Ernest Schier; Theater Critic, Educator

Ernest Schier, 80, theater critic and educator who was one of the founders and, for many years, the director of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn. A native of New York City, Schier was also a founding member and the first chairman of the National Theater Critics Assn. He was a theater critic for the Times-Herald in Washington and for both the Daily News and the Bulletin in Philadelphia. For many years, the institute was the only professional-level training program for theater reviewers. “We’re not trying to tell the critics what to say or how to say it, but I want them to couch their language in a civilized way and not be barbarians,” he once told a reporter in describing the institute’s mission. Schier also taught playwriting at Hunter College and Villanova University. He is survived by two sons, two daughters and three grandchildren. On Jan. 12 in New York of liver cancer.

Theodore Tannenwald Jr.; U.S. Tax Court’s Chief Judge

Theodore Tannenwald Jr., 82, who worked in Democratic presidential administrations. A law graduate of Harvard University, he was appointed to the U.S. Tax Court in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson and became its chief judge in 1981. Earlier he had worked as an expert on foreign aid in the administrations of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. On Jan. 17 in Washington, D.C., of a heart attack.