Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: September 7, 2019.

Saturday, September 7th, 2019

Carol Lynley, actress.

The paper of record seems rather dismissive of her acting career post 1967 or thereabouts (“..she was never directly in the public eye again”) but she did a lot of guest shots on various 1970s TV: “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Kojack”, “Quincy M.E”, “Police Woman”, “Hawaii 5-0”, multiple appearances on “Fantasy Island”, “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, and the list goes on…

…and she was Kolchak’s girlfriend in “The Night Stalker”…

…and, yes, she did do a “Mannix” (“Voice In the Dark”).

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 6, 2019.

Friday, September 6th, 2019

Sharing the same riff with other folks, but: Robert Mugabe is burning in Hell.

Unemployment exceeded 80 percent. At one point, inflation ran at an almost incomprehensible 230 million percent: When a bank note with a face value of 10 trillion dollars was introduced in early 2009, it was worth only about $8 on the black market. Zimbabwe’s money became so worthless that it was effectively replaced by outside currencies, including the South African rand, the United States dollar and China’s yuan.
Mr. Mugabe morphed into a caricature of dictatorship: vain and capricious, encircled by the flashy spending of his second wife and other family members, who lived in luxury at home and went on shopping sprees and long annual vacations in the Far East. (That wife, the former Grace Marufu, had been his secretary and mistress, and Mr. Mugabe, despite a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, fathered two children with her while still married to his first wife, Sally Hayfron.)

…

Starting around 2000, Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants sent squads of young men to invade hundreds of white-owned farms and chase away their owners. The campaign took a huge toll.
Over two years, nearly all of the country’s white-owned land had been redistributed to about 300,000 black families, among them 50,000 aspiring black commercial farmers and many of Mr. Mugabe’s loyalists. By late 2002, only about 600 of the country’s 4,500 white farmers had kept parts of their land.
The violent agricultural revolution had come with a heavy price: The economy was collapsing as farmland fell into disuse and peasant farmers struggled to grow crops without fertilizer, irrigation, farm equipment, money or seeds. Food shortages, at first ascribed to drought, only worsened as farmers were forced to stop farming. When food aid arrived, people who had opposed Mr. Mugabe said government officials had denied them handouts to punish them.

Posted in History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 2, 2019.

Monday, September 2nd, 2019

For the historical record: Valerie “Rhoda” Harper.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 30, 2019.

Friday, August 30th, 2019

James R. Leavelle.

He was the man standing next to Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot Oswald.

Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Australian Aboriginal actress. She was perhaps most famous as the mother in “Rabbit Proof Fence“.

Official NYT obit for Jessi Combs.

Ms. Combs was a lifelong racing fan whose love of cars and the sport led her into television, with a short run of appearances on “MythBusters,” the popular science program, and continuing hosting roles on “Xtreme 4×4,” a show about off-roading, and “Overhaulin’,” a show about revamping cars.

Ms. Combs was killed on Tuesday while attempting to set a land speed record.

Posted in Cars, History, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 26, 2019.

Monday, August 26th, 2019

Gerard O’Neill, investigative reporter for the Boston Globe.

Mr. O’Neill, who spent 35 years at The Globe, was one of three original reporters on the paper’s Spotlight Team, the full-time investigative strike force that was modeled after the Insight Team of The Sunday Times of London.
Two years after its founding in 1970, Spotlight — with the 29-year-old Mr. O’Neill on the team — won a Pulitzer Prize for its first major investigation, which uncovered rampant corruption in Somerville, a Boston suburb.
Later, as chief of the unit, Mr. O’Neill would help report, write and edit investigations that swept numerous awards, landed multiple Massachusetts officials in jail and led to reforms.

One of his (and the team’s) major accomplishments was breaking the story that Whitey Bulger was a FBI informant, and that the FBI had been letting him get away with major crimes (including murder) in return for informing.

Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Lehr would go on to write three books together, including two about Mr. Bulger: “Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal” (2000), which was made into a 2015 movie starring Johnny Depp as Bulger, and “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss” (2013).

Black Mass, while dated, is one of the two books on Bulger that I recommend (the other being The Brothers Bulger). Black Mass also won the best fact crime Edgar Award in 2001.

I was less enthusiastic about Whitey, which kind of felt like a quickly written update and attempt to cash in on Bulger’s capture.

Posted in Law, Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 23, 2019.

