Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: February 12, 2026.

Thursday, February 12th, 2026

Bud Cort, actor. THR. Other credits include “Midnight Caller”, “The Chocolate War”, and “Sledge Hammer!”.

Lory Patrick, actress. She doesn’t have that long a list of credits, but this is interesting:

Her first husband was late science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison; they were married and divorced in 1966, and she was the second of his five wives.

She later married Dean Jones, and they stayed married for 42 years (until Mr. Jones died).

Andrew Ranken, drummer for The Pogues.

Among other contributions, the Pogues credited him with coming up with the title “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash,” based on a quotation attributed to Winston Churchill: “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.”
“It seemed to sum up life in our band,” Mr. Ranken once said.

Fred Smith, musician. Interesting story: he started out with Blondie, and then defected to Television. After he left, Blondie blew up into a huge success, while Television broke up after two albums.

James Van Der Beek. NYT (archived). Other credits include “CSI: Cyber”, “Law and Order: SVU”, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”, and “Walker” (not “Walker, Texas Ranger”, but the reboot).

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

Obit watch: February 11, 2026.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2026

I had not previously heard of Hudson Talbott, but I find his obituary touching.

He wrote children’s books.

Mr. Talbott’s collaboration on “Into the Woods,” published in 1988, was a happier experience. The musical, which opened on Broadway a year earlier, is for adults — although it is based in part on folk tales by the Brothers Grimm, and features characters like Cinderella that are familiar to children. Mr. Talbott adapted it for a younger audience.
James Lapine, the musical’s Tony Award-winning librettist, said in an email that the book “honors our show rather than reinvents it.”
Mr. Talbott used a lush visual style, which he described as “more or less 18th-century French,” for illustrations like the depiction of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother inside the wolf’s open mouth, and he rewrote the story with help from Mr. Sondheim’s notes.
“Both Steve and I loved what he did,” Mr. Lapine said. “And the book remains my favorite gift to anyone who has a child.”

…

As a child, he showed artistic talent, but he had difficulty reading; he discovered later in life that he had dyslexia. In his semi-autobiographical book “A Walk in the Words” (2021), he wrote that drawing allowed him to disappear into a safe world all his own.
“I was the slowest reader in my class,” he wrote. “When everybody was turning to the next page, I was still on the first sentence. Nobody knew. But the books knew! And they were coming for me!”

…

Nancy Paulsen, the president and publisher of an imprint at Penguin Young Readers, who edited over a dozen of Mr. Talbott’s books, said that he was more confident in his artwork than in his writing. In painting, he employed various styles and was inspired by work from the Renaissance and the Hudson River School.
“He was very sophisticated about what he showed kids, but it was very easy to understand,” Ms. Paulsen said in an interview. “In ‘A Walk in the Words,’ when you see the wall of words, a kid knows what he’s doing there.”
In one part of the book, the boy cowers before the wall of words; in another, he tears down a wall of shame.

…

In 2022, Mr. Talbott spoke by Zoom to dyslexic students at a school in Richmond, Va., telling them that, as a child, he had dealt with his own challenges by spending too much time alone — “and nobody was there to help me, and it wasn’t their fault because I was hiding it.”
“If I could go back in time,” he added, “I would try to say to me, as a little boy, ‘Don’t be ashamed. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are who you are, and you read the way you read.’”

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 4, 2026.

Wednesday, February 4th, 2026

Chuck Negron, of Three Dog Night.

Mr. Negron’s bandmates’ initially rejected “Joy to the World,” but he argued that the group needed a “silly song” to keep success rolling. His instincts proved correct, as the track shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. That same year, his jaunty vocals on Paul Williams’s “An Old Fashioned Love Song” helped propel that song to No. 4.

