Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

« Older Entries

Obit watch: June 11, 2026.

Thursday, June 11th, 2026

Lance Rentzel. He was 82.

Mr. Rentzel started out with the Vikings, but didn’t do that well, mostly due to injuries. He was traded to the Cowboys, and was a solid player. Quoting Wikipedia:

On May 2, 1967, Rentzel was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for a third-round draft choice (#76-Mike McGill). Rentzel was converted into a flanker, where he became not only an immediate starter over Pete Gent but also one of the best wideouts in the NFL. Rentzel led the team in receptions with 58 for 996 yards (two yards less than Bob Hayes). If Rentzel had gotten four more yards and Hayes two more, it would have been the first time in NFL history that a team had two 1,000-yard wide receivers. In the tenth game of the season against the Washington Redskins, Rentzel had 13 receptions for 233 yards. His 13 receptions set a franchise record and stood for 40 years until it was broken by Jason Witten in 2007. The 233 yards were good enough for third on the team at the time (now sixth). Rentzel also starred in the 1967 NFL Championship, known since as the “Ice Bowl”, scoring a fourth-quarter, go-ahead touchdown later negated by the Green Bay Packers’ game-clinching drive.

He was on top of the world. He married Joey Heatherton in 1969. But he had a problem.

In 1966, he exposed himself to two young girls in St. Paul. That incident didn’t get a lot of attention, and he pled down to “disorderly conduct”. But in 1970, he exposed himself to a 10-year old girl in University Park, Texas. That got more attention: Ms. Heatherton divorced him, and he was traded to the LA Rams. He was less successful there, and was suspended at the start of the 1973 season after being convicted of possession of marijuana. (He was still on probation for the indecent exposure charge.)

He also wrote a book, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read.

“Doctor Who”.

The British broadcaster has canceled a Christmas special previously announced for later this year, and showrunner Russell T. Davies has confirmed his exit.

There were rumors a few weeks ago that the Christmas special was going to be cancelled, as the BBC and showrunners couldn’t find anybody who was willing to play “Doctor Who”.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 7, 2026.

Sunday, June 7th, 2026

Bob Packwood, former Senator from Oregon. WP (archived).

He resigned in 1995, before he could get thrown out, due to a sexual harassment scandal.

The case against Mr. Packwood, who had spent nearly half his life in the Senate, unfolded long before the #MeToo movement spurred society to take more seriously allegations of sexual misconduct against high-profile men. An inquiry by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Ethics dragged on for more than three years before the committee recommended unanimously that he be expelled.
That recommendation was based in part on Mr. Packwood’s diary, in which he detailed his predatory behavior, including toward women he supervised. “Twenty-two staff members I made love to,” he boasted, “and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.”

…

Shortly after his re-election to a fifth term, The Washington Post reported that he had made uninvited advances toward 10 women, many of whom were on his staff.
“Several said he was abrupt, grabbing them without warning, kissing them forcefully and persisting until they made clear that they were not interested or had pushed him away,” The Post reported.
Before the article was published, Mr. Packwood denied the allegations and refused to cooperate with The Post. Instead, he gave the newspaper embarrassing information about some of the women’s sexual histories to undermine their credibility.

…

But the Ethics Committee’s investigation continued.
As it expanded to include accusations of corruption, Mr. Packwood stonewalled it with legal challenges. In May 1995, though, the committee issued a damning bill of particulars, saying it had “substantial credible evidence” that Mr. Packwood had committed at least 18 sexual assaults between 1969 and 1990.
It also said that he had tampered with evidence by destroying parts of his diary, an incriminating document replete with scenes out of a bodice-ripper.
“If she didn’t want me to feather her nest, why did she come into the Xerox room?” he wrote at one point. “She knew I was copying stuff in there. I had my jacket off and my sleeves rolled up, revealing the well-defined musculature of my sinewy arms, which were always bulging with desire. I know what she wanted.”

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 5, 2026.

Friday, June 5th, 2026

James Handy, actor. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Gideon’s Crossing”, and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.

Max Kleven. Man, he had one heck of a career. Stunt work on “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Come Back Charleston Blue”, second unit director on “Rollerball” and “Silver Streak”, and acting credits on “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…

…and he was a “Mannix” five-timer, too.

This just in: Anthony Head. Other credits include “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”, “NYPD Blue”, and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 4, 2026.

Thursday, June 4th, 2026

Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic novel “Persepolis”.

I haven’t read it, but “Persepolis” got a lot of praise from the usual suspects.

