Obituary Note: Ruth Goldrosen; William A. Turnage

Former bookseller Ruth Goldrosen died on September 29. She was 96. Goldrosen founded Chart House Books, Hyannis, Mass., in 1979 and operated it until 1994. During her bookselling career, she brought many authors to Cape Cod to participate in the store's Literary Breakfasts. She then moved to Brookline, Mass., and worked at a pr firm, retiring only in 2013, at age 92.

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William A. Turnage, environmentalist, former president of the Wilderness Society and Ansel Adams's business manager, died on October 18 He was 74.

Until last year, Turnage was managing trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust and had initiated the enormously popular Ansel Adams publishing program at Little, Brown. Little, Brown executive editor Michael Szczerban recalled that the association between Turnage and Adams "began in the spring of 1970, when Bill was a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry. He invited Ansel to lecture at the university as a Chubb fellow, and they forged a fast friendship. Later that year, having completed his degree, Bill traveled to California to interview with the Sierra Club, and to see Ansel in Carmel. During that visit, Ansel--who was nearly 70, and saddled with an overwhelming workload yet little financial security--proposed to hire Bill as his business manager."

Together they "devised a strategy that would liberate Ansel from his darkroom and finally establish a steady flow of income by emphasizing the publication of books over the making of prints." The publishing program with Little, Brown began in 1976 and has included dozens of titles and the sale of millions of Ansel Adams books, calendars, posters and other products.

Szczerban added: "We are grateful to him for the visionary idea that established our longstanding relationship and the years of creativity that followed. We were lucky to work alongside Bill, and will miss him intensely--as a collaborator, a trusted partner in a vital area of our business, and as a friend."

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