Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length

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The New York Times
January 14, 2007 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths

WHITMAN, R. EUGENE (GENE), WHITMAN

SECTION: Section 1; Column 3; Classified; Pg. 27
LENGTH: 339 words
WHITMAN--R. Eugene (Gene), Whitman, 71. Pioneer in Emerging Markets Described as ''larger than life,'' ''charming, irreverent and fiercely competitive,'' Mr. Whitman was ''a true original.'' He died unexpectedly on January 7th, 2007 near his home in Sarasota, FL. Born October 12, 1935 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Mr.

whitman grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated from Hebron Academy in 1954 and Brown University in 1958. In 1961, he earned an MBA from New York University while serving in the National Guard. Mr. Whitman began his career as a bank trainee with Irving Trust Company in New York City in 1960. Over the following 19 years, he worked for several Wall Street firms, including Warburg Paribas and Arnold & S. Bleichroeder. In 1980, he founded his own investment banking firm, Whitman & Company, Inc. located in Boston MA. Starting in 1991, Mr. Whitman raised over $6B in assets for Genesis Investment Management Group in London, one of the first firms focused solely on Emerging Market equity investing. At the time of his death, Mr. Whitman represented Longview Partners, another London based investment manager. He maintained homes in Wellesley Hills, MA, South Dartmouth, MA, and Sarasota, FL where he relished being with friends and family. Mr. Whitman gave generously of his time and resources. His favorite commitment was his alma mater, Hebron Academy, where he served on the Board of Trustees. There, he conceived of an Entrepreneurship Program. He is survived by his wife and partner of 46 years Daphne Tewksbury Whitman, a son, Chip (Ralph E., Jr.) of New York City, a daughter, Hilary Allinson of Wellesley Hills, MA, two grandchildren, Ashley and Justin, and brother, Charles of New York City. To celebrate Mr. Whitman's life, a memorial service will be held on January 19 at 11am at the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church in Wellesley, MA. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be given to the Gene Whitman Entrepreneurial & Leadership Fund, Hebron Academy, PO Box 309, Hebron, ME 04238.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMERGING MARKETS (90%); DEATHS & OBITUARIES (93%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); BANKING & FINANCE (78%); TRUST ARRANGEMENTS (74%); INVESTMENT BANKING (74%); INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT (73%); CHRISTIANS & CHRISTIANITY (50%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP (57%)
ORGANIZATION: BROWN UNIVERSITY (57%)
TICKER: BK (NYSE) (57%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (57%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (57%); SIC6712 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (91%); BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (90%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%); LONDON, ENGLAND (69%) NEW YORK, USA (94%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (92%); FLORIDA, USA (88%) UNITED STATES (94%); URUGUAY (92%); ARGENTINA (92%); SOUTH AMERICA (90%); ENGLAND (69%); UNITED KINGDOM (69%)
LOAD-DATE: January 14, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Paid Death Notice
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
January 12, 2007 Friday

Late Edition - Final

In Obliging Waco, Dr Pepper Is the King
BYLINE: By FINN-OLAF JONES
SECTION: Section F; Column 1; Escapes; AMERICAN JOURNEYS; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1746 words
YOU step off the plane, rent a car and notice a gun club off the side of the airport access road. Fifteen minutes later, with a stranger's shotgun in your hand, you're merrily blasting away at clay pigeons across a poplar-lined field within site of the control tower. Welcome to the Wild West as it's lived in the old cowboy town of Waco, Tex. -- hospitable, liberating and as broad as the dry, grassy plains around town.

''We'd prefer folks call first if they want a loaner gun,'' said Greg Surber, manager of Waco Skeet and Trap Club, one of the largest gun clubs in the country, where nonmembers can borrow guns, buy ammunition and shoot clays launched from a series of towers that (phew!) face away from the runway. But even when I wandered in without any warning, he and the club members were happy to oblige an out-of-towner. That just seems to be the Waco way.

It has been more than a century since cowboys last drove a herd of cattle though its rip-roaring streets, across the Brazos River and up the Chisholm Trail, but Waco is still a live-and-let-live kind of place that attracts larger-than-life characters with lots of firepower -- a mixed blessing that has helped earn it, in some quarters, the nickname Wacko.

Waco's unique geography -- it's a bowl lined by the elm-shaded plains of Central Texas -- might be the key to understanding it. From the air, the city looks like a frontier fort (which is what it originally was) in the middle of a vast flatland. But on the ground you see that the plains have a corrugated quality, undulating into narrow, deep valleys ideal for small ranches with lots of privacy. This is compound country.

