Obit of the Day

In 1975, Larry and Jane Nance started their own business. Since Mr. Nance had worked most recently for a St. Louis-based tear gas company, they decided that the market was open to a line of personal-defense sprays. So the Security Equipment Corporation was started out of Mr. Nance’s trunk, filled with hundreds of containers of Sabre defense spray that he sold store-by-store across the St. Louis area.

Mr. Nance would handle the sales calls on the road and Mrs. Nance would do the follow-ups from home, while taking care of their four children. Although they faced set-backs (in 1982 a report by 20/20 on the negative effects of defense sprays caused sales to plummet) they remained dedicated to their product and today Security Equipment Corporation is the largest seller of pepper sprays in the world.

Sabre sprays are used in 25 countries including Canada, Denmark, Uruguay, Egypt, and Singapore. In the United States, Sabre sprays are used by the Department of Defense, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Marshals as well as almost every major metropolitan police force. The company offers products for personal use (including a pink pepper spray canister in support of breast cancer), law enforcement (some with combined concentrations of pepper spray and tear gas), and bear sprays…yes, bear sprays.

Larry Nance died at the age of 64 from myeloma. His children now run the company which uses the slogan, “Making Grown Men Cry Since 1975.”

Note: Sabre pepper spray was not used in the now-infamous UC-Davis pepper spray incident that became a popular meme in 2011. That was BAE’s Def-Tec MK-9.

Additional source: www.sabrered.com

(Image courtesy of wolverinesssm.com)

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Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

Nancy Sinatra,

How Does That Grab You?

Obit of the Day: Long, “Strange” Trip

When Nancy Sinatra put on her walking boots Billy Strange was there. When her baby shot her down, Bill Strange was there. When Elvis made memories, Bill Strange was there. When the Beach Boys recorded pet sounds, Billy Strange was there.

Billy Strange was a guitarist, songwriter, and arranger who worked with some of the best-known artists and made some of the most popular records of the 1960s. He arranged Nancy Sinatra’s hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and played guitar on “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” (“Bang Bang” was featured on the soundtrack of Kill Bill.) When Elvis came to Los Angeles, Strange wrote “Memories” and “A Little Less Conversation” for the star.

Strange began playing guitar when he was 14 years old and became a touring musician at 16. Later he became part of a group of session musicians living in L.A. They played on albums by the Beach Boys (including Pet Sounds), The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, and Frank Sinatra. The gentlemen earned the nickname “The Wrecking Crew” because older session musicians thought that rock and roll would “wreck” music.

Billy Strange and the other members of the Wrecking Crew were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee in 2007. Mr. Strange died at the age of 81.

(How Does That Grab You? is copyright of Boots Enterprises, Inc., 2006)

Anonymous Asks:

I just discovered your site and I love it. I agree with the person who mailed you that your summaries were very helpful and clear. I write the Republican Idiots tumblr and the site's goal is to publish a picture w/ six sentences or fewer summing it up. Sometimes no summaries are necessary, sometimes more are needed. I'm telling you this because I'd like to reblog your stuff w/out your summaries but I won't do it without your permission. Obv I'd include your site as the source, though.

obitoftheday Said:

Thanks. That is fine with me with one caveat: Please keep the citations. Nothing bothers me more on tumblr when a photo isn’t credited to the original source. Tumblr takes care of re-blog credit but keeping the citation is appreciated.

Good luck.

(OOTD is a non-political blog and whatever is re-blogged for political purposes - as “Republican Idiots” may do, I’m guessing - is how tumblr works, and the internet. So don’t assume I’m agreeing politically, just obeying the “Code of the Interwebs.” (Someone please write up “The Code of the Interwebs.”)

Obit of the Day: Scranton’s Silent Star

When Polly Alpert died in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the age of 103 she had lived in the city for 57 years, raising her four children and doing all the things that post-World War II American moms did. But there’s a good chance that not a lot of her Scranton peers were European film stars of the silent era.

Pola Illéry was born in Romania in 1908. By 1928 she had moved to France and became a star in their film industry. In ten years she performed in fifteen films, often as the star. She fled France in 1939 with the coming of the Nazi threat - Illéry was Jewish. She and her husband found their to the U.S. and Illéry became a naturalized citizen in 1946. They settled down in Scranton in 1954 and Illéry moved on with her life.

You can find Illéry’s full filmography here.

(The image of Illéry is from Sous les Toits de Paris or Under the Roofs of Paris and is courtesy of www.cinema.de)