Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: October 11, 2024.

Friday, October 11th, 2024

Ethel Kennedy.

Thomas Rockwell, author. His most famous book is perhaps How to Eat Fried Worms.

He was also Norman’s son.

Posing for a painting that depicted him rummaging through his grandfather’s overcoat pocket was one of his favorite childhood memories, he told Cobblestone, a children’s magazine, in 1989. That image appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
“I had to stand on tiptoe while reaching into the overcoat, which was hung on an easel,” Mr. Rockwell said, describing how his father had composed the painting. “My father gave me a present for posing, and I remember feeling so proud and pleased that I’d helped him with his work. I know I’ve never enjoyed any gift as much as that one.”

This one goes out to great and good FotB pigpen51: Greg Landry, quarterback.

He wore the Lions’ Honolulu blue and silver for 11 seasons, tallying 12,451 yards and 80 touchdown passes.
In 1971, his first year as a starter, Landry passed for 2,237 yards and 16 touchdowns, earning a first-team All-Pro nod and his only trip to the Pro Bowl. He was the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction until Matthew Stafford was named an alternate for the 2014 Pro Bowl.

…

Unusual for an era marked by pocket passers, Landry did damage with his legs as well as his right arm: He rushed for 2,655 yards over his career, which concluded with stints with the Baltimore Colts and the Chicago Bears. In both 1971 and 1972, he ran for more than 500 yards.

…

But with Landry, who was physically imposing at 6-foot-4, the Lions designed running plays for him, as would later be the case with current dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The Lions even took a page from college football playbooks and drew up option plays, in which the quarterback has the option to carry the ball himself after the snap or pitch it to a running back, a rarity in the N.F.L.
Landry showed off his burst early in his career, during the Lions’ rout of the Green Bay Packers in the opening game of the 1970 season. Closing out the game in relief of the starter Bill Munson, Landry called a quarterback sneak on third down with two yards to go at the Lions’ 13-yard line. Instead of gutting out a few yards for a first down, he burst through the Packers’ defense and galloped for 76 yards — the longest run for a Lion since 1951.

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Nobuyo Oyama, Japanese voice actress.

For about 25 years, Ms. Oyama was the voice of Doraemon, a character that first appeared in a manga created in 1969. Doraemon is a robot from the future, sent by its owner to the present day to help his great-great-grandfather solve his childhood problems and change his family’s fortunes.
The plump, earless, catlike robot typically helped the boy, Nobita Nobi, using gadgets from the future that he kept in his magical pocket. His deepening friendship with Nobita and his family was part of what made “Doraemon” one of the longest-running shows in Japan and beyond.

Posted in Art, Books, History, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 3, 2024.

Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

Jay J. Armes passed away on September 19th. He was 92.

I had been thinking about him recently, wondering if he was still around and enjoying a comfortable retirement, or if he was still working.

I’m not sure how many people remember him, but he was a pretty famous private investigator in El Paso.

Described as “armless but deadly” by People magazine, Mr. Armes appeared to live the life of a superhero. In the 1970s, the Ideal Toy Corporation even reproduced him as a plastic action figure, with hooks like those he began wearing in adolescence after an accident in which railroad dynamite exploded in his hands.

…

In May 1946, Julian and an older friend were horsing around one afternoon with a teenager who had a pair of railroad blasting caps. Julian was holding them when they blew up, shooting him into the air, mangling his hands and nearly killing him.
A few months later he was fitted with prosthetic hooks.

He tried acting for a bit, but went into PI work.

Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”

He was a self-promoter. Perhaps a bit too much of one.

After Newsweek, People and other national publications chronicled his adventures, the Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright went to El Paso to write a profile of Mr. Armes. His article — headlined “Is Jay J. Armes For Real?” — is widely regarded as a classic of magazine writing.

The Cartwright article is linked from the obit, but Texas Monthly is kind of skirty about reading without a subscription. Here’s an archived version. Brutally summarizing (you should really read the whole thing), Mr. Cartwright found a lot of inconsistencies between what Mr. Armes claimed and what could be documented.