…

The band splintered in 1976, and Mr. Negron sank further into the abyss, in large part because of heroin addiction. His millions in savings vanished and, before long, he was living in a Skid Row drug den in Los Angeles. The police often raided crack dealer neighbors but “never bothered us,” he recalled in a 1998 interview with The Las Vegas Sun. “That’s how pathetic we were.”
He hit a particular low one day when he was zonked out on a curb and noticed people gawking. “It’s really embarrassing,” he remembered telling a companion next to him, “these people want an autograph.”
“Chuck, you just peed in the street,” the friend responded. “They don’t know who you are.”

…

After 35 trips to rehab attempts in 13 years, Mr. Negron said he finally got clean in 1991, leading to an attempt to rekindle things with his bandmates. “They kind of went, ‘Get screwed,’” he told The Sun, “so I went, ‘OK, some things are too late — move on.’”

Virginia Oliver. I’m not exactly sure she qualifies as “notable”, outside of a small circle. But the obit is fun, she led a good life, and it lets me use a tag I don’t get to use as often as I’d like.

On the frigid and crustacean-filled waters of Penobscot Bay, Mrs. Oliver was known as the Lobster Lady. She was a folk hero to Mainers — an enduring, if fading, emblem of the state’s hardy, matter-of-fact work ethic.
“She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” Barbara A. Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver, said in an interview. “It’s grit and determination.”
During lobster season — from June to December — Mrs. Oliver would wake up at 2:45 a.m., put on overalls and drive her four-wheel-drive pickup truck to the dock. After loading her boat, the Virginia, with bait and gas, she would head to sea before sunrise, hauling lobster pots until lunchtime.

…

Mrs. Oliver fished for more than 60 years with her husband, Maxwell Oliver Sr., known as Bill. After he died in 2006, Max Jr. took his spot. “I’m the boss,” she would occasionally remind both of them.
As a general rule, her authority was not to be questioned on land or at sea.
“She was a hard worker, a lovely lady, but you definitely didn’t mess around with her,” Dave Cousens, a lobsterman who knew Mrs. Oliver for several decades, said in an interview. “She had a mouth like a sailor. A lot of things she said you couldn’t print in a newspaper.”

…

A few years back, she needed stitches after a particularly obstreperous lobster sliced her finger.
“What are you out there lobstering for?” the doctor asked.
“Because I want to,” she replied.

She was 103 when a fall forced her to give up lobstering. She was 105 when she passed away.

Mickey Lolich, of the Detroit Tigers.

Pitching in the major leagues for 16 seasons, mostly with the Tigers, Lolich won 217 games and struck out 2,832 batters, posting more than 200 strikeouts in a single season seven times.

…

The Tigers finished 12 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles as they won the 1968 American League pennant, led by the right-hander Denny McLain, who won 31 games and lost only 6 that season in becoming the first pitcher to reach the 30-game milestone in 34 years, a feat that hasn’t been matched since. Lolich, meanwhile, compiled a laudable 17-9 record.
McClain was bested by the future Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in the World Series opener, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Despite battling a groin infection that had developed overnight, Lolich pitched the Tigers to an 8-1 victory in Game 2 and hit the only home run of his career, a drive down the left-field line off the Cardinal starter, Nelson Briles.
The Tigers lost the next two games at home and were facing elimination when Lolich took the mound again, once more against Briles, but this time at Tiger Stadium. Lolich yielded three runs in the first inning, but the Tigers managed to rally for a 5-3 victory.
They won again in Game 6, in St. Louis, behind solid pitching by McLain and a 10-run third inning.
The durable Lolich was called on again for Game 7, when he faced Gibson.
With the game scoreless in the seventh inning, the Tiger outfielder Jim Northrup connected on a liner over the head of Curt Flood, the Cardinals’ center fielder, for a two-run, two-out triple. Detroit went on to a 4-1 victory, giving the Tigers their first World Series championship since they defeated the Chicago Cubs in seven games in 1945.

…

With that final out — a foul pop-up by Tim McCarver of the Cardinals that spurred Tiger catcher Bill Freehan to leap into Lolich’s arms — Lolich became the only left-handed pitcher in American League history to win three complete games in a World Series.

ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Posted in Lobsters, Music, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: January 31, 2026.

Saturday, January 31st, 2026

Catherine O’Hara. NYT (share link).

Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, voice work in “Where the Wild Things Are”, and “The Greatest Event in Television History”.

Demond Wilson. Other credits include “Today’s F.B.I.”, “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues”, and the original “Mission: Impossible”.

He studied acting at the American Community Theater and at Hunter College but was drafted and then wounded in Vietnam while serving in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 30, 2026.

Friday, January 30th, 2026

I’m going to do a round-up from the past couple of days. I’m also going to draw heavily on the NYT since we’re reaching the end of the month, and I have a bunch of share links to burn off before February.

Sly Dunbar, of Sly and Robbie.

For nearly 50 years, Mr. Dunbar and his partner, the bassist Robbie Shakespeare, who died in 2021, single-handedly shaped the various music styles — ska, reggae, rocksteady, dancehall — coming out of Jamaica’s heady cultural ferment of the 1960s.

…

Mr. Dunbar was known for his precise, propellant and somehow also relaxed drumming. After mastering the one-drop rhythm, a reggae standard that leaves out the kick drum on the first beat of a 4/4 measure, he pioneered the rockers rhythm, which deploys the drum on the first and third beats, and the snare on the second and fourth, making it even more danceable and energetic.
The rockers rhythm challenged the reggae orthodoxy of the 1970s. It fostered new genres like dancehall and made it easier for adjacent styles, like R&B, funk and rock, to incorporate reggae influences.

John L. Allen Jr., prominent Catholic journalist and author. I haven’t read any of his books, but I should probably at least buy the Opus Dei one. (Lawrence likes to give me a hard time about my Opus Dei membership.)

Johnny Legend, a polymath of the perverse who became something of a cult hero as — among other outré personas — a punk-rock wrestling impresario, an accomplice to the comedian Andy Kaufman, a B-movie archivist and erotic film auteur, and, with his flowing beard, a recording curiosity known as the Rockabilly Rasputin, died on Jan. 2 in South Beach, Ore. He was 77.

He’s not someone I’d ever heard of, but the obit is mildly interesting, so I’m just going to quote the first paragraph and send you over to the paper of record if it grabs you.

Finally, Dr. Peter H. Duesberg. That name may ring a bell for some people.

He did important early work on cancer.

In the late 1960s, when scientists had little understanding of what caused cancer, Dr. Duesberg studied a virus called Rous sarcoma, which had been associated with malignant tumors in chickens. He published the results of his experiments in 1970, showing that the virus carried a gene, known as Src, that triggered cancer in the birds.
It turned out to be the first known cancer-causing gene, or oncogene.
Dr. Duesberg’s work, at the University of California, Berkeley, set the stage for other researchers who were able to show that normal cells in many animals, including humans, carry a version of this gene, known as a proto-oncogene. Modern cancer treatments are based in part on the understanding that those proto-oncogenes can turn into cancer-spawning oncogenes when damaged over time by carcinogens, radiation or random mutations.

…

But he didn’t pursue his research on oncogenes. Instead, in his work at Berkeley and at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he held an appointment starting in 1997, he focused on the more established theory that cancer is caused by damage to the chromosomes, the structures that carry our genetic material.
And in a startling about-face, he inexplicably contradicted his own research, insisting that oncogenes didn’t, in fact, cause cancer; he even went so far as to heckle colleagues at scientific meetings if they supported that idea.

He became more famous as an H.I.V. denialist.

In the 1980s, Dr. Duesberg adopted another contrarian view, publicly rejecting the theory that the newly discovered disease known as AIDS was caused by human immunodeficiency virus, or H.I.V., a link that is widely accepted today. The theory he promoted was that AIDS was caused by poverty, malnutrition, the use of recreational drugs and azidothymidine, or AZT, an early antiviral drug used to treat the disease.

