Salesman

If you handed Robert F. Gaynor a microphone at a gathering, your chances of getting it back were slim. Bob, as he was best known, was a ham if there ever was one. Give him an audience and he was in his element. He was the life-of-the-party kind of guy who could croon a '50s ballad at a karaoke, make a speech, tell jokes, whatever the situation called for. He was also an actor who was proud of his role as an extra in the popular 2006 film "Invincible," and acted in numerous plays for a theater group in South Jersey.

REPUTED mob leader Joseph S. "Skinny Joey" Merlino seemed to have a dream job. The owner of a Philadelphia home-repair company testified in 1993 that Merlino worked for him as a telemarketer and could earn as much as $2,000 from a single phone call to generate sales leads. Anthony Valenti, owner of American Window & Siding Inc., a contractor active in the federal Title I program, told U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro that Merlino was so valuable, the company had given him a shiny new Infiniti.

On the surface it seems impossible: A self-employed latex salesman with no apparent income and a wife with a part-time job, living in a $230,000 Main Line home, with $300,000 in mortgage loans, $100,000 in credit card debt - and thousands left over to support a topless dancer in the cash equivalent of a Wonderbra. How did Craig Rabinowitz do it? The answer, according to a financial expert and documents in the Main Line murder case, is a combination of business acumen, salesman's cunning and credit.

Twelve days ago, during a political function, City Councilman Leland Beloff called a reporter aside to air a beef. Beloff admonished the writer for publishing a profile of his legislative assistant, Robert Rego, which included statements an undercover FBI agent had made about Rego during a federal perjury trial in April. The agent, Ronald J. Moretti, said Rego was recommended to him as someone who could funnel cash to organized crime figures from a casino junket business. The business was never formed; Rego was never implicated in any wrongdoing in that trial; and Rego was quoted as saying the testimony was "unsubstantiated.

Whitemarsh police have charged a Maple Glen salesman with forgery. Edward M. Munyan, 37, of the 1400 block of Patrick Court in Maple Glen, was charged after his employer, Ken Mattis, the owner of Diversified Leasing Inc., 511 Germantown Pike, was told May 12 by Fidelity Bank that his secretary's signature had been forged on a $1,000 check. Munyan will have a preliminary hearing at 10 a.m. today before Lafayette Hill District Justice Katherine Speers on charges of forgery, unauthorized taking of an auto and theft by unlawful taking.

A 42-year-old insurance salesman was found guilty of robbery and theft yesterday for trying hold up a Willow Grove gas station with his son's unloaded BB gun. John O'Hara, of Grant Avenue in Warminster, was convicted by Montgomery County Court Judge Anita Brody in the June 1 incident - in which the $300 O'Hara tried to steal never left John's Sunoco station at Easton and Mill Roads. O'Hara was no match for the two gas station attendants, who wrestled him to the ground, hit him with a stick, "popped him upside his head" with the child's gun and held him until police came.

Anthony P. "Tony" DeRosa, a retired Philadelphia Gas Works salesman who spent most of his adult life in service to others, died Saturday. He was 70 and lived in South Philadelphia. Tony DeRosa was a salesman for PGW for 35 years before retiring about five years ago from the Broad and Tasker streets office. Lorraine DeRosa, his niece, was raised in the narrow streets of South Philadelphia, where a double-parked auto can lead to serious and occasionally physical confrontations.

Linwood Tomlinson Bates, a traveling salesman who hit the road for more than 35 years with a sample case and a smile, died Dec. 14. He was 69 and lived in St. Augustine, Fla. Bates worked for a number of companies throughout the country and won awards for his salesmanship. In what many consider the toughest kind of sales - walk in off the street with a display case and a pitch - he never burned out because he believed in what he was doing, said his daughter, Evelynne Stoklosa. Born and raised in Camden during the Depression, Bates spent much of his time working to help the family.

Services are to be held tonight for Joseph F. Rupertus, an advertising salesman for the Daily News and Inquirer, who died Friday. He was 51 and lived in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. Rupertus went to work for the Daily News in the national advertising department in 1966 and in 1971 transferred to retail advertising as a sales representative. He worked there until September, when the two newspapers combined their advertising departments. A man of varied interests, he was a classical music and opera buff, a gourmet cook, wine expert, dog lover, writer and humanitarian.

John Bohannon, 76, formerly of Springfield, Delaware County, a retired salesman and singer with an Irish folk band, died of prostate cancer Monday at his son Michael's home in West Chester. From 1976 until 2005, Mr. Bohannon sang and played bass with Irish Mist. The band performed in local bars and restaurants, including O'Hara's Dining Saloon and Smokey Joe's in West Philadelphia, Toland's in Norristown, and Fiddler's Green in King of Prussia. "We were the musicians. He was the singer and entertainer and told the corny jokes," said his son John, a guitarist with the band.

