In Memoriam: Tony Diemont Anthony (Tony) Jan Diemont, director of engineering and production at the well-known industry firms Pook Diemont & Ohl and acouStaCorp, died on October 11, in Phelps Hospital, Westchester, New York. He was 68. Diemont's parents, Robert and Ilse, were Dutch Indonesians: His father was captured by the Japanese during World War II, surviving extreme conditions in a labor camp until liberation by American forces. His mother was part of the resistance movement; sequestered in a four-square-block area of her town, she bribed her captors for permission to drive out and obtain much-needed supplies from a nearby town. Diemont's uncles were also prisoners of war. Diemont himself became an expert in the war's history. With their baby daughter Franciska, Robert and Ilse Diemont fled Indonesia after the country attained independence, settling in the Netherlands, where their son was born in 1955. Following the passing of the Pastore-Walter Act, which allowed for the acceptance of 10,000 Dutch Indonesian citizens, the Diemont family won entrance into the US, landing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Diemont attended University of California, San Diego, graduating in 1977; in 1980, he earned a graduate degree in technical theatre from University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was a teaching assistant and technical director on many student productions there and locally. During his summers, he worked at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, where he met his future business partners Barbara Pook and Ted Ohl. In 1980, Diemont moved to New York City, teaming up with Pook and Ohl to run the production department at The Juilliard School. In 1982, the trio founded Pook Diemont & Ohl, Inc., a stage equipment design and contracting company. Over the next three-and-a-half decades, PDO became one of the country's most successful stage equipment and entertainment contracting firms. As director of engineering, Diemont was the creative force behind many innovative solutions. Following the 2017 purchase of PDO by Texas Scenic Co., Inc., Diemont continued as Northeast director of engineering. Between 1982 and 2023, his projects included Zankel Hall and Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall; The Wintergarden at the World Trade Center; Museum of Modern Art; The New Whitney Museum; The Shed on the Highline; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden; Jazz at Lincoln Center; NBC Studios, Saturday Night Live, and The Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center; Apollo Theater in Harlem; Chelsea Piers; Jacob Javits Convention Center, Palace Theater Times Square; Virgin Megastore Times Square; Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater; Chicago Theater; Dolby Theater in Los Angeles; Geary Theater in San Francisco; and Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas. Most recently, he was the lead designer and engineer of stage equipment systems for the new state-of-the-art Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University. He was a member of ESTA's ETCP rigging certification program and, in 2006, he earned an LDI Product of the Year Award for acouStac acoustical banners. In a statement, his partners said, "Tony will be remembered as one of the most brilliant technical theatre engineers of our time. His passion for quality was manifested in the safest and most elegant stage machinery and rigging installations in the industry. Tony was a gifted draftsman and an innate problem solver who possessed an uncanny ability to solve the unsolvable." They added, "Tony was also a quiet man, always generous with encouragement and a smile, and with a notoriously impish sense of humor. He was a clever and careful craftsman who adored shopping for specialty woods and tools as a relaxing pastime while planning his next projects. He loved to draw, sketch, and build models of ships and planes. He was in the process of restoring a 5'-long, 150-year-old historical sailing ship. He was a private person and a highly creative person in the best sense...and his passion was having the high-end stimulation of a near-impossible problem to solve. He made his mark on so many famous and iconic venues in the US and internationally. His legacy is his contribution to these spaces, which will live on for people to enjoy for generations." Diemont is survived by the scenic designer and art director Dana Lauren Kenn, whom he married in 1987, and their daughters Skyler Rose and Kirin Rose. His partners noted, "With a kindred theatrical and technical background, Dana was able to act as a sounding board and ad-hoc contributor to Tony's out-of-the-box thinking process. It made for a great intellectual intimacy." They added, "His daughters were everything to him. He loved his time with his family and co-workers and all that he made of it." A funeral was held for Diemont on October 21. The family plans to return his ashes to the family plot in San Francisco, next to his parents and sister. 
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