Wil Baden
Will Baden - 10 June 1928 - 9 November 2016.
"This is the man who, as a boy, lived in Hollywood and
was an extra in a crowd scene in an "Our Gang" episode about a birthday
party."
"This is the man whose father took him to the World
Science Fiction Convention, in 1939."
"He took the bus to visit John W. Campbell Jr. at
Astounding Science Fiction magazine's offices. While at Princeton University,
he had tea with Albert Einstein. (Which wasn't unusual at the time, all the
incoming freshmen did.)"
"He was always good with languages. One day, a man from
the government asked the head of the languages department if he could be
introduced to the students who were especially good with the following
languages? Which is how he ended up spending a summer translating Russian
mathematics papers."
"He was active in the New York lodge of the Masons. He
was a performer -- he was part of a comedy troupe called the Rusty Brothers.
His favorite bit was where a mason who'd been away from the lodge for a while
is trying to remember the correct secret handshake. It illustrated that you
could do comedy without speaking a word."
"He learned Hebrew, and translated the news from Israel
into English for the lodge newsletters to benefit the Jewish readers."
"He worked for a private detective firm for a while,
doing secret audits of New York drive-in movie theaters. At the intermission
he'd walk down the aisles between the cars, with a mechanical counter in one
hand and his date's hand in the other. He'd click the clicker for each car he
walked passed, and for each time his date squeezed his hand for one on her
side. He saw a lot of movies."
"As a computer programmer, he was active in what we
would now call the Open Source movement. He was a big fish in a shallow pond.
The users group for mid-sized IBM computers was called "COMMON" (named after a
Fortran statement), and he was active in that group for many years. He ended up
on the Fortran '77 Standards Committee, which is when the Fortran language
added "structured programming" to its library. (Before, with Fortran '66,
implemented on IBM as Fortran IV, we only had IF, GO TO, and DO loop
constructs. All those { } you see in modern languages? We didn't have them back
then.)"
"When the family moved to California, he would answer
the door on Halloween in his black cassock, white makeup, with the lights out
and tall candles burning ... and demand that the kids do a "trick" to get a
treat. This was something he learned from being a kid in the Depression - you
don't get something for nothing. You could whistle with a mouth full of peanut
butter, or sing Pumpkin Carols, or do a cheer routine or somersaults -
anything, really."
"When his four kids were at College Park Elementary
School, he'd come and read The Hobbit and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
at school. Decades later, the school librarian still remembered him
fondly."
"He was active in the Forth programming language world,
and was invited by the Chinese government as part of a group of Western
computer scientists to come and give lectures. So he learned Mandarin, to be
able to give his speeches in Chinese. He was invited back, two or three years
later, and did it again."
"He'd bring us into his work on weekends, and we could
play Hangman on the computer. No video monitors, each move resulted in another
sheet of paper printing out on the huge line printer. I asked him how it was
possible for a computer to play a game. Because of that question, I have a
career."
"He took me to the very first convention I ever
attended, a "COMMON" conference in Minneapolis. (At the Leamington, which was
later home for Minicon for many years.) We flew on Northwest Orient Airlines. I
remember it was spring, and there was snow on the ground, and I ordered a
lemonade in the bar and charged it to our room."
"For awhile, he worked for the Arabian-American Oil Co.
(ARAMCO) in Houston, staying for a week or so and flying home. TWA, the
airline, actually issued him a wooden plaque acknowledging him as a frequent
flyer. There was a possibility of him (and all of us) getting relocated to
Riyadh, so he learned Arabic. The course at Orange Coast College was short on
students and in danger of getting canceled, so some of us in the family joined
him there. Our Arab teacher told us that each word in Arabic has four meanings:
its primary meaning; the exact opposite; something obscene; and something to do
with a camel."
"He learned about the Doctor Demento radio show on KMET,
four hours each Sunday night, and we all started listening to it. He and mom
performed Tom Lehrer's "Irish Ballad" at a church talent show once, along with
"There's a Hole in the Bucket." "
"When he was recovering from a medical procedure about
ten years ago, at a nursing facility, he brought along his old Spanish grammar
book so he could communicate with the Spanish-speaking staff. They called him
El Viejo."
"He had a life-long interest in shorthand, both the
handwritten kind and alphabetic abbreviations. The system started by the
telegraphers, back in the 19th century, was something he worked on updating and
expanding."
"In the last few years, as he was going deaf and his
eyesight was failing, he started studying Esperanto."
Reported by Chaz Boston Baden, his son
on
Facebook
Wil Baden aka Neil Bawd (1928-2016) Memorial Party and
Sing-along
Saturday, 21 January 2017, 2:00-4:00 pm
Sierra Room,
Balearic Community Center
1975 Balearic Drive
Costa Mesa CA 92626
"Wil Baden once told his children that when he died, we
should have a party."
"So, with Mom's permission, we are doing just that. We
are going to have some of his favorite snacks, and sing songs from the Dr.
Seuss and Tom Lehrer songbooks. He sang us peculiar lullabies when we were
small, acompanied us on piano from time to time, introduced us to the Doctor
Demento show, and performed duets with Mom on occasion."
"We expect to have newspaper swordfights, and play some
"Halloween Games," and talk about some of our favorite memories of growing
up."
Hosted by the Baden children - Dorothy, Elaine, Chas.,
and Thomas.
RSVP: dad@badens.org
- Links:
- Obituary on SF
Site
- Photo
(Sunday 18-Aug-2002)
Photos from 1984 Forth Workshop in Tapei
Photos
contributed by Bill Ragsdale
At the National Chiao Tung University in
Taiwan |
At the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in
China |
|
