THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010


KLMNO OBITUARIES


EDWARD M. SWARTZ, 76 Lawyer was a pioneer on toy safety by Emma Brown


Edward M. Swartz, a flamboy- ant personal injury lawyer and consumer-safety activist whose annual list of the top 10 most dan- gerous toys helped force parents, government regulators and manufacturers to pay more atten- tion to the hidden perils of play- things, died Sept. 3 of congestive heart failure at his home in Chest- nut Hill, Mass. He was 76. Mr. Swartz took on the multi- billion-dollar toy industry each year with his top 10 list, invariably released to widespread media at- tention at the height of the holi- day shopping season. His targets included a wolver- ine costume with a “flexi-claw glove,” whose four-inch retract- able claws endangered young eye- balls; the Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid doll, which had a habit of chewing on children’s hair, leaving bald spots; and the seemingly innocent My Little Wood Wagon, whose slats, he said, could be easily removed, ex- posing dangerous screws. “He basically pioneered the whole area of toy safety,” con- sumer-safety advocate Ralph Na- der said this week. “He docu- mented it, he litigated it, he ad- vocated for regulatory standards and recalls . . . and he engaged in massive public education.” Toy industry representatives


said Mr. Swartz’s toy-safety tactics were simply an effort to drum up business for his law practice. They painted him as a greedy lawyer whose tactics contributed to an avalanche of product liability law- suits and a growing unwillingness among consumers to accept re- sponsibility for their own actions. “It’s like saying you should nev- er put a spoon in the hands of a child because he can ram it down his throat,” Stephen Schwartz of the toy company Hasbro said in a 1986 interview with The Washing- ton Post.


because it had used images of div- ing children to market the four- foot-deep pool. Those victories helped him build a reputation that landed him on Forbes magazine’s list of best-paid lawyers. “It can be very expensive to


make an unsafe product,” Mr. Swartz said. Edward Martin Swartz was


GERALD MARTINEAU/THE WASHINGTON POST


Mr. Swartz demonstrates “crazy eyes” after a news conference in 1977. Mr. Swartz launched his career


as a national spokesman for toy safety with his 1971 book “Toys That Don’t Care,” which Washing- ton Post reviewer Myra MacPher- son called “a valuable compendi- um of what not to buy, as well as an angry exposé of how little the government, the toy manufac- turers or anyone else is doing to make toys safe.” Known as the “Nader of the


Nursery,” Mr. Swartz went beyond simple examination of the chok- ing hazards, sharp edges and toxic materials harbored by baby dolls and teddy bears. He highlighted toys’ psychological hazards, pointing out that among products marketed to children were fake hypodermic needles emblazoned with the slogan “I’ll try anything” and a packet of candy cigarettes picturing a man burning a wom- an’s back with his cigarette. In 1973, the federal government


created the Consumer Product Safety Commission to protect the public from defective merchan- dise. Mr. Swartz became a dogged critic of the commission, calling its enforcement of toy-safety reg-


R. SMITH SIMPSON, 103 A forceful advocate of teaching diplomacy by Adam Bernstein R. Smith Simpson, 103, a re-


tired Foreign Service officer and author who was an early and forceful advocate of teaching di- plomacy along with for- eign policy in prepara- tion for an international affairs career, died Sept. 5 at a retirement com- munity in Charlottes- ville. The cause of death was not reported. Mr. Simpson served at


U.S. embassies in Brus- sels, Athens and Mexico City in the 1940s and held consular assign- ments in India and Mo- zambique. He retired in 1962 as the Foreign Service depu- ty examiner, a job that left him deeply frustrated by what he con- sidered the “abysmal ignorance” of many applicants of subjects in- cluding American geography and culture.


In professional journals and in books such as “Anatomy of the State Department” (1967), he con- tinued to press for improvements in how aspirants to a career in di- plomacy were trained, assigned and promoted. He advocated college-


level programs in inter- national affairs intend- ed to strengthen stu- dents’ focus on the im- plementation of foreign policy instead of the pol- icy itself.


Mr. Simpson retired from the Foreign Service in 1962.


One of his most per- suasive efforts on the subject was an issue he edited in 1968 of the An- nals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Among


the contributors was Peter F. Krogh, a State Department offi- cial who became dean of George- town University’s foreign service school in 1970. “People were always much more interested in international


affairs writ large, but diplomacy was a neglected field,” Krogh said. “It wasn’t sexy. Everyone wants to talk about what we want to do in the world; not a lot want to talk how to get it done.”Krogh said he was persuaded by many of Mr. Simpson’s ideas and provided the institutional framework to try them out. The collaboration led to the foreign service school’s In- stitute for the Study of Diplomacy. Krogh called Mr. Simpson an “absolute pit bull” on making the intricacies of diplomacy central to the new institute and said he was not shy about complaining when he thought “we strayed a bit from the mold he had in mind.” Mr. Simpson taught night classes at Georgetown and moved to Char- lottesville from Annandale in 1992.