Friday, August 23rd, 2019

NYT obit for David H. Koch, for the historical record. (Edited to add: Reason.)

Russ Conway. No, you’ve probably never heard of him, but I think he’s noteworthy.

Mr. Conway was a reporter for the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Massachusetts. He covered the Boston Bruins for the paper. And, while doing so, came up with evidence of serious – indeed, criminal – misconduct by the head of the NHL Players Union, Alan Eagleson.

Mr. Eagleson, he wrote, had, among many things, skimmed money from players’ disability payments; lent union funds to friends and associates at favorable rates; and billed the union for personal expenses, including a London apartment and Wimbledon tickets.
He also reported that Mr. Eagleson had promised that the N.H.L. players’ pension fund would profit from the Canada Cup — which was held five times between 1976 and 1991 between teams from Europe, the United States and Canada — but that little was left after subtracting questionable expenses.

His reporting was published as a series in the paper, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. It was later expanded into a book, Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey.

Even better, his reporting led to investigations in the US and Canada, and a 1994 Federal indictment on 32 charges. Mr. Eagleson pled guilty to three counts of mail fraud in 1998, and was ordered to make restitution to the union. He was also convicted on fraud charges in Canada, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. (He served six months.) In addition, Mr. Eagleson was disbarred and forced out of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

What Mr. Conway uncovered about Mr. Eagleson occasionally disgusted him. He recalled one player, Ed Kea, who suffered a brain injury when he was checked into the boards during a game in 1983 while he was with a minor league affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.
“Al Eagleson didn’t even have the common decency to go visit the family,” Mr. Conway told Maclean’s. “He wouldn’t aid them in the insurance process. He was gone. Crush up the cigarette pack, throw it out. Next!”

Posted in Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 22, 2019.

Thursday, August 22nd, 2019

Jack Perkins, NBC News reporter and former host of “Biography” on A&E.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 20, 2019.

Tuesday, August 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Cedric Benson.

Statement from APD.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 18, 2019.

Sunday, August 18th, 2019

Cedric Benson, former UT and NFL player, was reportedly killed in a motorcycle accident last night.

Benson, a running back who played for the Longhorns from 2001 to 2004, accumulated the second-most rushing yards in program history and topped 1,000 yards in each of his four seasons. He captured the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top running back in his senior season in 2004. The next year, the Chicago Bears took him No. 4 overall in the NFL draft. Benson went on to play eight seasons in the league and last played in 2012 with the Green Bay Packers.

He was 36. Reports are that a passenger on his motorcycle was also killed.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 17, 2019.

Saturday, August 17th, 2019

Quickly, because I’m busy again: Peter Fonda. THR.

Posted in Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 14, 2019.

Wednesday, August 14th, 2019

Dr. Carl A. Weiss Jr.

The name may ring a small bell for some of you. Others of you may be more familiar with his father…

…Dr. Carl A. Weiss, aka “The man who shot Huey Long”.

Maybe.

Carl Jr. would go on to learn a great deal about the senator and his father: that Long — who had seized near-dictatorial power to become what President Franklin D. Roosevelt branded as the most dangerous man in America — lingered 31 hours before he died of a single bullet wound, a victim, some said, of botched medical care by a patronage appointee at a Baton Rouge hospital; that his father — whose Tulane University yearbook had proclaimed that he was “bound to go out and make the world take notice” — died instantly, his body perforated with 61 bullet holes; and that his father — an antagonist of the Long regime but by most accounts an unlikely murderer — was just as rapidly convicted in the court of public opinion as the assassin.

The junior Dr. Weiss spent much of his life trying to prove that his father did not shoot Long. Some historians agree:

The counternarrative asserts that the doctor had only punched Long, that the bodyguards had overreacted and that Long was actually killed in the fusillade of their bullets. The guards were said to have then covered up their reckless response by pinning the death on Weiss.
“In his heart he knew the allegations weren’t true,” Carl III said of his father in a telephone interview. “The one-man, one-gun, one-bullet is not what occurred.”
Professor Richard D. White Jr., dean of the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University and the author of a more recent biography, “Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long” (2006), shares those doubts.
“As a historian I cannot say either way, but deep in my heart I do not believe Carl shot Huey, but instead a stray bodyguard bullet hit him,” Professor White, who had met with Dr. Weiss Jr., said in an email this week.