Peabo Bryson, musician.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 3, 2026.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026

Col. Bruce Crandall (US Army – ret.), Medal of Honor recipient and big damn hero, passed away on May 31st. He was 93.

Major Bruce Crandall distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism as a Flight Commander in the Republic of Vietnam while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). On 14 November 1965, his flight of sixteen helicopters was lifting troops for a search and destroy mission from Plei Me, Vietnam, to Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley. On the fourth troop lift, the enemy had Landing Zone X-Ray targeted. As Major Crandall and the first eight helicopters landed to discharge troops on his fifth troop lift, his unarmed helicopter came under such intense enemy fire that the ground commander ordered the second flight of eight aircraft to abort their mission. As Major Crandall flew back to Plei Me, his base of operations, he determined that the ground commander of the besieged infantry battalion desperately needed more ammunition. Major Crandall then decided to adjust his base of operations to Artillery Firebase Falcon in order to shorten the flight distance to deliver ammunition and evacuate wounded soldiers. While medical evacuation was not his mission, he immediately sought volunteers and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, led the two aircraft to Landing Zone X-Ray. Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard the aircraft. Major Crandall’s voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to continue to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be resupplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated. This greatly enhanced morale and the will to fight at a critical time. After his first medical evacuation, Major Crandall continued to fly into and out of the landing zone throughout the day and into the evening. That day he completed a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire, retiring from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the Infantry battalion. His actions provided critical resupply of ammunition and evacuation of the wounded. Major Crandall’s daring acts of bravery and courage in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

On Nov. 14, 1965, Major Crandall was piloting one of several unarmed helicopters ferrying soldiers to a remote part of Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam for a search-and-destroy mission. On their fifth trip, they came under attack by enemy mortars, rockets and automatic weapons.
The ground commander ordered the helicopters to abort the mission and return to their command post. According to military records, Major Crandall decided without formal orders to organize a mission to return to the combat site after learning that medevac assistance had been suspended.
“The medevac pilots were all great pilots,” he later said. “But they weren’t allowed to land on a landing zone until it was ‘green’ for a period of five minutes” — meaning safe from incoming fire.
In subsequent landings, he and his wingman, Major Ed Freeman, delivered ammunition to soldiers trapped there and evacuated the wounded. They were credited with saving the lives of about 70 injured soldiers.

…

In the wake of the battle, Major Freeman received the Distinguished Flying Cross, and Major Crandall received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor. A group of veterans who had fought alongside both men later called for them to receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest decoration.
In White House ceremonies, President George W. Bush presented the medal to Major Freeman in 2001 and Colonel Crandall (his final rank) in 2007.
“Fourteen times he flew into what they called the valley of death,” Mr. Bush said of Colonel Crandall. “He made those flights knowing that he faced what was later described as an almost unbelievably extreme risk to his life. In the course of the day, Major Crandell had three different choppers. Two were damaged so badly they could not stay in the air. Yet he kept flying until every wounded man had been evacuated.”

Press release from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. According to them, there are 63 living Medal of Honor recipients.

His military decorations include the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, 24 Air Medals, the Vietnam Service Medal, and numerous other awards and commendations.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 28, 2026.

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

Robert Daley, author and deputy commissioner with the NYPD. He was 96.

Daley served as deputy commissioner of the NYPD in 1971 and 1972, a turbulent period marked by police corruption investigations, organised crime violence, major robberies and attacks on officers. He later drew on that experience in ‘Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.’, giving readers a close look at the inner workings, pressures and contradictions of the force.
‘Prince of the City’ became his most enduring work. The book followed Robert Leuci, an NYPD narcotics detective whose cooperation with investigators exposed corruption within the department’s Special Investigation Unit. The story centred not only on criminal conduct, but on loyalty, guilt and the complicated moral code that shaped police life. Critics recognised its force, with contemporary commentary noting the power of Daley’s portrayal of the flawed policeman as a modern literary figure.

Haven’t read the book, but the movie version of it is…pretty okay. I do think it could have been trimmed down some (the movie comes in at 2:47: “The Best Years of Our Lives” comes in at 2:52).

(Archive.is is still broken. Sorry.)

Posted in Books, Cops, Law, Movies, NYPD, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 22, 2026.

Friday, May 22nd, 2026

The archiving service I use has been having problems for the past few days, and I’m running low on NYT share links.

Kyle Busch. ESPN. Oddly, I don’t see any coverage of this in the NYT: it looks like they’ve shuffled off the coverage to their sports vertical, “The Athletic”, which they make you pay extra to read.