Mr. Armes’s son said in an interview last week that Mr. Cartwright’s article was a “hatchet job” and that it was retaliation for his father’s unsuccessful campaign for sheriff of El Paso County against a friend of the writer. Mr. Cartwright died in 2017.
In 2016, the public radio program “Snap Judgment” revisited the Texas Monthly article and the puzzle of Mr. Armes.
The private eye couldn’t tolerate even hearing Mr. Cartwright’s name.
“He’s got a wilted hand, and I guess he had an inferiority complex,” Mr. Armes told “Snap Judgment.” “He saw Jay Armes had accomplished all this. So, he had to write a cutthroat story. Don’t tell me about anything about this corrupt Gary Cartwright. Don’t even mention his name to me.”

…

He told interviewers that he appeared in more than three dozen movies and television shows. But he is credited as an actor with just one TV appearance on the Internet Movie Database — a 1973 episode of “Hawaii Five-O” in which he played an assassin.

“Hookman”, season 6, episode 1. He was a violent criminal who was out for revenge against the four cops that caused him to lose his hands…one of whom was Steve McGarret. I admit, I haven’t seen every episode of the good “Hawaii Five-O”, but I have seen this one, and I would agree it is one of the best of those I’ve seen. Mike Quigley seems to agree with me.

(It was remade for the bad “5-0” (season 3, episode 15), but without Mr. Armes.)

He had some notable successes and seemed to earn enough money to support his lifestyle. In 1991, he was credited by authorities with tracking down the body of Lynda Singshinsuk, a Northwestern University student who had gone missing. Mr. Armes also persuaded the suspect, Donald Weber, to confess to killing her.
“Without Mr. Armes’s assistance, there is a significant possibility that Mr. Weber would not be brought to justice,” a prosecutor told The Chicago Tribune.

I found two action figures on eBay. One is $61.19 and it doesn’t look complete. The other one is $149.99. I can’t tell how complete it is, but it does have the “briefcase” with the various “hands”.

In other news, Masamitsu Yoshioka has passed away. He was 106.

His death was announced on social media on Aug. 28 by the Japanese journalist and author Takashi Hayasaki, who spoke with Mr. Yoshioka last year. He provided no other details.

He was “the last known survivor among some 770 crew members who manned the Japanese airborne armada that attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941”.

He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”

This made me snort:

He participated in the attack on Wake Island on Dec. 11, 1941, and a raid in the Indian Ocean early in 1942. (As Professor Morgan put it, he “was involved in many additional campaigns for the liberation of Asia from white colonialism.”) But when Emperor Hirohito announced his nation’s surrender, Mr. Yoshioka was on an air base in Japan.

“…the liberation of Asia from white colonialism”.

The Rape of Nanjing.

“Now I think of the men who were on board those ships we torpedoed. I think of the people who died because of me,” Mr. Yoshioka said. “They were young men, just like we were. I am so sorry about it; I hope there will not be any more wars.”

Bob Yerkes, stuntman. IMDB.

His backyard was equipped with rigs for high falls, mats to practice flips and a springboard powered by compressed air that launched people end-over-end. He is said to have invented the airbag for stunt use.
“There will never be another backyard like Bob’s where you could train for free or even live for free if you needed a place to stay,” Williams wrote.

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: October 2, 2024.

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

John Amos. NYT (archived). Other credits include “The Rockford Files: Shoot-Out at the Golden Pagoda”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Hunter”.

Frank Fritz, of “American Pickers”.

Burning in Hell watch: Song Binbin, commie.

A daughter of a prominent general in the People’s Liberation Army, Ms. Song was enrolled at Beijing Normal University Girls High School when she and classmates responded to Mao’s call for young people to turn against intellectuals, educators and others who supposedly held bourgeois values.
On Aug. 5, 1966, students attacked Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old mother of four who headed the school. She was kicked and beaten with sticks spiked with nails. After passing out, she was thrown onto a garbage cart and left to die.
Her death has been widely described as the first killing of a teacher during the Cultural Revolution, a violent spasm establishing Mao’s cult of personality, with masses waving his Little Red Book of his writings.