…

Dr. Weiss ultimately cooperated with James E. Starrs, a forensic scientist at George Washington University, who tracked down Carl Sr.’s revolver (it was not unusual for Baton Rouge doctors making late-night house calls to be armed) and a single spent bullet.
They were found in a safe deposit box belonging to the daughter of Louisiana’s former top police official. Dr. Weiss joined the State Police in successfully suing to review the records and test fire the gun.
The police concluded that the bullet — if it was, indeed, the one that had killed Long — had not come from Weiss’s revolver.
Long’s clothes were also examined, and here the tearing of the material and the residue left on it indicated that Long had been shot at point-blank range. That undercut at least one theory — that Long was killed by a ricocheting bullet fired by a bodyguard.

I want to note here, for the record, that the supposed Weiss gun was not a revolver, but an FN Model 1910 pistol. As a matter of fact, it was this one.

I don’t know what to think about Long and Weiss. I’m inclined more in the direction of T. Harry Williams (who was writing close enough to the event that he could interview some first-hand witnesses, and believed that Weiss shot Long) than I am towards some of the later historians. On the other hand, the whole thing is just such a mess of botched investigations and chain of custody questions (how did the Weiss gun and the bullet end up in that guy’s safety deposit box?) that I doubt we’ll ever know anything for sure.

Posted in Guns, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 13, 2019.

Tuesday, August 13th, 2019

Dorothy Olsen. She was 103 when she passed away on July 23rd.

You’ve probably never heard of her, but she was one of the WWII Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). The WASPs ferried military aircraft from manufacturing plants to points where they could then be flown overseas.

Transporting and testing the latest models, towing targets and transferring captured enemy planes, the WASPs collectively flew an estimated 60 million miles from 1942 to 1944. Thirty-eight died in accidents during training or on duty.
From her base in Long Beach, Calif., Mrs. Olsen flew 61 missions for the Sixth Ferry Group in nearly two dozen models, including P-38s, P-51s and B-17s. She flew them to West Coast airfields to be deployed in the Pacific, or to Newark to be deployed in Europe.

The WASPs were initially considered to be civil service employees and not military.

The WASPs were finally recognized as veterans eligible for benefits in 1977 under President Jimmy Carter. In 2010 they received as a group the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s two highest civilian awards.

According to the paper of record, Ms. Olsen’s death leaves 38 surviving WASPs.

Henri Belolo, co-founder (with Jacques Morali) of the Village People.

I love the caption on that first photo.

Posted in History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 9, 2019.

Friday, August 9th, 2019

Rosie Ruiz, historical footnote. She apparently died in early July, but her death was not widely reported until recently.

For the younger set: Ms. Ruiz “won” the 1980 Boston Marathon, with a “finishing time” of 2:31:56.

But suspicions about her victory arose immediately. Spotters had not seen her at checkpoints along the 26-mile course, and after the race she told a television interviewer that she had run only one other marathon, the 1979 New York City Marathon, and that she had finished that race in 2:56:33.

Eventually, it came out that Ms. Ruiz hadn’t actually finished the NYC Marathon:

New York City Marathon officials invalidated Ruiz’s time after reviewing videotape showing that Ruiz had not crossed the finish line in the time she had mistakenly been assigned by a volunteer, who thought Ruiz was an injured runner.
Days later, Ruiz’s victory in Boston was also nullified. Race organizers there based their decision on about 10,000 photographs taken along the last mile of the race as well as on information supplied by the news media and observers along the route. In addition, at least one witness recalled seeing Ruiz enter the course at Kenmore Square, about a mile from the finish line.

Jacqueline Gareau was declared the women’s winner. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) her time was 2:34:28, which was a record women’s time for the Boston Marathon.

Posted in History, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Also an obit watch.

Tuesday, August 6th, 2019

It has been really, really hard to find anything linkable on this, but Lawrence has a post up at his other blog:

Barry Hughart, noted fantasy writer. I’m not a big fantasy fan, but I’ve heard a lot of folks I trust (including Lawrence) rave about the Master Li and Number Ten Ox books. I do want to read them: I just haven’t been able to accumulate copies.

(Of course, if I were sufficiently motivated, Lame Excuse Books could probably take care of that.)

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Layers and layers of fact checkers.

Tuesday, August 6th, 2019

I noticed this over the weekend and pointed it out to a few people, but it’s still going on:

Posted in Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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