And where you have a lot of miniworlds, you have a lot of local color, for better or worse. The rocker Ted Nugent, the fitness entrepreneur Gary Heavin and President Bush all built high-caliber compounds around Waco. So did David Koresh. In Waco, opening sentences are often punctuated with ''sir'' or ''ma'am'' and closing sentences with ''hon.'' Rustic shacks abut 19th-century pillared mansions. Great restaurants masquerade as holes-in-the-wall.

Baylor University, a Baptist school that has been known for its politically conservative alumni, houses a shrine to a group of bohemian poets. In a state that prides itself on an independent, cowboy spirit, Waco seems to epitomize easygoing individualism. Not surprisingly, this is the city that gave the world Steve Martin and Dr Pepper.

The Dr Pepper Museum, with a wealth of regional lore and history, is a must-see. In 1885, Charles Alderton, a local druggist, created Dr Pepper, designing it to ''taste like a drugstore smells.'' Now his quirky soda has become so deeply ingrained in hometown culture that Wacoans serve it heated over a slice of lemon as an alternative to coffee or tea. ''It's quite refreshing, like a hot toddy without the rum,'' said Becky Hodges, a local innkeeper.

Inside the museum, in an old bottling plant with squat arches and multicolored brickwork, an animatronic Doc Alderton tells the story, and tour groups file into a checker-tiled vintage soda fountain where, on a day last summer, a woman in a white hat was setting out Dr Pepper floats made from the original cane-sugar recipe on a marble countertop. Murmurs came up from around the room as people took their first sips.

''This is how it tasted when I was growing up,'' a middle-aged man in a Stetson hat announced before herding his family into the museum store to buy a crate of it.

Farther uptown toward the river, sprawls Baylor, one of the oldest universities in Texas. Inside the Armstrong-Browning Library on the Main Green is an impressive repository of all things related to Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and their circle of counter-Victorian free spirits. All would have undoubtedly felt right at home in this neo-Renaissance building with its vast stained-glassed windows, where many of their possessions -- personal papers, paintings and furniture -- are on display. Andrew Armstrong, who wears Robert Browning's personal signet ring in the full-length portrait overlooking the reading room, assembled the collection in the early decades of the 20th century.

EIGHT blocks north along Baylor's pleasant greens, the Old Suspension Bridge, now open only to pedestrian traffic, spans the Brazos. The resemblance to the Brooklyn Bridge is no accident. This one was finished in 1870 from cables supplied by John A. Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. On a languorous evening, watching romantic couples huddled along the rails enjoying the sunset, it's hard to imagine that cowpokes used to drive giant herds of cattle over this bridge, headed for northern markets.

A five-minute walk east along the River Walk leads to the Texas Ranger museum, which preserves the mystique of the law enforcers of the Old West days with silver badges, white cowboy hats and lots and lots of guns, including shotguns that the Rangers took from Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after ambushing them in their car.

Of course, Waco's most famous shootout happened a lot more recently. ''We get asked about it all the time,'' a genial woman at the Waco tourist office said, handing out a map to the site of the former Branch Davidian compound, the site of Mr. Koresh's last stand, six miles east of town. It's now little more than burnt concrete foundations amid windy plains of dry grass.

In front of the ruins stands a memorial grove of 86 white-blossomed crepe myrtle trees, one for each person who died in the confrontation between government agencies and the Branch Davidian sect -- most of them in the fire on April 19, 1993.

''I still find old ammo casings all over here,'' said Ron Goins, who moved to the former compound after the shootout (although he said he was not a member of the sect) and sometimes greets visitors coming up the gravel road. The memorial chapel built over the ruins of the main building exhibits photos and artifacts.

For a more cheery view of a religious community, drive three miles north of Waco to the Homestead Craft Village, a nondenominational settlement founded in 1973 in New York. The group has about 1,000 members and emphasizes simple farm living and old-fashioned craftsmanship.

''We use cars and telephones, but we strive for the dignity of simple self-sufficiency and well-built things,'' said Kevin Durkin, who quit his graduate studies at Columbia University and became a master carpenter in the community. The village bakery, presided over by young women, is popular with Wacoans. It's easy to taste why. Most of the baking ingredients -- right down to the molasses used to sweeten the food -- are produced by the community, and, counterintuitively, downing a doughnut or a cinnamon roll feels healthy.

The whole village is a 19th-century pastoral vision, with a smithy and a gristmill. Its artisan shops sell elegant community-made wooden funiture, soaps, candles and unique copper-tinted pottery. On a sunny summer day, you can watch the colony's straw-hatted menfolk piling rounded haystacks with pitchforks, just the way haying was done 150 years ago.