…

Two weeks after Ms. Bian’s death, more than one million young Red Guards thronged Tiananmen Square, where Ms. Song had been selected to pin a red armband around Mao’s left sleeve as they stood atop the towering Gate of Heavenly Peace. A photograph of the moment appeared across the country. Praised by Mao, Ms. Song, at 19, became a kind of celebrity in China.
But the whirlwind of the Cultural Revolution soon turned on Ms. Song’s family. Her father, Song Renqiong, was purged from the Communist Party in 1968, and Ms. Song and her mother were put under house arrest. The Cultural Revolution ended only when Mao died in 1976.

…

On Jan. 12, 2014, Ms. Song visited her old school and expressed remorse, bowing before a statue of Ms. Bian and delivering a 1,500-word speech. “I am responsible for the unfortunate death of Principal Bian,” she said, according to The Beijing News. (Ms. Bian’s title was officially deputy principal, but she was referred to as the principal because she was serving in that role at the time in an acting capacity.)
In 2004, Wang Youqin, a schoolmate of Ms. Song’s who later became a historian at the University of Chicago, published “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a book that included a description of the death of Ms. Bian and of Ms. Song’s role in the turmoil at the girls’ high school.
After Ms. Bian’s death, Ms. Wang wrote, “Every school in China became a torture chamber, prison or even execution ground, and many teachers were persecuted to death.”
Ms. Song denied that she had participated directly in the beating; she said, in fact, that she had tried to stop others who did. But she acknowledged that she and a fellow student were Red Guard leaders and that they were among the first to post so-called big-character posters — publicly displayed signs handwritten in a large format — denouncing teachers.

…

Some commenters stressed that Ms. Song should bear a greater burden because of her prominence among the Red Guards. “It’s meaningless to say you witnessed a murder and then say you don’t know who the killers were,” said Cui Weiping, a retired professor of literature who writes about China’s past, as quoted by The New York Times in 2014.
One person who was unsatisfied was Ms. Bian’s widower, Wang Jingyao. He had taken photos of his wife’s battered body after her death as well as of the posters that her tormentors had hung in their apartment after breaking in. One sign threatened to “hack you to pieces,” another to “hold up your pigs’ ears.”
“She is a bad person, because of what she did,” Mr. Wang told The Times in 2014, when he was 93. “She and the others were supported by Mao Zedong. Mao was the source of all evil. He did so much that was bad.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 1, 2024.

Tuesday, October 1st, 2024

Pete Rose. NYT (share link). ESPN. MLB.

As everyone knows, I am not a baseball fan. And if I was a baseball fan, I would be pulling for the Astros, Rangers, or Indians Guardians.

But I’ve always felt a little sorry for Pete Rose. He did pretty much the worst thing you can do in baseball, and what happened to him is a result of his own actions. But I think he probably got crapped on more than he deserved, and I kind of wish people had shown him a bit more compassion. The ban from baseball was an appropriate response, but maybe he didn’t deserve to be a pariah and the butt of jokes.

Posted in Obits, Sports | 6 Comments »

Pete Rose obits tomorrow.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

You know the deal: I want to give everyone an opportunity to get their obits (and, more importantly, corrections) up.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 30, 2024.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

Kris Kristofferson. THR.

He was a good Texas boy who did some acting in addition to his music career. There’s plenty of press coverage around this, but a few credits that aren’t covered in the articles: “Lone Star”, “Millennium”, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”, “Heaven’s Gate”, and let us not forget…

(I know both Lawrence and I have said this before, but “Passion & Poetry: Sam’s Trucker Movie”, which is on the blu-ray edition of “Convoy”, has a lot of Kristofferson in it. And I think it is almost more interesting than the movie itself.)

Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame NBA player. ESPN.

I kind of disliked that commercial because I felt it made him look like a jerk (yes, I know it was playing off his signature move). But:

Mutombo often joked about how much in fines his showmanship had cost him under the league’s no-taunting rule. But four years into retirement he received ample payback, starring in an acclaimed Geico commercial created for the 2013 Super Bowl. In that 30-second spot, in full uniform, he wagged his famous finger at people in various everyday activities.
He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commercial had reestablished recognition “for me and for my foundation. I thank God for it.”