41 seems awfully young these days.

Edited to add: Shortly after this went up, the NYT posted an actual obit in the obituary section. I apologize that this is paywalled, but, as I said earlier, archive.is is having problems and I only have three share links left until June 1. (No, they don’t roll over from month to month. I wish.)

Kirk Foyle. He was a local man: Tuesday night, he was eating on the patio at Green Mesquite (one of our local barbecue restaurants), when a tree fell on him. He died from his injuries the next day.

Tomorrow is promised to nobody, whether you’re a NASCAR driver or a barbecue eater. Be prepared.

Sam Sianis. He owned and ran the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, also known as the “Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger cheeps cheeps Pepsi!” place from SNL. (Though my understanding is that sketch was also heavily influenced by the Belushi family, who were in the restaurant business as well.)

The Billy Goat Tavern is also famous for triggering Cubs fans.

Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”

…

In 1984, when the Cubs were contesting the National League championship, the team relented and allowed Mr. Sianis bring a goat onto the field.
But the Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
Watching the tiebreaking seventh game that year from the tavern, Mr. Sianis banished the curse by ringing the bell that had been worn by Murphy in 1945. The current goat stood beside him, looking as nervous as the rest of the crowd. Then it urinated on the floor. Mr. Sianis led it away.
“Don’t touch the goat,” one fan said, according to The Financial Times. “It’s bad luck.”

“Then it urinated on the floor.” I cannot tell a lie: one of the reasons I enjoy NYT obits so much is the telling details.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Goats, Mammals, Obits, Sports, TV, Urine | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 20, 2026.

Wednesday, May 20th, 2026

Barney Frank. WP (archived).

The Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas.

The restaurant blamed major casinos and “corporate greed” for pricing average Americans out of the “quintessential American experience of affordable indulgence” in Las Vegas, it said.
“Our core value, ‘Eat big and laugh loud,’ no longer fits a city peddling $40 ‘artisanal avocado toast,’” the restaurant said.
“The honest, heavy-duty calories that built our reputation are now considered gauche by a city that has excluded the middle class and lost its swagger in the process.”

Lawrence sent over a report from Fox Las Vegas:

Posted in Food, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 19, 2026.

Tuesday, May 19th, 2026

Mark Fuhrman.

This is a couple of days old, but worth noting: G. Robert Blakey.

He did the RICO.

In 1969, he was hired as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures. It was there that he worked on the RICO law, under Senator John L. McClellan, the Arkansas Democrat who chaired the subcommittee.
The law — Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, for which Senator McClellan was the driving force — says that a person or group of people who commit certain crimes as part of a conspiracy or criminal enterprise can be charged with racketeering. And it allows those hurt by the enterprise to sue for three times their actual damages.
Previously, prosecutors would charge people for committing single crimes like murder, extortion or gambling, or for conspiracy to commit those individual felonies. “Bob took conspiracy law and broadened it to describe a pattern of racketeering that is committed in furtherance of an enterprise,” Ed Stier, a former federal prosecutor in New Jersey, said in an interview.

…

Some critics have argued that the RICO law is too vague, that it is too widely used and that its penalties are sometimes out of proportion to the crimes being prosecuted.
“It is sort of the white-collar equivalent of capital punishment,” Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, told The Los Angeles Times in 1989 after the conviction of a New Jersey investment partnership for engaging in a racketeering conspiracy involving securities fraud.

Posted in California Über Alles, History, Law, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 18, 2026.

Monday, May 18th, 2026

Peter G. Neumann, computer security guru and a hero of mine.

Dr. Neumann (pronounced NOY-man), who has worked as a computer scientist and security researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., since 1971, has long been a voice in the wilderness warning about a computer industry that has been prone to repeatedly make the same mistakes.
In 2010, Dr. Neumann launched a research project that investigated how to protect against the most common types of security vulnerabilities. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the program, known as Cheri, developed a new approach to computer hardware that restricts software programs so that malicious instructions are impossible to execute.
An analogy would be replacing a master key that opens every door in a building with a set of keys that each only open the specific rooms their holder is authorized to enter — and making it physically impossible to copy or modify them.

…

Beginning in 1985, Dr. Neumann served as editor for the Association for Computing Machinery Risks Forum newsgroup, an influential collection of emails from readers reporting computer failures and foibles that has an avid following of hundreds of thousands.
Since then, he has maintained the sprawling compendium of computer failures, flaws, foibles and privacy issues, annotating each of the 3,195 issues with wry comments and the occasional pun. In 1995, the list became the basis for his book, “Computer-Related Risks.”