Robert Smith Simpson was


born Nov. 9, 1906, in what is now Arlington County. He was a 1923 graduate of Western High School in Washington and a 1927 gradu- ate of the University of Virginia,


where he also received a master’s degree. He was a 1931 graduate of the Cornell University law school and completed all but his dis- sertation for a doctorate in inter- national affairs at Columbia Uni- versity. After an early career with the


National Recovery Administra- tion, a New Deal agency, Mr. Simpson joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 1944, he be- gan working for the State Depart- ment and participated in drafting the United Nations charter. He was an international affairs ad- viser to the Labor Department in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His wife, Henriette Lanniée, whom he married in 1934, died in 2007. Survivors include two daugh-


ters, Margaret Maurin Stunkard of Bryn Mawr, Pa., and Zelia Broyles of Vinton, Va.; three granddaughters; and five great- grandchildren. bernsteina@washpost.com


ulations toothless and ineffective. In the mid-1980s, he founded the nonprofit World Against Toys Causing Harm and published a second book, “Toys That Kill” (1986). He did not shy from hyper- bole. “The object of some of these companies,” he said in 1987, “is to turn our playing fields into killing fields.” Mr. Swartz was as successful in the courtroom as he was in the court of public opinion. In the ear- ly 1980s, he won $3.1million from the toy company Fisher-Price, which he sued on behalf of the parents of a 14-month-old child who suffered brain damage after choking on one of the company’s Little People figurines. He found targets outside the toy industry as well. In the early 1970s, he won a $1.4million ver- dict for a family whose children were severely burned when their bedding caught fire and melted onto their skin. A decade later, he won a $6.5 million judgment for a family whose son had been para- lyzed after diving into a shallow swimming pool — he argued that the manufacturer was negligent


born Jan. 17, 1934, in Winthrop, Mass. He put himself through school with a series of odd jobs, including selling insurance, hawking encyclopedias and rent- ing pillows to train passengers. Mr. Swartz graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1955 and three years later from Boston University’s law school, where he edited the law review. He received a master of laws degree from the University of Michigan in 1960. He worked as a state assistant


attorney general in Massachusetts in the early 1960s before going into private practice. He launched his own firm, Swartz and Swartz, in the early 1970s. His marriage to the former Lin-


da Katzen ended in divorce. Survi- vors include his second wife, Bar- bara Marcus Swartz of Chestnut Hill and Miami; three children from his first marriage, James Swartz of Chestnut Hill, Joan Siff of Newton, Mass., and Sharron Swartz of Los Angeles; a step- daughter, Laura Schwartz of New York; two brothers; and five grandchildren. Mr. Swartz cautioned his fellow


lawyers to refrain from dismiss- ing a potential product-liability case simply because the client may have seemed to have caused his own injury by acting irrespon- sibly. “Lawyers in their offices often


act as judge and jury when they say to a client, ‘You have no case,’ ”Mr. Swartz told the ABA Journal in 1986. “Never say that you have no case.” browne@washpost.com


R


B7 ELIZABETH R. KING, 86


Worked over 60 years at U.S. Geological Survey


Elizabeth R. King, 86, who was one of the first women to work as a geophysicist for the U.S. Geolog- ical Survey, died Aug. 10 at the Renaissance Gardens nursing fa- cility at Riderwood Village in Sil- ver Spring. She had complica- tions from a broken hip sustained in July. After joining the Geological


Survey in 1948, Ms. King spent more than 60 years at the federal agency that maps and monitors many of the country’s natural re- sources. “My work involved compiling


magnetic maps of various parts of the country and analyzing them tying to extract information on concealed ore deposits and other geological features,” she wrote in an autobiographical essay in the 1980s.


She was often the only woman


participating in airborne surveys of the nation’s topography, flying 500 feet above ground to identify and record magnetic fields with- in the earth. She helped develop meticulous maps and models of geological and geographical for- mations and also interpreted magnetic and gravitational maps of many parts of the United States. Ms. King retired from her day-


to-day job in 1993 but continued to work as an emeritus scientist at the Geological Survey until her death.


