Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: June 7, 2018.

Thursday, June 7th, 2018

Jerry Maren, one of the Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz” and the last surviving little person from that group. (According to the NYT, some young girls were also hired to fill out the Munchkin ranks, and some of them are still alive.)

With a friend and fellow actor, Billy Barty, Mr. Maren in 1957 founded Little People of America, a nonprofit advocacy organization that says it has roughly 6,000 members.
“He took it as his responsibility to show, through a strong sense of self and speaking out and personal example, that little people are just people,” Mr. Cox said. “All of the other Munchkins had a great deal of respect for Jerry.”

Mel Weinberg, of ABSCAM fame.

A convicted swindler with a Runyonesque persona, Mr. Weinberg, facing prison for fraud, traded his criminal savvy for probation and became a principal orchestrator and actor in the two-year operation code-named Abscam. The operation videotaped politicians and others taking bribes from federal agents posing as oil-rich Arabs seeking favors on immigration problems and investment projects.

…

With chartered jets, limousines and parties to lend verisimilitude, the government-run scam led to convictions and prison terms for Senator Harrison A. Williams, a New Jersey Democrat, as well as the mayor of Camden, N.J., and 17 others. It inspired a revision of guidelines in federal undercover cases and legal and ethical debates over whether the defendants had been unlawfully entrapped.

Posted in FBI, Law, Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 5, 2018.

Tuesday, June 5th, 2018

Prominent fashion designer Kate Spade has passed away at 55.

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

Robert Mandan, television actor perhaps most famous as “Chester Tate” on “Soap”.

Barbara Kafka, noted cookbook author. When I was younger, I cooked a lot of meals out of her Microwave Gourmet.

For the record, the paper of same still has not published an obit for Gardner Dozois.

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

Obit watch: May 31, 2018.

Thursday, May 31st, 2018

Josh Greenfeld, writer.

Mr. Greenfeld shared an Oscar nomination with Paul Mazursky for the screenplay of “Harry and Tonto”. (They lost to “Chinatown”. Man, 1974 was a heck of a year.) He also wrote plays, reviews, and features.

But he was most famous for three books about his severely autistic son: A Child Called Noah, A Place for Noah, and A Client Called Noah.

Karl Greenfeld, who continued telling Noah’s story in his own book, “Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir” (2009), said his brother, now 51, is in an assisted living home in Lawndale, Calif. “My parents went to see him every weekend until my father’s condition deteriorated over the last three years,” he said.

Philly.com obit for Gardner Dozois. The paper of record has not seen fit to publish an obit yet.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 28, 2018.

Monday, May 28th, 2018

For the historical record: Alan Bean. NYT. NASA.

“At one-sixth gravity in that suit, you have to move in a different way,” he said. “One of the paintings that I did was called ‘Tip Toeing on The Ocean of Storms.’ And it shows that I’m up on my tip toes as I’m moving around. And we did that a lot. On Earth, I weighed 150 pounds; my suit and backpack weighed another 150. 300 pounds. Up there, I weighed only 50. So I could prance around on my toes. It was quite easy to do. And if you remember back to some of the television we saw, Buzz and Neil on the Moon with Apollo 11. Black and white. They were bouncing around a lot. They were really bouncing on their tip toes. Quite fun to do. Someday maybe be a great place for a vacation.”

Gardner Dozois, one of the great figures of science fiction, passed away yesterday. Michael Swanwick. Lawrence.

He was a fantastic writer: “Dinner Party”, “A Special Kind of Morning”, “Chains of the Sea”, “The Peacemaker”, “Flash Point”, “Solace”.

He didn’t write as much as I would have liked, because he became an editor. Well, not just an editor, but one of the greatest editors science fiction ever saw. He edited Asimov’s Science Fiction for 20 years, “… winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times in 17 years from 1988 to his retirement from Asimov’s in 2004.” He also edited thirty four volumes of the massive Year’s Best Science Fiction collection: “Stories selected by Gardner Dozois for the annual best-of-year volumes have won, as of December 2015, 44 Hugos, 41 Nebulas, 32 Locus, 10 World Fantasy and 18 Sturgeon Awards.”

