Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: April 11, 2019.

Thursday, April 11th, 2019

Ed Westcott passed away at the end of March. He was 97.

Mr. Westcott was the photographer at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project era. Note I said “the photographer”: Mr. Westcott was the only person authorized to take photos at Oak Ridge. (There were also photographers at Los Alamos and Hanford.)

Thousands of his negatives were stored at Oak Ridge, and then at the National Archives in Washington, before they were declassified years later.
He also developed aerial reconnaissance photos of the devastation wrought by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as armed guards waited outside his darkroom.

Kind of related: I got curious about the Cemestos houses, did some DuckDuckGoing, and found this piece from McSweeney’s. I know, but I actually thought this was pretty good: Anne Wheeler’s a charming writer, and I’d love to hit some nuclear tourism spots with her.

Posted in Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch part 2: April 9, 2019.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

Lt. Colonel Richard E. Cole (United States Air Force – Ret.)

He was 103.

Lieutenant (at the time) Cole was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot on the Tokyo raid. He was the last survivor of Doolittle’s Raiders.

As Mr. Cole remembered it: “The tune ‘Wabash Cannonball’ kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner, like he thought I was going batty.”

…

Doolittle, Lieutenant Cole and the other three crewmen of their plane bailed out in rain and fog soon after their bomber crossed the Chinese coast as darkness arrived. Lieutenant Cole landed in a pine tree atop a mountain and was unhurt except for a black eye. He made a hammock from his parachute and went to sleep. At dawn, he began walking, and late that day he made contact with Chinese guerrillas.
He was soon reunited with Doolittle, who had come down in a rice paddy, and their three fellow crewmen. The five joined up with other stranded airmen who had been rescued. The Chinese took them all on an arduous journey, much of it by riverboat, to an air strip, where they were picked up by a United States military transport plane and flown to Chungking, the headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese.

For the record:

Three of the 80 Doolittle raiders were killed in crash landings or while parachuting. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Three of them were executed, another died of disease and starvation in captivity, and four survived more than three years of solitary confinement and brutality.

Lt. Cole went on to fly transport planes over the Hump. He also served with the 1st Air Commando Group.

Lt. Cole’s page on doolittleraider.com which contains some great photos. Obit from MySanAntonio.com. I had no idea the gentleman lived in Comfort (about 90 minutes up the road from me). Cool story from the Express News in 2018.

Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando sounds like a fascinating book.

Rest in peace, soldier.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Sometimes there’s just nothing you can say.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

A while back, I noted the death of Kelly Catlin, Olympic cyclist.

There’s a follow up article in today’s NYT.

Catlin told her sister, Christine, that seeking therapy meant she was weak and that she would rather suffer.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

Posted in Cycling, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 9, 2019.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

Seymour Cassel, character actor.

As the obit notes, he did a lot of work with John Cassavetes and Wes Anderson. But his list of credits goes beyond that. He did a guest shot on “Convoy” (the TV series) and was in “Convoy” (the movie). He did several episodes of “12 O’Clock High” and “The F.B.I.”, was in two “Batman” episodes, guested on “Matlock”, and was even in one “ST:TNG” episode.

Never did a “Mannix”, though, as far as I can tell.

(Noted: “Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight”. Just read the summary.)

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

Obit watch: April 7, 2019.

Sunday, April 7th, 2019

Vonda N. McIntyre, noted SF writer, passed away on Monday, but I did not know about this until Lawrence mentioned it last night. The NYT obit is datelined Friday, but I’m thinking it must have been posted late in the day.

Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, for the historical record.

Ly Tong. He was a pilot with the South Vietnamese Air Force.

A man who never accepted defeat, Mr. Ly Tong considered it his personal mission to take back his country from the Communists, who have ruled it since winning the Vietnam War in 1975.

So, in 1992, he…

…hijacked a commercial airliner after takeoff from Bangkok, ordered the pilot to fly low over Ho Chi Minh City — known as Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, before the Communist victory — and dumped thousands of leaflets calling for a popular uprising.
He then strapped on a parachute and followed the leaflets down to certain capture. He was released six years later in an amnesty and returned to the United States, where he had become a citizen after the war.

That takes us to 1998. In 2000…

…Mr. Ly Tong burnished his anti-Communist credentials with a flight over Havana in a rented plane, scattering leaflets as he had in Vietnam. He was commended on his return by Cuban-Americans in Florida, who gave him a victory parade.

Later that year…

…Mr. Ly Tong made a second trip over Ho Chi Minh City, sending down a new cascade of leaflets, which he had signed “Global Alliance for the Total Uprising Against Communists.”

