This text is a part of Neglected, a collection of obituaries about exceptional folks whose deaths, starting in 1851, went unreported in The Occasions.
Starting within the Forties, the pilot Mary Barr took virtually any alternative to get herself off the bottom. She labored as a mechanic, gave flying classes and even transported prisoners.
She in the end eloped with a fellow pilot, and in 1952 she flew their new child daughter dwelling — solo.
“She mentioned that pilots had been the rock stars when she was rising up,” that daughter, Nevada Barr, mentioned by cellphone. And, she added, her mom “needed to be a rock star.”
Above all, Mary Barr is understood for combating wildfires as the primary lady lead pilot for the US Forest Service, which required adamantine nerves, impeccable judgment and a lot ability within the cockpit that flying turned second nature, virtually like strolling. The job was probably the most demanding within the sky, and she or he was a pure.
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Lead pilots for the Forest Service assist bigger planes navigate the treacherous airspace over wildfires, whereas coordinating with firefighting groups on the bottom.
Barr spent greater than a decade on this function, primarily in Northern California. She labored as a contractor for a number of years earlier than she was employed full time in 1974, mentioned Lincoln Bramwell, the Forest Service’s chief historian.
There have been different ladies within the Forest Service on the time, Bramwell mentioned in an interview. However few had been straight concerned in firefighting efforts, and none had served as a full-time lead pilot earlier than Barr.
“She carved her personal path,” Bramwell mentioned, in a job for which “your report and expertise want to talk for themselves.”
Lead pilots use small, maneuverable planes to search out the most secure strategy for unwieldy tanker craft to dump water or flame retardant on fires, whereas different pilots carry out duties like deploying smoke jumpers or dropping provides.
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Lead pilots additionally choreograph the broader response to a wildfire, and resolve when the scenario is just too perilous to maintain going. They don’t seem to be solely the mine supervisor; they’re additionally the canary within the shaft.
“It’s like enjoying chess,” mentioned Michael Ok. Savage, who trains and evaluates the Forest Service’s lead pilots, besides “with the chess board on hearth.”
Of the Forest Service’s roughly 50 present pilots, 9 are full-time lead pilots. There are additionally six lead pilots on contract; 9 who work for different companies, just like the Bureau of Land Administration; and 7 trainees. A type of trainees, Maddie Wilbanks, is the one lady on her method to changing into a lead pilot.
“There’s extra astronauts than there are lead aircraft pilots,” Savage mentioned in an interview.
Lead pilots face innumerable hazards within the air. They might be blinded by smoke or by ash raining down. Shifting winds and sudden updrafts may roll their aircraft, flip it the other way up or slam it to the bottom.
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“I imply, simply scary as hell, however Momma simply thought it was nice,” Nevada Barr mentioned of her mom’s job in an interview with StoryCorps. She and Barr’s different daughter, Molly, who has labored as a industrial airline pilot, sat down for the interview final yr to debate their mom’s legacy.
The lead pilot job is in some methods extra difficult at present, Savage mentioned, as a result of there are extra fires, extra hearth groups working collectively, extra automobiles within the air and extra airborne hazards, like drones.
However in Barr’s time a number of the firefighting procedures and insurance policies that information pilots had not but been developed, he added, so “they needed to be inventive.”
“We’ve received all that coverage and process in place, which retains folks protected,” Savage mentioned. “It’s far more organized than it ever was in her day.”
Barr was not fazed by the hazard, mentioned Nevada Barr, a novelist recognized for her collection a few ranger named Anna Pigeon who solves mysteries in nationwide parks across the nation. Moderately, she mentioned, her mom was stoic and matter-of-fact about her accomplishments.
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“She knew for a indisputable fact that as a feminine pilot she needed to be twice nearly as good, twice as calm within the face of upsets to get wherever,” Nevada Barr advised StoryCorps.
Her humility could also be a part of the explanation her story was not broadly recognized, and why her loss of life from problems of dementia, on March 1, 2010, at 84, went largely unreported.
“She by no means boasted about it,” Nevada Barr mentioned. “However I do know that she was actually happy with the truth that the opposite pilots would comply with her into this hellacious situation with full belief.”