Michael F. Crowley ECONOMIST


Michael F. Crowley, 70, an economist for the National Sci- ence Foundation from 1976 until he retired in 2002, died Aug. 29 at Montgomery Hospice’s Casey House in Rockville of complica- tions from bile duct cancer. He lived in Darnestown. At the National Science Foun-


dation, Mr. Crowley headed sur- veys on scientific and technical personnel and was a program di- rector for small business pro- grams. From 1962 to 1974, he worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and revised wholesale and con- sumer price indices and worked on employment surveys. From 1974 to 1976, he worked at the Federal Energy Administration reporting on the effects of the oil embargo. Michael Francis Crowley was born in Newport, R.I., and gradu- ated from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in business administration. He re- ceived a master’s degree in eco- nomics from American Univer- sity in 1964. From 1963 to 1972, he was a member the D.C. Na- tional Guard. Survivors include his wife of 47 years, Marsha Frommer Crowley of Darnestown; two children, Jay Crowley of Darnestown and Beth Burchard of Washington; two brothers; and four granddaugh- ters.


—Lauren Wiseman


Chadwick Johnson ECONOMIST


Chadwick Johnson, 85, an economist at the Japan desk for the Commerce Department from


Elizabeth Raymond King was born to American parents in Hali- fax, Nova Scotia. Her father was a chemistry professor at a university in Nova Scotia, and her mother had taught astronomy at Smith Col- lege in Northampton, Mass. Ms. King was educated by her parents at home and developed an interest in geology by accom- panying her father on rock-col- lecting trips around Nova Scotia. Not long after entering Smith


College, she had a serious bout with tuberculosis and spent two years recovering in a sanitarium. After graduating from Smith, Ms. King moved to Baltimore and briefly developed photographs at a department store before work- ing in the pathology department at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she took photographs of cadavers and autopsied tissues. She joined the Geological Survey in 1948. Ms. King missed a year of work


after a serious car accident in 1974.


She lived in Silver Spring and wrote a monthly newsletter for a van pool she organized of 15 em- ployees who commute to USGS headquarters in Reston. She was a 62-year member of All Souls Unitarian Church in the District and participated in theat- rical groups at the church. Survivors include a sister. — Matt Schudel


1969 until he retired in 1980, died Aug. 27 at his home in Am- herst, Mass. He had prostate can- cer.


Mr. Johnson was a Foreign


Service officer for the State De- partment from 1952 to 1969 with assignments in Italy, Germany and Japan. Mr. Johnson, a Philadelphia


native, received a bachelor’s de- gree in politics in 1946 from Princeton University. He


re-


ceived a law degree in 1949 and a master’s degree in public admin- istration in 1959, both from Har- vard University. He served in the Marine Corps during World War II and again from 1950 to 1952, stationed at Quantico, Va. He was a Bethesda resident from 1965 to 1987, when he moved to Amherst. He was a member of the Wash-


ington Tennis Association and the Edgemoor Club, a swim and tennis club in Bethesda. From the 1960s to 1980s, he held vari- ous rankings in the U.S. Tennis Association. He was a member of River Road Unitarian Church in Beth- esda, where he served on the so- cial justice committee. A son, David Johnson, died in


1977.


Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Ruth MacLeod “Betsey” Johnson of Amherst; five chil- dren, Andrew Johnson of Silver Spring, Sara Meyers of Belmont, Mass., Emily Johnson of San Francisco, Jeffery Johnson of Al- ameda, Calif., and Mark Johnson of Urbana, Md.; and eight grand- children.


—Lauren Wiseman  More obituaries. B8 As a philanthropist, self-made billionaire ranked among the most generous kluge from B1 Mr. Kluge sold his stations to


Murdoch for $2 billion. He told Forbes magazine that television “was going to get more competi- tive. . . . I didn’t feel I could take that risk, to go on and develop a fourth network.” While focused on the lever-


aged-buyout, Mr. Kluge also made a savvy investment in the cellphone business, against the advice of many advisers who said it would take at least 10 years for the demand for mobile phones and beepers to explode. After buying several phone providers for $300 million in 1983, he orchestrated a $1.6 bil- lion sale of those companies to Southwestern Bell in 1986. The deal reportedly surprised many analysts, who said they thought Mr. Kluge was committed to be- ing the fledging industry’s leader. “When we buy an asset, we


look at it as a return on the in- vestment,” he told Forbes in 1990. “With cellular, you are buying a future price. In that light, the price we got may not have been the peak, but it was a good value at the time. Sometimes I might not maximize an investment. But I don’t deal in 100 percent. I deal in 80 percent to 85 percent.” The deals catapulted him to


the ranks of the nation’s billion- aires. In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $6.5 bil- lion and listed him as No. 35 among the 400 richest Amer- icans. Not all of Mr. Kluge’s invest- ments reaped profits. He lost money on his $78million pur- chase of controlling interest in the Orion Pictures movie com- pany and his purchase of the Pon- derosa steakhouse chain. Met- romedia International Group, a conglomerate specializing in the European and Russian telecom- munications, filed for bankruptcy in 2006.


