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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 14, 2001
LEESBURG -- In postal circles, Robert Aurand Moon was known as "Mr. ZIP."
Mr. Moon, 83, who invented the U.S. Postal Service's ZIP code system and later was director of delivery services for the entire nation, died Wednesday after a prolonged illness.
He was a resident at Leesburg Nursing Center in Leesburg, ZIP code 34748.
A native of Williamsport, Pa., Mr. Moon began his lengthy career with the post office as a postal inspector in Philadelphia and Chicago in the 1940s.
"He started working on the ZIP code idea in 1940," Barbara Moon, his wife of 52 years, said Thursday. "He loved his job and the post office."
Creating the ZIP code -- the national postal distribution system -- was her husband's greatest accomplishment, she said. ("ZIP" is an abbreviation for Zoning Improvement Plan.)
According to postal records, July 1, 1963, was the official date the first Directory of Post Offices was issued using ZIP code numbers.
Robert Moon retired in 1965, only to return five years later to Washington, D.C., as director of delivery services.
"He was brought in to Washington to advance the usage of the ZIP code," his wife said.
The Moons moved from Reston, Va., to Zellwood in 1977, after he retired for the second time from the U.S. Postal Service.
Other survivors are sisters Jean Moore of Raleigh, N.C., and Mary Katherine O'Brien of Bridgeport, Conn.
WORCESTER, Mass. -- Harvey R. Ball, whose ubiquitous cute-as-a-button smiley face elicits grins and grimaces, died Thursday in Jewish Health Care Center in Worcester, Mass. He was 79.
Mr. Ball was a commercial artist who was a lifelong resident of Worcester. In 1963, he enclosed two dots and a curved line in a yellow circle to create an image that soon became an icon.
According to a story published in the Boston Globe on Oct. 14, 1999, the graphic was a child of corporate discord. A Worcester-based insurance company, State Mutual Life Assurance, had bought out an Ohio firm called Guarantee Mutual, creating an uncomfortable office dynamic.
State Mutual's vice president came up with the idea of an in-house friendship campaign, and the company's marketing director farmed out the graphic work to Mr. Ball. She suggested a smile. Mr. Ball added eyes, so that ill-tempered employees couldn't turn it into a frown.
After Mr. Ball received $45 for his work and bade a permanent farewell to his design, the smiley face took off in a way no one could have predicted. State Mutual, which originally ordered 100 smiley-face pins, reordered them in batches of 10,000.
At one time the companies attempted to market themselves as the "Smile Insurance Companies," but the firms couldn't pretend to control the phenomenon; the yellow button had taken on a life of its own.
"I was looking around, and I said, "For God's sake, the smiley's everywhere,' " Mr. Ball recalled in 1999, when the figure was emblazoned on U.S. postage stamps.
When State Mutual finally inquired about securing rights to the design, he said, they were told that the image had been so thoroughly absorbed into the public domain that it could not be copyrighted. Although that judgment cut Mr. Ball off from legal ownership, it is also, to some, the brass ring of graphic design -- proof that he created an image that's as universally recognizable as a stop sign or a heart shape, though its ubiquity has inspired some to see it as a symbol of mindless optimism and bland conformity.
Mr. Ball served in the Army during World War II and spent eight weeks storming the Japanese line on Okinawa. He was awarded a Bronze Star.
Mr. Ball also served in the Army Reserve and was a member of the National Guard for 27 years until his retirement as brigadier general.
He leaves his wife, Winifred (Trudell); a daughter, Jacquelyn Stein of Worcester; three sons, Thomas H. of Boston, and Charles P. and Richard E., both of Worcester; two brothers, Raymond of Shrewsbury, Mass., and Merritt of New London, Conn.; a sister, Virginia of Worcester; seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
STAN SMITH, 84, who owned the famed Sloppy Joe's bar in Key West for 21 years, died Sunday. He and his wife, Marcia, bought the bar in 1960, a year before its most famous regular and the man who named it, Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide. In later years, Mr. Smith became popular with younger, nomadic visitors to laid-back Key West who would sit on the beach with him and play bongos.
DR. RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES, 86, a scientist and Harvard University educator who was widely considered the pre-eminent authority on hallucinogenic and medicinal plants, died Tuesday in Boston. Over decades of research, mainly in Colombia's Amazon region, he documented the use of more than 2,000 medicinal plants among Indians of a dozen tribes, many of whom had never seen a white man before. More than 120 species bear his name, as does a 2.2-million-acre tract of protected rain forest in Colombia, Sector Schultes, which the government there set aside in 1986.
MICHEL FRIBOURG, 87, the chairman of the Continental Grain Co. who negotiated groundbreaking wheat and rice sales to the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, died Tuesday in New York City. Mr. Fribourg, who was chairman of the family owned business for five decades and expanded the company into 70 countries, often said that international trade made it possible to open channels that diplomacy could not.
NYREE DAWN PORTER, 61, an actor best-known for her role in the hugely successful TV series The Forsyte Saga, died Tuesday in London. In the celebrated BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's novels, she starred as the beautiful Irene in a 50-year tale of intrigue and thwarted love in the upper-class Forsyte family. It ran for 26 episodes in 1967, attracting huge audiences.
GEORGE CHARLES LAMB JR., 75, who started with United Parcel Service as a clerk logging addresses and stayed to become the company's chairman and chief executive officer, died April 3 in Durham, N.C.
L. RICHARDSON PREYER, 81, a Democratic member of Congress who represented North Carolina's 6th District from 1968 to 1980, died April 3 in Greensboro, N.C.