Mary Alice Utterback was born on July 11, 1925, in Hanover, N.J., and grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, the place her father, William Utterback, taught speech at Oberlin School, and her mom, Margaret (Granger) Utterback, was a primary-school trainer. Her fascination with flying was kindled by well-known aviators like Charles Lindbergh.
Mary’s dad and mom divorced when she was younger. She went to a non-public boarding college in Massachusetts and began school, however after taking her first pilot classes she dropped out to pursue flying.
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She paid her approach by way of flight courses by working odd jobs, together with as a dishwasher, then flew planes throughout the US for plane producers throughout World Struggle II. After shifting to Lewiston, Idaho, she labored as a bookkeeper and flying teacher at a small airport.
The airport’s supervisor, David Barr, who was married, grew enamored of Mary. Mary quickly left Idaho for Jackson Gap, Wyo., the place she flew charters and “chased moose off the runway,” Nevada Barr mentioned.
David Barr was not far behind. They quickly went to Florida so David may get a “quickie divorce,” Nevada Barr mentioned, and married not lengthy after.
The Barrs managed an airport in Santa Fe, N.M., for a number of years earlier than shifting within the early Fifties to Susanville, Calif., about 90 miles northwest of Reno and bordering Lassen Nationwide Forest, an 1,875-square-mile protect the place the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges meet.
They managed a small airstrip there, and she or he helped authorities companies rely wild horses by air and flew charters that transported prisoners and elevated parachutists. She additionally competed within the Reno Air Races, although her husband requested her to cease as a result of he anxious that racing was too dangerous.
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When Barr was pregnant, she flew to Nevada, the closest place she may discover a lady obstetrician to ship her daughter, whom she named after the state. She then flew her new child again from the hospital on her personal, tucking her into the bags compartment behind the passenger’s seat of her small aircraft.
By the early Nineteen Eighties she was a nationwide Forest Service air security officer, chargeable for overseeing different pilots and coaching them to combat wildfires.
David Barr died earlier than his spouse, who by no means remarried. In 2001 Barr was inducted into the Girls in Aviation Pioneer Corridor of Fame.
Nevada Barr mentioned that despite the fact that her mom flew by way of glass ceilings, she by no means talked about dealing with any unequal remedy. Her mom’s instance, she mentioned, taught her and her sister that they might obtain something.
“A lot of youngsters, I believe they develop up and assume, ‘I’d like to do that, however it’s unimaginable,’” Nevada Barr mentioned. “And we weren’t raised that approach.”
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
European private equity group EQT is in advanced discussions to buy video game services company Keywords Studios for £2.2bn, in the latest potential takeover of a London-listed company.
EQT is negotiating over a cash offer of £25.5 per share. It has already made four unsolicited proposals for the business, all of which were rejected by its board, according to a statement from Keywords.
The EQT offer is a more than 70 per cent premium on the stock’s value at the close of trading on Friday.
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The latest proposal is a “significant increase” from the initial bid and the board of Keywords Studios “would be minded to recommend” it to shareholders if a firm bid is made, the company said.
Dublin-based Keywords Studios’s shares rose 5 per cent in Friday trading to close at £14.70 a share.
The company’s board said that it remains confident about its growth plans including expanding through acquisitions, and that EQT supported its strategy.
Keywords Studios, which is listed on London’s junior Aim market, was established in 1998 and has more than 13,000 employees in 26 countries. It provides services from game art to marketing and testing.
Its clients include Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Tencent, and it has worked on games such as Fortnite and League of Legends.
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It floated in 2013 at a market valuation of less than £50mn.
More recently, its share price has more than halved from a peak in September 2021, as investors have worried about the potential for some of its services, such as translation, to be supplanted by artificial intelligence.
The company reported record revenues of €780mn in 2023 — up 13 per cent year-on-year — while its pre-tax profit fell 49 per cent to €35mn. It also provides services to film and television production and blamed the US writers’ strike for €20mn of lost revenues in the second half of last year.
Sweden’s EQT is among the biggest private investment firms and has previously bought UK-listed firms such as veterinary pharmaceuticals company Dechra. The group has €242bn of assets under management.
