Philip L. Carret; Began One of the First Mutual Funds
Philip L. Carret, 101, pioneer of the mutual fund industry. A native of Lynn, Mass., and graduate of Harvard, Carret served as a pilot of the Sopwith Camels in France during World War I. He began his career in 1922 as a financial reporter for C.W. Barron on the publication that eventually became the weekly Wall Street staple Barron’s. Two years later, Carret started managing money for friends and family in a “pooled” investment trust. The trust was reorganized as a corporation in 1928 and became one of the first U.S. mutual funds, known today as the Pioneer Fund run by the Pioneer Group of Boston. Carret remained on the Pioneer board until last year. He also founded Carret & Co. in 1963. He called his style of picking stocks “basic value investing” and advocated finding good managers and holding stocks for a long period. Among his avocations, Carret traveled the world to view solar eclipses from 1928 until this February, when he saw a total eclipse from the Caribbean. On Thursday in New York.
Margaret Gerasimenko; Immigrant Became Award-Winning Nurse
Margaret Gerasimenko, 74, who became an award-winning nurse in middle age. Born in Russia, she planned to become a surgeon but was thwarted by German imprisonment during World War II. Although just short of high school graduation, she was pressed into nursing duties as a Nazi prisoner of war in Germany. After the war, she went to Morocco, where she and her future husband, Vladimir Gerasimenko, waited 10 years before gaining clearance to immigrate to the United States. After raising their daughter Irena in Southern California, she enrolled in the Queen of Angels School of Nursing. She worked 22 years as a registered nurse at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, earning the March of Dimes Excellence Award and designation as UCLA’s nurse of the year. Her daughter and son-in-law, talent agency and film executive Mike Medavoy, have established a cancer research fund at UCLA in Gerasimenko’s memory. On May 20 in Beverly Hills of cancer.
Norman Weinstein; Operated Jewelry Business
Norman Weinstein, 81, who operated M. Weinstein jewelers for several decades. Born in Chicago, Weinstein moved to Pasadena with his family as an infant. His father, Morris, started their jewelry business in the Roosevelt Building in downtown Los Angeles. After 60 years in that location, the store, which specialized in diamonds, moved to Beverly Hills, where it continues to operate as M. Weinstein Jewelers. On Monday in Los Angeles.
