Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

Obit watch: March 18, 2024.

Monday, March 18th, 2024

David Breashears passed away on March 14th. I haven’t seen much coverage of this, but I was able to find an obit from Outside.

I think most Everest fans are familiar with him. He did several climbing documentaries, including the IMAX “Everest”.

Breashears shot Everest during 1996 climbing season, and witnessed the deadly blizzard that killed eight climbers and was later chronicled by author Jon Krakauer in the Outside feature and best-selling book Into Thin Air. Breashears helped with the rescue and recovery of climbers after the incident, and his experience led to another Everest film, the 2008 Frontline documentary Storm Over Everest. The film included interviews with survivors, video from the 1996 expedition, and recreated scenes of the storm and rescue efforts.
Speaking to Frontline, Breashears said he felt it was necessary to retell the story via film and not just words to try and help viewers understand the tragedy. “For me, to see and hear direct testimony from a person who has overcome such adversity, has survived such a difficult and stressful event, is very powerful,” he said. “There is something so much more poignant about seeing a person’s face and looking into their eyes and hearing their voice than just reading about them on a written page.”

Breashears grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and was a great rock and ice climber, turning heads early as a youth in Eldorado Canyon. As told in a 2022 story in Climbing, Breashears earned the nickname “Kloeberdanz Kid” after a speedy ascent of the challenging route Kloeberdanz, 5.11c R in Eldorado Canyon at just 18 years old. His visionary 1975 first ascents of the difficult and committing routes Krystal Klyr and Perilous Journey, both 5.11b X, with the X for great danger in the event of a fall, remain legend. Among their other mountaineering feats, in winter 1982 Breashears and Jeff Lowe made the first ascent of the 4500-foot north face of Kwangde Lho (6011 meters) via a hard and technical route on extremely steep rock and ice. The face was unrepeated until 2001.

According to Wikipedia, he also did the climbing shots for David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise” video.

Obit watch: March 14, 2024.

Thursday, March 14th, 2024

Admiral Philippe de Gaulle has passed away at 102. He was the oldest son of Charles de Gaulle.

I’ve noted before that I don’t like doing obits for children of celebrities simply because of their birth. In that vein, I think it is important to point out that Philippe de Gaulle himself had a long history of heroism:

As a young naval officer in World War II, he fought in the English Channel and in the Atlantic; personally received the surrender of German troops in Paris occupying the Palais Bourbon, now the French Senate, in August 1944; “took part in all the battles of the Liberation,” the Elysée said; and was wounded six times.
He later became a naval pilot and fought in France’s wars in Indochina and Algeria. He ended his military service in 1982 as inspector general of the French Navy.

Robyn Bernard, actress. Other credits include “Diva”, “Simon & Simon”, and “Tour of Duty”.

Michael Culver, actor. Other credits include “Space: 1999”, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, “Thunderball”, and “From Russia With Love” (the last two were uncredited).

Paul Alexander, TikTok and iron lung guy.

Obit watch: March 12, 2024.

Tuesday, March 12th, 2024

Eric Carmen, musician. NYT (archived).

I don’t have any association with or memories of “All By Myself”, but I do remember hearing “Hungry Eyes” a lot on the radio.

Jean Allison, actress. No “Mannix”, but she did do a fair number of cop and cop adjunct shows. Other credits include “Hec Ramsey”, “McCloud”, and “Lou Grant”.

Obit watch: March 11, 2024.

Monday, March 11th, 2024

Malachy McCourt, Frank McCourt’s brother and (as the NYT puts it) “professional Irishman”.

The barrel-chested, red-bearded Mr. McCourt appeared regularly on soap operas — notably “Ryan’s Hope,” on which he had a recurring role as a barkeep — and played bit parts in several films. In the 1950s, he opened what was considered Manhattan’s original singles bar: Malachy’s, on the Upper East Side.

His IMDB page.

In 2006, he ran for governor of New York as, appropriately enough, the Green Party candidate. His opposed the war in Iraq and, as part of his environmental agenda, suggested a prohibitive levy on chewing gum. He got 42,000 votes, or about 1 percent of the total, which was enough to qualify for a distant third place. (Eliot Spitzer was the winner.)

I’m leaving out the overcoat story. Check the obit for that one.