He spent another six years in a Thai prison for that. The paper of record states he was unarmed and nobody was hurt during either of his hijackings, which makes me wonder about the definition of “hijacking”. But I digress.

In his final and most bizarre act of defiance, in 2010 in California, Mr. Ly Tong assaulted a Vietnamese singer whom he deemed sympathetic to the government of Vietnam. Disguised as a woman, he walked to the edge of the stage, reached up as if to hand the singer a bouquet and squirted a liquid, which may have been pepper spray, in her face. He was sentenced on multiple charges to six months in jail and three years’ probation. He appeared at his trial in drag.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 4, 2019.

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

David Fechheimer, private investigator. Noted here because this is one of the better NYT obits for a not-so-famous person I’ve read in a while.

Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed, late night TV host in Cleveland during the 70s.

Sweed broke into Cleveland TV in 1971 on WKBF Channel 61. He wore a lab coat and was armed with an assortment of low-rent props, from Cheez Whiz to firecrackers to flying pierogis, kielbasa and slime. He quickly was syndicated in six other markets — Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
He got his start working as an assistant for another late-night TV legend, Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson. He received Anderson’s permission to appear as the Ghoul in 1971.

(Previously. Hattip: Lawrence.)

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

Obit watch: special 007 edition, April 1, 2019.

Monday, April 1st, 2019

By way of Lawrence: Tania Mallet, Tilly Masterson in “Goldfinger”.

Shane Rimmer has also passed away. He was in a whole bunch of stuff, including “The Spy Who Loved Me” and uncredited parts in “You Only Live Twice”, “Diamonds Are Forever”, “Live and Let Die”, and “Star Wars”. He was the B-52 copilot in “Dr. Strangelove” and Rusty in “Rollerball”.

He was perhaps most famous to some people as the voice of Scott Tracy on the “Thunderbirds” TV series.

Posted in Movies, Obits | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: March 30, 2019.

Saturday, March 30th, 2019

I’m no military aviation expert, but I’ve read a fair amount on the subject. Much to my chagrin, I had not heard of Commander Joe “Hoser” Satrapa (USN – ret.) until McThag linked to his obit.

What a guy. He was one of the leading advocates of fighters carrying guns, instead of relying on missiles. He was also famous as something of a “swashbuckling, authority-challenging maverick”. This obit is full of great stories and quotes:

While flying and fighting in his F-8E Crusader over North Vietnam, CDR. Satrapa was famous for the personal arsenal that he wore on his flying kit in the event he was shot down. According to anecdotes shared in social media by fellow squadron members, Satrapa reportedly carried “Two Mark 33 hand grenades, a Colt Python .357 revolver with 60 rounds of ammunition, a Smith & Wesson 9mm with non-NATO hollow-point ammunition and 3 spare magazines, a custom Randall survival knife and an additional throwing knife over his left shoulder.”

Among other highpoints:

  • He was drummed out of the Navy for “administrative deficiencies” in the early 1980’s, only to be reinstated by SecNav John Lehman and President Ronald Reagan in 1981…and retroactively promoted to commander.
  • Whereupon he was assigned as an instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School: “As a part of his training syllabus, some sources recounted that Joe “Hoser” Satrapa delivered his initial lecture as an adaptation of General George Patton’s famous flag speech.”
  • His call sign later changed from “Hoser” to “Toser”. I won’t spoil the story, but I will give a hint: “a pilot without a right thumb cannot fly a jet fighter”.
  • During one training flight, he “shot down” two Air Force F-15s…in one Navy F-14…twice…with his gun.
  • He nearly caused Japan to cancel their F-15 order.
  • After he left the Navy, he went on to fly fire suppression drops in California. One day, an aircraft above him dropped fire retardant on top of him, completely covering his windscreen. What did he do? Read the obit.

How have I never heard of this guy before? And thanks, McThag, for the heads-up.

Also among the dead:

Agnès Varda, French film maker. I’ve never seen anything of hers, though I think I have the Criterion “Cléo from 5 to 7” somewhere, and I remember Roger Ebert extravagantly praising “The Gleaners and I”.

Victoria Ruvolo. Her story is kind of interesting: she was driving home one night with a friend, from her niece’s recital, when a 18-year old man threw a frozen turkey through the windshield of her car:

The turkey crashed through Ms. Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing the bones in her cheeks and jaw, fracturing the socket of her left eye, causing her esophagus to cave in and leaving her with brain trauma.

…

Ms. Ruvolo required extensive reconstructive surgery to her face and months of physical and cognitive rehabilitation before she could return to work as a collection agency manager nine months later.

In spite of this, she forgave the young man, and lobbied for him to receive a light sentence. The prosecution wanted him to serve 25 years: thanks to Ms. Ruvolo’s advocacy, he served six months in prison and five years of probation.

