Anderson, O’Brien, Cohon, Roddey, Miller, O’Reilly, Johnson, Zockoll, Ostrowski, Wecht, D’Andrea, Szabo, Kopf Jr.

Barbara Anderson, 89
Her career as an award-winning costume designer, professor and associate dean of Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts spanned more than 45 years. She worked on numerous theater, television and film productions and co-wrote the definitive textbook on costume design with her late husband, Cletus Anderson, whom she met while getting an MA in design from Yale.  Anderson made costumes for the Civic Light Opera, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” American Playhouse, the Senator John Heinz History Center and for filmmakers such as George Romero, her close friend.

Larry O’Brien, 81
For more than 20 years, thousands of Pittsburghers woke up to “O’Brien & Garry” on 1250 WTAE-AM and 96.1 WHTX-FM. It was the second-longest talk radio show of its kind, airing from 1975 to 1997. The duo of John Garry Lindemulder (his real last name) and Larry O’Brien were known for their irreverence and hilarious humor — both quick-witted, they made each other laugh as they performed skits including “Lieutenant Macho,” a satire of “Kojak,” or lampooned their station manager. They met in Toledo, where O’Brien was from, reunited years later after pursuing separate radio careers around the country, and remained close friends until the end.

Jared Cohon, 76
Cohon became the eighth president of Carnegie Mellon in 1997. During his 16-year tenure, he added a campus in California and 16 degree programs in 14 countries. Cohon excelled at fundraising — he inherited a $400 million campaign that grew to $1.2 billion — and he encouraged entrepreneurship by allowing faculty members to create their own companies. The Collaborative Innovation Center was built under Cohon and housed Google before it moved to East Liberty. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, where he received a Ph.D. in civil engineering, Cohon came to CMU after serving as a dean at Yale. He was an adviser on numerous boards including Homeland Security and chaired the National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems.

Jim Roddey, 91
A winning Republican in the land of Democrats, Roddey became the first chief executive of Allegheny County in 1999. Previously, he was a successful business associate of Ted Turner who came to Pittsburgh to become a partner in Hawthorne Group, which owned Pittsburgh Outdoor Advertising. The former Marine captain never lost his North Carolina accent or his Southern charm as he became involved in a host of local organizations — Port Authority Transit, WQED, Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. He also served on the boards of UPMC, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, and Carnegie Museum of Art. Renowned for his sense of humor and ability to tell a good yarn, he remained active after his retirement and was much sought after for his sage counsel.

James Miller, 79
An interior designer and retailer, Miller was known for his exquisite taste, eye for color and sophisticated design sense. He co-founded Toadflax, the iconic Shadyside store, and later opened Boxwood, which also specialized in flowers, gifts and decor.  A bon vivant who counted many of his society clients as friends, Miller was an avid horseman, book collector, accomplished cook and gardener.  Curious, energetic and a master of conversation, he found great joy in creating beauty, whether with flowers, in a room, or in experiences he could share.

Sir Anthony J.F. O’Reilly, 88
Handsome, charming, athletic and rich, Tony O’Reilly brought an international electricity to Pittsburgh, leading the H.J. Heinz Co. from 1973 to 2000. The arc of his life was out of a storybook. Raised by a single mother in Dublin, Ireland, he became a rugby star, America’s highest-paid CEO, and Ireland’s richest man, owning Waterford Wedgewood and other companies. He co-founded the Ireland Funds with Dan Rooney and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He bought his wife Chryss the 40-carat diamond ring of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and later filed for bankruptcy. Pittsburgh’s O’Reilly Theater is named for him, and on opening night, he chatted with guests until the last one left.

