Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category
Obit watch: October 16, 2023.
Monday, October 16th, 2023Obit watch: October 15, 2023.
Sunday, October 15th, 2023I’m aware of Suzanne Somers, but all the obits I’ve seen so far have been preliminary. I think I’ll wait until tomorrow on this one.
Other credits include two episodes of the 1985-1986 “Twilight Zone” revival, “The Bunker”, “The Eleventh Hour” and “Breaking Point” (both of which I was just recently reading about, and which I would love to see on home video), and three episodes of “St. Elsewhere”.
Colette Rossant, cookbook author and popularizer of French food. She may have been a bit obscure for most of you: I know of her because she was a great friend of Calvin Trillin, and he wrote about her multiple times in “The Tummy Trilogy”.
In a 1981 article in The Times with the headline “The Inspirations of a Global Cook,” Craig Claiborne, the newspaper’s august food critic, wrote that he “found it impossible to refuse an invitation to a Rossant meal, which turned out to be a feast,” including a blend of fresh and smoked salmon christened with rillettes of fish as an appetizer, a roast of veal “cooked to a savory state in milk” and other delicacies.
Mr. Claiborne noted that Mr. Trillin, the celebrated author, humorist and food writer, had once written that whenever he was invited to dine at Ms. Rossant’s, his wife, Alice, was “forced to grab me by the jacket two or three times to keep me from breaking into a steady, uncharacteristic trot.”
Tommy Gambino, of Gambino family fame.
He was the nephew of “Big Paul” Castellano, who succeeded Carlo as the head of the family but was rubbed out in 1985 on the orders of eventual Gambino godfather John Gotti.
Tommy Gambino arrived at Sparks Steakhouse on East 46th Street just moments after Castellano and his driver, Tommy Bilotti, were gunned down outside the eatery.
Tommy Gambino, once described as the a “quintessential Mafia prince of New York City,” was convicted in 1993 of two counts of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy for controlling gambling and loan sharking operations in Connecticut.
He served in federal prison from 1996 to 2000.
The prosecution’s evidence in his trial included secretly recorded conversations with Mafia turncoat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
Obit watch: October 14, 2023.
Saturday, October 14th, 2023Other credits include “Quincy M.E.”, “Adam-12”, “Perry Mason”, and (the original) “The Fugitive”.
Louise Glück, poet and winner of the Nobel Prize (also the Pulitzer and the National Book Award).
Obit watch: October 12, 2023.
Thursday, October 12th, 2023Walt Garrison, legendary Dallas Cowboy, rodeo competetor, and Skoal endorser.
His best season was 1971, where he scored 10 touchdowns and had 1,174 total yards, and it was capped off by a 24-3 Super Bowl victory over Miami. He was named to the Pro Bowl that season.
A knee injury Garrison suffered while steer wrestling in 1975 ultimately ended his NFL career. He retired from Dallas as the third-leading rusher and fourth-leading receiver in team history.
Phyllis Coates, actress. Other credits include three appearances on “Perry Mason”, “Midnight Caller”, “The Untouchables”, and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”.
Jeff Burr, director. IMDB. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Michael Chiarello, celebrity chef.
Rudolph Isley, of the Isley Brothers.
Obit watch: October 9, 2023.
Monday, October 9th, 2023Ellsworth Johnson passed away on September 30. He was 100.
Mr. Johnson was a member of one of the Operations Groups of the Office of Strategic Services in WWII. He was originally trained as a medic:
“My disappointment at being a medic was great,” he wrote in a memoir, “Behind Enemy Lines: The O.S.S. in World War II” (2019). “I knew that surgical training would at least keep me out of a ward where I could expect to be no more than a bedpan jockey.”
He drew a distinction between participating on the field of combat and treating its victims after the battle.
“I wanted to get into the fight,” he said in a television interview. “I didn’t want to see the results of the fight.”
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In August 1944, he parachuted from the belly of a B-24 bomber 400 miles behind German lines to harass enemy troops and feed intelligence to London as the Allies were poised to invade southern France. His team and the French Resistance captured a vital dam and its hydroelectric power plant after forcing the German garrison guarding it to flee.
After serving in France for about a month, he and many of his comrades chose to transfer to the Pacific Theater as members of an Operations Group rather than be absorbed into the regular Army.
Joining recently trained Chinese paratroopers, Mr. Johnson and other Americans, all serving officially as advisers, jumped some 600 miles into Japanese-occupied territory in the summer of 1945.
“We learned to live under the noses of the enemy,” he wrote.