After Ms. Ruvolo’s recovery, she spoke about empathy and forgiveness at schools and programs like Taste (Thinking Errors, Anger Management, Social Skills and Talking Empathy), which holds criminals accountable for their actions.
As part of his rehabilitation, [the turkey thrower – DB] also spoke to Taste, Robert Goldman, its founder, said by phone.
“[The turkey thrower – DB] has a job and is a productive member of society,” said Mr. Goldman, who collaborated with Ms. Ruvolo and Lisa Pulitzer on a book, “No Room for Vengeance …” (2011). “He did everything Victoria challenged him to do and spoke to kids about the mistakes he made.
“That’s her legacy: She’s an example of forgiveness in a vengeful world.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 29, 2019.

Friday, March 29th, 2019

I think this is a swell NYT obit for Michel Bacos. (Previously.)

His death was announced by Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, where Mr. Bacos lived.
“Michel bravely refused to surrender to anti-Semitism and barbarism and brought honor to France,” Mayor Estrosi said. “Michel was a hero.”

…

“There was no way we were going to leave — we were staying with the passengers to the end,” Mr. Bacos (pronounced bah-COSE) told the Israeli website Ynetnews.com in 2016. “This was a matter of conscience, professionalism and morality. As a former officer in the Free French Forces, I couldn’t imagine leaving behind not even a single passenger.”
As he recounted to the BBC that year, “I told my crew that we must stay until the end, because that was our tradition, so we cannot accept being freed. All my crew agreed without exception.”

…

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu tweeted this week that Mr. Bacos had “stayed with the hostages through all their hardships, until I.D.F. soldiers — led by my brother Yoni — freed him in a daring operation.”
“I bow my head in his memory,” he added, “and salute Michel’s bravery.”

(For those unfamiliar with the Entebbe raid: Yonatan Netanyahu was the leader of the assault force, and was killed during the attack.)

Returning to Israel in their military transport plane, the commandos fetched Mr. Bacos from the cabin. “Your place is not here,” he recalled a soldier telling him, “but in the cockpit.”

…

Michel joined the Free French Forces as a teenager during World War II and was stationed in Morocco as a naval aviation officer.
“I fought the Nazis,” he said. “I knew precisely what fascism was all about. The genocide is a horror that none of us had forgotten.”

…

Mr. Bacos allowed himself a two-weak break after the hijacking. But once back from vacation, he requested a specific destination for his first flight: Tel Aviv.

Awful lot of dust in the air this morning.

Edited to add 3/30:

Posted in Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 27, 2019.

Wednesday, March 27th, 2019

Larry Cohen, noted film director and writer.

I actually rented “Q” at one point when I was younger, and wouldn’t mind watching it again. As I recall, it was kind of silly, but I like Quetzalcoatls and Michael Moriarty.

I haven’t been able to find a reliable source for this, but Mike the Musicologist forwarded me a Wikipedia link: Michel Bacos apparently passed away yesterday. Mr. Bacos was the pilot of Air France 139 when it was hijacked on June 27, 1976. As you know, Bob, the plane eventually ended up in Uganda at the Entebbe Airport, and things proceeded from there.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2019.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2019

Richard Erdman, noted character actor. He was on “Community”, which I never watched. But before that, he seems to have done guest shots on many TV shows of the 1970s and 1960s (except “Mannix”). Like everyone else in Hollywood, he was also in “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, and played Hoffman in “Stalag 17”.

Al Silverman passed away on Sunday. He worked in publishing, spending 16 years with Book of the Month Club and later becoming an editor with Viking Books.

Before that, he was a freelance sportswriter and later editor in chief of “Sport” magazine. While he was editing “Sport”, he met and wrote about Gayle Sayers, who was recovering from a knee injury. Ultimately, Mr. Silverman and Mr. Sayers collaborated on Mr. Sayers’s autobiography, I Am Third. And, in turn, a chapter from that book became the basis for “Brian’s Song”.

“I don’t remember my father talking about his greatest projects, but in terms of royalties, it was the best,” Brian Silverman said by telephone.

Another great story:

When the running back Paul Hornung was celebrated for leading the Green Bay Packers to the 1961 National Football League championship, Sport awarded him a 1962 Corvette. Mr. Hornung soon after sold the car and got into a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service in United States Tax Court after he failed to disclose the full market value of the car as part of his gross income for 1962.
“My father testified to Hornung’s defense that he should not pay income tax on the car,” Brian Silverman said. His father argued that the car was an unsolicited reward for Mr. Hornung’s talents and thus should be tax-exempt — “the same as a Nobel Prize, because football was Hornung’s art and he performed it to an award-winning degree.” Mr. Hornung lost the case.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 19, 2019.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

Reason has a nice obit up for Dick Dale.