…

Throughout his life, Dr. Duesberg maintained his position that H.I.V. does not cause AIDS, a contention that raised questions about the perils of undermining public trust in established scientists during an epidemic.

…

By 1987, when Dr. Duesberg published his theory about AIDS in the journal Cancer Research, a consensus had formed around H.I.V. as the cause of the disease. Eventually, scientists figured out how H.I.V. caused AIDS — through the slow destruction of a white blood cell known as CD4, which is essential for the maintenance of the immune system. None of the factors Dr. Duesberg had proposed as the cause of AIDS led to this immune collapse.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits, Science | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 27, 2026.

Tuesday, January 27th, 2026

Thomas Fogarty, another one of those big damn heroes of medicine.

Dr. Fogarty invented the Fogarty catheter.

“When people had a blood clot in their arm or leg, they usually ended up having three operations,” he told Stanford Medicine magazine in 2006. “Fifty percent of the patients died. I thought there must be a better way.”
Dr. Fogarty, who died at 91 on Dec. 28 in Los Altos, Calif., found a solution while a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1960. There, he conceived a device that would revolutionize vascular surgery — a balloon catheter that removed blood clots from patients’ limbs through a minimally invasive technique that became an industry standard.

…

For the first balloon-catheter procedure — in 1960 or 1961, according to various accounts — Dr. John J. Cranley, a vascular surgeon who was Dr. Fogarty’s mentor, first made a small incision in an occluded artery in a patient’s leg. He inserted the catheter — with the balloon deflated — past the blood clot. The balloon was then inflated with saline solution and retracted, pulling the clot along with it.
His response was, “Holy Cow!,” Dr. Fogarty told the publication Endovascular Today in 2004. Dr. Cranley exclaimed, “Wow, this really works!

…

Six-plus decades after its invention, the Fogarty catheter is used hundreds of thousands of times a year around the world in vascular, cardiac and thoracic surgeries. According to the American College of Surgeons and Fogarty Innovation, a nonprofit he founded, it remains the most widely used catheter for removal of blood clots and is credited with having saved an estimated 20 million lives globally.

…

In a video tribute on his 90th birthday in 2024, colleagues at Fogarty Innovation described him as unconventional, stubborn and “about as touchy-feely as a steel screw.” Colleagues also paraphrased the mantra that drove Dr. Fogarty’s career: “How can I make this better? How can I reduce pain? How can I get the patient out of the hospital more quickly?”
At the same time, Andrew Cleeland, the organization’s chief executive, said in an interview that Dr. Fogarty had been a prankster who didn’t always take himself so seriously. Thomas Fogarty Jr. added that his father “wouldn’t tolerate foolishness except foolishness of the highest quality; well into his 80s, nothing was funnier to him than a whoopee cushion.”

He was also a fly fisherman.

During medical school, he experimented in his attic by cutting the pinkie finger from a surgical glove to use as a balloon, and then attaching it to a urethral catheter by using fly-tying techniques. He had learned to tie fly knots as a boy, when he would fish, at least part of the time, in a cemetery pond.

Posted in Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 23, 2026.

Friday, January 23rd, 2026

James Bernard, “founding editor and star writer” of the hip-hop magazine “The Source”.

His sister, Emily Bernard, who confirmed the death, said he died by suicide. His body was discovered on Dec. 29 in a wooded area in Pemberton Township, N.J., near his home.
Mr. Bernard is believed to have died around the time he was reported missing, in March 2024. He would have turned 60 last August.

…

His career at The Source unraveled in 1994, when he and other staff members organized a walkout after Mr. Mays published a laudatory article about the little-known group Almighty RSO, with which he was close, without consulting other editors. When calls for Mr. Mays’s resignation went nowhere, Mr. Bernard and others left the magazine.
In 1997, he and Mr. Dennis started a rival magazine, XXL. The founders conceived the quarterly as both a hip-hop tastemaker and a broader lifestyle magazine, like Playboy in its 1960s and ’70s heyday.