NYT obit for David Bordwell. (Previously.)

Obit watch: March 8, 2024.

Friday, March 8th, 2024

Vice Admiral Richard Truly (US Navy – ret.), astronaut and former NASA administrator. NASA.

Mr. Truly joined NASA in 1969, but he didn’t venture into space for 12 years, when he was the pilot of the shuttle program’s second orbital flight. The success of that flight proved that NASA could safely relaunch the Columbia shuttle, seven months after its maiden flight, and safely return it to earth.

In 1983, Mr. Truly, who was a captain at the time, commanded the Challenger during its third flight, the eighth overall in the shuttle program. It took off at night and landed in darkness — a first for the program. The flight also marked a personal distinction: Captain Truly was the first American grandfather in space.

But he returned to NASA as its associate administrator in charge of the shuttle program in 1986, less than a month after the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight due in part to launching in too cold temperatures, killing its seven-person crew, which included a teacher, Christa McAuliffe.
A month into his new job, Captain Truly said that the next shuttle would be launched only in daylight and in warm weather (the Challenger was launched at 36 degrees Fahrenheit), and that it would land in California instead of Cape Canaveral, Fla.
“I do not want you to think this conservative approach, this safe approach, which I think is the proper thing to do, is going to be a namby-pamby shuttle program,” he said. “The business of flying in space is a bold business.”
He added: “We cannot print enough money to make it totally risk-free. But we certainly are going to correct any mistakes we may have made in the past, and we are going to get it going again just as soon as we can under these guidelines.”

He remembered walking to his office on his first day as associate administrator to find people crying in the corridor “because of the pounding they had been taking in the media,” he said in a 2012 interview with the Colorado School of Mines, where he was a trustee at the time.
“By that time,” he added, “rather than an airplane accident, it had been portrayed as NASA killed its crew. It was the start of the most tumultuous engineering, political, cultural, social endeavor that I ever found myself in.”

He was appointed administrator by George H.W. Bush, but (according to the NYT) left after three years because of a dispute with “Vice President Dan Quayle and his staff at the National Space Council, of which Mr. Quayle was the chairman.”

Between 1960 and 1963, he made more than 300 landings, many of them at night, on the aircraft carriers Intrepid and Enterprise, then became a flight instructor.

His honors included the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, the Presidential Citizens Medal and two NASA Distinguished Service Medals.

Steve Lawrence, of Steve and Eydie fame. NYT (archived).

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Akira Toriyama, manga guy and creator of “Dragon Ball”.

John Walker, AutoCAD and Autodesk guy.

The idiosyncratic Mr. Walker put his mark on a company that was anything but corporate in spirit. A 1992 article in The New York Times described Autodesk under Mr. Walker as “a cabal of counterculture senior programmers” who “took their dogs to work and tried to reach a consensus on strategy through endless memos sent by electronic mail.” (In those days, email was still a novelty in the business world.)
That same year, The Wall Street Journal scored a rare interview with Autodesk’s “founding genius.” The resulting article noted his quirks, including the fact that he did not allow the company to distribute his photograph in any form. He was prickly in manner during the interview, the reporter noted, and insisted that it be conducted in front of a video camera, debated each question and claimed a copyright on the conversation.

Obit watch: March 4, 2024.

Monday, March 4th, 2024

Brigadier General John C. Bahnsen Jr. (US Army – ret.) has passed away at the age of 89.

Gen. Bahnsen was a genuine, certified, American badass.

General Bahnsen was among the most decorated combat veterans in U.S. history. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest honor for heroism, behind the Medal of Honor; five Silver Stars; four Legions of Merit; three Distinguished Flying Crosses; four Bronze Stars (three for valor); two Purple Hearts; and the Army Commendation Medal with a “V” device for valor.
He earned most of those awards during the second of two Vietnam tours, when he led a troop in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment that was commanded by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, the son of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. of World War II fame.