They successfully intercepted enemy supply lines and communications and inflicted casualties in an unsuccessful attempt to retake a town.
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The OSS Operations Groups are considered a precursor to today’s Special Forces.
His death was confirmed by his daughter-in-law, Anna Johnson. It came four weeks after he was presented with an Army Special Forces tab and a Green Beret in a ceremony at the assisted living facility where he lived near Grand Rapids, Mich.
“This is an extremely rare event and, quite frankly, the last of its kind that will ever occur,” Major Russell M. Gordon, the director of public affairs for the 1st Special Forces Command, said of the ceremony.
And Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, the deputy commanding general of the Army Special Operations Command, said during the event: “Everything that he did in 1944 — we model ourselves on in our training and the operations that we conduct. It’s our origin story.”
Murray Stenson, cocktail guy.
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I’ve made myself a Last Word a couple of times, and I’ve had them when I’m out and about and drinking. The ones I make at home seem just a little sweet to my taste: the ones I get elsewhere I think are better balanced. If I can find Mr. Stenson’s recipe, I’ll compare it to the ones I’m using.
Mr. Stenson did not consider himself a mentor. He did not write books or become a highly paid brand ambassador, as many successful bartenders do, especially once they reach middle age and their bodies start to rebel against hours of constant standing. Well into his 60s, and even after open-heart surgery in 2012, he worked up to seven nights a week.
“I enjoy being behind the bar,” he told Imbibe magazine in 2012. “That’s where you meet all the really interesting people.”
Obit watch: October 6, 2023.
Friday, October 6th, 2023Dick Butkus, one of the greats. ESPN.
At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, good size for his era, Butkus stuffed running plays up the middle. He was also speedy and mobile enough to drop back and foil opponents’ pass plays. He was cited as a first-team All-Pro five times and was chosen for the Pro Bowl game eight times. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, so the number of times Butkus smothered opposing quarterbacks remains unrecorded. But he was considered to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing for the Bears from 1965 to 1973.
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Butkus was chosen by the Bears in the first round, third overall, in the 1965 N.F.L. draft and by the Denver Broncos of the American Football League in its second round. He went with his hometown team, a storied N.F.L. franchise owned and coached by the future Hall of Famer George Halas. In his rookie season, he intercepted five passes and recovered seven fumbles.
But the Bears fell on hard times during Butkus’s years. They won 49 games, lost 74, tied four and never reached the playoffs. In his last few seasons, Butkus played on with a badly injured right knee despite having undergone surgery. In May 1974, having retired, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending that the team had not provided him with the medical and hospital care it had promised in a five-year contract he signed in July 1973. The case was settled out of court.
He also did some acting.
Joe Christopher, one of the original 1962 Mets.
He was a part-time player in 1962 — the perfectly awful “Amazin’ Mets,” as their manager, Casey Stengel, called them, had a 40-120-1 record that season — when he got batting tips from a Mets coach, the renowned Rogers Hornsby, who hit over .400 three times in the 1920s.
“He was sitting in hotel lobbies,” Christopher recalled in an unpublished interview in 2010 with George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times. Christopher recalled Hornsby telling him that the secret of hitting was “don’t let the pitcher jam home plate” and “it’s not about contact, it’s impact.”
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In June, when he was hitting .307, he talked about getting a chance to play full time.
“I always knew I could hit, but nobody up here believed me,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I always hit well in the minors, but when I got to the majors nobody had any confidence in me.” He added, “They just wouldn’t give me a chance to play regularly. There was always that worry that if I went 0 for 4 I’d be on the bench the next day.”
He finished the season at .300, 16th best in the National League and only the third time a Met had reached that level. (The Mets’ Ron Hunt hit .303 that season.) He also led the Mets with 76 runs batted in and was second in home runs with 16.
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He had a career batting average of .260, with 29 home runs and 173 R.B.I.
Keith Jefferson, actor. IMDB.
Russell Sherman, pianist.
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Mr. Sherman was in many ways an anti-virtuoso; he devoted much of his time to other interests, like poetry, philosophy and photography. In the late 1950s, instead of becoming a touring concert pianist, he left New York to teach piano at Pomona College in California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1967, he began a long tenure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, hired by its president at the time, the composer Gunther Schuller. Mr. Schuller, who founded GM Recordings in 1981, produced a Beethoven album by Mr. Sherman, who became the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas and piano concertos.
On a GM Recording album, “Russell Sherman: Premieres and Commissions,” Mr. Sherman performed works composed for him in the 1990s by Mr. Schuller, Robert Helps, George Perle and Ralph Shapey. His recordings also include works by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Chopin Mazurkas, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas and Bach’s English Suites.