The Wikipedia entry on ‘The Source” goes into more detail about this and other issues.

Posted in Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 21, 2026.

Wednesday, January 21st, 2026

This isn’t quite an obit, but Mike the Musicologist sent it to me a few days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it: a tribute to Phil Schreier. (Previously.)

His character was unlike anyone I’ve ever known. Smart, funny and stubborn. Whatever standard an organization or the world imposed, his own was higher. He was a public face of NRA, not because he sought fame and fortune; the latter is extremely unlikely as an NRA employee of 36 years. He took that role on as not only his vocation but as a responsibility. Most of NRA’s millions of members will never meet an NRA staffer, one of the dedicated people that goes to work for them every day, so you better leave a good impression. Phil had the Cal Ripken attitude: No matter what’s going on in your life, you stay and sign the last baseball. At the thousands of gun shows he attended, and the dozens of NRA Annual Meetings, he would always make time to answer a question or shake a hand, much to his own peril when seeking to reach the bathroom on time. He once told me that if you’re on TV enough, you’ll never make it to the men’s room alone again. There was simply no quit in him.

Rob Hirst, drummer for Midnight Oil.

As I’ve observed before, if our Earth isn’t turning, our ability to dance will be the smallest of our possible problems. And if our beds are burning and we want to sleep…maybe get a hotel room? Or a fire extinguisher?

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: January 13, 2026.

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026

Scott Adams. THR.

I used to be a pretty avid follower of “Dilbert”. Back at one of my previous jobs, the running joke was that “Dilbert” was a documentary about my life. Then something happened. Mr. Adams’s…eccentricities, for want of a better word, got on my nerves. (Remember the “Dilberito“, and Mr. Adams’s idea that we didn’t need to actually, you know, eat food? We could just pills with all the nutrients we needed.)

He was still on my radar, because how could he not be? But he didn’t have the relevance for me that he once had. I’m sad he’s passed on, though.

(These days, the documentary about my life is called “The Wire”.)

Elle Simone Scott, of “America’s Test Kitchen”. I get a kick out of having “ATK” on in the background while I work.

Jirdes Winther Baxter. She was 101.

Ms. Baxter was the last known survivor of the 1925 Nome diphtheria epidemic.

A copy of medical records from 1925, possessed by Mr. Baxter, a retired lawyer, indicates that Jirdes (pronounced JER-diss) Winther, then 11 months old, was hospitalized in Nome on Jan. 30 with diphtheria and what she later called a high fever. Highly contagious, diphtheria is a dangerous bacterial disease that can clog airways, severely restricting breathing, and damage the heart and kidneys.
Jirdes’s Norwegian-born mother, Ragnhild, and one of her brothers, John, were admitted on Feb. 2. Her father, Johan, and another brother, Gudmund, did not contract the disease.
At the time, there was only one doctor, Curtis Welch, in Nome, a gold-rush town of 1,400 inhabitants. After two young children died of diphtheria by mid-January, officials there instituted a quarantine advised by Dr. Welch, who had realized that a pandemic seemed “almost inevitable.”
He sent alerts, by radio telegram, to other towns in Alaska and pleaded for emergency help from the U.S. Public Health Service. The nearest supply of antitoxin, made from the blood of horses, was at a hospital in Anchorage, 1,000 miles away.

They couldn’t fly antitoxin in by plane, the port was frozen over, and there was no train service directly to Nome.

