Ailing Punch Sulzberger misses wife's memorial

A Spokesman-Review story today, about a memorial service for the recently deceased wife of NYT Co. Chairman Emeritus Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Sr., 84 (left), notes that he was unable to attend Saturday's event at Spokane, Wash., because of unspecified "poor health." His son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., spoke in is stead.

“When Allison would leave to go to Spokane . . . his voice was gone,” Sulzberger said of his father, who was quiet and subdued in her absence, the Spokesman-Review story says. When she came home, he’d say, “Hello, sweetheart,” the happiness apparent in his voice, his son recalled. “The greatest gift she gave us was that of love,” Sulzberger said, “in her words and in her deeds.”

Cowles, 75, died at her Spokane home on April 25 from pancreatic cancer. She was the matriarch of the family that owns the Spokane paper.