“…We’re like Johnny Appleseed, crossing the country and sowing the seeds of survival.”

Johnny Thompson, aka “The Great Tomsoni”,

…a pompous caricature of a magician. His act, full of deadpan humor and often performed with his wife, Pamela Hayes, as his indifferent assistant, left spectators laughing so much that they might not have fully appreciated that they were also seeing expertly executed tricks.

He was more than a magician, though: he was a consultant and advisor to other magicians (including Penn and Teller, who he worked extensively with) and an expert magic historian.

“Johnny had a profound way of taking an idea and creating an illusion that worked,” he said by email. “When I called him and asked, ‘How do I make a guarded car vanish from inside of a dealership?,’ without missing a beat he said, ‘We don’t, we vanish it from a tent outside, just like the vanishing elephant illusion,’ ” a reference to a classic trick performed by Houdini and others.
Mr. Jillette said that this knowledge of history had also come into play in a less visible role that Mr. Thompson filled: that of informal mediator when one magician thought another might be stealing material.
“If two people felt they were doing material that was too close, Johnny knew the provenance of everything,” Mr. Jillette said. “He could adjudicate that.”

You should read all the way to the end of this obit: there’s a story involving Mr. Jillette that I won’t spoil for you here.

Posted in Magic, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 18, 2019.

Monday, March 18th, 2019

Dick Dale. Guitar World.

I missed the surf guitar era – I was too young. But Mr. Dale was an interesting guy: one of the other online obits I’ve seen (and can’t find now) states he practiced martial arts for 30 years. Not only that, but he used his martial arts practice as a tool to deal with the pain he suffered from multiple chronic illnesses.

How about a musical interlude?

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 17, 2019.

Sunday, March 17th, 2019

Johnny “Lam” Jones, former UT football player and track star.

In his freshman year he ran in the same backfield as another Johnny Jones. To distinguish the two, Coach Darrell Royal gave one the nickname Lam, for Jones’s hometown, and the other the nickname Ham, because that Jones came from Hamlin, Tex.

He was an Olympic gold medalist in 1976 and a star football player for UT, but did not have an entirely successful pro career.

W. S. Merwin, noted poet. While I like me some poetry, and have heard of Merwin, I confess to not knowing his work very well. But:

In later years Mr. Merwin was equally known for his work as a conservationist — in particular for his painstaking restoration of depleted flora, including hundreds of species of palm, on the remote former pineapple plantation in Hawaii where he made his home. He had lived there, in blissful near-solitude, since the 1970s, refusing to answer the telephone.

Anyone who’s a fellow member of the Alexander Graham Bell Was a Meddling SOB Society is okay in my book.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 14, 2019.

Thursday, March 14th, 2019

This literally just in, hot off the virtual press: Birch Bayh, former Senator from Indiana. Possibly more later.

Going out to great and good friend of the blog Borepatch: Hal Blaine, noted session drummer.

Mr. Blaine was part of a loosely affiliated group of session musicians who in the early 1960s began dominating rock ’n’ roll recording in Los Angeles. Along with guitarists like Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, bassists like Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and keyboardists like Leon Russell and Don Randi, Mr. Blaine played on thousands of recordings through the mid-1970s.
He famously said he gave the group its name, the Wrecking Crew, although Ms. Kaye has insisted that he did not start using that term until years after the musicians had stopped working together.

He substituted for Dennis Wilson on many of the Beach Boys studio recordings:

Asked if Mr. Wilson was angry that he was replaced in the studio, Mr. Blaine said he was not.
“He was thrilled,” he said, “because while I was making Beach Boy records, he was out surfing or riding his motorcycle. During the day, when I was making $35 or $40, that night he was making $35,000” performing live.
Mr. Blaine’s other studio credits include Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Ms. Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s “A Taste of Honey.”

The NYT has an interesting way of presenting the obit for former UT president Bill Powers:

Francesco Cali passed away last night. He was shot six time outside his home, and (according to one report Lawrence sent me) run over by a pickup truck.

Mr. Cali was the current reputed boss of the Gambino family, John Gotti’s old outfit.

The assassination of Mr. Cali came on the same day that Joseph Cammarano Jr., the reputed acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, was acquitted at trial, and about a week after Carmine J. Persico, a longtime boss of the Colombo crime family, died in prison at age 85.

NYT on the Cammarano acquittal. Previously on Carmine “The Snake” Persico.

Edda Goering, Herman’s daughter, passed away. She was 80.

Posted in History, Law, Music, Nazis, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

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