Back in Waco, other visions of the past await: a string of gorgeous Greek revival and Italianate mansions lining Cameron Park, witnesses to the vast wealth that was here when Waco was a world center for cotton growing in the last half of the 19th century. A half-dozen homes open up for public tours every weekend, but the one that stands out in full ''Gone With the Wind'' glory is the Earle-Harrison House, built in 1858. In its gardens one Saturday evening last summer, a boisterous crowd danced to Shania Twain and Prince. Most of the men wore tuxedos and cowboy boots, the approved outfit for Texas-style weddings, many of which are held at the house.

Just downhill in Cameron Park, a place of lush vegetation and miles of winding paths, another creature appeared to be dancing. On a trail along limestone cliffs overlooking the Brazos, a roadrunner rushed wildly on spindly legs in a ''Happy Feet'' dance, darting in and out of the brush.

Armadillos, too, appeared and reappeared, and the rhythmic sound of crickets and soft evening light gave the place a primordial, Edenesque feel. The smell of barbecued beef came wafting through the trees from the open-pit fires down by the riverbank where Wacoans gather every weekend.

Had the Chisholm Trail cowboys come back, they would have felt right at home.

IF YOU GO
WACO has many chain hotels, but there are also several bed-and-breakfasts that provide local color and Texas hospitality. The Judge Baylor House (908 Speight Street; 254-756-0273; $72 to $115) has registered Henry Mancini and Shelby Foote in its guest rooms. The Cotton Palace (1910 Austin Avenue; 877-632-2312; $109 to $139) is run by Becky Hodges, a gregarious font of local knowledge.

There's fine dining in Waco, but for a meal with regional spirit, look at the places with Formica tables. Elite Circle Grille (2132 South Valley Mills Drive; 254-754-4941), sister to the now-departed downtown Elite cafe, where Pvt. Elvis Presley was a regular when he was stationed at nearby Fort Hood, is decorated with Elvis memorabilia and serves chicken-fried steak ($9.95) and baby-back ribs with Dr Pepper barbecue sauce ($16.95). It hops with live jazz on Friday nights.

Rudy's Country Store & Bar-B-Q, next door at 2510 Circle Road (254-750-9995), serves ''wet'' (juicy) or ''dry'' (lean) brisket sandwiches ($3.49) with some properly fiery barbecue sauce. It also sells a ''sissy'' sauce, but you haven't come to Waco to be a sissy, have you?

Or drive south on Franklin Avenue to the giant revolver pointing into the parking lot of Michna's Bar-B-Q (2803 Franklin Avenue; 254-752-3650), featuring succulent slabs of meat, sides of beans and salad, and the hallowed Texas concoction of corn chips, cheese and chili sauce called Frito pie ($4.95).

Admission is $5 at the Dr Pepper Museum (300 South Fifth Street; 254-757-1025) and at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum (100 Texas Ranger Trail; 254-750-8631). The Armstrong-Browning Library (710 Speight Avenue; 254-710-3566) is free.

At Waco Skeet and Trap Club, (7209 Karl May Road; 254 753-2651), 25 clay pigeons and ammunition are $6.

Homestead Craft Village (254-754-9600) is at 608 Dry Creek Road.

A schedule of downtown house tours is at www.historicwaco.org. The antebellum Earle-Harrison House (1901 North Fifth Street; 254-753-2032; admission $3) is open by appointment.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AIRPORTS (90%); TRAVEL HOSPITALITY & TOURISM (78%) Travel and Vacations
COMPANY: RENT-A-CAR CO INC (91%)
ORGANIZATION: NEW YORK RANGERS (59%); TEXAS RANGERS (59%)
PERSON: GEORGE W BUSH (52%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (58%) Finn-Olaf Jones
GEOGRAPHIC: TEXAS, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%) Waco (Tex); Texas
LOAD-DATE: January 12, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: SHRINE OF THE RANGERS -- The Texas Ranger museum, above, preserves the mystique of the famous law enforcers of the Old West days. The River Walk, right, along the Brazos. The Old Suspension Bridge, below right, is now open to pedestrians only. (Photographs by Erich Schlegel for The New York Times)Map of Texas highlighting points of interest in the Waco area.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
January 11, 2007 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

The Dome Gains Weight And Settles Down
BYLINE: By ALASTAIR GORDON
SECTION: Section F; Column 2; House & Home/Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1728 words
BRUCE NELKIN decided in the 10th grade that he would someday live in a geodesic dome, after seeing a picture of one in a science book. ''It looked like something out of 'Star Wars,' '' Mr. Nelkin said. ''I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and I said to myself, 'When I grow up I'm going to build one of those.' ''

In 2003 he finally did. Now Mr. Nelkin, 45, an Internet marketer, and his wife, Deana, live in a house made of two adjoining domes in Pleasantville, N.Y.