He was also a personal friend of mine. I wrote about this a little, a long time ago, and I’m still more than a little raw over Gardner’s death. During the 90s, we spent a lot of time online in the old Delphi system. There was a regular Wednesday night book-ish SF chat. And then Gardner and his life partner Susan Casper and some other folks (not named here for their privacy) and I had a smaller, private chat at 11:59 on Friday night, where we commiserated over each other’s struggles and celebrated our successes. We were all a lot younger then, and could stay up until 2 or 3 AM solving the problems of the world.

Gardner was also a veteran, though he didn’t see combat. I would retell the safety column story here, but I can’t do it justice: maybe someone else can. I will say that one of my enduring memories of Gardner is “…OR YOU WILL DIE!”

The ending of “A Special Kind of Morning” has always resonated with me, ever since I first read it.

So, empathy’s the thing that binds life together, it’s the flame we share against fear. Warmth’s the only answer to the old cold questions.
So I went through life, boy; made mistakes, did a lot of things, got kicked around a lot more, loved a little, and ended up on Kos, waiting for evening.
But night’s a relative thing. It always ends. It does; because even if you’re not around to watch it, the sun always comes up, and someone’ll be there to see.
It’s a fine, beautiful morning.
It’s always a beautiful morning somewhere, even on the day you die.
You’re young—that doesn’t comfort you yet.
But you’ll learn.

It was a beautiful morning yesterday, Gardner.

This is not quite an obit, but seems fitting: in memory of PFC Joshua Fleming.

Posted in Books, Geek, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 23, 2018.

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018

Philip Roth, noted American novelist.

I wish I had more to say about this, but: I just found out about his death, I’ve never read a Roth novel, and I don’t much like liver.

Clint Walker, actor. He was the star of “Cheyenne”, and appeared in “The Dirty Dozen” (among other credits).

As shooting of the show’s first season began, Mr. Walker confessed to the crew that he did not have a great deal of experience on horseback. He later recalled the response: “You’ll either be a good rider, or a dead one.”

Robert Indiana, visual artist, passed away on Saturday. He was most famous for his rendering of “L-O-V-E”:

I’m not sure I ordinarily would have noted this, but:

Mr. Indiana believed the piracy of the image harmed his reputation in the New York art world, and he retreated to Maine in 1978.

More:

Mr. Indiana, whose career was made, and nearly consumed, by his creation of the sculpture “LOVE,” had sought refuge here four decades ago, an exile from a New York art world he had come to resent, and settled into a rambling Victorian lodge hall overlooking Penobscot Bay, where he was, more or less, left alone to create his art.

He had become increasingly reclusive over the years, and his friends and associates wondered why. Turns out that, on Friday, the day before Mr. Indiana died:

…a company that says it has long held the rights to several of Mr. Indiana’s best-known works proposed an answer, arguing in court papers that the caretaker and a New York art publisher had tucked the artist away while they churned out unauthorized or adulterated versions of his work.

“They have isolated Indiana from his friends and supporters, forged some of Indiana’s most recognizable works, exhibited the fraudulent works in museums, and sold the fraudulent works to unsuspecting collectors,” said the lawsuit filed last week by Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

They filed the lawsuit on Friday. Mr. Indiana’s death was announced on Saturday. Very interesting.

Posted in Art, Books, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 22, 2018.

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018

Murray Newman, over at Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, has a nice tribute up to Judge Frank Price, who passed away on Sunday.

Judge Price was not someone I knew, but I wish I had known him: he sounds like a good and genuinely fun guy.

…he was among the greatest practitioners of sleight of hand and close-up magic, performing routinely as a professional magician at Magic Island and many other venues. Training his hands to betray the closest scrutiny took the kind of discipline that was his forte. He took immense pride in the craft of magic and considered it a noble art, his “other” profession.

(Oddly enough, I was just refreshing my memory of the “Blood and Money” story Sunday night: I had no idea that Judge Price had died until I saw Mr. Newman’s post yesterday.)