…

“There’s no limit on the impact that a small team can have if they don’t care who gets credit,” said Patrick Lincoln, the office director of Darpa’s Information Innovation Office, who described Dr. Neumann as routinely working behind the scenes without credit. “The world is just so much a better place for having had Peter.”

Schlitz Beer.

I’m not much of a beer drinker, but this gives me a chance to embed my favorite Sven and Ole joke.

Posted in Geek, Mixology, Obits | No Comments »

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.

Friday, May 15th, 2026

It has been more than a minute since I’ve been scuba diving.

And my dive certification came from PADI (which, as we all know, stands for “Put Another Diver In”).

But these people were cave diving?

At 160 feet?

The fark?

I know, it is early, the investigation isn’t complete, and this is the NYPost. But right now, this sounds to me like criminal negligence.

Posted in Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 15, 2026.

Friday, May 15th, 2026

Joe Sedelmaier, commercial director.

Among his works:

And this one:

And this one:

I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to his Southern Airways “Steerage” commercial. For some reason, that commercial reminds me of…every Southwest flight I’ve been on.

Claudine Longet, actress and singer.

The enchanting, doe-eyed Longet recorded albums of breathy pop for A&M Records before she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black song “Nothing to Lose” in Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968), in which she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.

I’ve heard this is actually a pretty good movie, but have never seen it.

A onetime Las Vegas showgirl, Longet had married “Moon River” crooner [Andy] Williams in December 1961 and appeared on his long-running NBC variety show and Christmas specials, often with their three children.

After she and Williams divorced (amicably), she took up with a skier named Vladimir “Spider” Sabich.

… Longet and the kids were living with the California-born Sabich at his chalet in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a .22-caliber German‐made gun that had been purchased by his father. She claimed the gun accidentally discharged as he was showing her how it worked.

He died on the way to the hospital. She was criminally charged, but local law enforcement completely botched the case. She ended up being convicted of “criminally negligent homicide”.

She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was able to serve most of her sentence on weekends).
The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court. Longet agreed not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and to never publish a book about her life and the trial, and her career as a singer and actress was done.

@jack.hutton

The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. #SNL #classic #1976 —

♬ original sound – Jack Hutton

Edited to add: I know the NYT is watching this space. Because as soon as I put up my own obit for someone, the NYT puts up theirs. Guys, let’s not fight. I’d be willing to entertain a job offer, though I would insist on working remotely.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 13, 2026.

Wednesday, May 13th, 2026

Betty Broderick passed away last week. She was 78.

Some folks may remember this from the late 1980s. Ms. Broderick’s husband dumped her for a younger woman.

On Nov. 5, 1989, Ms. Broderick entered the home of her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, a prominent malpractice lawyer in San Diego, and Linda Kolkena Broderick, a former flight attendant who became his legal assistant and, while he was still married to Ms. Broderick, his lover, and shot them in bed with a .38-caliber pistol.
Ms. Broderick, then about to turn 42, immediately turned herself in to the police, and never denied firing the fatal shots at her former husband, 44, and his second wife, 28. But she denied committing murder, claiming in media interviews and in the courtroom to have been a victim of years of psychological abuse.

It was one of those minor sensations at the time.

Ms. Broderick spoke to magazines and newspapers before and after her trials, and twice appeared from prison on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” angrily venting about her husband.
“He went off with the bimbo at 40, driving a red Corvette — haven’t we heard this before?” she told The Los Angeles Times three weeks after the killings.

…

At her first trial, mental health specialists called by both the prosecution and the defense testified that Ms. Broderick was narcissistic and histrionic. Melvin G. Goldzband, a psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, refuted her claims of emotional abuse.
“She wanted not to be rejected,” he said, adding that she would have been angry even if her husband had agreed to an extravagant monthly support settlement.
“People extend battles because it’s the only form of the relationship that they have,” Dr. Goldzband said.
Ms. Broderick was sentenced in 1992 to the maximum possible term: 32 years to life in prison. She was twice denied parole.

Rex Reed, noted (and I kind of want to say “notorious”) movie critic.

His 1967 Times article on Michelangelo Antonioni — “If there is anything more excruciating than sitting through a Michelangelo Antonioni film, it’s sitting through a Michelangelo Antonioni interview” — led the Italian director to write a letter to the editor disputing Mr. Reed’s characterization of him. To Mr. Reed, Bette Midler was “a zaftig waif,” Peter Lawford a low-I.Q. “court jester” and Warren Beatty just plain insufferable.