The pale gray hemispheres stand out like twin spaceships on a tree-lined street where all the other houses have pitched roofs. But inside, the house looks unexpectedly terrestrial, with overstuffed couches, hardwood floors and rustic fireplaces much like those of its neighbors.

The Nelkins are among a growing group of Americans who are building dream homes in the shape of geodesic domes, once a symbol of youthful rebellion but now one of aspiration for aging baby boomers.

Hemispheres are sprouting up among the mock Tudors and colonials of upscale neighborhoods across the country, from Veneta, Ore., where a company called Oregon Dome is building a development of 2,000-square-foot spec domes on suburban lots for around $200,000 each, to Asheville, N.C., where American Ingenuity, a Florida company, is starting to put up an all-dome community. Like tofu and yoga, the dome has evolved from countercultural funkiness to middle-class respectability.

First popularized in the 1950s by the designer and inventor Buckminster Fuller, who died in 1983, geodesic domes have long been appreciated by environmentalists for their energy efficiency and the way they provide the maximum amount of space with a minimum of material. In the 1960s and '70s, hippies built them in the wilderness, painting them in psychedelic patchworks; their rounded contours were seen as a retort to all things square or right-angled in Western society.

The domes of the Flower Power era were rarely more than a standard 24 feet in diameter and cost less than $1,000 to build, according to Jay Baldwin, an early dome builder and dweller. But many new domes are sprawling mansions of more than 10,000 square feet, built on budgets of a million dollars or more.

''The domes have gotten bigger and more expensive as people's incomes expanded,'' said Dennis Johnson, who founded Natural Spaces Domes, a dome building company in North Branch, Minn., in 1978. In the past decade his clients have quadrupled in number, to about 200 a year.

Like most modern homeowners, dome owners want plenty of space.

''They want another bedroom,'' said Robert Singer, the president of Timberline Geodesics, a dome manufacturer in Berkeley, Calif. ''They want the home office, they want the entertainment room, they want the extra space in the basement, they want the large custom kitchen.''

Two years ago, Mr. Singer said, his factory needed to run only seven months a year to meet the demand. Now it operates full time to produce more than 50 houses annually, and he still can't fill all the orders.

Many people are also requesting surprisingly conventional architectural accessories: dormer windows, cedar shingles, carriage lamps, gambrel-roofed entryways.

They want to stand out from the pack, it seems, but not too much; they want to reclaim their youth, but aren't willing to sacrifice the comforts of middle age. (Mr. Nelkin put a cupola on top of his dome, because, he said, it made the place look ''more homey'' and less like the kind of basic unembellished dome ''you might see in an oil refinery.'')

Companies that sell kits for large-scale domes offer custom options like cupolas, balconies, rectangular additions for extra rooms and even matching minidomes for pets. But early dome builders like Mr. Baldwin see the new customized domes as bastardizations of Fuller's concept.

''I call them elephant droppings,'' he said. ''Fuller's idea was that of a machine-made object, a pure geometry.''

Most dome dwellers are not so picky.

Tina Gerard and Wes Dehnke, who own a 45-foot-diameter dome in River Falls, Wis., love its shape and the triangular framing inside. But when they were planning it they thought the outside looked too naked.

Not anymore.

''The castle turrets give the dome a whole other dimension,'' Ms. Gerard said.
Pleasantville, N.Y.

Bruce Nelkin and his wife, Deana, an insurance underwriter, spent about half a million dollars building their double dome on a 1.64-acre lot in Westchester County.

Constructed by American Ingenuity of Rockledge, Fla., which specializes in energy-efficient domes, the house is covered with four-inch-thick concrete panels and has seven-inch-thick polystyrene wallboard on the inside for added insulation.

It has 2,300 square feet of living space, including three bedrooms, a library and two offices, and although Mr. Nelkin admitted that they have had some trouble with leaks, he said the heating bills are minuscule.

The Nelkins, left, who have a toddler and a baby on the way, designed the inside of the house for comfort. Both science fiction fans, they were taken by the futuristic look of domes, but they modeled the interior on a Vermont ski lodge.

''Purely futuristic would be cold and hard and too utilitarian,'' Mr. Nelkin said.