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Some two decades later, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Sherman’s “interpretive style, it should be said, is an acquired taste,” but that his “performances are usually illuminating alternatives to the standard view.”
Mr. Sherman resented these accusations of eccentricity. “I think of myself as a compassionate conservative” who responded “radically to the score and nothing but the score,” he told The Times in 2000. He suggested that listeners who disliked his interpretations lacked imagination.
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Obit watch: October 3, 2023.
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023Jim Caple, sportswriter.
I sort of remember the name: I was probably reading him back in the good old “Page 2” days. My feelings about lyrical happy horsepucky baseball writers are well known, but it seems like he wasn’t one of those guys:
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Obit watch: October 2, 2023.
Monday, October 2nd, 2023Lucy Morgan, Florida journalist. She wasn’t someone I had heard of before, but the obit (which I encourage you to read) makes her sound fascinating.
She specialized in uncovering political corruption. In 1973, she went to jail because she refused to reveal her source for grand jury proceedings.
She shared a Pulitzer (with Jack Reed) for exposing the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
She also exposed the sheriff of Gulf County, who got sent to prison for extorting oral sex from female inmates.
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Russ Francis, former tight end for the Patriots and 49ers, was killed in a plane crash on Sunday. Also killed was Richard McSpadden, a vice-president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
It appears they were taking off from Lake Placid Airport and there was some sort of problem. Reports say they tried to make it back to the airport but couldn’t.
Mr. Francis, in additional to a successful NFL career (first round NFL draft pick, three time Pro Bowl player) was also an avid pilot. He’d recently bought an interest in Lake Placid Airways, a local charter and scenic flight service.
Mr. McSpadden, in addition to being an AOPA VP, was a former commander and flight leader for the Thunderbirds.
Tim Wakefield, former Boston Red Sox pitcher (and a past winner of the Roberto Clemente Award). Cancer got him at 57.
Chris Snow, of the Calgary Flames. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, and passed away after a “catastrophic brain injury”.
Obit watch: September 29, 2023.
Friday, September 29th, 2023Dianne Feinstein. NYT. LAT. WP.
This doesn’t quite qualify as an obit, but I don’t have any place else to put it (other than a separate entry, which I’d rather not do) and I feel like it is close enough for government work. The Las Vegas Police department has made an arrest in a 27-year old cold case.
But:
The other point that I think should be made: an arrest is one thing. A conviction is another. More from the tabloid of record.
Edited to add: A two-pack (see what I did there?) of additional coverage from the NYT and the LAT.
“Dwight, shouldn’t you be linking to the actual Las Vegas newspapers?” Well, yes, except: the Las Vegas newspapers are generally not great. Though they have had some good columnists working for them in the past…but for the record, here’s the Review-Journal coverage.
Also not quite an obit, but within this blog’s area of coverage:
This is just a very preliminary report from the NTSB: we probably won’t get the full report for two years or more. And no, I’m not noting it because moose. RoadRich can argue with me in the comments if he knows more, but I believe this is one of the biggest killers of pilots out there, especially pilots of small aircraft: trying to take off with an overloaded aircraft, or an aircraft out of balance.
Super quick obit watch.
Friday, September 29th, 2023I’m aware of Dianne Feinstein’s death. At this point, it’s breaking news, and I don’t want to blog much until this shakes out.
There will probably be more later on today.
Obit watch: September 28, 2023.
Thursday, September 28th, 2023Sir Michael Gambon, British actor. The NYT is still in “A complete obituary will appear shortly.” mode.
Obit watch: September 27, 2023.
Wednesday, September 27th, 2023In his 23 seasons with the Orioles, from 1955 to 1977, Robinson became known as the Human Vacuum Cleaner for his ability to snare just about anything hit his way.
Charging topped grounders or bunts, backhanding smashes, ranging to his left or his right, he won 16 consecutive Gold Glove awards as the American League’s leading fielder at third base. Only the pitcher Greg Maddux, with 18 Gold Gloves, has exceeded Robinson’s total.Robinson played on four pennant-winning teams, two of them World Series champions. He was the most valuable player of the 1970 World Series, in which the Orioles beat the Cincinnati Reds in five games, for his spectacular plays and for his hitting: He had a .429 batting average and hit a pair of home runs. (The Orioles also beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in four games in the 1966 Series.)
Robinson had 2,848 hits, 268 home runs and a career batting average of .267. He was the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1964, when he hit 28 homers, had a league-leading 118 runs batted in and batted .317, all career highs. But he was best known for his fielding.
