Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 August 8

= August 8 =

Birth and death dates
I'm having trouble verifying birth and death dates for James Everett Lipp. They are currently sourced to Encyclopedia Astronautica; that link tells us the site hasn't been updated since 2019 and is out of date and no longer maintained. As you can see from that source, the birth and death date appear to be cited to space historian Roger D. Launius, NASA Chief Historian, NASA History Office. The link is currently dead. One would think there would be at least one obituary from 1993 (the death date) available. The assumption is that the subject spent most of his life in Pasadena and Santa Monica, California. One very old source dating from the beginning of his career says he was living there and had a wife and child. Considering his importance in military history, there should be something more about his life and death. There's a lot of sources about his career and work at RAND, but not much else. Can anyone else confirm and verify his birth and death dates? Viriditas (talk) 06:46, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The only thing I could find is his entry on ancestry.com. I guess his being more a behind the scenes figure makes sources about him personally scarce and the pre (mainstream) internet death means that what sources exist are probably not online. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 12:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * This doesn't give the birth and death dates, but there's a Caltech commencement program from 1932 showing that James Everett Lipp earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. William Shockley was one of his classmates. --Amble (talk) 17:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's also a record for his PhD thesis in 1935 showing Theodore von Kármán as his PhD advisor. That may be a notable biographical detail in its own right. --Amble (talk) 17:29, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Some additional biographical details in the Caltech Engineering and Science magazine from October 1952. Has him living in Santa Monica. --Amble (talk) 18:03, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Some historical interviews and notes refer to him as Jimmy Lipp:, --Amble (talk) 18:09, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * This NASA biographical list also has him born in 1910. --Amble (talk) 18:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Findagrave entries exist for who the parents supposedly are: and . The obit for Paul lists spouse Edith. That was his second wife, after he and Jamie divorced prior to 1930. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:04, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Ancestry's California Death Index gives James Everett Lipp info: born July 3, 1910, in Washington, DC; died Aug 13, 1993, in San Diego; mother's maiden name Wood. The lack of an obit is not surprising, as that's often the case in large cities. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Redundant now, U.S. Congress, House Comitee on Science and Astronautics Hearings 1960 has the date of July 3 1910 Hearings. --Askedonty (talk) 21:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The article currently lacks places of birth and death (DC and San Diego). The lack of a Findagrave entry, as with the lack of an obit, is probably also a consequence of dying in a large city. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Something else occurred to me. Lipp died in San Diego in 1993.  That's around the time major media consolidation was gearing up for job cuts. Mosaic was released in January, but I didn't use it myself until the end of April when 1.0 was released; at that point, most people who had downloaded it (a tiny minority of academics, scientists, and hobbyists) saw what was coming for the print media.  I suspect that when Lipp died several months later in August, San Diego was already cutting back on obituary writers, as were other newspapers. Viriditas (talk) 23:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like I was wrong. The job cuts occurred a year earlier, in February 1992. 144 editorial staffers at the San Diego Tribune and San Diego Union lost their jobs. "The scrappy Tribune succumbed to the same diseases that have claimed at least 35 other newspapers over the last two years: the powerful influence of television and changing readership habits that have frustrated publishers’ efforts to attract and retain readers without the time to devote to an evening publication." Viriditas (talk) 23:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Big-city papers typically only carry obits of "well-known" people, and this guy might not have been well-known enough to make the cut. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:28, 8 August 2023 (UTC)