Natural Bridge, Va.

Pieter and Jolanta van Dijk plan to retire to their new double dome, a 4,200-square-foot house being built on 30 acres in western Virginia, overlooking rolling farmland.

For the van Dijks, who have lived in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Nigeria, the house represents a turning point.

''We felt like we finally needed to shoot roots,'' said Mrs. van Dijk, 56, a native of Poland.

The larger dome will house the main living area and a master bedroom; the smaller will contain a garage and a workshop where Mr. van Dijk plans to make most of the furniture for the house.

Apart from the foundation, roofing and electrical work, the van Dijks are doing all the labor themselves.

''We needed a challenge,'' Mrs. van Dijk said.

''If you have the right tools, it's not that difficult,'' added her husband, a 58-year-old Dutch-born civil engineer, speaking by phone from Dubai, where he is supervising the construction of a factory. ''You don't need a crane,'' he said, and all the parts are color-coded.

Although the couple won't move in until the house is finished later in the year, Mrs. van Dijk, above, who studies spiritual healing, said she already has a strong connection to the house.

''It feels better to be in a round space,'' she said. ''Everything is open and flowing. You can't hide in the corners.''

Bulverde, Tex.

For Larry Sunn, a contractor, building a dome is ''a prestige kind of thing -- it's not like anybody else's house.''

He and his wife, Margie, both 62, have never been hippies, and the 8,400-square-foot triple dome they are building in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio -- with a longhorn steer carved in stone over the fireplace, a holster for the hair dryer in the bathroom and a sink the shape of Texas -- has cost some $1.3 million so far, they estimate.

This is the couple's second dome. They used to live in a 3,400-square-foot dome in California that Mr. Sunn built in 1980. They liked that one so much that when they retired and moved to Texas in 2003, they decided to build another.

Mr. Sunn, above, noted that part of the dome's appeal, in addition to the ease of heating and cooling, is its structural soundness, which makes it resistant to storms and other natural disasters.

''We aretrying to use the house to prepare us for catastrophe,'' he said. (They have installed a generator, a propane tank and a 5,000-gallon water tank, just in case.)

The combination of three domes allows enough space to accommodate workshops for Mrs. Sunn's embroidery business and Mr. Sunn's furniture making, in addition to living quarters.

And there are two garages, each with doors on both sides, so the Sunns never have to back out.

Murrysville, Pa.

Rob Thompson, a retired computer software entrepreneur, idolized Buckminster Fuller and wanted to be an inventor when he was a boy. So when he was looking for a new project after retiring early and getting a divorce, he decided to design and build his own dome.

Last fall, after two years of construction, Mr. Thompson, 52, far right, finally moved out of his 19th-century Victorian house and into his new triple dome, near right.

The house, more than 10,000 square feet, sits on a wooded two-acre lot outside Pittsburgh, its three domes circled like wagons around an open courtyard and connected by narrow corridors. The structure, which Mr. Thompson said cost $1.1 million to build, has six bedrooms as well as a kitchen and a great room -- and a 210-gallon fish tank built into the wall between them.

Outside are a pond with waterfall in the central courtyard, a running and cycling track and a greenhouse where Mr. Thompson raises vegetables hydroponically. And the indoor pool, top, has its own dome -- ''for the kids,'' who are 11 and 13, Mr. Thompson said. ''I don't want them out roaming the streets.''
Sedona, Ariz.

When David Walske, a 50-year-old writer, and his partner, Rick Goldstein, a 51-year-old film editor, built their vacation dome in the mid-1990s on a one-acre lot in the Arizona desert, they saw it as a symbol of anarchy, Mr. Walske said, or at the very least, ''doing your own thing.''

The construction cost was about $200,000, Mr. Walske estimated -- not bad for a 2,500-square-foot house with two rectangular additions (an entry and a kitchen), a 30-foot-high ceiling and views of Sedona's famous red-rock buttes.

Domes have a reputation for being hard to sell, but last year, when Mr. Walske and Mr. Goldstein offered it on Craigslist, it went for $670,000, roughly comparable to what a conventional, similar-size house on a one-acre lot in the same area would sell for, according to Roy Grimm, a Sedona real estate agent. (Mr. Walske and Mr. Goldstein are now renovating a house near Seattle.)

The buyers, John and Cindy Schofield, who relocated from Bucks County, Pa., where they were living in a 140-year-old Victorian, maintain that they weren't trying to stand out, no matter what their friends thought. (''I didn't know you had a little hippie in you,'' one friend said.) They just wanted a house with character, Mrs. Schofield said.

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