A plan was devised to carry 300,000 units of antitoxin by train from Anchorage to the railhead of Nenana in interior Alaska, about 300 miles north. From there, sled dogs would ferry the serum 674 miles west to Nome, a relay that would involve 20 mushers and about 150 dogs. It would come to be known as the 1925 Serum Run and the Great Race of Mercy.
For days, millions were enthralled by radio and newspaper accounts of the rush to keep a threatened town alive. A front-page headline in The New York Times reported, “Serum Relief Near for Stricken Nome.”
Bill Shannon, the first musher on the relay, retrieved the serum — a 20-pound package containing glass vials housed in a metal cylinder — from the train in Nenana. He insulated the container with bearskin and took off on a 52-mile stretch as midnight approached on Jan. 27.
Mushers handed off the antitoxin and rested at roadhouses along the relay, enduring aching cold and wind and blizzards that sometimes made the trail disappear. On Feb. 2, the serum arrived in Nome after five days and seven hours, frozen but quickly thawed by Dr. Welch and administered to the sick.

Ms. Baxter had a few words to say on a subject of historical interest:

Ms. Winther Baxter believed — as many now do — that Balto, a husky that helped lead his team on the final 55-mile stretch into Nome, received heroic acknowledgment, including a statue in Central Park, at the expense of Togo, another husky who was the lead sled dog for a celebrated Norwegian-born driver named Leonhard Seppala.
Togo led his team for 261 miles — 170 to meet up with the relay and 91 on the longest, most hazardous stretch, involving a treacherous crossing of a frozen bay. Decades later, Togo received his own statue in New York, but in a less prominent location, Seward Park on the Lower East Side.
“No, no, you have it all wrong,” Ms. Winther Baxter corrected people when they mentioned the Balto statue, her granddaughter recalled her saying. “Togo was the real hero.”

Posted in Books, Food, History, Mammals, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 11, 2026.

Sunday, January 11th, 2026

Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead.

(the sound of eight confused men getting paid)

Stewart Cheifet. My older readers may remember him from back in the day as the host of “Computer Chronicles” on PBS.

Hessy Levinsons Taft. I confess she wasn’t that notable, but this is a fun story in historical retrospect.

When she was six months old, in 1934, her family hired a photographer to take a portrait of her. The photographer, feeling whimsical, submitted the photo as an entry for a contest “to find a baby representing the epitome of the Aryan race”.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, chose the winner.

She won the contest. Which made things rather complicated, as she and her family were Jewish.

T.K. Carter, actor. Other credits include “The Corner” (For those of you who have read the book or watched the mini-series, he was Gary McCullough. For those of you who haven’t read the book, I commend it to your attention.), “A Rage In Harlem” (1991), “Runaway Train”, and “Quincy, M.E.”.

Erich von Däniken, crank.

Mr. von Däniken was 32 and managing a hotel in Davos, Switzerland, when he published his first and by far most popular book, “Chariots of the Gods,” in 1968. In breathless prose, saturated with exclamation points and folksy interjections such as “Hey, presto!” Mr. von Däniken posited that virtually the sum of human knowledge and ability had been bestowed by extraterrestrials.
With little evidence and a lot of innuendo, he proclaimed that the Egyptian pyramids could have been built only with alien expertise. (“Is it really a coincidence that the height of the pyramid of Cheops multiplied by a thousand million — 98,000,000 miles — corresponds approximately to the distance between the earth and sun?” he wrote.)
The birdman cult of Easter Island, Mr. von Däniken declared, developed as a way to honor the supreme beings who had flitted down from the outer atmosphere to land on that remote spot in the Pacific, off the coast of South America.
Because an iron rod in a temple in Delhi, India, appeared impervious to rust, it must have been made from a celestial alloy, he insisted. Similarly, he said, when viewed from the air, the geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru, are obvious landing strips for spaceships. And artwork on a Mayan sarcophagus depicts not a king descending into the underworld, he concluded, but an astronaut-god piloting a spaceship.

It sounds ridiculous, but people bought into this [stuff]. Including me. In my defense, I was left unsupervised. Also, I was very young at the time. (See also.)

Over the next half century, he published over 40 more books, which were translated into some 30 languages, and though none of them offered much variation from his original themes or ideas — subsequent titles included “Gods From Outer Space,” “The Gods Were Astronauts” and “Arrival of the Gods” — they collectively sold more than 70 million copies.

