FEBRUARY/MARCH 2000

OBITUARIES

Edith-Marie Appleton

Edith-Marie Appleton, 80, who made substantial financial contributions to the art museum that became the largest private gift to Florida State, died Dec. 8.

She was the sister of Arthur Appleton, the founder of the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, who gave the museum to FSU and Central Florida Community College in 1990.
Soon after, Edith-Marie Appleton gave $2 million (matched by the state) to build a 22,000-square-foot wing of the museum. The wing includes galleries for exhibitions, an art education center, workshops, a distance-learning center and a library.

She also donated an additional $2 million to support educational programs at the museum.

"Edith-Marie has left Floridians with a legacy that is testament to her great love of the arts," said FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte.

She was born in Evanston, Ill., earned a bachelor's degree from Smith, became a registered nurse and joined the family business, Appleton Electric Co., in Chicago. The family sold the business in 1982.

Francois Bucher, art historian

By Mark Hinson
Condensed from the Tallahassee Democrat

Art historian, writer, medieval scholar and noted eccentric Francois Bucher, 73, who founded the arty Nautilus Foundation in Lloyd, died Nov. 9.

The Swiss-born Bucher, who was a retired professor from Florida State, was "spectacularly brilliant and urbane," FSU professor Robert Fichter said.

Bucher spoke English, German, French, Italian and the Romansch dialect.

He arrived at FSU in 1978 after teaching at the University of Minnesota, Yale, Brown, Princeton and State University of New York/Binghamton. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and Getty Scholar.

In the '80s, inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, Bucher began constructing the 6,000-square-foot cinder block building that housed Nautilus.

He envisioned it as an artist colony and think tank. It contained his living quarters, a theater/lecture hall, a library and a round art gallery.
He left it to Florida State.

Charlie Carter

By Bob Thurston
Condensed from the Tallahassee Democrat

Charlie Carter, 73, the FSU Marching Chiefs' musical arranger for more than 40 years, died Saturday, Dec. 11.
Several of his original works are standard repertory in secondary school music programs all over the country. During the 1970s he was also a top-selling arranger of marching band tunes for Charter Publications.

But his first love was the Marching Chiefs, and they always loved him right back.

He came to FSU in 1953.

There Carter quietly continued plunking away at a piano, perfecting arrangements for a band whose very sound is arguably his own creation. He created a scoring style that has defined the Chiefs' sonority: big, rich and dark, with an emphasis on melodic low brass. The style has changed very little, even in the writing of his successors.

Carter's legacy is on public display every time the Chiefs perform. The FSU Fight Song and "The Hymn to the Garnet and the Gold," with which the Chiefs conclude their football-game performances, are Carter's arrangements.

The short musical cheer - "Go Seminoles! Fight, team, fight!" - heard after big plays, is a Carter original and a brilliant little nugget of jazz writing.

Edward Kilenyi, pianist

By Dorothy Clifford
Condensed from the Tallahassee Democrat

Edward Kilenyi, 89, internationally renowned pianist who came to Tallahassee in 1953 to teach at Florida State, died Jan. 6.

Born of Hungarian parents in Philadelphia in 1910, Kilenyi came to Tallahassee because of his long association with the great Hungarian pianist, composer and conductor Ernst von Dohnanyi, who had joined the FSU faculty in 1949.

"We lost not just a colleague and friend," said Florida State music professor James Streem. "We've lost our link with the past. Eddie Kilenyi represented the last link with what we called the Golden Age of Pianism. We've lost the style."
"Kilenyi's artistry was widely recognized by the musical world," said Donald Manildi, curator of the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland.

Manildi says he knows Kilenyi through his recordings, which he began collecting as a child.

In an April 1999 review, New York Times critic David Mermelstein cited Kilenyi's 1938 recording of Schubert's "Wanderer" as a benchmark by which he judged a more recent recording of the work.

"Such is the impact that Edward Kilenyi, pianist, makes even today and, I'm sure, will continue to make into the future," said Jane Perry-Camp, a student and later faculty colleague of Kilenyi.

"He was among his century's giants as a musician, as a pianist and as a teacher," said Perry-Camp, who is now retired from Florida State. "The care, love and understanding he lavished on the music he played, he lavished equally on his students and their playing."

Donald A. Gifford

Donald A. Gifford, 53, a prominent Tampa lawyer and former chair of the FSU Alumni Association, died Oct. 25.
In Tampa, where he was a senior partner at Shackleford, Farrior, Stallings & Evans, lawyers praised Gifford for his legal acumen, sense of humor and readiness to help others.

"He's the kind of guy that you would seek out when you had a tough legal question, and you wanted to go to someone you really respected," Tampa lawyer Steve Anderson said.

Born in Derry, N.H., Gifford graduated from the University of South Florida, where he was student body president, and from FSU's law school.

Gifford was chair of the FSU Alumni Association in 1992 and 1993. He was also on the boards of Seminole Boosters and the FSU Foundation and was president of the FSU College of Law Alumni Association.

"He established a benchmark by which we measure the achievements of others, and few will achieve his standard; he truly was unique."said Jim Melton, president of the FSU Alumni Association.

Kirk Bell Cocke Hassell

Kirk Bell Cocke Hassell, 83, a retired associate professor in the School of Business at Florida State University, died Jan. 3.

A native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., she had lived in Tallahassee since 1951. She taught at FSU from 1951 to 1978.

She was a Coast Guard veteran of World War II and a past national president of Chi Omega Sorority. She was a member and elder of Faith Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee.

Richard R. Lee

Richard R. Lee, 64, a retired professor of communication at FSU, died Oct. 9.

A native of Minneapolis and a veteran of the U.S. Army, he taught at Florida State from 1968 to 1997.

He was a founding member of the Mountain Camp Retreat, and he initiated and participated in the founding of Big Bend Hospice.

He was an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, and was active in Tallahassee's Unitarian Universalist Church.

Godfrey Smith

Godfrey Smith, 85, died Nov. 9. A lifelong resident of Tallahassee, he was a veteran of the Army Air Corps and was the former president and CEO of Capital City First National Bank. Smith was involved in many civic organizations, and he was a trustee of the FSU Foundation. He was on the FSU Athletic Board for 20 years.

"Godfrey Smith was so wonderful in so many ways," FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte said. "Godfrey cared about the university and knew how important it was to the community, and he contributed in so many ways, both financially and with advice.

He advised every president I have known. He certainly advised me on some important issues."

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