Posted in Law, Magic, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2018.

Monday, May 21st, 2018

NYT obit for Joseph Campanella.

Billy Cannon, running back for the Houston Oilers. Noted here for “compare and contrast” reasons:

HouChron obit by John McClain. Note that this obit discusses his legal troubles in one two sentence paragraph, and that close to the bottom of the article.

NYT obit. Note that this obit basically headlines and leads off with his legal troubles, and devotes the better part of six paragraphs to them and the fallout from his conviction.

Posted in 1970s, Media, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2018.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

Joseph Campanella, noted actor. He was in everything: most notably, he was Joe Mannix’s boss at Intertect during the first season of “Mannix”. He was also one of the lawyers in “The Lawyers” portion of “The Bold Ones”, appeared several times on “Mama’s Family”, and…well, if you’ve heard of it, he was on it at some point.

Glenn Branca, avant-garde composer.

Mr. Branca’s compositions often used massed amplified guitars of various kinds — soprano, alto, tenor and bass — to give his sound the same breadth as that of an orchestra.
Many of his works are meant to be performed at high volumes, partly so that the overtones of his amplified guitars would linger and pile up, creating a phantom layer of harmony beyond what the musicians were playing, and partly as a purely tactile element, meant to both envelop and physically shake his listeners.

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

Obit watch: May 16, 2018.

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

Tom Wolfe roundup: NYT.

Young Tom was educated at a private boys’ school in Richmond. He graduated cum laude from Washington and Lee University in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in English and enough skill as a pitcher to earn a tryout with the New York Giants. He did not make the cut.

Quoted for the benefit of the Washington and Lee graduates in my audience. Wolfe was apparently quite the mover and shaker at W&L:

Upon graduation in 1947, he turned down admission to Princeton University to attend Washington and Lee University. At Washington and Lee, Wolfe was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He majored in English, was sports editor of the college newspaper, and helped found a literary magazine, Shenandoah, giving him opportunities to practice his writing both inside and outside the classroom.

He enrolled at Yale University in the American studies program and received his Ph.D. in 1957.

As for his remarkable attire, he called it “a harmless form of aggression.”
“I found early in the game that for me there’s no use trying to blend in,” he told The Paris Review. “I might as well be the village information-gatherer, the man from Mars who simply wants to know. Fortunately the world is full of people with information-compulsion who want to tell you their stories. They want to tell you things that you don’t know.”

NYT appreciation. NYT appreciation of his style:

Whether thrift or canniness inspired Mr. Wolfe to persist in wearing the suit into the following season, the effect was instantaneous, as he once said, “annoying people enormously.’’ Just by wearing white after Labor Day, he became the talk of any room he entered, and getting dressed each morning evolved for him into “a harmless form of assault.’’

WP.

He entered the world of stock-car driver Junior Johnson — the title figure of a 20,000-word Esquire article, “The Last American Hero” — so completely that he described the chickens walking across Johnson’s yard in Ingle Hollow, N.C.

Lawrence is a huge fan of this essay, especially for Wolfe’s observation that in Johnson’s part of the country, they grew courage like it was a natural resource. I’d happily link to it, but Esquire wants you to pay a subscription fee to access their archive, and I refuse to give those sumitches any money.

LAT:

“He had this kind of cynicism about liberalism,” said writer and friend Ann Louise Bardach. “If you look at what upset Tom, it was the card-carrying, raving, bring-down-the-barricade liberalism, but more than that, he was contrarian and a cynic in the sense that every great reporter is.”
He would later attend a state dinner at the White House during the Reagan administration, support President George W. Bush and complain against having to pay too much income tax. Walking the crowded streets of New York, Wolfe would wear a American flag lapel pin that he likened to “holding up a cross to werewolves.”

Borepatch sent over a nice note, and made a similar observation:

…my thoughts are that Wolfe and Reagan are inextricably linked. Political Correctness would not have allowed Bonfires to be published post-Reagan.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Bonfire of the obituaries.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2018

I’ll wait until tomorrow to post the Tom Wolfe obits. I think it’s better to give these things a chance to shake out, at least overnight. And I expect some thoughtful retrospectives and corrections to the initial press coverage.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch (and other things): May 15, 2018.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2018

I decided to put the Margo Kidder obits here: NYT. WP.

