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Bruce Kirby, a Canadian-born journalist, Olympic sailor and self-taught naval architect whose design for a lightweight fiberglass dinghy, originally sketched on a piece of yellow legal paper, changed the face of sailing, died on Monday at his home in the village of Rowayton in Norwalk, Conn. He was 92.
His wife, Margo Kirby, confirmed his death.
Dinghy racing in North America and Europe in the late 1960s revolved around the International 14, a lightweight, 14-foot, two-person craft, and by then Mr. Kirby had carved out a niche for himself moonlighting as a designer in the 14 sailing class, spinning off variations on the original design that would have the dinghy planing and skipping across the water’s surface. His day job was as editor of the sailing magazine One-Design & Offshore Yachtsman in Chicago.
He had also won renown racing 14s and was a three-time Olympian for Canada, though without winning a medal.
One day in 1969 he received a phone call from a friend, Ian Bruce, an industrial designer and boating enthusiast in Montreal who as a side job had been building complex wooden hulls to Mr. Kirby’s I-14 designs and selling them. But with little margin in that business, he was looking for a new small-boat design — an easy-to-build, fiberglass sailboat that a solo sailor could race and that would help keep his I-14 business rolling.
Grabbing a yellow legal pad, Mr. Kirby promptly drew one up, envisioning a lightweight fiberglass hull, just under 14 feet long. It would eventually be christened the Laser and become a worldwide phenomenon.
“When Ian called him in 1969, Bruce was doodling,” said Peter Bjorn, a former partner in Performance Sailcraft, the first manufacturer of the Laser. “Ian lofted it,” he added, referring to the drawing of final plans, “in the fall of 1970, and they tweaked it. There was snow on the ground when they finally put the molds together. Bruce came and sailed it. And that was it.”
The boat was rigged up for the 1971 New York Boat Show with a sticker price of $595 (about $3,780 today). Before the doors closed, 144 were sold.
“All of a sudden,” Mr. Bjorn said, “there was something that wasn’t quite a toy — they took a bit to sail — and you could take money straight out of your pocket to buy it and throw it on the roof of your car.”
Coming in colors like orange, yellow, light blue and British racing green, the boat was an instant sensation. Its streamlined simplicity — with a teak tiller and a sail whose sleeve slid over an aluminum mast — made the Laser as basic in design as the Windsurfer and the Hobie Cat catamaran, both of which had arrived on the beach boat scene around the same time. What made the Laser different from them, however, was that it could be ideal both for cruising around with friends and for performance racing by a single sailor.
“It was a boat you could control with your body,” said Peter Commette, winner of the first Laser world championships, in 1974.
More than 250,000 of the boats have been built worldwide since 1970, making Mr. Kirby’s creation one of the most influential sailboat designs of all time. The Laser, now called the ILCA, for the International Laser Class Association, is used for men’s and women’s single-handed events in the Olympics.
Mr. Kirby came to call his original legal pad drawing the “million dollar doodle.” The royalties he received allowed him to leave his day job, launching him into an eclectic boat-design career that touched every corner of the sport, from the America’s Cup to junior sailing to cruising craft for shallow estuaries, and established him as one of the world’s pre-eminent boat designers.
Bruce Robert William Kirby was born on Jan. 2, 1929, in Ottawa into a nautical family with membership in the Brittania Boating Club in Ottawa (a grandfather was a club commodore). His father, David Patee Kirby, was in the building supply business. His mother, Eileen (Bruce) Kirby traced her lineage to Scottish kings, according to family lore. His paternal great-grandfather was Adm. Henry W. Bruce (1792-1863), a noted commander in the Royal Navy who was said to have participated in the War of 1812 early in his career.
He followed in his father’s wake, racing small boats on the Ottawa River during Canada’s fleeting summers and devouring copies of Yachting magazine in the winter. The best small-boat sailors of the time raced International 14s, two-person boats, each usually built in the home or garage according to design specifications. Mr. Kirby began to travel and rake in trophies in the class.
If his first love was sailing, his second was journalism. A lung ailment kept him out of college, and through his father’s connections he became, at 20, a reporter for The Ottawa Journal for $25 a week (the equivalent of about $290 in Canadian money today).
His knowledge of sailing brought him reporting stints from an ocean sailing yacht in Europe. Moving to The Montreal Star, he joined its copy desk but also covered the America’s Cup. He headed for Chicago to become editor of One-Design & Offshore Yachtsman in 1965.
Never far from sailing, Mr. Kirby qualified for the 1956 Olympics, in Melbourne, Australia, in the single-handed Finn class. He went on to sail in the 1964 Games (in Tokyo) in the same class and in the 1968 games (centered in Mexico City) in the two-person Star class.
He worked out his designs using intuition and from reading Norman Skene’s “Elements of Yacht Design.” His I-14 designs were steppingstones to the Laser, which in turn opened doors, bringing him a host of design commissions, including one for a yacht named Runaway, Canada’s 1981 entry in the Admiral’s Cup international competition. Runaway put him on a global stage.
