Official who oversaw World Trade Center development dies
BY Wire reports
Saturday, February 09, 2013
2/09/13 at 6:08 AM
Guy Tozzoli, an official with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who supervised the development of New York's original World Trade Center and then witnessed its destruction, died Feb. 2 in Myrtle Beach, S.C. He was 90.
As director of World Trade Center Development for the Port Authority, Tozzoli oversaw the design and construction of the 110-story towers, the world's tallest buildings from their dedication in 1973 until a terrorist attack felled them.
Tozzoli fought for the famous Windows on the World restaurant in the north tower, and it was his idea to use the dirt excavated for the center as landfill to build Battery Park City.
Tozzoli joined the Port Authority in 1946 and spent his career there except for two years of service during the Korean War. He was given the task of planning and building the World Trade Center in 1962. He coordinated construction of the massive project and then focused on leasing it.
"It will be a city with a working population of 50,000 and a landmark that will attract 80,000 visitors daily," he said at the time.
Tozzoli retired in 1986 but maintained an office at the trade center, where the Port Authority was based. He spent three hours trapped in a staircase when terrorists set off a truck bomb in 1993.
Tozzoli was about to enter the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan from New Jersey when hijacked planes struck the towers on Sept. 11, 2001. He saw the smoking north tower and watched as the second plane hit the south tower.
"I lived with those buildings for 40 years," he said. "When the second plane hit, I knew what it was. It made me immensely sad and then terribly angry. I was empty after that."
Artist behind 'Star Wars,' '2001' creatures dies at 98
Stuart Freeborn, a makeup artist behind creatures such as Yoda and Chewbacca in the "Star Wars" films, died Tuesday in London. He was 98.
He began his film career in the 1930s, honing his makeup skills on stars including Marlene Dietrich and Vivien Leigh.
After military service during World War II, he worked on British cinema classics including "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" and David Lean's 1948 version of "Oliver Twist." His transformation of Alec Guinness into Fagin - complete with a large hooked nose - was criticized by some as anti-Semitic, a matter of regret for Freeborn, who said he was part Jewish.
Freeborn later worked with Stanley Kubrick, transforming Peter Sellers into multiple characters for "Doctor Strangelove" before designing the apes for the "Dawn of Man" sequence in "2001: A Space Odyssey," in which primates react to a monolith.
But he will likely be best remembered for his work on "Star Wars" - creating characters such as the 7-foot-tall wookie Chewbacca and the sluglike Jabba the Hutt.
Irvin Kershner, who directed "The Empire Strikes Back," noted that Freeborn "quite literally put himself into Yoda, as the Jedi master's inquisitive and mischievous elfin features had more than a passing resemblance to Freeborn himself."
