JOHN STRAVINSKY

STRAVINSKY--John. It is with great sadness that the family of John Stravinsky announces his death on November 1, 2023 at the age of 77. He was born on November 4, 1945 in Paris, France to Francoise and Soulima Stravinsky and was the grandson of the composer Igor Stravinsky. John attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, IL and Urbana High School where he grew up. He was in the second year graduating class of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. As a young man in New York, he performed in clubs, acted in theatre, film, and television commercials, and tended bar at Mickey Ruskin's Ocean Club and One University Place. He began writing in the 1970s, contributing to the Soho Weekly News, Boxing Illustrated, Billiards Digest, and eventually writing golf, boxing, and baseball pieces for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, Inside Sports and others. For several years he wrote on pro football and other sports for the Village Voice. He worked for HBO in the early 1980s doing off- camera interviews at Wimbledon and was a color commentator for pool tournaments for ESPN. In 1991, he and his wife and young children moved from Brooklyn to Bellport, NY. There, he authored six books, ranging from a biography of Muhammad Ali, to an anthology of poker writing, to a co-written memoir of a golf hustler. John himself was an avid golfer, a canny poker player, a sophisticated handicapper at New York and California racetracks, and champion pool player. A savvy gambler, he bet on every game he played and most of the games he watched. He was a suave and charming raconteur often using obscure American slang which he mixed with the occasional bawdy French phrase. He was the very definition of "clubbable" - social and popular - but with no pretense or false enthusiasm. When not playing golf at his cherished Bellport Country Club or Sara Bay Country Club in Sarasota, FL, where he and his wife have resided since 2019, John was a passionate reader of books and publications, from Patricia Highsmith and Leo Tolstoy to The Nation and The Ring Magazine. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Dava, and his sons, Louis and Charles. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that a donation be considered to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research: www.michaeljfox.org