David Lasser, 94, a Space and a Social Visionary (original) (raw)
U.S.|David Lasser, 94, a Space and a Social Visionary
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/07/us/david-lasser-94-a-space-and-a-social-visionary.html
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- May 7, 1996
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May 7, 1996
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David Lasser, an immigrant's son whose vision of the future inspired men to build and fly rockets to the heavens and whose concern for life on earth impelled him to champion and organize the unemployed during the Great Depression, died on Sunday at the Remington Senior Care Facility in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., a San Diego suburb. Mr. Lasser, who lived in Rancho Bernardo, was 94.
Mr. Lasser's pioneering sense of the potential of rocketry was expressed in a 1931 book "The Conquest of Space," and it led him to form the organization now known as the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. But his vision grew from an unlikely source: Mr. Lasser, as managing editor of a magazine called Science Wonder Stories, grew dissatisfied with the propulsion imagined by his authors for their space ships. Drawing upon his background in engineering, he conducted his own research and realized that the rocket -- the very same instrument used against the British in the War of 1812 and embodied in the lyrics of the national anthem -- would make space travel possible.
As the Depression deepened, Mr. Lasser's socialist sympathies prompted him to turn to labor organizing, a campaign that rallied hundreds of thousands to his Workers Alliance of America, later the American Security Union. After earning the respect of statesmen like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and W. Averell Harriman, Mr. Lasser fell victim to the Red hunts after World War II, when he was smeared with a baseless charge of Communism that barred him from Federal service.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter expunged the canard with a letter that said: "This nation has a deep and abiding commitment to human rights. When lapses occur, it is important that they be corrected. I am glad that my Administration has had the opportunity to correct the record in your case."
Mr. Lasser, a son of Russian immigrants, was born in Baltimore and grew up in Newark, where his father, Leonard, cleaned and repaired clothes in a small shop.
A high school dropout who went to work to help his family, David was almost 16 when he lied about his age to enlist in the Army in World War I.
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