Robinson was named an All-Star every season from 1960 to 1974. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, his first year of eligibility, with almost 92 percent of the votes.
Edited to add: Dave Barry on Brooks Robinson.
Phil Sellers. He was a dominant player for Rutgers in the 1970s:
He was called “Phil the Thrill,” and, with Sellers leading a team that also included Eddie Jordan, Mike Dabney and Hollis Copeland, Rutgers kept improving. During Sellers’s junior year, when he averaged 22.7 points and 9.4 rebounds a game, Rutgers had a record of 22-7 and played in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, losing in the first round.
Rutgers was undefeated in 26 games during the 1975-76 regular season, Sellers’s senior year. Late in a conference tournament game against St. John’s University that preceded the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, Sellers clashed with his coach, Tom Young.
“Give me the ball,” Young recalled Sellers saying when he described the incident to The New York Times in 1983. “I said, ‘Phil, we’re going to run our offense.’ He said it three times, ‘Give me the ball.’”
Sellers scored six points in the next 90 seconds, and Rutgers won.
Rutgers then won its first three games in the N.C.A.A. tournament, despite subpar scoring performances from Sellers, to raise its record to 31-0. But the Scarlet Knights lost the semifinal game to Michigan, 86-70, with Sellers scoring only 11 points against the strong defense of Michigan’s Wayman Britt.
Sellers’s college career totals of 2,399 points and 1,115 rebounds are still Rutgers records.
Terry Kirkman, of the Association. This is another one of those groups that was a little before my time – though I have heard of Terry Kirkman – so I’m going to leave comment on this up to my music consultant.
Obit watch: September 26, 2023.
Tuesday, September 26th, 2023David McCallum. THR. Tributes from Deadline.
David McCallum made every moment count, in life and on set. Let’s raise a jug and celebrate a funny fantastic authentic man. I’ve only got 3 autographs. Connery, Tony Bennett and McCallum. I felt the same way as Steve McQueen in this picture from The Great Escape: Wow! It’s David… pic.twitter.com/ve6hFvFkQD
— Michael Weatherly (@M_Weatherly) September 25, 2023
I was a little young for “UNCLE” first-run (and I don’t recall it being in re-runs on any of the Houston stations) and I’ve never been a big fan of “NCIS”. But I did kind of like Mr. McCallum. I have no idea what his politics were, which I think is worthy of praise in the current era.
And this kind of made me choke up a bit:
So did this:
Donations can be made to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
(Mr. McCallum served in the British military. But his second wife’s father was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima.)
Other credits include “The Master”, “Babylon 5”, “Hell Drivers” (which I have to admit sounds interesting: check out that cast), “A Night to Remember”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War”.
Dick Clark, one-term Democratic Senator from Iowa. He was famous for walking 1300 miles during his 1972 campaign.
Matteo Messina Denaro, Italian Mafia boss.
In 2020, Mr. Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia for his role in the high-profile murders of two of Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, and for deadly bombings the next year in Milan, Rome and Florence that prosecutors believe were part of a Cosa Nostra strategy against the state.
He also received a life sentence for his involvement in the kidnapping and death of the 12-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat after the boy was strangled and his body was dissolved in acid, and in the death of a police officer.
He’d been “underground” since 1993, but was still running the “family business”. The authorities tracked him down because he was being treated for cancer:
Obit watch: September 22, 2023.
Friday, September 22nd, 2023Stephen Gould, tenor best known “as a leading interpreter of the operas of Richard Wagner”.
Mr. Gould established himself as a reliable heldentenor, a singer who takes on heroic roles, mostly in the German repertory, requiring a particularly powerful voice. Such roles are among the most demanding in opera.
He first appeared at Bayreuth in 2004, performing the title role in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” a production that dazzled Olin Chism of The Dallas Morning News.
“One of the heroes was American tenor Stephen Gould, who sang the title character,” Mr. Chism wrote. “This was his Bayreuth debut, and by the end of the evening he had become a festival favorite.”
He remained so over the next 18 years, performing in 20 Bayreuth productions; he regularly sang the title role in “Siegfried” and Tristan in “Tristan und Isolde.” He also performed in leading opera houses around the world, including with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 2010 as Erik, the hunter, in Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman.”
Obit watch: September 21, 2023.
Thursday, September 21st, 2023Rose Gregorio, actress. Other credits include “Harry O”, “The Rockford Files”, and “The Rookies”.
Pete Kozachik, VFX guy. (Hattip: Lawrence.) He did a lot of work with Tim Burton: “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Corpse Bride”.