…

An oft-quoted Reed takedown was his skewering of Barbra Streisand in 1966 after she kept him waiting longer than a David Lean epic. “Three-and-a-half hours late,” he wrote for The Times, “she plods into the room, falls into a chair with her legs spread out, tears open a basket of fruit, bites into a green banana and says to the reporters, ‘OK, you’ve got 20 minutes.’ ” What Ms. Streisand had to say about him later is best suited for impolite company.

…

He lived in the Dakota, one of New York City’s most prestigious buildings, in a two-bedroom apartment that he had bought in 1969 for $30,000. He even had a brief film career in the 1970s and ’80s, most notably in the gender-bending comedy “Myra Breckinridge,” where Mr. Reed played Myron, who was transitioning to Raquel Welch’s Myra. The movie was universally panned. It was so bad that Mr. Reed put it at the top of his own list of the 10 worst films of 1970.

…

When Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, won best actress at the 1987 Academy Awards for “Children of a Lesser God,” Mr. Reed wrote that she had benefited from a “pity vote.” Bizarrely, and wrongly, he insisted that Marisa Tomei did not really win the 1993 Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in “My Cousin Vinny” and that the presenter, Jack Palance, had read the wrong name. Mr. Reed once mixed up Benicio del Toro, a Puerto Rican actor, and Guillermo del Toro, a Mexican filmmaker, misspelling Benicio to boot.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 9, 2026.

Saturday, May 9th, 2026

Philip Caputo, author and Vietnam vet.

The Vietnam War, which cost the lives of at least one million Vietnamese and 58,000 American service members, generated an outpouring of fictional and nonfictional books, by some reckoning more than 3,500 titles.
A few works came to be widely regarded as classics because their authors captured unflinchingly the peculiar mix of boredom and terror in combat, the ambivalence about fighting a war that often seemed pointless and unwinnable, and the disheartening malaise that followed America’s first military defeat.
The standouts include works of fiction, including Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (1990), and nonfiction ones like Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” (1977), Ron Kovic’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1976) and Mr. Caputo’s “A Rumor of War” (1977), which sold two million copies and was translated into 15 languages.

…

Mr. Caputo wrote in “A Rumor of War” that his book was about “the things men do in war and the things war does to them.” It opens with an account of Mr. Caputo’s enthusiastic enlistment in the Marine Corps as a 24-year-old Midwesterner, driven by a need to prove his courage and manhood, followed by his 16-month tour of duty as a platoon commander and infantry lieutenant.
He vividly recorded the toll on the soldier’s spirit of the punishing heat, dust, malarial mosquitoes, disease-laden water and minimal hygiene. Those physical challenges were augmented by the confusion about what the platoon under his command was supposed to accomplish in its daily patrols — purportedly to secure the perimeter around the Danang airstrip essential to the safe passage of supplies and soldiers.
It was especially difficult to pinpoint an enemy, hidden and shielded as they were by the thick growth of jungle and by their deadly mines and booby traps. The Vietcong — guerrilla fighters supporting the Communist government in Hanoi — were experienced at warfare, and the periodic skirmishes were bloody, costing the lives of men to whom Mr. Caputo had grown close.

…

After troops under his command intentionally shot two civilians suspected of having Vietcong loyalties, Mr. Caputo took responsibility for the killings and wrote that he was “almost court-martialed” in 1966 before the charges of premeditated murder were dropped; Mr. Caputo left the service with an honorable discharge. He told the story as an illustration of how war can warp the moral codes of even ethical men.

Alex Zanardi has passed away at 59.

For those who may not remember, Mr. Zanardi was a prominent and talented racing driver.

On Sept 15, 2001, he entered an Indy-style race near Klettwitz, Germany. Originally called the German 500, it was renamed the American Memorial 500 in honor of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks four days earlier. Zanardi was leading with 13 laps remaining, when he appeared to accelerate too quickly while exiting a pit stop.
He lost control, and his car swerved across a grassy area and onto the track. He spun into the path of an oncoming driver, Alex Tagliani of Canada, who broadsided Zanardi’s car while traveling roughly 200 miles per hour.
Zanardi’s chassis was split in two, and debris scattered across the track. He said in a 2004 appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” that he was administered last rites with the oil of his car’s engine. He was airlifted by helicopter to a Berlin hospital, and doctors amputated both legs above the knee. Tagliani was not seriously injured.

