If New York’s most famous cemetery — we’re talking, of course, about Green-Wood — were to hold a tombstone beauty contest, the judges would have a tough time. After all, it’s home to over 650,000 residents: the nation’s finest minds and talents, the big money of old New York, famous names, and, I suspect, many who were simply very lucky, including some of the most notorious corrupt officials.
“Every New Yorker’s ambition is to live on Fifth Avenue, walk in Central Park, and be laid to rest with his fathers in Greenwood,” the New York Times once wrote.
So you can imagine the variety and level of execution of the headstones there, including incredible versions of entire family scenes in marble, full-size mausoleums, sculptures, crypts, memorial obelisks, and even mini-temples.
Against this backdrop — among all this marble, pathos, and stone angels — if I were on the jury of an imaginary competition, I would award first place not to the most lavish or most expensive monument, but to the most stylish one. The family lot with the simple inscription “KASSAR.”
This is a low, wide, and very geometric family monument. It has a strict and modern appearance: smooth surfaces, a lack of decoration, and a few names and dates. It’s hard to tell from the photograph, but in real life, it contrasts strikingly with its surroundings.
I didn’t recognize the name right away, but then I was surprised to discover: Ray Kassar was the CEO of the legendary Atari company from 1978 to 1983!
Atari is an American company that essentially created the video game industry. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Atari was the fastest-growing company in US history. Steve Jobs was hired as the company's 40th employee, earning $5 an hour.
It’s surprising that Ray not only took the company to new heights, growing Atari from $75 million in revenue to $2.2 billion in just three years, but also managed to plunge it into a profound crisis.
Furthermore, he managed to fire four key developers along the way, who slammed the door and founded their own company, Activision, one of the largest gaming publishers in the world. You know it for Call of Duty, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Diablo, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch, through its acquisition of Blizzard.
It’s a true paradox: the man who elevated the gaming industry, nearly destroyed it, and accidentally gave birth to one of the world’s largest gaming publishers lies beneath the most discreet and stylish stone in the cemetery.