The discussions between EQT and Keywords come as takeover interest in UK-listed companies has reached its highest level since 2018, driven by depressed share prices that are attracting foreign investors.
In April, US private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy UK-listed cyber security company Darktrace in a £4.3bn deal.
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Under UK takeover rules, EQT has until June 15 to either make a firm offer or walk away.
A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.
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A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.
Brett Coomer/AP
HOUSTON — As the Houston area works to clean up and restore power to hundreds of thousands after deadly storms left at least seven people dead, it will do so amid a smog warning and scorching temperatures that could pose health risks.
National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Chenard said on Saturday that highs of around 90 degrees (32.2 C) were expected through the start of the coming week, with heat indexes likely approaching 100 degrees (38 C) by midweek.
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“We expect the impact of the heat to gradually increase … we will start to see that heat risk increase Tuesday into Wednesday through Friday,” Chenard said.
The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when humidity is combined with the air temperature, according to the weather service.
“Don’t overdo yourself during the cleanup process,” the weather service’s Houston office said in a post on the social platform X.
In addition to the heat, the Houston area could face poor air quality during the weekend.
Heavy rainfall was possible in eastern Louisiana and central Alabama on Saturday, and parts of Louisiana were also at risk for flooding.
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The Houston Health Department said it would distribute 400 free portable air conditioners to area seniors, people with disabilities and caregivers of disabled children to contend with the heat.
Five cooling centers also were opened — four in Houston and one in Kingwood.
Hundreds of thousands remain without power
A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.
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A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.
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The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city — decimating the facade of one brick building and leaving trees, debris and shattered glass on the streets. A tornado also touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cypress.
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More than a half-million homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity by midday Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. Another 21,000 customers were also without power in Louisiana, where strong winds and a suspected tornado hit.
CenterPoint Energy, which has deployed 1,000 employees to the area and is requesting 5,000 more, said power restoration could take several days or longer in some areas, and that customers need to ensure their homes can safely be reconnected.
“In addition to damaging CenterPoint Energy’s electric infrastructure and equipment, severe weather may have caused damage to customer-owned equipment” such as the weatherhead, which is where power enters the home, the company said.
Customers must have repairs completed by a qualified electrician before service can be restored, CenterPoint added.
High-voltage transmission towers that were torn apart and downed power lines pose a twofold challenge for utility companies because the damage affected transmission and distribution systems, according to Alexandria von Meier, a power and energy expert who called that a rare thing. Damage to just the distribution system is more typical, von Meier said.
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How quickly repairs are made will depend on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to assess the damage, equipment replacement, roadwork access issues and workforce availability.
The storm caught many off guard
Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.
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Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.
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Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reported late Friday that three people died during the storm, including an 85-year-old woman whose home caught fire after being struck by lightning and a 60-year-old man who had tried to use his vehicle to power his oxygen tank.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire previously said at least four other people were killed in the city when the storms swept through Harris County, which includes Houston.
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School districts in the Houston area canceled classes Friday for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed.
Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said Saturday that he hoped to reopen schools on Monday, but that is dependent upon the restoration of electricity in school buildings.
“If a school doesn’t have power, it will remain closed,” Miles told reporters during a tour of the heavily damaged Sinclair Elementary School.
Whitmire warned that police were out in force, including state troopers sent to the area to prevent looting. He said the speed and intensity of the storm caught many off guard.
Noelle Delgado, executive director of Houston Pets Alive, said she pulled up at the animal rescue on Thursday night and found the dogs and cats — more than 30 in all — uninjured, but the building’s awning had been ripped off, the sign was mangled and water was leaking inside.
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She hoped to find foster homes for the animals.
“I could definitely tell that this storm was a little different,” she said. “It felt terrifying.”
State and federal recovery assistance is on the way
In light of the storm damage, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Whitmire both signed disaster declarations, paving the way for state and federal storm recovery assistance.
A separate disaster declaration from President Joe Biden makes federal funding available to people in seven Texas counties — including Harris — that have been affected by severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding since April 26.