My understanding is that what the doctors did was less “amputation” and more “cleaning up what was left” and replacing Mr. Zanardi’s blood. His legs were scattered all over the track.

I’ve mentioned this book before, but the first chapter of Stephen Olvey’s Rapid Response: My Inside Story as a Motor Racing Life-saver describes the accident and the medical response. Nobody, ever survives a bilateral traumatic amputation of both legs. The fact that Mr. Zanardi did is a tribute to excellent medical planning, especially by Dr. Olvey, some luck, and Mr. Zanardi’s toughness.

Charming, optimistic and an easygoing storyteller, Zanardi often joked about making himself taller with his prosthetics. In his droll appearance with Letterman, who is co-owner of an IndyCar team, he said that he no longer had to worry about washing his socks, and that he received so much German blood during transfusions in Berlin, he should have been given a German passport.
Then he swiveled his left prosthesis to eye level and placed a drinking cup on the bottom of his shoe.
Some people wondered whether he was scared to drive again, Zanardi told Letterman, but he considered himself less vulnerable than before his accident. “If I break one of my legs, I only need a 4-millimeter screw and I can fix it very rapidly,” he said to laughter from the audience.

…

In May 2003, 20 months after losing his legs, Zanardi returned to the same German speedway and, in a specially adapted car, drove the final 13 laps to symbolically complete the race he didn’t get to finish.

…

He began competing in touring car championships — street cars modified for racing — along with sprint series races. In 2019, he drove the prestigious 24-hour endurance race at Daytona with three teammates, using a modified BMW steering wheel that permitted him to drive without wearing his prosthetics.
“I feel a bit like Jimi Hendrix,” he told The New York Times before the race. “I play with both my hands.”

He also became a competitive hand-cyclist.

In 2011, he won the handcycle division of the New York City Marathon and followed by winning two gold medals and a silver medal at both the 2012 Paralympics in London and the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
He was credited in 2017 with becoming the first adaptive athlete to break nine hours in an Ironman Triathlon: swimming 2.4 miles with a buoyancy device and without his prosthetics; using a handcycle to bike 112 miles; and completing the 26.2-mile marathon in a racing wheelchair. He finished in 8 hours 58 minutes 59 seconds.

…

Zanardi sustained serious head injuries in a second crash, in 2020, when he collided on his hand bike with a truck during a road relay in Tuscany. He was placed into a medically induced coma and withdrew from public life during a long rehabilitation process.

Posted in Books, Cars, Cycling, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 6, 2026.

Wednesday, May 6th, 2026

Screenshot

NYT.

Mr. Turner put together a top-notch crew that helped him win the 1977 America’s Cup races off Newport, R.I. But he did so only after coming close to being thrown out of the races once he had been accepted. “During the Cup eliminations,” Time magazine reported, “he flirted with every girl in sight, crawled pubs with his crew, got tossed out of chic clubs and restaurants for boozy behavior and turned Newport’s blue bloods positively purple.”
The Cup organizers forced Mr. Turner to apologize publicly to one elite club, the Spouting Rock Beach Association, for accosting female members. “I wish to apologize profusely because I certainly did have a couple drinks too many that Saturday night,” Mr. Turner wrote to the club president.
But on winning the Cup, he surrounded himself with young, attractive women and was too drunk to finish a victory speech at a nationally televised news conference.

…

Still crushed by debt, Mr. Turner sought to squeeze profits from his MGM library by colorizing classic black-and-white movies in what turned out to be a misguided attempt to increase their appeal among younger viewers. He was attacked by the press, filmmakers, movie buffs and politicians as a cultural philistine. Stung, he ended up colorizing only a few films, among them the 1941 Humphrey Bogart detective movie “The Maltese Falcon,” before abandoning the plan amid condemnation by many actors and directors, including the filmmakers Billy Wilder and Woody Allen.

…

He wooed [Jane Fonda – DB] — just after her divorce from the liberal activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden — by emphasizing their similarities, including as the children of a suicidal parent (in Ms. Fonda’s case, her mother) and their friendships with icons of the far left, like Mr. Castro. She later wrote in a memoir that she had been dazzled by his charisma, which she likened to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
The couple married in 1991 — the third marriage for each — and in subsequent years, Mr. Turner devoted more of his time to environmentalism and global peace, while Ms. Fonda virtually retired from Hollywood to devote herself to Mr. Turner and his new causes.
Their marriage lasted 10 years, with Ms. Fonda saying his insatiable need for other women and her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, were underlying causes.

Posted in Boats, History, Media, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

« Older Entries