…

Mutombo’s mother, Biamba Marie, died at home in 1998 after having a stroke; he had been unable to get hospital care for her due to a government-enforced curfew. That year, he invited business and political insiders to a dinner in Washington to announce a fund-raising campaign for a hospital in Kinshasa to provide treatment for the poor. Over the next several years, he struggled to raise money, even from people within the N.B.A., two notable exceptions being Ewing and Mourning.
“I thought it would be easy, that I would call up all the rich people I knew from being a basketball player and the whole thing would take nine months,” he told The New York Times weeks before the 300-bed hospital, named for his mother, opened in September 2006, on land donated by the government. He said that he had to pay squatters to vacate the property and that he had donated roughly $15 million to the project.
“This is going to be the proudest day of my life,” he said during the ceremonial opening.

John Ashton, actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Columbo”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 27, 2024.

Friday, September 27th, 2024

Dame Maggie Smith. THR. Tributes. Other credits include “Richard III” (1995), “Murder By Death”, “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, and voice work in “Sherlock Gnomes” and “Gnomeo & Juliet”.

Barbara Leigh-Hunt, actress. Other credits include “Oh Heavenly Dog”, “The Plague Dogs”, and “Longitude”.

Muriel Furrer, Swiss cyclist. She was 18. Her death was a result of head injuries she sustained in a crash yesterday during the UCI World Championships.

Frank Coppa died in October of 2023, but his death was not announced until recently.

In 2002, he was serving time for securities fraud when he was indicted on racketeering and extortion charges. Facing an even longer prison sentence, he notified the F.B.I. that he wanted to cooperate with the government.
It was the first time a Bonanno member had flipped, violating the mafia’s solemn oath of loyalty, Omertà.
Mr. Coppa’s decision to cooperate with federal prosecutors, knowingly putting his life at risk, led at least 10 other members to do the same and ultimately helped the government convict Joseph Massino, the Bonanno boss, of seven murder charges and immobilize his mafia family.

…

Mr. Coppa, known as Big Frank, spent two days on the witness stand describing a world seemingly drawn from a Mario Puzo novel, with characters nicknamed Bobby Wheelchairs, Sally Bagel, Gene the Hat, Patty from the Bronx and Little Nicky Eyeglasses.

…

Mr. Coppa also detailed his role in the death of Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno member, known as Sony Black, who was executed in 1981 for unwittingly connecting the family with an undercover F. B.I agent, Joseph D. Pistone, who used the alias Donnie Brasco. Mr. Pistone later wrote a book about that experience and was played by Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco,” a 1997 film adaptation.
The night of Mr. Napolitano’s murder, Mr. Coppa testified, he had bought fried chicken for the hit men as they prepared for the execution, at a Bonanno member’s house in Queens.

…

Among law enforcement officials, Mr. Coppa was known as a clever wise guy. He made millions of dollars for himself and the Bonanno family in pump-and-dump schemes, boosting the value of penny stocks to quickly turn a profit. He also shook down underworld figures outside the Bonanno family who were engaging in securities fraud.
“He was one of the smartest mob guys you’re ever going to meet,” a former F.B.I. agent involved in the case said in an interview on the condition of anonymity so that he could speak about the investigation. “He understood how to engineer these financial frauds. He was at a completely different level when it came to most of these guys.”

Posted in Cycling, Law, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 23, 2024.

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

Mercury Morris, one of the great NFL players. ESPN. NYT (archived).

Morris made no secret of the fact that he was filled with pride about the 1972 Dolphins being the first — and still only — undefeated and untied team in NFL history, pulling off a truly perfect season.
He also tried to make this clear: No, the Dolphins were not rooting against the teams that came close to matching their feat of perfection or had champagne on ice waiting for the moment that the last unbeaten team in a season gets defeated.
“And for the record, we DO NOT TOAST every time an unbeaten team loses,” Morris posted on social media in 2015, when the Cam Newton-led Carolina Panthers started 14-0 before losing the next-to-last game of their regular season. “There’s no champagne in my glass, only Canada Dry Ginger ale! Ha!”

Kathryn Crosby, der Bingle’s wife who had a pretty successful career of her own. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Anatomy of a Murder”, “The Phenix City Story”, and “The Night the World Exploded”.

