Obituary

When Joseph Teasdale ran for governor in the mid-70s, he walked a thousand miles en route to winning the tightest gubernatorial race in the nation, handing a popular incumbent governor a stunning defeat. His margin of victory over Missouri Republican Gov. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, by whom he had been defeated in the previous election, was a mere 12,000 votes out of more than 1.9 million cast. Even members of the Teasdale campaign cabinet were stunned.

By day, Ralph Kalish was a well-respected, successful patent attorney. By night, he was, well, he was anything — anyone — he wanted to be: restaurateur, playwright, actor.

In 2011, he became Branch Rickey, the former, longtime St. Louis Cardinals Baseball manager who changed the game forever by bringing Jackie Robinson into the formerly all-white major leagues.

Ralph V. Streiff, who was onboard at homegrown Nooter Corp. as the former boiler works company moved into building custom apparatus that helped stamp out polio and put men on the moon, died Sunday. He was 86.

Fresh out of Washington University School of Engineering in 1951, Mr. Streiff joined Nooter as a sales engineer. Forty years later, he retired as president and chairman of the company, which had become one of the largest metal fabricators in the world during his tenure.

Murray Weidenbaum, an influential scholar widely known as the key architect of President Ronald Reagan’s economic theory dubbed “Reaganomics,” has died.

In 1980, Reagan campaigned on a fix for an economy plagued by rising inflation, unemployment and a growing deficit. He appointed Mr. Weidenbaum as his economic adviser.

Rodney Coe, a sociologist who led Saint Louis University’s Department of Family and Community Medicine for a decade, wanted medical students to be more than healers with a great bedside manner. He wanted them to know and understand the communities they would be serving. A medical school program that bears his name made his hope a reality.

“He was very proud of that,” said his wife, Elaine Coe.

The first weathercaster for KSD Channel 5, the first television station in St. Louis, quickly abandoned the job in favor of sales. Howard DeMere replaced him. It was 1949, and Mr. DeMere stayed on for most of the next 30 years, becoming one of the most familiar and celebrated personalities in St. Louis television history.

Mr. DeMere marveled at television, a medium that did not exist when he was born.

“(TV) turned civilization upside down,” Mr. DeMere wrote in a recent blog post, “a new art form, new language, different commerce and a much laxer moral code.”

The founder of one of St. Louis’ largest network of car dealerships has died. Lou Fusz Sr. died Tuesday of a heart attack in Palm Beach Florida. He was 94.

Fusz started selling cars in the early 1950s. His first dealership was the Lou Fusz Motor Company in Clayton that sold Pontiacs. Over the years, he grew his business to include 13 dealerships with more than 900 employees.