January 26, 1925 - September 27, 2008
Father of six, actor, auto racer, publisher, founder of Newman's Own, Hole in the Wall Gang camps for seriously ill children and The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.
From here:
According to press releases from his his charitable organizations, Newman's Own Foundation and the Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, Paul Newman died Friday at age 83 at his long-time home in Westport, Connecticut, and with his passing, more has been lost than just a good and fine man.
For a half-century, on screen and off, the actor Paul Newman embodied certain tendencies in the American male character: active and roguish and earnest and sly and determined and vulnerable and brave and humble and reliable and compassionate and fair. He was a man of his time, a part of his time, and that time ranged from World War II to the contemporary era of digitally animated feature films.
From LA Times:
Although he began to race at 47, he was ranked among the sport's top 25% of drivers, his team placing second in the prestigious Le Mans endurance contest in 1979. At 70, he became the oldest driver to place in a professionally sanctioned auto race when his team took third in the 24-hour race at Daytona, Fla.
Still racing into his 80s, Newman escaped uninjured from a car fire in 2005 and entered another race a month later.
Since the 1980s, Newman had devoted more time to Newman's Own, a food products company he founded as a lark that grew into one of the nation's largest charitable organizations. The company, which produces all-natural salad dressing, popcorn, sauces and lemonade, has turned over more than $250 million in after-tax profits to hundreds of groups, including his own Hole in the Wall Gang camps (named after the outlaw gang in "Butch Cassidy").
Friends said Newman abhorred what he called "noisy philanthropy." He felt the awards and honors offered him were excessive and once declined a national medal in a letter to President Clinton, calling such recognition "honorrhea."
From a 2007 fundraising letter for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:
It was one of my life's proudest achievements.
More than the films, more than the awards — finding out that I was on Nixon's Enemies List meant that I was doing something right.
Nixon didn't like my campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. But then again, he didn't much care for debate, dissent, or the Constitution either.
I was proud to stand with Democrats against an imperial president back then. And I am proud now to stand with a new generation of Democrats against a president who poses what I believe to be the biggest internal threat to American democracy in my lifetime.
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