Tongsun Park, who was at the center of the 1970s “Koreagate” scandal.

In 1978, he was indicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery and making contributions as a foreign agent, and he fled the country. He returned with a promise of criminal immunity to testify in Congress and before a grand jury.
He said that he had passed money to 31 members of Congress — up to $273,000 in one case — and while he denied acting on behalf of the South Korean government, a former Korean intelligence officer told Congress under oath that Mr. Park was working for Korean intelligence as part of an influence-buying operation code-named Ice Mountain.
But the accusations, splashily covered in the post-Watergate period, largely fizzled out. Only three of the 31 current and former congressmen Mr. Park named were indicted, and only one, Richard T. Hanna, a California Democrat, was convicted. He served a little over a year in jail.
The House, which considered disciplinary action against 11 sitting members, ended up reprimanding just three, in what critics called an example of Congress’s inability to discipline its own members.

He later got caught doing illegal lobbying for Saddam Hussein, and served five years for that.

Shortly after I posted Friday’s obit watch, the NYT posted their Nelson DeMille obit.

KMart. Sort of. The last “full-sized” store in the United States, in Bridgehampton, New York, is closing in October. There is one store left in Miami, but it is described as being the size of a CVS, not a full-sized store. There are also other stores in places like Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Posted in Books, Law, NFL, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 20, 2024.

Friday, September 20th, 2024

Dr. John A. Clements, another big damn hero, passed away on September 3rd at 101.

Newborn babies sometimes have a problem called respiratory distress syndrome, or RDS. They can’t breathe, and they die. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the second son of JFK and Jacqueline, famously died from RDS. In the 1960s, RDS killed about 10,000 babies every year.

Dr. Clements first did the early work that determined the lungs used a surfactant to allow breathing. Then, two other researchers that he served as an advisor for determined that RDS was caused by an absence of surfactant in the baby’s lungs.

Then Dr. Clements developed an artificial surfactant.

His research led to the first synthetic lung surfactant, which the University of California licensed to the drugmaker Burroughs Wellcome and Company. Its drug Exosurf was the first replacement surfactant for clinical use approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in 1990.
Eventually, further study found that animal-derived surfactants worked better, and they are most often used today. Infant deaths from R.D.S. in the United States have declined to fewer than 500 a year.

JD Souther, musician and actor.

Mr. Souther was almost the fifth Eagle: He joined the quartet for an afternoon tryout at the Troubadour, but he decided that the band was already perfect, and that he’d rather write for them.
A string of songs followed, many of them hits and most of them written with Mr. Henley and Mr. Frey, including “The Best of My Love,” “Victim of Love,” “Heartache Tonight” and “New Kid in Town.”

…

In recent years he was better known, at least to younger fans, for his screen presence. In 2012 he joined the cast of “Nashville,” playing a veteran music producer, Watty White — a character that drew heavily on his own experiences in the industry. He appeared during the first season, and his character was popular enough that the showrunners brought him back for the fifth season.

Nobody else has bothered to report this yet, as far as I’ve seen, but: Nelson DeMille, thriller author.

His first novel was “By the Rivers of Babylon,” published in 1978.

I actually remember when that came out, and being interested in reading it. However, I had somewhat limited means at the time, and that was one of the books I never bought. Now that I’m older, I may have to pick it up, because what’s not to like about a book with two Concordes in it?

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 16, 2024.

Monday, September 16th, 2024

Dr. George Berci, Holocaust survivor, violinist, and big damn hero, passed away on August 30th. He was 103.

Dr. Berci was one of the pioneers of minimally invasive surgery.

Dr. Berci brought a precise eye and an inventor’s zeal to innovations that enabled doctors to better visualize the bladder, colon, esophagus, prostate, common bile duct and other body parts. Until earlier this summer, he was the senior director of minimally invasive surgery research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he had worked since 1969.
His innovations were critical to the revolution in minimally invasive endoscopies and laparoscopies, which dramatically reduced the need for surgeons to make large incisions.
In endoscopies, doctors use a flexible tube with a light and a camera to examine the upper and lower digestive system. Dr. Berci focused mainly on the area around the throat and vocal cords.
In laparoscopies, surgeons place a thin rod with a video camera attached at the end through a small abdominal incision. Carbon dioxide is then used to inflate the space to give doctors enough room to use small instruments to, among other things, remove gallbladders, cysts, tumors, appendixes and spleens; diagnose endometriosis; and repair hernias.