Then came Canada I, the 1983 Canadian entry for the America’s Cup, and its design lifted Kirby’s reputation to new heights.
Though Canada I made the semifinals, the Canadians were no match for the Australians, who went on to break the longest winning streak in sports history — 132 years — by defeating the Americans that year for the cup.
Kirby designed another Cup boat, the Canada II, for the 1987 series. He also produced a total of 63 innovative and popular sailboat designs, including the 23-foot Sonar keelboat, which he created for the Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, Conn., where he was a commodore. The Sonar has been sailed on every continent and is used in the Paralympic Games.
His Laser was selected for the men’s single-handed sailing event for the 1996 Olympics and for the women’s single-handed event in 2008.
“For me the big thing I love about the Laser is the simplicity of design,” Sarah Douglas, a Canadian representative in this year’s Tokyo Olympics, said in a phone interview from Japan. “I grew up in Barbados. It’s the most accessible boat. If the Laser wasn’t in the Games, I don’t know how smaller nations can compete in sailing.”
Kirby, who became a naturalized American citizen, lived along the Five Mile River in Rowayton for 45 years, designing in his basement. He and Mr. Bruce were awarded the Order of Canada for their contributions to sailing, and Mr. Kirby was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2012.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Kelly Kirby and Janice Duffy, and two granddaughters.
“Physically he was quite compromised,” Margo Kirby, his wife, said. “He blamed it on hiking for years on small boats. He said he’d do it all over again.”
A probing history of the CIA’s evolving role from the outset of the Cold War into the 1960s, viewed through the exploits of four American spies. On the heels of Germany’s defeat in World War II, European leaders and intelligence agents were shifting focus to the Soviet Union’s dominance over Eastern Europe and threatening pursuit of influence in Asia. Under a recently sworn-in President Harry Truman, the American government was slower to gauge early. signals but eventually responded with often disastrous covert tactics. Anderson delivers a complex, massively scaled narrative, balancing prodigious research with riveting storytelling skills. He tracks the careers of four agents. In the Philippines, Edward Lansdale was instrumental in combatting the Hukbalahap uprising, lining up Ramon Magsaysay, the secretary of defense, to become president in 1954. Peter Sichel, a German Jew whose family escaped the Nazis, ran the CIA’s Berlin office for more than a decade. Former naval officer Michael Burke headed the paramilitary operations in Albania and elsewhere. Frank Wisner, the CIA’s deputy director of plans, had key roles in the Office of Policy Coordination until its full merging with the CIA in 1950. Though all four men began their careers with the strong desire to defend American freedom, the author
engagingly demonstrates how their efforts were undermined by politically motivated power grabs within the
U.S. government; poorly planned covert operations; and duplicitous scheming by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover
and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who were espousing anti-communist rhetoric to advance their own careers. “By
the end of Eisenhower’s second term,” writes Anderson, “the geographical spread of governments that his
administration had undertaken to overthrow or otherwise subvert suggested an almost purposeful design, as if
it sought to alienate the citizenry of most every region and subregion of the globe.” Over the course of the
narrative, the author amply shows how the CIA was increasingly pushed to function as an instrument of
politically charged ambitions.
An engrossing history of the early days of the CIA.
Howard “Tom” Thompson passed away on May 29. He was 89 years old.
Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Tom spent his childhood years in New Canaan and ultimately raised his family in Darien. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1953, Tom served in the United States Navy. Tom married Ann Hilton in 1958. Together they raised two children. In business, he enjoyed a successful career as an advertising executive, including vice-president for Benton & Bowles Advertising Agency.
During his 63 years in Darien, he served as Treasurer of Noroton Presbyterian Church, Chairman of the Darien Red Cross, and President of The Darien Senior Men’s Association (2002-2003). Tom volunteered for the Stamford-based Meals on Wheels organization.
Tom enjoyed time with his family on numerous vacations in the Caribbean and summers in Plymouth, MA and Cape Cod. He was an avid New York Yankees fan and also cheered for the Patriots, as his granddaughter is a New England Patriots cheerleader.
In addition to his wife, Ann, Tom is survived by his two daughters, Cynthia Thompson Daniska (Michael) of Bethel, CT and Betsy Thompson of Darien. Tom is also survived by two grandchildren, Scott Daniska and Lauren Daniska, both of whom reside in the Boston area.
A private family memorial will take place in Plymouth, MA in August. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Tom’s memory to Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, 27 Cannon Road, Wilton, CT 06897.
Joe Spain and David Mace will lead the Happy Wanderers in their final outing of the spring/summer season on Wednesday, June 23, the first trip to Manhattan on Metro North since the fall of 2019! The group will be leaving the Darien station on the 8:33 AM express to Grand Central (8:37 AM out of Noroton Heights); masks are required on Metro North. You should buy your tickets for the train at the machines on the Darien or Noroton train platforms. A Metro Card will be needed for the Tram to Roosevelt Island. If you don’t have a Card, you can buy your train ticket from the machines with one Metro Card ride included. The group will congregate at the information booth on the main floor upon arrival in Grand Central. The walking destination is the 59th St. Tram to Roosevelt Island, and then to the Four Freedoms Roosevelt Park at the south end of the Island. From there, the group will take the East River ferry to 34th Street, and have lunch. We then will walk back to Grand Central, with a short stop at the Morgan Library, and an afternoon train back to Darien. Please get in touch with Joe (203-554-4201) or David (203-505-9693) if you would like to join this excursion.
