IN MEMORIAM

DAVID K. SILVER

David K. Silver

Medical publicist and science writer David K. Silver died March 13 in Allendale, NJ. He was 74.

Silver was born in Chicago, the son of a newspaper editor. After serving in the Army during World War II, Silver used the GI Bill to attend the University of Cincinnati and then the University of Missouri School of Journalism, earning undergraduate degrees in English, history, and journalism. He pursued graduate studies in international affairs at Columbia University.

Early in his career, Silver worked on the editorial staffs of a variety of trade magazines and insurance industry newsletters. In 1959, he accepted the position of public information director of the National Arthritis Foundation. There, in addition to coordinating fundraising and other duties, he initiated and directed a national campaign against quack remedies for arthritis. Silver succeeded in persuading 43 U.S. senators to issue personal TV-spot warnings about arthritis quackery. The campaign also included two televised Senate committee hearings, repeated news coverage, as well as appearances before national, state, and local organizations throughout the United States by crusading arthritis sufferers. The Arthritis Foundation continued the campaign well into the 1990s.

From 1964 to 1967, Silver worked first for the National Vitamin Foundation and then for the Vitamin Information Bureau as information director. Silver then joined the public relations agency of Manning, Selvage, and Lee, where he worked for the next 22 years supervising the Upjohn Company account. Under the sponsorship of Upjohn, Silver constructed and directed the 1967-1975 national campaign to raise public awareness of diabetes and associated health risks. The program enlisted the participation of the U.S. Public Health Service and the American Diabetes Association in the largest nationwide blood screening effort at that time. The campaign is credited with detecting more individuals at risk for diabetes than any other program before or since.

In addition to his work on the diabetes campaign, Silver initiated and served as editorial director for a series of newsletters written by researchers in several clinically relevant fields. The quality of these newsletters burnished Silver's reputation among researchers and clinicians, and this allowed him to propose and collaborate in clinical research projects, most notably a study that sought to correlate risk factors for diabetes with those of heart disease. He was listed as co-author on the scientific papers.

In 1988, Silver accepted the position of vice president at the Rowland Company, then the fifth largest PR firm in the world. His account responsibilities included Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and MacNeil Consumer Products. In 1991, he formed his own firm, the Silver Consortium, serving such clients as Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, and the Aspirin Foundation of America.

Silver was an active member of NASW for nearly 30 years.

(Source: Elliot Richman, Ph.D.)

FULVIO BARDOSSI

Fulvio (Bart) Bardossi, a retired journalist and public information director, died April 22 of heart failure in Huntington, New York, at the age of 80. He had been an NASW member since 1979.

Bardossi's nickname was coined in 1947, on his first day of work at the Ogdensburg Journal in upstate New York. Upon introducing himself to his boss, the managing editor said, "I can't call you that. I'll just call you Bart." The name stayed with Bardossi through the rest of his career, which included stints at the Associated Press, General Electric, and Rockefeller University.

Born in Barre, VT, Bardossi received his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Vermont in 1942. He served as a cryptographer with the Army Air Corps in Alaska from 1942-45. After the war, Bardossi studied journalism at Columbia University, where he met his future wife, Ada, who was also a student. The two graduated with master's degrees and married in 1947.

Their first newspaper jobs took them to the Ogdensburg Journal, where Bardossi worked as a wire editor and Ada as an obituary writer. In 1949, Bardossi became a wire editor in the Albany bureau of the Associated Press, where he stayed until 1956.

Bardossi then began a new job with General Electric as a writer and producer for the corporate television advertising department. He helped manage the company's pavilion at the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York.

Between 1965 and 1970, Bardossi worked as a writer and producer for Prism Productions in Manhattan, creating science documentary films for PBS. He also co-authored two books, Kilauea: Case History of a Volcano and Secrets in the White Cell. From 1970 until his retirement in 1985, Bardossi worked as director of public information at Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

Once retired, Bardossi enjoyed writing poetry. He served as vice president of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association.

(Source: Newsday)

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