…

“It is unlikely that there will ever be another surgeon who so single-handedly impacts an entire field of surgery as Dr. Berci did,” said Dr. Brunt, the producer of the documentary, who is a professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “He understood the potential for laparoscopy and its applications long before most surgeons saw any value in it.”

Tito Jackson. THR.

Herbie Flowers, session musician who played bass on “Walk on the Wild Side”.

Tommy Cash, Johnny’s brother, but he had a music career of his own. THR.

Posted in Heroism, History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 13, 2024.

Friday, September 13th, 2024

Donald Sheppard passed away on September 7th. He was 104. BBC.

Mr. Sheppard served in the Royal Engineers during World War II.

Mr. Sheppard was one of more than 150,000 soldiers who crossed the English Channel on June 6, 1944. He landed at Juno Beach, in Normandy, under a hail of gunfire. More than 4,000 Allied troops died that day.
“When he landed on the beach, he said he was just walking over dead bodies,” his son said. “Dead boys, dead men. And they gave their life for our freedom. I think to him, personally, he never wants that to be forgotten.”

…

In 1945, Mr. Sheppard helped British forces liberate Bergen-Belsen, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany; more than 50,000 people, including Anne Frank, died there. When the British arrived, corpses lay in piles; about 60,000 people, emaciated and ill, were still alive.
Mr. Sheppard struggled to talk about the experience; a granddaughter, Daisy O’Brien, said she did not learn about it until she was a teenager. Mr. Sheppard would become emotional remembering that day, his son said.“He couldn’t believe that one human could do that to another human,” Jonathan Sheppard said, and would often lament the “senselessness” of war.

…

After his retirement, Mr. Sheppard devoted himself to keeping alive the memory of the soldiers who fought and died beside him. He raised money for veterans, made repeated trips to Normandy and, until recently, spoke to schoolchildren about the war.

Chad McQueen. I think I’ve noted before that I don’t do obits for celebrity children just because they are celebrity children, but he did have a career beyond being Steve McQueen’s son. Other credits include “V”, “New York Cop”, and “Firepower”.

Bob Weatherwax, Hollywood dog trainer. He was most famous for succeeding his father, Rudd, in training dogs to play “Lassie”.

On a trip to Philadelphia to promote the 1994 movie “Lassie,” a successful attempt to revive the franchise, he and the film’s star stayed at the luxurious Rittenhouse Hotel, where the celebrity collie dined on boiled chicken that was prepared by a chef, delivered by room service and washed down with distilled water.
Lassie usually traveled with Mel, a Jack Russell terrier. The two dogs watched “Lassie” reruns on Nickelodeon in between promotional appearances.
“The hotels say they wish they had more guests like Lassie,” Mr. Weatherwax told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “They don’t have to deal with cigarette holes in the carpet or spilled drinks.”

Alberto Fujimori.

Joe Schmidt, one of the Detroit Lions greats.

Schmidt was named to 10 Pro Bowls, selected as a first-team All-Pro eight times and chosen for the N.F.L.’s all-decade team for the 1950s.
The Lions were an N.F.L. powerhouse in those years. They defeated the Cleveland Browns for the 1952 league championship; beat them again in the 1953 title matchup, when Schmidt was a rookie; and bested them once more in 1957, routing them 59-14. They also went to the championship game against the Browns in 1954, but that time they lost.
Schmidt was 6 feet 1 inches and 220 pounds, not especially big even by the standards of his era. But he anchored the defense on Lions teams that included his fellow future Hall of Famers Yale Lary, Jack Christiansen and Dick Lane (known as Night Train) in the secondary, along with an offense featuring Bobby Layne at quarterback, Doak Walker at halfback and Lou Creekmur and Dick Stanfel on the line.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1973.

…

Schmidt’s teammates voted him their most valuable player four times. He was also the Lions’ longtime captain. When he retired after the 1965 season, he had intercepted 24 passes and recovered 14 fumbles.

