Passed Made Present
passedmadepresent.bsky.social
Passed Made Present
@passedmadepresent.bsky.social

Teacher posting an obituary from the past, daily

www.passedmadepresent.org
"Long considered one of the most powerful artists of her generation, Pepper shunned typical classification, leaving confused..."

#BeverlyPepper
1922-2020
Born on this day

news.artnet.com/art-world/be...
Artist Beverly Pepper, Who Long Rejected Critics' Attempts to Define Her Brawny Sculptures, Has Died at 97 | Artnet News
The sculptor Beverly Pepper confounded critics by refusing to be tied to any trends, styles, or artistic circles.
news.artnet.com
December 20, 2025 at 10:58 PM
"... Tyson could reach transcendent peaks in her starring roles, many of which distil and explore vital elements of African American experience."

#CicelyTyson
1924-2021
Born on this day

www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...
Cicely Tyson obituary: Black female pride on screen
“I want to be recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black women”, the actor and model wrote – and from Sounder and Roots to The Help and the Tyler Perry universe, her performances...
www.bfi.org.uk
December 19, 2025 at 10:54 PM
"... developed basic techniques that have enabled generations of researchers to elucidate how genes work."

#EstherLederberg
1922-2006
Born on this day

www.theguardian.com/science/2006...
Obituary: Esther Lederberg
Obituary: Esther Lederberg, emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, who has died aged 83, developed basic techniques that have enabled generations of researchers to e...
www.theguardian.com
December 18, 2025 at 8:42 PM
"... before a single mile of the interstate highway system had been built, Voorhees was one of its early planners... Later, he helped plan subway systems around the world, including Washington's Metro."

#AlanVoorhees
1922-2005
Born on this day

wapo.st/4p5bhOa
Pioneer in Highway Design Spread Talents Broadly
wapo.st
December 17, 2025 at 10:21 PM
"... Ms. Colvin, a middle-aged, college-educated Syracuse homemaker and mother of two, was appalled to discover that the recent census had counted 11,055 residents of Onondaga County, N.Y., who could not read or write."

#RuthColvin
1916-2024
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/u...
Ruth Johnson Colvin, Champion of Literacy, Is Dead at 107 (Published 2024)
www.nytimes.com
December 17, 2025 at 1:06 AM
"... Dyson devised – while taking a Greyhound bus ride in America – the answer to a conundrum in quantum electrodynamics that had stumped giants of physics..."

#FreemanDyson
1923-2020
Born on this day

www.theguardian.com/science/2020...
Freeman Dyson obituary
Brilliant theoretical physicist and mathematician whose far-fetched ideas for the future verged on the bizarre
www.theguardian.com
December 15, 2025 at 9:05 PM
"An Army veteran, Mr. Sarria collected nearly 6,000 votes in an unsuccessful 1961 campaign for San Francisco supervisor that demonstrated the political clout of the city's gay community for the first time."

#JoseSarria
1922-2013
Born on this day

www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...
José Julio Sarria, gay political pioneer, dies
An Army veteran, Mr. Sarria collected nearly 6,000 votes in an unsuccessful 1961 campaign...
www.sfgate.com
December 14, 2025 at 10:00 PM
"He led the survivors out of the burning area through the city sewer system."

#YitzhakZuckerman
1915-1981
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/1981/06/20/o...
YITZHAK ZUCKERMAN, COMMANDED FIGHTERS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO (Published 1981)
www.nytimes.com
December 13, 2025 at 9:29 PM
"After the Italians were ousted in the early 1940s she returned to Addis Ababa, where she drove a car and raced a horse-and-trap around the city."

#EmahoyTsegueMaryamGuebrou
1923-2023
Born on this day

www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou obituary
A series of albums recorded in the 1960s and 1970s and released as the Ethiopiques in the late 1990s and early 2000s brought the sound of Ethiopian jazz to west
www.thetimes.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:08 PM
"I'm not throwing 3,000 people out of work two weeks before Christmas."

#AaronFeuerstein
1925-2021
Born on this day

www.reuters.com/world/us/aar...
Aaron Feuerstein dies at 95, paid idled workers after mill fire
Former Boston-area millowner Aaron Feuerstein, who gained fame for paying workers idled after a fire in December 1995, has died at the age of 95, his son Daniel Feuerstein said on Thursday.
www.reuters.com
December 11, 2025 at 9:35 PM
"Until the 1970s, most linguists believed that the structure of language existed out in the world, and that the human brain then learned it from infancy... Dr. Gleitman argued the opposite."

#LilaGleitman
1921-2021
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/s...
Lila Gleitman, Who Showed How Children Learn Language, Dies at 91 (Published 2021)
www.nytimes.com
December 10, 2025 at 9:31 PM
"Grace Murray Hopper, 85, a retired Navy rear admiral and a legendary pioneer computer scientist who was a co-inventor of the business language COBOL..."

#GraceHopper
1906-1992
Born on this day

wapo.st/4iVYzzS
ADM. HOPPER DIES
wapo.st
December 9, 2025 at 10:27 PM
"Searching through an Italian-English dictionary, she spotted “prego” and declared it the ideal name for a pasta sauce..."