Unlike fellow commanders who led from a desk, General Bahnsen led troops from his own helicopter — a tactic that allowed him to coordinate air and ground forces simultaneously, which he did while firing his rifle and dropping grenades from his window.
“We thought he had a death wish sometimes,” Mr. Noe said.
He did, but not for himself.
“The enemy of my country is my enemy, and our mission was to kill them,” General Bahnsen said in a 2013 interview with the American Veterans Center. “You could capture them if you could. We captured a lot of them in my units, but we also killed them. And my feeling was, that’s our job.”
He was unrelenting. He often landed his helicopter to fight alongside his ground troops. One day, he was shot down three times. Each time, he ordered delivery of a replacement helicopter so that he could return to attacking.

General Bahnsen was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during a battle in early 1969.After his crew chief was severely wounded amid heavy gunfire at low altitudes, General Bahnsen evacuated him, refueled and rearmed.
“I was mad as hell!” he wrote in his autobiography. “I thought those bastards had just killed my crew chief.”
Not knowing whether the crew chief was alive or dead — he survived but was paralyzed — General Bahnsen returned to the battle site.
“Forcing them to a confined area, he marked their position and directed five airstrikes against them, while at the same time controlling four separate rifle platoons,” his award citation reads.
Enemy fire crippled his helicopter, so he returned to his base and got another.
Upon returning, the citation says, he “landed to guide in the lift ships carrying an additional infantry unit, and then led a rifle platoon through dense terrain to personally capture two enemy who were attempting to escape.”
He ordered the captives to be evacuated by helicopter while he remained on the ground, and led his squad on foot for more than a mile to a safe position.

He is one of those rare professionals who truly enjoys fighting, taking risks and sparring with a wily foe,” General Patton wrote in an evaluation of General Bahnsen, adding that he was “the most highly motivated and professionally competent leader I have served with in 23 years of service, to include the Korean War and two tours in Vietnam.”

Chris Mortensen, ESPN guy.

David Bordwell, film scholar. He did a lot of work for the Criterion Collection.

Among Bordwell’s favorite films, according to IndieWire, were Passing Fancy (1933), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Sanshiro Sugata (1943), Song of the South (1946), Advise and Consent (1962), Zorns Lemma (1970), Choose Me (1984), Back to the Future (1985) and The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Interesting list. I kind of feel like calling “Song of the South” one of your favorite films in this day and age is just setting yourself up for cancellation. But then again, he’s dead, so what does he care if he gets cancelled? (And to be frank, the Criterion Collection could probably do a great job of preserving and showing “Song” in a historical and scholarly context.)

Mark Dodson, voice actor. Other credits include a video game inspired by a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Darkwing Duck”, and “Legend of the Superstition Mountains”.

Obit watch: March 1, 2024.

Friday, March 1st, 2024

Richard Abath.

Mr. Abath was one of the two guards on duty at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum early in the morning on March 18, 1990. He was the one who let the two robbers, disguised as police officers, into the museum.

Over the next hour and a half, the thieves stole more than a dozen works of art, including pieces by Edgar Degas, Rembrandt van Rijn, Édouard Manet and Peter Paul Rubens, cutting the works from their ornate wooden frames. They also took an ancient Chinese beaker and a bronze eagle finial from a Napoleonic-era flagpole.

All together they took some $500 million in art, the equivalent of $1.2 billion today, making it by far the biggest art heist in history.
Suspicion immediately turned to Mr. Abath. City and federal investigators zeroed in on important details, like the coincidence of the thieves arriving so soon after the second guard left to make the rounds. A video camera outside the museum showed Mr. Abath briefly opening a side door not long before the robbery occurred.
Mr. Abath maintained his innocence throughout the rest of his life, and he was never named as an official suspect. He said that he regularly opened the side door to make sure it was locked and that while museum protocol forbade him from letting anyone in after hours, there was no contingency should the visitors be uniformed police officers.
“You know, most of the guards were either older or they were college students,” he told NPR in 2015. “Nobody there was capable of dealing with actual criminals.”

Brian Mulroney, former Canadian PM.

Obit watch: February 29, 2024.

Thursday, February 29th, 2024

Richard Lewis. Tributes. (The one from Jamie Lee Curtis is particularly nice.) NYT (archived).

Anne Whitfield, actress. Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Dragnet 1967”, and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”.

Obit watch: February 28, 2024.

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024

Ole Anderson, one of the Four Horsemen.

That’s the Four Horsemen of professional wrestling.