Sir Anthony O’Reilly, who has died at the age of 88 after making and losing one of Ireland’s biggest fortunes, was a rugby star who became one of his country’s most celebrated businessmen, philanthropists and raconteurs.
He first came to prominence in the business world as the creator of the successful Kerrygold marketing campaign for Irish dairy products in the early 1960s. But he was already a familiar figure from his dazzling performances on the rugby field. He was capped 29 times for Ireland between 1955 and 1970 and also played for the British Lions.
O’Reilly, who was better known as Tony even after being knighted in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland, was born in 1936, the son of a senior civil servant. He had a conventional Irish middle class upbringing in Dublin, but it took an unconventional turn when, towards the end of his schooldays, he discovered that his parents were not married to each other. His mother had simply taken O’Reilly as her surname by deed poll. There being no divorce in Ireland, his father was still legally married to another woman by whom he had three children.
Whatever the mainspring of his talents, O’Reilly deployed his unusual qualities of intelligence, determination and stamina, coupled with humour and charm, to considerable effect. He began his business career as a management consultant with clients including a maker of garden gnomes whose problems later provided him with a rich store of anecdotes for the many after-dinner speeches he was invited to give.
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His first executive role was in Dublin in the early 1960s when he was put in charge of An Bord Bainne, a new government organisation for promoting Ireland’s dairy industry. O’Reilly created a viable production and marketing strategy and, aged 26, propelled Irish butter and cheese into international markets with the launch of Kerrygold.
The acclaim for this achievement prompted the Irish government to ask him to take on the job of rescuing the state-owned Erin Foods, which was making heavy losses in the mid 1960s. He prudently refused to do so unless he could also run Erin’s profitable parent company, Irish Sugar.
Erin was to be the key to the next three decades of his business life. Looking for an international partner to improve its distribution and credibility in the UK, O’Reilly set up a joint company with Heinz. The US ketchup maker soon asked O’Reilly to become its UK managing director.
Over the next two decades, O’Reilly rose to the top of Heinz, becoming chief executive in 1979 and, in 1987, its first non-family chair. He transformed the company’s sales and profits, and became its largest individual shareholder, but its stock was falling by the time he retired in 2000 as consolidation among rivals left Heinz in the industry’s second tier.
His early success at Heinz had given O’Reilly the financial resources and contacts required to launch an investment company in Dublin in 1971. Through this he was able to pursue a parallel business career in Ireland as he shuttled between Heinz’s Pittsburgh headquarters and Castlemartin, the art-filled stately home on the River Liffey where Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton were among his guests.
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The most successful of his ventures was the newspaper group, Independent News & Media, where he bought effective control for £1mn in 1973 and which developed extensive interests in the UK, France, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
O’Reilly bought Waterford Wedgwood in 1990, refinancing and restructuring the Anglo-Irish crystal and china company and hailing Waterford crystal as one of the four great Irish brands, alongside Guinness, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Kerrygold.
In 2000 he told the Financial Times of his ambition to build Waterford Wedgwood into a global luxury goods group to rival Gucci or Richemont. He poured much of his fortune into the effort, only for the indebted group to fall into receivership in 2009.
That same year he lost a fierce battle for control of INM to Denis O’Brien, the Irish telecoms tycoon, costing him the dividend income his newspapers had once provided. Pursued by creditors, he sold Castlemartin and other prized assets but by 2015 the man reputed to have been Ireland’s first billionaire was declared bankrupt.
It was a jarring fall for someone once known for his philanthropy. Most notably, O’Reilly had created the Ireland Fund which became a major conduit for channelling finance into constructive community projects on both sides of the Irish border.
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O’Reilly was married twice. He had six children by his first wife, Susan. His second wife, Chryss, whom he married in 1991, was a member of the leading Greek shipping family of Goulandris. A noted horse breeder, she died last year.
On Saturday night, Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, described O’Reilly as “a giant of sport, business and media” who left “permanent legacies in all three”.
O’Reilly himself was fond of quoting the sportsman CB Fry’s dictum: “It is incumbent upon you to be a whole man, to be an all-rounder”. It was an epithet he lived up to.
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