#LaurelCutler
1926-2021
Born on this day

www.wsj.com/business/med...
Reluctant Advertising Woman Reached Top of Her Trade
Laurel Cutler, who has died at age 94, was a philosophy major who wanted to write novels but ended up advising top executives at companies such as Chrysler and Campbell Soup.
www.wsj.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:18 PM
"... Ron Labinski transformed the typical American sports stadium from a graceless and egalitarian lump of steel and concrete into a palace where everyone could see the action..."

#RonLabinski
1937-2023
Born on this day

www.wsj.com/articles/ron...
Ron Labinski Turned Major League Sports Stadiums Into Palaces
The Kansas City architect, who has died at age 85, improved sight lines and pioneered club seats.
www.wsj.com
December 7, 2025 at 10:57 PM
"A career as a concert pianist led, with the outbreak of another world war, to lecturing and prolific journalism..."

#EveCurie
1904-2007
Born on this day

www.thetimes.com/travel/desti...
Eve Curie
Eve Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie, was the only one of her family not to receive a Nobel prize. Though she showed an aptitude for science, from an early age her inclinations were artistic. A
www.thetimes.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:34 PM
“She was the punk-rock Dorothy Parker.”

#RuthPolsky
1954-1986
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/o...
Overlooked No More: Ruth Polsky, Who Shaped New York’s Music Scene (Published 2021)
www.nytimes.com
December 5, 2025 at 10:00 PM
"Mrs. Manford was a mother of three and a New York City elementary school teacher when her defiance in the face of violence thrust her onto the national stage..."

#JeanneManford
1920-2013
Born on this day

www.sfgate.com/nation/artic...
Jeanne Manford, PFLAG founder, dies
Mrs. Manford, who started Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in 1972, had...
www.sfgate.com
December 4, 2025 at 10:41 PM
"A mathematician and one of few women in the male-dominated world of software methodologists, Ms. Shlaer was a leading figure..."

#SallyShlaer
1938-1998
Born on this day

www.sfgate.com/news/article...
Sally Shlaer
Berkeley and a Bay Area pioneer in computer software development, died November 12,...
www.sfgate.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:13 PM
"Pade was among the last living members of a founding generation of women in electronic music who are only now just beginning to get their due."

#ElseMariePade
1924-2016
Born on this day

pitchfork.com/thepitch/100...
Else Marie Pade, Denmark's "Grandmother of Electronic Music," Is Dead at 91
Else Marie Pade, who was both a musical pioneer and, during WWII, a prisoner of the Gestapo, died this week at the age of 91. Critic Philip Sherburne looks back at her influential—and overlooked—legac...
pitchfork.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:25 PM
"... Sola remained immensely hopeful that at last the truth would come out about how several thousand Chileans had lost their lives... and that she might at last discover her husband's fate."

#SolaSierra
1935-1999
Born on this day

www.theguardian.com/news/1999/ju...
Sola Sierra
Sola Sierra, who has died of a heart attack aged 63, devoted her life and indomitable energy to justice and human rights in her native Chile. "She was a typical Chilean woman of the people," a friend ...
www.theguardian.com
December 1, 2025 at 10:23 PM
"Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination..."

#ShirleyChisholm
1924-2005
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/o...
Shirley Chisholm, 'Unbossed'Pioneer in Congress, Is Dead at 80 (Published 2005)
www.nytimes.com
November 30, 2025 at 11:02 PM
"When Japan invaded... Orosa joined a resistance movement called Marking’s Guerrillas, holding the rank of captain. She turned her attention to inventing nutrient-dense foods to sustain local fighters."

#MariaOrosa
1893-1945
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/o...
Overlooked No More: Maria Orosa, Inventor of Banana Ketchup (Published 2022)
www.nytimes.com
November 29, 2025 at 10:21 PM
"She... quickly proved she could hold her own on the Baltimore waterfront. In 1954, when a dockworker compared her nose to a ski jump, Mrs. Bentley punched him in the jaw."

#HelenDelichBentley
1923-2016
Born on this day

www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/u...
Helen Delich Bentley, Former Maryland Congresswoman, Dies at 92 (Published 2016)
www.nytimes.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:29 PM
"... she was chief of economic research in the 1970s, when a male executive directed her to take notes in the back of the room."

#ElizabethBailey
1938-2022
Born on this day

wapo.st/3XkunUY
Elizabeth Bailey, pathbreaker for women in economics, dies at 83
She was the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Princeton and helped deregulate airlines as the first woman on the Civil Aeronautics Board.
wapo.st
November 26, 2025 at 9:49 PM
"Decades before 'Seinfeld' became known as the sitcom about nothing, and Tina Fey wrote and starred in '30 Rock,' Lynch’s presciently modern sitcom... celebrated the understated humor of average married life."

#PegLynch
1916-2015
Born on this day

www.latimes.com/local/califo...
Peg Lynch dies at 98; broadcast pioneer created early sitcom 'Ethel and Albert'
Peg Lynch, a trailblazer for women in broadcast entertainment who wrote, owned and starred in one of television's first sitcoms, "Ethel and Albert," has died.
www.latimes.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:27 PM