…

Mr. von Däniken wrote his second book from prison. In 1970, a Swiss court convicted him of fraud, forgery and embezzlement, determining that, as a hotel manager, he had falsified financial records to subsidize what the court called a “playboy” lifestyle. He served about a third of a three-and-a-half-year sentence.
Critics pointed to Mr. von Däniken’s criminal history as proof of a penchant for deception. But Mr. von Däniken seemed unfazed, even comparing himself to Jesus. “People don’t ask if Christ was convicted of a crime,” he told Playboy in 1974. “What has that to do with the message Christ brought?”

Posted in Books, Geek, History, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: January 7, 2026.

Wednesday, January 7th, 2026

Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s son with Jane Wyman. He was 80.

As the chairman and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation, he supported causes and topics his father heralded in working to preserve the former president’s legacy, according to the foundation’s website.
In a letter on the foundation’s site, Mr. Reagan said he was most proud of his father’s “steadfast dedication to individual liberty and global democracy and the positive impact these values had upon our nation and our world.”
He often worked as a radio host, sometimes filling in on the talk radio host Michael Jackson’s show and had his own program, “The Michael Reagan Show.” In addition, he wrote many columns for various outlets, including Newsmax, the right-wing cable channel and site.

This is a few days old, but I’ve been holding it until I had enough obits to do a round-up: Diane Crump.

On Feb. 7, 1969, Crump became the first professional female jockey to compete at a track in the United States where betting was legal. A month later, she won the first of her 228 career victories, which brought her mounts earnings of nearly $1.3 million.
She won 24 races that year, even though her reception in the male-dominated world of horse racing remained mostly unenthusiastic. She went on to become the first female jockey to ride in the Triple Crown’s most prestigious race, the Kentucky Derby, on May 2, 1970.

And, finally, last and least: Aldrich Ames is burning in Hell. LawDog.

The son of an alcoholic C.I.A. officer, Mr. Ames failed upward through the agency ranks for 17 years until he attained a headquarters post of extraordinary sensitivity.

…

The K.G.B. took care of him — he was paid at least $2,705,000 — and it took care of its own turncoats. As many as 10 Soviet and Soviet-bloc spies were arrested, interrogated and executed for treason. One was imprisoned. At least two escaped, one step ahead of their pursuers. The network that had provided the United States with political, military, diplomatic and intelligence insights on Moscow was destroyed.

Posted in History, Horses, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 2, 2026.

Friday, January 2nd, 2026

Back on the train.

Philip Schreier, director of the NRA Museums, passed away on Monday.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Schreier, but by all accounts he was a swell guy.

Throughout his career, Phil was a trusted and respected voice within the firearms community. He became the public face of the NRA through countless television appearances and public engagements, always warmly received wherever he went. Phil was not only an ambassador for the NRA but also a devoted advocate for the Second Amendment.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, former senator from Colorado.

Irreverent, blunt and independent, the rough-hewed Mr. Campbell was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal who favored gun rights and abortion rights, billed himself as the champion of the average voter and refused to be bound by party lines. He switched allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1995.

…

From 1960 to 1964, Mr. Campbell studied Japanese and judo at a university in Japan. He won 48 of 50 tournament matches, earned a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1963 and joined the United States judo team at the 1964 Olympics. (He tore a ligament, lost his first match and retired from active competition, ranked fourth in the world.)

Isiah Whitlock Jr., actor. Other credits include “Cocaine Bear”, “Law and Order”, “L&O: Criminal Intent”, “L&O: SVU”, and “Lightyear”.

Cecilia Giménez. You probably don’t recognize the name, but you may recognize this:

The group called her “a great painting enthusiast” and acknowledged Mrs. Giménez’s efforts to restore the nearly century-old fresco of Jesus. “Because of the poor state of conservation, Cecilia, with the best intentions, decided to repaint over the work,” it said.
But when Mrs. Giménez’s handiwork came to light in August 2012, the authorities initially suspected that the church had suffered an act of vandalism. The delicate misery on the face of Christ en route to the crucifixion had been replaced by a misshapen head.

