Thomas R. Hubbard, educator
Thomas Russell Hubbard, a retired health sciences teacher at the Community College of Baltimore City and Northwestern High School, died of heart failure March 23 at Bon Secours Hospital in Chesapeake, Va. The former Lochearn resident was 90.
Born in Durham, N.C., he was the son of Dr. James M. Hubbard Sr., a dentist, and his wife, Ethel.
After his graduation from Hillside High School, he obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from North Carolina Central University. He studied at Columbia University and received a doctorate in health sciences at the Catholic University of America.
He taught at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., and in the New York City public schools system.
He moved to Baltimore as a biology instructor at Morgan State University. He subsequently headed the sciences department at Northwestern High School, and later became a professor of health sciences and the chair of the Department of Health Technologies at Baltimore City Community College.
He retired as dean of allied health at Tidewater Community College in Portsmouth, Va.
In retirement he enjoyed the outdoors, traveled and spent time with his grandchildren.
He was a Mason, and was also a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
A life celebration will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Bell Yeager Freewill Baptist Church in Durham, N.C.
Survivors include a daughter, Jill Hubbard Labat of New Orleans, La.; a brother, Robert F. Faison Sr. of New York, N.Y.; and three grandchildren. ISAO TAKAHATA, 82
Isao Takahata, co-founder of the Japanese animator Studio Ghibli that stuck to a hand-drawn “manga” look in the face of digital filmmaking, died Thursday of lung cancer at a Tokyo hospital, according to a studio statement.
He started his studio with Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, hoping to create a Japanese version of Disney. He was aware how the sumie-brush sketches of faint pastel in his work stood as a stylistic challenge to Hollywood’s computer-graphics cartoons.
In a 2015 interview, he talked about how Edo-era woodblock-print artists had the understanding of Western-style perspective and the use of light, but chose to depict reality with lines, and in a flat way, with minimal shading. That, he said, was at the heart of Japanese “manga,” or comics.
“It is about the essence that’s behind the drawing,” he said. “We want to express reality without an overly realistic depiction, and that’s about appealing to the human imagination.”
His last film, “The Tale of The Princess Kaguya,” based on a Japanese folktale, was nominated for a 2015 Oscar for best animation feature. Although he did not win, Mr. Takahata won many other awards, including those from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Lorcano International Film Festival.