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Ilon Specht, 81, a copywriter who told women they were ‘worth it’
In 1971, L’Oreal, the French beauty company, hired the U.S. ad agency McCann-Erickson to launch a new line of hair color called Preference. While the men on the account sat brainstorming ideas for the pricey dye, a 23-year-old copywriter named Ilon Specht fumed.
“I could see they had this traditional view of women and my feeling was that I’m not writing an ad about looking good for men,” she told The New Yorker in 1991.
Specht offered her own slogan, which put the woman’s perspective front and center: “Because I’m worth it.” The ad campaign became a sensation, and by the 1980s, Preference overtook Clairol’s Nice’n Easy in the hair color wars.
“She created a commercial for Preference hair color that spoke to women directly and told them that they had identities beyond the men in their lives, and for that reason, they were worth it,” L’Oreal wrote in a company history. “It was bold and unifying, and ultimately, became timeless.”
Specht later became creative director of Jordan McGrath Case & Taylor, and in a long career wrote memorable copy for the Peace Corps, the Red Cross and Underalls pantyhose. After retiring from advertising, she opened an art and home decorating business in California.
Specht, 81, of Ojai, California, passed away on April 20.
Nancy Schuster, 90, a ‘goddess’ of the world of crossword puzzles
Nancy Schuster had a long career as a crossword puzzle constructor, editor, competitor, judge, and mentor. (Courtesy)
Nancy Cahn Schuster was raised in the Bronx on the Grand Concourse and attended the Bronx High School of Science. “I attempted to solve my dad’s Times crosswords from about age 9 or 10,” she once recalled.
After her own children grew older, she began to construct puzzles for various publications, and in 1978, she finished first in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in her first attempt. “She became a goddess to everybody” in the world of crossword solvers and constructors, Stanley Newman, a longtime puzzle editor at Newsday, told the New York Times.
Schuster went on to work as editor in chief of Dell Champion Puzzles magazines, and was also the editor of the “Random House Crossword Puzzle Dictionary.”
“She was a tester of puzzles for the New York Times for many years, debating clues and answers with her lifelong friend Will Shortz [the Times’ crossword puzzle editor] up until her 90th birthday” last July, her family wrote in an obituary.
Schuster, 90, died April 26.
Ellis Kaplan, 78, a photographer on the frontlines of the tabloid wars
Photographer Ellis Kaplan joined The New York Post in 1981 and covered the Queens courts. (Courtesy Reuben Fenton)
In a four-decade career at The New York Post, photographer Ellis Kaplan haunted courthouses in his native Queens, New York and snapped crooks, judges, cops and bystanders for the brash daily.
“A quintessential son of Queens, he served on the frontlines of the tabloid wars during a bygone era,” said Lia Eustachewich, The Post’s managing editor of news. “He was a friendly face on door knocks, an expert when it came to Queens court, and was truly dedicated to his photography.”
According to The Post, Kaplan was found dead last week in the same Jamaica, Queens apartment where he lived since 1963. He was 78. Friends said Kaplan had virtually no family and very little money, and set up a gofundme page to pay for Kaplan’s Jewish burial.
Sheppie Abramowitz, 88, a passionate advocate for refugees
Sheppie Abramowitz, left, shown at an International Rescue Committee dinner in 2013 with, from left, David Miliband, Sarah O’Hagan and Louise Shackelton, was “dedicated to improving the lives of refugees and facilitating the support of people displaced by conflict and crisis worldwide.” (Courtesy IRC)
In the aftermath of World War II, Sheppie Abramowitz’s mother opened the family’s Baltimore home to Jewish refugees. In the 1960s, Sheppie started volunteering for the International Rescue Committee, the agency formed in 1933 to help refugees from Nazi Germany.
Over the course of five decades, she served as IRC’s vice president of government relations, special advisor, family liaison director and a volunteer teacher in Hong Kong, Thailand and Austria. She stewarded the founding of IRC’s office in Washington, D.C. (and often would enlist her brother, the pianist and composer Phillip Glass, for IRC fundraisers).
She “believed passionately that the IRC was the best vehicle to save lives and protect refugees, and she worked her whole life to strengthen its ability to fulfill its mission,” said her son, Mike Abramowitz.
She died April 7 at age 88. Her survivors include Mike, her daughter Rachel and her husband, Morton L. Abramowitz, a career diplomat who served as the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