…

But her artistic mishap created an economic boon for Borja, a town of 5,000 inhabitants.
Tourists flocked to see her efforts. Less than three years later, more than 150,000 visitors from Japan, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere had made a trip to Borja, paying one euro, about $1.20, to view her work under a protective clear cover.
Local officials told The Times in 2014 that the tourism spike had stabilized the town’s restaurant industry and helped the area’s institutions. The nearby Museo de la Colegiata, which houses religious medieval art, experienced a rise in annual visits to 70,000, from 7,000. Vineyards in the region squabbled over the rights to put Mrs. Giménez’s Christ on their labels. In 2016, two Americans even staged an opera about the affair in the same church.

Louis V. Gerstner, former IBM CEO.

Posted in Art, Guns, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 28, 2025.

Sunday, December 28th, 2025

Brigitte Bardot. THR.

After making nearly 50 features, she dedicated her life to defending animal rights. Through her Fondation Brigitte Bardot, created in 1986, she took on such issues as seal hunting, poaching, the fur trade, bullfighting, the captivity of wild animals in zoos and circuses, conditions in slaughterhouses and the farming of horse meat.
“I gave my beauty and my youth to men,” she said. “I am going to give my wisdom and experience, the best of me, to animals.”
Bardot supported National Front candidates including Catherine Megret and Marine Le Pen and spoke out against the “Islamisation” of France. A 1996 interview in Le Figaro had her condemned for inciting racial hatred, while a paragraph in her book comparing homosexuals and pedophiles was widely criticized.

Few of Ms. Bardot’s movies were serious cinematic undertakings, and she later told a French newspaper that she considered “La Vérité,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated 1960 crime drama, the only good film she ever made.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 27, 2025.

Saturday, December 27th, 2025

Robert Lindsey, author and NYT reporter.

He ghostwrote autobiographies of Ronald Reagan and Marlon Brando. He also wrote A Gathering of Saints (about the Mormon forgery murders). He may be most famous for The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage (which won the Edgar for best fact crime in 1980).

He credited his inspiration to become a journalist to the radio soap opera “Front Page Farrell,” starring Richard Widmark, which captured his imagination when he was home sick from school in the fourth grade. In the fifth grade, he started a student newspaper at his parochial school. In the sixth, he received a red-penciled “A” on one of his compositions. He was hooked, he said.

“Front Page Farrell” on the Internet Archive.

“With a notebook and a great deal of curiosity, I traveled the world, top to bottom, from the Arctic Circle to the South Pole,” he wrote in his memoir. “I hung out with murderers, spies, a president, mobsters, generals, movie stars and scientists who helped shape our future. I watched history unfold and wrote about it.”
He added, “What could be more fun than being a reporter?”

Annette Dionne, last of the Dionne quintuplets. I don’t want to seem like I’m giving her, or the very sad story of the quints, short shrift. But I wrote about this back in August when Cécile Dionne passed away, and the obit also does a good job of recapping the story.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 23, 2025.

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2025

This is a couple of days old, but it got past me because the weekend was busy: May Britt.

She had a career as an actress, including the original “Mission: Impossible” and the 1959 “The Blue Angel”. She married Sammy Davis Jr. in 1960.

The couple planned their wedding for that October but ended up pushing it back to November. It took place in Hollywood; Frank Sinatra served as best man, and several other members of the Rat Pack were in attendance — including Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy’s sister Patricia. (Mr. Davis was a core member of the group, known for performing in Las Vegas together.)

There was a lot of backlash at the time, and the marriage pretty much cost Ms. Britt her career.

Chris Rea, musician. I wouldn’t say I was a big fan of his work, but back in the day when I listened to the radio, KGSR would play “Texas”. I thought that was a pretty swell song.

And it is Christmas, right?

Posted in Christmas, Music, Obits | 2 Comments »

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