Posted in Heroism, Mammals, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 10, 2024.

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

James Earl Jones. NYT (gift link). THR. Variety.

I didn’t realize he was an EGOT (but the Oscar was honorary, not competitive).

The IMDB trivia asserts he was a NRA member, which is interesting. It also asserts that he was considered for the lead role in one of the spin-offs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, but they cast Avery “Hawk” Brooks instead.

Other credits include three episodes of “Homicide: Life on the Street”, something called “Excessive Force” that sounds fun, “The Last Remake of Beau Geste”, “Exorcist II: The Heretic”, and, of course, “The Star Wars Holiday Special”.

Once, while traveling cross-country, Jones broke out his Darth Vader voice on the CB radio scanner. “The truck drivers would really freak out — for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that,” he told The New York Times magazine.

As a not-quite-an-obit but belongs here anyway note, the NYT obit is credited to Robert D. McFadden. Mr. McFadden retired from the Times on September 1st, and the paper of record ran a very nice tribute to him. I’ll say something nice about the NYT for once: I agree, Mr. McFadden was a pretty swell obit writer. I think he belongs in the same class as the legendary Robert McG. Thomas Jr..

He retired with more than 250 advance obituaries still in the pipeline, each awaiting its day.

Also among the dead: Ed Kranepool, one of the original Mets.

When Stengel assessed Kranepool’s talent, he told The New York Times: “He don’t strike out too much and he don’t let himself get suckered into goin’ for bad pitches. I wouldn’t be afraid to play him. He don’t embarrass you.”

…

After the ’69 Series, Kranepool and several teammates, including Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones, put together a musical act that performed in Las Vegas, singing, among other songs, “The Impossible Dream.” After the group’s debut on the Circus Maximus stage at Caesars Palace, Kranepool conceded that the singing Mets were nervous.
“It’s not like Shea Stadium, where we know what we’re doing,” he told The Times. “But we had enough Scotch.”

Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Media, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch watch.

Monday, September 9th, 2024

Yes, I know.

I think it’d be better to wait until tomorrow for the James Earl Jones obits, to allow the dust to settle and the corrections to be made. I know I’m sacrificing timeliness, but I’d rather be right.

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Obit watch: September 4, 2024.

Wednesday, September 4th, 2024

Paul Harrell, noted gun YouTuber. (Hattip: Lawrence.) McThag.

Edited to add: The Firearm Blog. NYPost, which kind of makes me want to go “!!!!”. On the other hand, the NYP ran an article yesterday about a heron eating a rat, so running an obit for a popular YouTuber, even if he was a gun guy, is probably closer to news.

Rob “Rabbit” Pitt, car guy. Sacramento Bee. (Hattip: FotB RoadRich.)

Archived NYT obit for James Darren, which did not go up until after I posted yesterday.

Posted in Cars, Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 3, 2024.

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024

James Darren, actor and musician.

Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “S.W.A.T.” (the original), “Black Sheep Squadron” (aka “Baa Baa Black Sheep”), and “Renegade”.

Simon Verity, stone carver.

Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving, a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem, depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”

…

In the late 1970s, Mr. Verity visited Austria, where he became fascinated by a 17th-century grotto built for the prince-archbishop of Salzburg. He went on to restore centuries-old grottoes and designed and built new ones, both in Europe and in the United States.

…

One of his original grottoes was at Leeds Castle, in Kent, England, which visitors entered through a suite of rooms. Nearly all the rooms were encrusted, from ceiling to floor, with colorful mosaics made from minerals, shells and animal bones, and some of the walls were covered with elaborate limestone sculptures.
In addition, he carved statues of four whales and a fountain for King Charles III when Charles was the Prince of Wales; a teacup made of broken crockery for Elton John’s garden; a seated king in the front of Wells Cathedral, whose restoration he also worked on; and “The Agony in the Garden,” which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before his betrayal.
Mr. Verity created fountains and a sundial at the American Academy in Rome and headstones for the writer Nancy Mitford; George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival impresario, and his wife, Joyce (for which he sculpted a jazz band); and the British poet laureate John Betjeman.

Posted in Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

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