Dan's Papers -February 6, 2009 - Obits: James Brady, J. Keller, Lucas Foss

Magazine columnist James Brady, who also authored numerous best selling books, has died at his Manhattan apartment at the age of 80. A fixture of the Hamptons scene, he was often seen jogging near his Georgica home in East Hampton every morning after a work session.

Brady was a Marine during the Korean War and won the Bronze Star for his efforts in many battles there. He headed up an infantry rifle unit.

Upon returning home, he became a reporter for Women's Wear Daily, then a publisher or editor for Harper's Bazaar, W, The National Star, New York Magazine (where he started the "Intelligencer" column) and The New York Post (where he started "Page Six.")

For 30 years, he wrote a column for Advertising Age, and for the last 25 of those years, wrote a second weekly column for Crain's New York. His last column will appear February 16.

Beginning at age 59, Brady began writing books, some of them novels set in East Hampton and others about his time in the Marines. His best seller was his memoir, The Coldest War. He was working on his final edits of Hero of the Pacific: The Life of Legendary Marine John Basilone, which will be published in November.

(An expanded obituary and tribute to his life appears in Dan's Papers.)

Sgt. Jonathan Keller, a resident of Wading River, died last week at a military base hospital in Fort Bragg, North Carolina from bullet wounds to the arm and shoulder he suffered in a firefight in Afghanistan in April. Several hundred people attended his funeral at St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, including numerous members of the "Fighting 69th" National Guard Unit based in Bay Shore, who came in parade dress or camouflage uniforms. Keller was a member of the First Battalion.

Keller was born and raised in Wading River, attended Shoreham-Wading River High School and enlisted in the Army to defend his country. His parents survive him. His father, Marty Keller, is active in politics and is the current Riverhead Republican Party chairman.

"He was a wonderful, wonderful boy," said Dolores Kelley of Wading River, whose daughter attended high school with him. "He was a son every mother would want."

Another mourner from Wading River, Kendra Berry, was a friend of Kellers and told of the many letters he sent her from around the world.

Flags in the community remained at half-mast for the day.

Lucas Foss, the world class composer, conductor and pianist, died at his home in Manhattan last Sunday. He was 86.

Foss was born in Berlin in 1922, the son of a prominent lawyer and painter. At the age of 11, his parents fled with him to Paris, where he was enrolled in the Music Conservatoire. At the age of 16, his family moved to America and he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, then at Tanglewood with Serge Koussevitsky, and then at Yale with Paul Hindemth. He became an American citizen in 1942.

In 1946, he wrote "Song of Songs," and a folk work called "The Jumping Frog of Calavares County," based on the story by Mark Twain. His "First Symphony" appeared in 1946. He was the soloist in his "Second Piano Concerto" in 1951. Soon thereafter, he succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as the head of composition at UCLA. One of his best works, "Time Cycle," was premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, which also made the first recording of it. Many of his works were avante garde. He had great curiosity and composed atonally early on and later, in conventional ways. In the 1970s, he became director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and in the 1990s was the director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He is considered one of America's great composers, and in 1983 was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In the late 1990s, he was the director of the Music Festival of the Hamptons, a post he retained until his passing.

He is survived by his wife, Cornelia; a son, Christopher; a daughter Eliza; a brother, Oliver; and three granddaughters.