Adam Parfrey, publisher of weird stuff under the Amok Press and Feral House imprints.

My feelings about baseball in general, and the New York Yankees specifically, are well known. But this is a nice story:

For the past three years, the Yankees have been quietly sending flowers to the families and police departments of slain law enforcement officers across the country.

…

While the flowers usually arrive without warning or explanation beyond the message on the card, the gesture can elicit strong emotions. In Fargo, when Officer Jason Moszer was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2016, his 11-year-old stepson, Dillan Dahl, was devastated. When the flowers from the Yankees arrived, Dillan took them to his room and watered them, trying to keep them alive for as long as possible, said his father, Tim Dahl.
“It was the first time he smiled in days,” Dahl said.

This is a good story, too, and one I didn’t have time to blog on Sunday:

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 14, 2018.

Monday, May 14th, 2018

This is a placeholder for Margot Kidder obits: once they start going up, I’ll add them here.

In the meantime:

Chuck Knox, noted NFL coach.

Ernest Medina, one of the central figures in the My Lai massacre.

Captain Medina went on trial in September 1971, defended by the prominent criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey, as well as a military lawyer. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter of at least 100 civilians, the murder of a woman and two counts of assault against a prisoner by firing twice over his head to frighten him the night after the massacre.
The defense contended that Captain Medina was unaware of large-scale killings of defenseless civilians until they had already occurred. The prosecution argued that the defense account was not credible since Captain Medina had been in continual radio contact with his platoons. The court-martial panel of five combat officers returned not guilty verdicts on all counts after an hour’s deliberation.

Doreen Simmons.

“Who?”

She was born in England, studied theology and classics at the University of Cambridge, and taught school in Singapore.

She was best known as an English-language sumo commentator for NHK from 1992 until March of this year.

“At the beginning, there were three play-by-play men who had experience of broadcasting games like baseball, but their knowledge of basic sumo was newly acquired and pretty limited,” she said in an interview last year with The Daily Express, a British newspaper. “They wanted the color provided by commentators like me who were hired because we were already knowledgeable about some aspect of sumo.”

Posted in History, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, Sumo, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 9, 2018.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

NYT obit for James Avery.

Anne V. Coates, noted film editor. She was nominated five times for Oscars, and won for “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Her other Oscar nominations were for “Becket” (1964), directed by Peter Glenville; “The Elephant Man” (1980), by David Lynch; “In the Line of Fire” (1993), by Wolfgang Petersen; and “Out of Sight” (1998), by Steven Soderbergh.

George Deukmejian, former governor of California.

Posted in California Über Alles, Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 2, 2018.

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2018

Missed this one until it showed up on the NYT obits Twitter: noted film director Michael Anderson.

Among his credits: “Logan’s Run“, “Around the World in 80 Days“, “The Dam Busters“, and “The Quiller Memorandum“.

We’ve talked about watching “The Dam Busters”, but it won’t be this weekend even if we had the DVD, and that DVD is a touch pricey. I wouldn’t mind watching “Quiller” either, and I’ve never actually seen “Logan’s Run”.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 1, 2018.

Tuesday, May 1st, 2018

Noted Texas jeweler James Avery.

I lack the proper chromosomes to be able to fully appreciate James Avery jewelry, though that hasn’t stopped me from purchasing some as gifts for other people. Not too terribly long ago, a bunch of us went to the James Avery world headquarters and museum (which is up near Kerrville), and I was kind of impressed and fascinated by the process and the craftsmanship involved. It isn’t the sort of thing I can (or want to) do myself, but like TJIC’s farm book, it’s interesting to watch.

Richard L. Collins, noted aviation writer. My dad was a private pilot, and had a subscription to Flying magazine as far back as I can remember. I grew up reading Collins and Gordon Baxter and the other writers in that stable.

(Hattip: RoadRich.)

Posted in Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

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