Richard F. Nace, 85, formerly of Haddonfield, a salesman for a paper supply firm, died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday, June 4, at Evergreen Woods, a retirement community in North Branford, Conn. Mr. Nace retired in 1995 after a 37-year career as an account executive with the Philadelphia office of Lindenmeyr Munroe, son Andrew said. "He sold primarily coated paper for glossy printing of pamphlets, annual reports, catalogs," his son said. "He enjoyed the type of sales" in which he worked, which was "a repeat account sale.

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. - David Morris Kern, the creator of Orajel, a medicine aimed at fighting toothaches and later mouth sores, has died, family members said Sunday. He was 103. Allan Kern, his son, said his father died peacefully Friday at a group home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. Born in 1909 in Manhattan and raised in Brooklyn, Kern graduated from Brooklyn College of Pharmacy and worked as a pharmacist before becoming a salesman for Norwich & Warner Pharmaceuticals. After buying a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility with his brother and two partners, he created Orajel with the help of a chemistry professor.

Sidney A. Grossman, 87, a haberdasher from Northeast Philadelphia who became a card dealer at an Atlantic City casino, died Wednesday, Jan. 2, of heart failure at a nursing home in Northfield, N.J. Mr. Grossman was raised in Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion section and attended Simon Gratz High School. He served in the Army during World War II. He was stationed in Panama and earned the rank of corporal. Mr. Grossman was married to Barbara Grossman. The marriage ended in divorce.

NEW YORK - A garment salesman was held without bail Thursday while awaiting a court appearance on charges that he systematically shot three shopkeepers to death as they worked alone in their New York City clothing stores. Salvatore Perrone, 63, of Staten Island, was held after his initial Brooklyn court appearance on murder charges. He was represented by a lawyer solely for the proceeding, and another will be assigned when he returns to court Tuesday, prosecutors said. He was taken into custody Wednesday in the suspected serial killings that scores of New York detectives were investigating.

At least 1,500 people, including Vice President Biden, are expected at the funeral of former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter at noon Tuesday at Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley. The 1 1/2-hour service at the Conservative synagogue will be followed by burial in Shalom Memorial Park in Huntingdon Valley. The service is open to the public, but cameras and recording devices are prohibited. Lower Merion Township police said they were anticipating a "phenomenal" amount of traffic for the service for one of America's most prominent politicians.

At least 1,500 people, including Vice President Biden, are expected at the funeral of former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter at noon Tuesday at Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley. The 11/2-hour service at the Conservative synagogue will be followed by burial in Shalom Memorial Park in Huntingdon Valley. The service is open to the public, but cameras and recording devices are prohibited. Lower Merion Township police said they were anticipating a "phenomenal" amount of traffic for the service for one of America's most prominent politicians.

William Linenberg, 94, of Langhorne, a retired salesman, Torah reader and educator who was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor during World War II, died Wednesday, Aug. 22, of myelofibrosis, a blood disease, at his home. Mr. Linenberg graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1935 and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the wrestling team. In 1941, he enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill as a gunnery officer.

  Samuel Mattei, 80, chairman of the Springfield Township Zoning Board in Delaware County for 13 years and a coach and executive with the Springfield Youth Club for 14 years, died of Parkinson's disease on Sunday, July 15, at his home in Foxfield, a residential community in Garnet Valley. Mr. Mattei spent the bulk of his career with the Albert Tire Co. in Pennsauken, which he joined as a salesman in 1959 and from which he retired in 1996 as general manager. "He was their highest-netting salesman for years and years," son Gary said.

The New Yorker has called the current revival of Death of a Salesman "luminous. " That's like a screaming "rad sick awesome ridic" from your average teenager. I was reminded of a luminously rad VP of Ops for the Western District of the mainframe computer firm I worked for in the '80s. I was their organization consultant, and had organized a meeting of the sales force in L.A. one fine warm weekend. Tom, the VP, was as brilliant and hard-nosed a marketer as you would find in a cutthroat business then gaining extraordinary momentum on the West Coast.

Willy Loman, as a character, has achieved a status something like Hamlet's - if you can play the patriarch of what is now a great American classic, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman , then you're a notable actor. Lee J. Cobb originated the role on Broadway in 1948, in a Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning production directed by Elia Kazan. George C. Scott played the volatile, delusional man in a 1975 revival, then came Dustin Hoffman (1984) and Brian Dennehy (1999). Now comes the remarkably intelligent actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose Willy Loman can turn on a dime, as Miller wrote him, even as Hoffman makes perfect sense of the quick mental and emotional shifts.