by Thomas Vitullo-Martin, March 12, 2004
Many of you know Stan and Hope Ackerman as key leaders of the various incarnations of the Belnord Landmark Conservancy. That was a normal role for them, as they were organizers and leaders of the directors guild, first in the section that formed while television drama became an important craft in the 1950s, and later when the film and the television guilds merged into the Directors Guild of America. Stanley was an organizer, serving on the Eastern Council and the National Board of the DGA from 1964 to 1971, and then as DGA Assistant Executive Director heading the New York office for 18 years, from 1971 to 1989. He received the Frank Capra Achievement Award in 1990.
Stanley was a leader in everything we did as a tenant organization, and was a member of the executive committeee, and chair of it, for many years, resigning only in 2007 for health reasons.
Direct and gruff, he came to the job naturally, as a director and union leader.
A number of our organization’s leaders had stood out in their WWII service. Art D’Lugoff, who died in late 2009, and was perhaps the youngest of the group who served in the war, was a forward radio man in Northwestern China, based somewhere between the foot of the Himalayas and the Mongolian Steps. Sumner Rosen was part of D-Day and survived the Battle of the Bulge only because he had been wounded and evacuated shortly before his unit was wiped out. Stanley, in the army from 1941 to 1946, was a decorated infantry combat captain in the Italian campaign. In Italy, he secretly worked with the Italian-Jewish underground to secure safe passage out of the country for hundreds of Italian Jews.
We learned a week ago that Stanley had died in March 2009. In early 2008 he and Hope were both in declining health, but living on their own at the Belord. Stanley fell on the sidewalk outside the building, and the doormen called an ambulance to take him to Roosevelt Hospital. I went with Hope to the ER, and it was clear then that they both needed help. The ER doctors admitted Hope to the bed next to Stanley’s. After a few weeks they were placed with a long-term nursing facility, one that would take both husband and wife, and shortly after that they returned home, under the care of their daughter, Lisa.
In the fall of 2008, Lisa moved her parents to North Carolina, where Stanley passed away on March 7, 2009 at the age of 93. The photos above were taken at the Ackerman’s “14th anniversary,” on February 29, 2004, when they had been married for 56 years.
In his professional career, Stanley was both an actor and a director. He appeared as Woody Allen’s father in “Bananas,” and as a reporter in “Stardust Memories.” He was an active director, and directed many live television dramas in the 1950s, in work with the Lux Video Theatre and Television Theater, and Kraft Television Theatre.
