Ernesto and Irv

Still teaching, but not quite as sleep-deficient.


Ernesto Lecuona (1895 - 1963) was, by most estimations, Cuba's greatest musician ever. He was a composer, pianist, band leader, and a founder of the Havana Symphony Orchestra. Finding the Castro regime in Cuba intolerable, Lecuona moved to Tampa in 1960. If you have not been informed about Ernesto Lecuona, you can bring yourself up to speed here, here and here.

Lecuona's untimely death on 29 November 1963 did not receive the attention it merited because the news media of the world was still working on the grist from the death just a week earlier of another significant figure in Cuba's history -- President John F. Kennedy.


History repeats itself! My friends in Philadelphia have informed me that noted radio personality Irv Homer passed away on 26 June 2009. I had a number of occasions to listen to Irv's show, and I held him in high regard for his sincerity, and his willingness to call things as he saw them, come what may. Irv Homer was able to see the broader issues of things.

Irv Homer was a staunch proponent of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, and was openly critical of the intrusive excesses of government, whether the FCC or the IRS.

And, having lost a young child of his own to disease, Irv Homer was an active and avid supporter of the Sunshine Foundation, a charity that grants wishes to very sick children. [Parenthetic note: The Sunshine Foundation's sponsorship of gatherings of children afflicted with progeria, a rare disease that manifests itself as rapid aging, enabled the efficient and reliable collection of blood samples which greatly advanced the medical research towards treatment and cure.].

Hopefully, Irv Homer will eventually be recognized as the broadcast industry's moral compass he was. But, like Ernesto Lecuona before him, Irv Homer must, in death, take second-line billing the media's other anointed idols of lesser worth than himself -- In Irv's case, he is a few pages after Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett.

Rest in Peace, Irv Homer (and also Ernesto Lecuona)!