Rev. Tom Johnson, 68
He was raised in Wilkinsburg by parents who believed in education. They sent him to Shady Side Academy, where he returned after college and served for many years as a teacher, head lacrosse coach, counselor and trustee. Johnson later earned a Master of Divinity from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. There he met Jodie Moore, with whom he co-founded The Neighborhood Academy in 2001 to educate under-served youth. Over 20 years, they grew it from a small program for a handful of students to a new facility in Garfield that teaches 150 middle and high school students. He was Head of School at the academy for 18 years. Before that Johnson, an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, served at Allegheny United Church of Christ and East Liberty Presbyterian Church.

Jim Zockoll, 93
His mother died when he was 15 and 10 months later his father remarried, sold the house, moved away and left his six children behind, homeless. When Zockoll graduated from North Braddock High School, he traded his transistor radio to buy shoes. He became a multimillionaire who paid for every class reunion since 1949. After serving in the Korean War, he worked as a Pan Am flight engineer. He also bought and rented homes and started a small drain-cleaning business. While he was visiting London, his hotel had no idea how to fix a drain problem, so Zockoll flew home, got his equipment and went on to start the Dyno-Rod Company, which he sold for more than $140 million. He started several other UK companies, modeling them after American success stories — a chain of auto repair shops, U-Haul trailers and even ice cream parlors.

Frank Ostrowski, 94
After graduating from Schenley High School in 1947, Ostrowski studied trumpet at the prestigious New England Conservatory and Berkshire Music Institute. He joined the Oklahoma Symphony at age 20 and was drafted two years later, playing in the Army band at Fort Meade. Then came two tours with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Ostrowski joined the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1955, and for 15 years played under William Steinberg, Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, and also Stravinsky and Hindemith. Ostrowski, who also led his own orchestra, was hired to provide musicians for the opera, ballet and Civic Light Opera, which he led from 1972-2022.

Dr. Cyril Wecht, 93
Dr. Wecht was a trailblazer in the field of forensic pathology, a brilliant man with medical and legal degrees who famously argued that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the only shooter in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Cyril, as he was known locally, was both popular and polarizing. He served as Allegheny County Coroner, Commissioner and Democratic Party chair, narrowly losing the race against Jim Roddey to become the first county executive. Outspoken, argumentative and controversial, he conducted more than 20,000 autopsies and consulted on another 40,000 between speaking engagements and writing dozens of books and hundreds of professional publications.

Giuseppe “Joseph” D’Andrea, 94
He grew up in a small Italian village during World War II and emigrated to America at 18, becoming an educator, union officer and honorary vice consul for the Italian Consulate in Pittsburgh. He was a founding member of the Senator John Heinz History Center’s Italian American Program and with Peter Argentine made a documentary on the worst coal mining disaster in U.S. history — the 1907 explosion in Monongah, W.Va. — in which 362 immigrant men were killed. D’Andrea spoke Italian, Latin, Spanish and French and taught languages at Moon Area High School for 27 years and was briefly president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a union with 177,000 members.

Eva Szabo, 80
When she moved to Pittsburgh in 1978 and opened Eva Szabo’s European Skin Care salon, beauty treatments like body wraps, exotic facials and assorted scrubs were both a rarity and a luxury. But soon women were flocking from all over the city to her salons in the William Penn Hotel, Webster Hall and the North Hills and South Hills. A native of Hungary, Szabo was a chemist who made her own skin care products in a lab at her Fox Chapel home.  She hired many Hungarian immigrants to work for her and was delighted that 30 percent of her clientele were men.

Robert Kopf, Jr., 80
He proposed to his wife, Susie, at the end of their first date while he was a student at Princeton. The same impulsiveness — or clear-sightedness — led him to leave behind a legal career at Rose, Schmidt, Dixon and later, Buchanan Ingersoll, and take the risk in 1996 of founding Smithfield Trust Company. The company became his passion along with reading, correcting other people’s grammar, fly-fishing in Sun Valley, playing tennis, studying history and admiring Winston Churchill. Kopf was president of The Edgeworth Club and the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club, and served on the boards of Sewickley Academy and the Sewickley YMCA.