Jayme Stevenson is well known to our members as Darien’s First Selectman from 2011 to 2021 (she chose not to run for re-election this year). She was twice elected by her bi-partisan peers to serve as Chairman of the 18-town Western Connecticut Council of Governments. Jayme served as Chairman of the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency and First Vice-Chair of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. She has been married to her husband John for 34 years and they have five children and two grandchildren. Jayme has a B.S. degree in Telecommunication and Business Management from Arizona State University, Walter Cronkite School of Communication, and at one point worked for Standard & Poor’s Corporation as Vice President, Asset-Backed Finance
Marty Yellin received a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from CCNY. In 1965 he joined Perkin-Elmer in Wilton, Ct. and they helped support his doctorate in Bio Medical Engineering at NYU applying engineering solutions to medical issues. At Perkin Elmer he became involved with a Top Secret program to design and build the largest spy satellite ever to be flown in space. In his last 10 years at Perkin Elmer he helped design and manage the Hubble Space Telescope which has been the most productive space instrument ever built. After retirement in 1998 he resumed taking courses at NYU in the fields of genetics and cell biology.
David Montieth is a past World Champion in the High Jump in the 70 to 74-year age group, having won that title at the World Championship Master’s Track and Field meet in Perth, Australia. He has been ranked number one in the world in his age group for 6 of the last 16 years, and has won 28 U.S. National Championship meets during that same time period. He currently holds both the U.S. indoor and outdoor high jump records in the 70 to 74 age group and was named “Athlete of the Year” by the National USA Track and Field organization for that age group.
While David high jumped during his years at Wabash College he did not jump again until he was almost 60 years old when he realized he had to take better care of his body. His presentation emphasizes the importance of maintaining one’s health and fitness if we want to enjoy an active and fulfilling life as we age.
Prior to retiring in 2011 David enjoyed a 40-year career in Human Resources where he was Head of HR for divisions of Target Stores and Macy’s Department Stores and for his last 20 years was head of Human Resources for Dress Barn, Inc. Since his retirement he has been very active in consulting and Board work for two volunteer organizations as well as his local church.
Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, David and his wife Karen have lived in Ridgefield for the past 30 years.
Peter Gogolak and his family escaped from Communist Hungary during the 1956 revolution. Within 8 years of arriving in America, he was making football history. He introduced soccer-style place kicking in both college and professional football. At Cornell University, he made 54 consecutive extra points, a college record.
In 1964 he was overlooked by the NFL but drafted in the last round by the AFL Buffalo Bills. The Bills won the 1964 and 1965 AFL Championships and Peter made the Sporting News All AFL Team. He was the first to switch from the AFL to the NFL, sparking the “war between the leagues” when he signed with the New York Giants, which led the the eventual merger of the two leagues.
Peter is still the all-time leading scorer of the New York Giants and in 2010 he was inducted into the Ring of Honor at Giant Stadium. In 2006 he was asked by the White House to be the US Citizen Representative in Budapest at the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.
After his playing career, Peter was a long-time sales executive with the financial printing firm RR Donnelly.
Ambassador Thomas “Tom” M.T. Niles was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1939. Upon graduating from Harvard College in 1960 he joined the U.S. Foreign Service. After assignments in Belgrade, Moscow (twice), and the United States Mission to NATO in Brussels, as well as assignments to the Department of State in Washington, he was named by President Reagan to be Ambassador to Canada in 1985. In 1989, he was named by President George H.W. Bush to be Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels. In 1991 he was reassigned to the Department of State as Assistant Secretary for Europe and Canada. In 1993 he was named Ambassador to Greece by President Clinton. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1998 and became President and CEO of the United States Council for International Business in 1999, a position he held until 2005.
Bruce Putterman is publisher and CEO of The Connecticut Mirror, a digital-only, nonprofit, non-partisan news organization. At a time when traditional newspapers in Connecticut are disappearing or sharply cutting reporting staff (part of a national trend), the Connecticut Mirror’s mission is to produce original journalism that informs Connecticut residents about the impact of public policy, holds government accountable, and amplifies diverse perspectives. Some 88% of the Connecticut Mirror’s revenues come from reader donations. Before joining The Connecticut Mirror in 2017, Bruce owned and operated a West Hartford-based consulting practice for 16 years, providing strategic planning and marketing services to more than 50 nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups, public agencies, private equity firms, and other for-profit clients. His interest in journalism dates back to his college years when he worked in commercial radio and TV news. Bruce served as an elected member of the West Hartford Board of Education from 2003 through 2015, including three years as chair of the board. He has a Bachelor of Arts in History and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Cornell University