Through the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the tag team known as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which over the years included Gene, Lars and Arn Anderson, who called themselves brothers and were popular around the Midwest. They were part of regional circuits like Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling that were united under the National Wrestling Alliance, which regularly crowned them tag-team champions.
In the 1980s, Mr. Anderson teamed up with Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard to become the Four Horsemen, who went on to dominate the N.W.A. and later World Championship Wrestling, which competed with the W.W.F.

As professional wrestling became more popular and commercialized, Mr. Anderson grew increasingly disparaging of it. In a 2003 book, “Inside Out: How Corporate America Destroyed Professional Wrestling,” written with Scott Teal, Mr. Anderson wrote about his disdain for the corporate transformation of the sport and his clashes with executives, including Vince McMahon, the longtime head of W.W.E.

Mr. Anderson was left out when other members the Four Horsemen were inducted into the W.W.E. Hall of Fame, but he is a member of the N.W.E. and W.C.W. halls of fame.

Brian Stableford, noted author, passed away a few days ago. I don’t have a direct obit I can link, but Michael Swanwick posted a nice tribute to him on his blog.

Obit watch: February 26, 2024.

Monday, February 26th, 2024

I was running pretty much flat out from mid-Friday afternoon until late Sunday night, so this is the first chance I’ve had to post anything. But: the NYT finally ran an obit for Chuck Mawhinney. (Previously.)

After graduating from high school in 1967, Chuck wanted to become a Navy pilot. But a Marine Corps recruiter won him over by promising that he could delay his enlistment by four months, until the end of deer season.
The Marines had not had dedicated snipers since World War II, but by 1967 the corps had changed its mind. Mr. Mawhinney was among the first to complete the new Scout Sniper School at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps installation in Southern California. He graduated at the top of his class.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Golden Richards, former Dallas Cowboy receiver.

Richards helped the Cowboys reach Super Bowl X and XII. Against the Broncos in Super Bowl XII, Richards caught a touchdown pass from running back Robert Newhouse (the first touchdown pass thrown in a Super Bowl by a non-quarterback) as Dallas recorded a 27-10 win.

José DeLeón, pitcher.

DeLeón was 86-119 with a 3.76 ERA in 264 starts and 151 relief appearances for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1983-86), Chicago White Sox (1986-87, 1993-95), St. Louis (1988-92), Philadelphia Phillies (1992-93) and Montreal Expos (1995). The right-hander struck out 1,594 in 1,897⅓ innings.

Jackie Loughery, actress (and Jack Webb’s third wife). Other credits include OG “Perry Mason”, “Surfside 6”, and “Marcus Welby, M.D.”.

Charles Dierkop, actor.

Other credits include “Matt Houston”, “Bearcats!” and…two episodes of “Mannix” (“A Penny for the Peep Show”, season 3, episode 6. “Desert Run”, season 7, episode 6).

Eddie Driscoll, actor. IMDB.

Chris Gauthier, actor. Fair number of genre credits, including “Supernatural”, “Watchmen”, and the “Earthsea” mini series.

Kenneth Mitchell, actor. Other credits include “NCIS”, “CSI: Cyber”, and “Detroit 1-8-7”.

Obit watch: February 23, 2024.

Friday, February 23rd, 2024

It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit.

Pamela Salem.

Yes, Miss Moneypenny counts as a Bond girl. Yes, “Never Say Never Again” counts as a Bond movie.

Other credits include “Magnum, P.I.” (original recipe), “The Great Train Robbery”, “God’s Outlaw”, and some “Doctor Who”. And “EastEnders”.

Obit watch: February 22, 2024.

Thursday, February 22nd, 2024

The paper of record finally got around to publishing an obit for Niklaus Wirth.

Ewen MacIntosh, British actor. IMDB.

Lefty Driesell, noted college basketball coach.

Robert Reid, one of the great Houston Rockets.

Lawrence sent over two obits:

Paul D’Amato, actor. IMDB.

Steve Miller, SF author.

While Miller is known in the science fiction community for the hundreds of stories he and [Sharon] Lee wrote together, he is best remembered for having co-authored the Liaden Universe, a series that now includes 25 books described as “space operas,” with stories emphasizing the interpersonal connections between characters, human or otherwise, within vast literary universes.