his grandchildren out for ice cream, attending Angels baseball games, and working on his model train set – earning him the nickname "Papa Train." He was a dedicated member of St. Timothy Catholic Church, where he attended Mass for many years.

He was proud of his paternal colonial lineage to the Reverend John Craig, who served as the first Presbyterian pastor of the Augusta Stone Church in Fort Defiance, Virginia in 1740. He also held great pride in his maternal ancestor John Paul Judson being one of the first settlers in the Seattle-Tacoma area, who crossed the Naches Pass through the Cascade Mountains by wagon in 1854. Judson, also a judge, served as a Regent of the University of Washington.

A noble warrior, he bravely battled both prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease for over five years, till his ultimate passing. May he rest in eternal peace with his loving wife Pat until they are joined by the rest of their family. Pete will always be fondly remembered for his engaging wit, mentorship, and love for his family and he will live on in our hearts and minds forever.

David Miall passed away peacefully in the early morning of October 8 at Résidence La Vaquine in the village of Chaillac, France. His loving family, residing in different parts of the world -- Canada, France and the United Kingdom -- remember him with great fondness. As a prominent scholar in the empirical studies of literature and Romanticism, particularly the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, David is also remembered with great respect and admiration by numerous colleagues and former students who worked with him. Much of his career was devoted to examining the unique characteristics of literary texts. He was an early adopter of computer technology, which assisted him with the pioneering research he conducted, often with psychologist Don Kuiken.

David was born in Brighton and from early on showed great interest in the natural world -- particularly dragonflies and ponds -- as well as music and literature. He married his first wife, Valerie Kennedy, in 1967 and they had a son, Laurence. He graduated from the Guildhall School of Music in London, a school he had been accepted into at the age of just 16. His musical endeavours took him to Munich, Germany and back to London. Eventually he switched careers to become a scholar of literature. He graduated from the University of Stirling in 1976 and earned his PhD from the University of Wales in 1979. The same year, he met Sylvia at the College of St. Paul and St. Mary in Cheltenham where they were both lecturers.

In 1989, David, Sylvia and Laurence emigrated to Canada, settling in Edmonton. David was a prolific researcher and much- admired professor at the University of Alberta from 1990 to 2012. In retirement, David and Sylvia lived at L'Age, a small hamlet overlooking the valley of the River Anglin in France. There, David had books from the floor to the ceiling of his study and loved to watch the dragonflies, frogs, rare toads, and other aquatic life that frequented the pond in the garden. His Parkinson's slowed him down in his final years, but he nevertheless developed lively interests in cave paintings and local church frescoes.

Allan Blye, a television comedy writer and producer who helped cement the Smothers Brothers’ reputation for irreverence in the late 1960s and later collaborated with Bob Einstein to create the hapless daredevil character Super Dave Osborne, died on Oct. 4 at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 87.

His wife, Rita Blye, confirmed the death. She said he had been in hospice care for Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Blye was a writer and singer on variety shows in Canada when he received a surprise call in 1967 from Tom Smothers asking him to join the writing staff of the series that he and his brother, Dick, would be hosting on CBS.

“I couldn’t believe it was Tom Smothers,” Mr. Blye said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2019. “I thought it was Rich Little doing an impression of Tom Smothers.”

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was unlike any other variety show. The brothers were renowned as a comical folk-singing duo: Tom played the naïve, guitar-playing buffoon, and Dick, who played the double bass, was the wise straight man. They had creative control of the series, which emboldened them and their writers to be more outspoken as they addressed politics, the Vietnam War, religion and civil rights — and their forthrightness during a divisive era increasingly angered some viewers, CBS censors, some of the network’s affiliates and conservative groups.

Mr. Blye and his writing partner, Mason Williams — best known for writing and performing the hit guitar instrumental “Classical Gas” — worked on the deadpan editorials delivered regularly by Pat Paulsen, a mournful-looking cast member who used the show as a platform to run for president in 1968 as the candidate of the S.T.A.G. (Straight Talking American Government) Party.

“These were double talk, they didn’t make sense,” Mr. Blye told The Los Angeles Times in 1970. “Pat closed with the line that if viewers wanted copies of the editorial, they could have them by sending in stamped, self-addressed envelopes. We got thousands and thousands of those envelopes.”

Mr. Blye, who became a producer during the show’s third and final season, encouraged the comedian David Steinberg, a friend from Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they both grew up, to deliver comic sermons. In his second one, he told the biblical story of Jonah, with humorous riffs.

