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/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ Robert Abplanalp, 81, Inventor and Nixon Confidant, Dies September 2, 2003 By LINDA GREENHOUSE WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - Robert H. Abplanalp, a friend and confidant of President Richard M. Nixon and an inventor who turned a better aerosol valve into an international business and a personal fortune, died on Saturday at his house in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 81. The cause was cancer, his son-in-law, Gregory Holcombe, said. Mr. Abplanalp provided emotional and financial support to Nixon during his tumultuous years in and out of power. As president, Nixon vacationed on Grand Cay, Mr. Abplanalp's private 125-acre island in the Bahamas, complete with a 55-foot yacht and a house that Mr. Abplanalp had refurbished for presidential use. At another vacation spot, Key Biscayne, Fla., Mr. Abplanalp bought a house next to one owned by another Nixon friend, Bebe Rebozo, and turned it over to the Secret Service for use during the president's visits. Immediately after Nixon's resignation in August 1974, Mr. Abplanalp, along with Mr. Rebozo, flew to California to be with the disgraced former president in his first days as a private citizen. In 1969, Mr. Abplanalp lent Nixon the money to buy the 29-acre property at San Clemente, Calif., that became the western White House. Their friendship began in the early 1960's, when Nixon, after his defeat in the 1960 presidential race and the 1962 race for California governor, was in political limbo and starting a law practice in New York. Approaching him at a dinner there, Mr. Abplanalp said he thought that Nixon had been "robbed" in 1960 and offered his support. He then retained Nixon's law firm to handle his company's overseas legal affairs. Mr. Abplanalp had started the company, the Precision Valve Corporation, with two partners in 1949 to manufacture a new type of aerosol valve that he invented in a machine shop in the Bronx and for which he had a patent. Although aerosol technology was not new, the metal valves on aerosol cans were unreliable, easily corroded and expensive to produce. Mr. Abplanalp used plastic in a model that could be mass produced, lowering the price per valve, to 2 1/2 cents from 15 cents. Precision Valve revolutionized the industry. It turned a profit after its first year, and Mr. Abplanalp traded in his 1936 Chevrolet for a new Cadillac. He soon bought out his partners, John Baessler and Fred Lodes, to be sole owner of the company. The company, with headquarters in Yonkers, has plants and offices in 20 countries and produces four billion valves a year. At his death, Mr. Abplanalp was chairman and chief executive. His son, John, is the company's president and, Mr. Holcombe, his son-in-law, is a vice president. Robert Henry Abplanalp was born on April 4, 1922, in the Bronx, the son of Swiss immigrants, Hans and Marie Abplanalp. His father, who lived to 100, was a mechanic for a fleet of bakery trucks, and the boy enjoyed tinkering in his father's basement machine shop. After graduating from Fordham Preparatory School, he entered Villanova University to study mechanical engineering but dropped out after three years, to open his own machine shop. He served in the Army in Europe from 1943 to 1946. Mr. Abplanalp returned to his struggling machine shop after the war and remained a doodler and tinkerer all his life. He held hundreds of patents. The idea for his aerosol valve came from a salesman of aerosol products who paid a call and complained about the unreliability of existing valves. Mr. Abplanalp spent the next three months designing the seven-part device that became the basis for his company and his fortune. In the packaging industry, he was sometimes compared to Henry Ford, inventor of the mass-produced automobile. Mr. Abplanalp won many honors, including the Horatio Alger Award in 1971, and made the Roman Catholic Church and its institutions the focus of his philanthropy. He was chairman of the board of Fordham Prep and rescued it from financial distress in 1978. He married Josephine Sloboda in 1956. They were named in 1971 to two charitable orders, the Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulcher. In addition to his wife and son, also surviving are a daughter, Marie Holcombe of Bronxville; a sister, Clara Radcliffe; and four grandchildren. Mr. Abplanalp, a high school football star, was a husky six-footer with an informal manner. A sign on his office wall read, "Kwitcherbellyakin." He ranked his contribution to the Nixon presidency as a modest one. "My job," he once said, "was to tell a couple of small jokes." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/obituaries/02ABPL.html?ex=1063503600&ei=1&en=27abb7193efd4536 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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