| Notes |
- The Miami Herald (FL)
July 13, 2007
George Butler Storer Jr., the cable-television pioneer and aviation executive whose innovations made it harder to steal cable service and easier to fly from Miami to the Northeast, died of congestive heart failure at Mount Sinai Medical Center Saturday, said his wife, Violet Dunker Storer. He was 81.
As president from 1961-65 of Miami Beach-based Storer Broadcasting Co., he guided the company into the cable age.
An electrical engineer, he invented the first cable anti-theft "trap," the prototype of which remains at the Storers' Surfside apartment.
He was born in Toledo, Ohio, two years before his father, George B. Storer Sr., and his father's brother-in-law, J. Harold Ryan, founded Storer Broadcasting in 1927 with a single radio station.
He later attended the University of Colorado, served in the U.S. Navy and ran Storer stations in Atlanta and San Antonio.
He moved to Miami in 1954 as vice president of the television division.
The company was "always looking for other opportunities" for expansion because one company could own only seven television and seven radio licenses at a time, said Storer's older son, George B. "Hap" Storer III. (One of the latter was Miami's WGBS, George B. Storer's initials.)
The company got into Community Antenna Television (CATV), "with an antenna high on a hill that fed [a signal] through cables to the houses," said Hap, 56, whose mother, Joan Stanton, was his father's first wife.
The company sold for about $2 billion in a 1985 leveraged buyout.
By then it was known as Storer Communications, with 1.5 million subscribers.
Her husband's real love was aviation, said Violet Storer.
After Storer Broadcasting bought the financially troubled Northeast Airlines from Howard Hughes in 1965, Storer became board chairman, moved to Boston and created Northeast's "Yellowbird" campaign: yellow-and-white Boeing 727s, flight attendants in yellow and green hotpants, the "Fly Northeast Yellowbirds To . . ." slogan.
"We were so glad to see him come," recalls Capt. Robert Mudge of Massachusetts, a retired Northeast and Delta pilot whose 1969 book, Adventures of a Yellowbird; The Biography of an Airline (Brandon Press), credits the Storers with modernizing the fleet and expanding the routes.
"George Storer was a blessing," Mudge said. "He saved the airline."
At least for awhile. Northeast merged with Delta in 1972.
During his tenure at Northeast, the airline won the right to compete head-to-head with National and Eastern airlines on the Miami/New York/New England routes.
Northeast had only temporary authorization to fly the routes, said Hap Storer, a Connecticut banker.
It was "turned down time and time again" for full authorization, he said.
"There was a major [lobbying] campaign by Northeast employees," which succeeded.
An open-ocean racer, fisherman and sport shooter, Storer moved to California in the 1970s and founded Storer Yacht, which modified sailing yachts for West Coast racing.
Ted Turner, a business peer and sailing buddy, called him "a great yachtsman and a terrific person" in an e-mail.
Hap said the men had a running gag: exchanging a bottle of scotch that could only be opened by the one who beat the other twice in a row. It never was, he said.
Storer returned to Miami in 1976 with his second wife, now Barbara Storer Rubin, and son David, starting several ventures that includes Miami Voice Corp., which made voicemail equipment.
Father and son developed a passion for radio-controlled model airplanes, which they built by the dozen in a house across the street from the Surfside apartment, said David Storer of Fort Lauderdale.
He now teaches people to fly the planes at Markham Park in Sunrise.
His father made his plane from scratch, in a workshop filled with woodworking and electrical tools, said Storer, 37.
"His mind was a beautiful thing. He was a walking calculator."
He was also a romantic. After an ill-fated two-year marriage to his third wife, Claire Theresa Traendly, Storer met Violet at the Surf Club, where he was a regular at the bridge tables and bar.
On their first date in February 1985, he asked if she'd have time off in April.
While she ducked into the powder room, he had the piano player begin April in Paris, which she realized was an invitation.
They married at the Surf Club, then honeymooned in Paris. In April.
Beside his wife and sons, Storer is survived by brothers James, Peter and Robert Storer, and four grandchildren.
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1925 - 2007 (81 years)
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