A poker promise


John Werner Kluge was born Sept. 21, 1914, in Chemnitz, Ger- many. After his father’s death, he moved to Detroit with his mother and stepfather. His stepfather wanted him to drop out of high school and work in his painting business, but in- stead Mr. Kluge left home at 16 and worked on a Ford assembly line. For a time, he lived with his typing teacher, whom he credited with being his mentor. Mr. Kluge won a scholarship to Columbia University and told school officials that if they really wanted him to attend, they would have to double his scholarship


money. Columbia paid. He graduated with an eco- nomics degree in 1937. He supple- mented his tuition with $7,000 in winnings from poker. After a Co- lumbia dean chastised him for playing poker, Mr. Kluge said he promised not to gamble again. “But I never said I wouldn’t


play,” he said. Returning to Michigan, he was so successful doing sales work for a paper company that he became a part owner of the firm. After completing Army intelligence service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II, he decided his ambitions were in business ownership. In 1946, he used his Army dis-


charge money to buy his first ra- dio station, WGAY


in Silver


Spring. He continued to buy and sell stations and invested in what became the Baltimore-based food wholesaler Kluge, Finkelstein and Co. He liked finding unorthodox


ways to promote food products. While working on a contract for a pickle company, he was inspired by the new scratch-and-sniff craze to persuade the old Wash- ington Times-Herald to run ad- vertisements using essence of dill in the ink. The effect was unfortunate, with one of his associates telling


The Washington Post in 2003 that every office in Washington “stunk like the dickens.”


But worse was when a press- man spilled dill juice at the print- ing plant. “The first thing the union did when it negotiated a new contract was to say, ‘No more essence in the ink,’ ” Mr. Kluge told The Post. His entry into television began by chance, after a friend hap- pened to mention that DuMont was selling its stations. After lin- ing up investors, he bought sta- tions in Washington (WTTG, Channel 5), Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles and Houston. His new company, renamed


Metromedia, was headquartered in Secaucus, N.J. Rents were low- er than in New York, and Mr. Kluge kept costs down even more with his cut-rate approach to pro- gramming. His frugality extended to some areas of his personal life, such as a habit of leaving his coat in the car rather than wearing it into a restaurant. He wanted to avoid tipping the coat checker. At the same time, he lived in a


Manhattan apartment dubbed “the satin citadel” by Vogue magazine, where trees grew out of the marble floors. His other properties included a castle on 80,000 acres in Scot-


land and a $45 million estate near Charlottesville that featured a golf course designed by Arnold Palmer.


Major philanthropist As a philanthropist, Mr. Kluge


ranked among the most gener- ous. In 2000, he gave $73million to the Library of Congress for a scholarly center and other proj- ects. He also underwrote the John


W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the human sci- ences, a $1 million award given periodically to those distinguish- ing themselves in areas not cov- ered by the Nobel prizes, such as political science, sociology and philosophy. Winners have includ- ed historian John Hope Franklin and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Mr. Kluge gave Columbia Uni-


versity $400 million for minority student aid in 2007 and donated much of his estate near Char- lottesville to the University of Vir- ginia. Unlike the other media barons of his era, including William Pa- ley, Mr. Kluge preferred to shun publicity largely out of a desire to avoid tipping his hand about his next deal.


“If I had my choice, I’d stay in the woodwork all my life,” he told United Press International. “I’m


not ego driven.” His first two marriages, to The-


odora Thomson and Yolanda Zuc- co, ended in divorce. He received unwanted attention in 1985 when the British press revealed that his third wife, the former model Pa- tricia Rose Gay, had posed nude for a men’s magazine and ap- peared in a pornographic movie years before they wed in 1981. The news dropped just before


Patricia Kluge was scheduled to help host a Palm Beach, Fla., charity ball in honor of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Pa- tricia Kluge quietly dropped out of the royal welcoming commit- tee. She and Mr. Kluge divorced about 1990, and she received a settlement of $1 billion. Survivors include his fourth


wife, Maria Kuttner of Charlottes- ville; two children from his sec- ond marriage; and a son from his third marriage. “Work isn’t really work for me,”


Mr. Kluge told Forbes in 1990. “I didn’t think I’ve ever really ‘worked’ in my life, because ‘work’ to me means that you’re really doing something that you don’t like. I hate to tell you this, but I’ve never liked the weekend in my life. I was enthusiastic about Monday morning from the day I left college.”


mcardlet@washpost.com


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