The sermon was part of the April 13, 1969, episode, which never aired and led to the show’s cancellation. CBS had been insisting that Tom Smothers send it and its affiliates a tape of each week’s show in advance, in a timely fashion, for their review. When the tape of their final show did not arrive on time, CBS told the brothers that they had broken their contract. Tom Smothers later said that CBS used the sermon as an excuse to fire them.

Two months after the cancellation, Mr. Blye and the rest of the show’s writing staff — which included Mr. Einstein and Steve Martin — won an Emmy Award.

“Allan was measured, mature and fresh, and he wasn’t following a common road to success,” Dick Smothers said in an interview. “He wasn’t formula. When I talked to him, he made sense.”

In a post on the social media site Threads, Mr. Martin praised Mr. Blye as “my earliest mentor” and a “comic delight.”

Alvin Allan Blye was born on July 19, 1937, in Winnipeg. His father, David, a Romanian immigrant, worked in his wife’s family’s dry cleaning business; his mother, Goldie (Portnoy) Blye, who was from Russia, managed the home.

Alvin grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in which Yiddish was his first language; he was a child soloist in his temple’s choir and sang on radio and in Yiddish theater. He became a cantor in his 20s and continued to be one at synagogues in Toronto and Los Angeles.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Blye performed on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation variety shows as well as on “MisteRogers,” the predecessor to Fred Rogers’s children’s show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He played Captain Blye, who went on assignments like “Go find me love” for the genial host. He stayed in the cast for a little while after the show’s production moved to Pittsburgh in 1966.

While still working for the Smothers Brothers, Mr. Blye formed a partnership with Chris Bearde. Together they wrote and developed the format for “Singer Presents … Elvis,” Elvis Presley’s acclaimed 1968 comeback special. Steve Binder, the show’s producer, said it was Mr. Blye’s idea to have dozens of men, who resembled Presley in shadow, stand behind him on risers and imitate him on his opening number, “Trouble/Guitar Man.”

With Mr. Bearde, Mr. Blye was also a writer and producer for “The Andy Williams Show” (1969-71), “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” (1971-74) and “The Sonny Comedy Revue” (1974), Sonny Bono’s short-lived solo venture after he and Cher divorced. He was executive producer of the sitcom “That’s My Mama” (1974-75), a sitcom revolving around a middle-class Black family in Washington.

Mr. Einstein’s Super Dave character first emerged in 1976 on the short-lived variety show “Van Dyke and Company,” which starred Dick Van Dyke and was produced and written by Mr. Blye and Mr. Einstein.

“We wrote it as a sketch, then started auditioning people for the part,” Mr. Blye told The New York Times in 1995. “On the second or third day, I turned to Bob and said, ‘I don’t know anyone who could do this better than you.’”

Super Dave was puffed up with misplaced confidence as he plunged himself into one death-defying stunt after another. Although modeled on the real-life daredevil Evel Knievel, Super Dave was more like the ill-fated Wile E. Coyote, who would snap back from being crushed by a boulder or falling off a cliff in the Road Runner cartoons.

“People loved the character getting mauled,” Mr. Blye told the Television Academy.

Super Dave showed up on several TV series and specials overseen by Mr. Blye and Mr. Einstein, including “Bizarre” (1979-86), a sketch comedy series on Showtime that was hosted by the comedian John Byner, and his own talk show, “Super Dave,” also on Showtime, from 1987 to 1991.

At the end of a failed stunt in the first episode of “Super Dave,” Mr. Einstein said, “My life just flashed before my eyes, and there wasn’t another episode in it.”Mr. Blye’s first marriage, to Shirley Brotman, ended in divorce. He married Rita Rogers (no relation to Fred Rogers) in 1989. In addition to her, he is survived by two sons, Jeff and Rob, and a daughter, Debra Blye, from his first marriage; a daughter, Kate Blye, and two other sons, Sam and Charlie, from his second marriage; three grandchildren; and his brother, Garry, a talent manager and producer.

Looking back in the Television Academy interview at his work for the CBC, Mr. Blye said that working with Mr. Rogers had “touched something close to my heart.” He recalled being introduced to him in about 1961 in an otherwise empty CBC studio in Toronto, where he was appearing on “Parade,” a variety show. When Mr. Blye approached him, he said, Mr. Rogers’s hands were occupied by two of his puppets, Henrietta Pussycat and King Friday XIII.

“I never talked to him, I talked to both of his puppets, and the puppets had their dialects and it was great,” Mr. Blye said. “I talked to them for about 15 minutes and someone came to me and said, ‘Blye, they’re ready for you to rehearse.’”

Mr. Rogers waited for him after the rehearsal.

“He said, ‘I’m doing a show here myself. How would you like to appear on a portion of it called “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe”?’ ‘Sounds great. I’d love that.’ So he booked me and I did 300 shows for him.”