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Obit watch: May 28, 2024.

Tuesday, May 28th, 2024

I didn’t want to post an obit watch yesterday because I thought it would distract from Memorial Day. So catching up…

Bill Walton. ESPN. Boston Globe (archived).

Richard “It’s a Small World” Sherman. NYT (archived).

Don Perlin, comic artist. (“Moon Knight”)

Adele Faber, author. I’m not a parent, but I have heard a lot of raves for How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Al Ruddy. He produced a couple of movies, and co-created “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.

Not exactly an obit, but Lee Goldberg wrote a nice tribute to Roger Corman.

He was cheap, but he paid us on time, treated us well and was a wonderful, creative collaborator.

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

Ángel of the morning…

Tuesday, May 28th, 2024

Ángel Hernández has retired as a baseball umpire “effective immediately”. ESPN.

This seems more like one of those “retirefirings”:

Major League Baseball and the Hernández were negotiating a financial settlement over the past two weeks and came to an agreement during the holiday weekend, according to USA Today.

I do so love a good classical reference:

“I have decided that I want to spend more time with my family. Needless to say, there have been many positive changes in the game of baseball since I first entered the profession. This includes the expansion and promotion of minorities. I am proud that I was able to be an active participant in that goal while being a Major League umpire.”

…

Hernández has been a lightning rod for controversy and is universally viewed as the worst umpire in the game by players, managers and fans of the sport.
The poor reputation he has dates back almost two decades with player polls by Sports Illustrated in 2006 and 2011 ranking him as the third-worst umpire and an ESPN poll in 2010 putting 22 percent of the respondents as viewing Hernández as the worst in MLB.
Hernández umped just 10 games during the 2023 season because of a back injury, but he got 161 calls wrong, according to Umpire Auditor.

He sued MLB in 2017 alleging racial discrimination, but the case was thrown out of court.

And since I have the song stuck in your head now…

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 24, 2024.

Friday, May 24th, 2024

Kabosu, the Shiba Inu who became a symbol of Dogecoin.

Hatitp to RoadRich, whose eulogy I will borrow: “Much sad. Very respect. No bite.”

Bob McCreadie. This is kind of a weird one, but actually not that weird by NYT standards. He was a prominent dirt track racer. Dirt track racing is apparently a big deal in parts of the East Coast, but not so much in NYC. The slightly surprising thing to me is that the paper of record treats him and his career with respect:

McCreadie was dirt racing’s perfect Everyman: Scrawny, bespectacled, with a bushy beard, he chain-smoked, cursed vigorously and hauled his racecars with his own pickup truck instead of the fancy trailers that many of his contemporaries used.
In northern New York, where he lived, the news media covered him with roughly the same exuberance with which New York City newspapers covered Babe Ruth in his heyday. The Post-Standard of Syracuse mentioned him more than 1,200 times in his career.
“He looked like a country bumpkin,” Ron Hedger, a longtime writer for Speed Sport Insider, said in a phone interview. “The fans identified with him, and they really loved him. There was always a mob of people waiting in line for an autograph.”

…

He started racing in 1971 and won his first race four years later. He then began dominating the circuit. In 1986, he won the Miller American 200 at the New York State Fairgrounds — the Super Bowl of dirt racing. His best year was 1994, when he won 47 of 93 races.

…

In his best year, McCreadie won somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 in race prizes. But his aggressive racing style had an occupational hazard: dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of crashes.
“You’re looking at someone who’s run thousands of races,” he told The Post-Standard in 2006. “If you tried to do percentage-wise out of the total — maybe 5 percent.”

This just in: Caleb Carr, author. You’ve probably at least heard of The Alienist:

Mr. Carr had first pitched the book as nonfiction; it wasn’t, but it read that way because of the exhaustive research he did into the period. He rendered the dank horrors of Manhattan’s tenement life, its sadistic gangs and the seedy brothels that were peddling children, as well as the city’s lush hubs of power, like Delmonico’s restaurant. And he peopled his novel with historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt, who was New York’s reforming police commissioner before his years in the White House. Even Jacob Riis had a cameo.

He was also a prominent military historian. And he was horribly abused as a young boy by his father, the Beat author Lucien Carr.

“There’s no question that I have a lifelong fascination with violence,” Caleb Carr told Stephen Dubner of New York magazine in 1994, just before “The Alienist” was published, explaining not just the engine for the book but why he was drawn to military history. “Part of it was a desire to find violence that was, in the first place, directed toward some purposeful end, and second, governed by a definable ethical code. And I think it’s fairly obvious why I would want to do that.”

Morgan Spurlock, of “Super Size Me” fame. NYT (archived) which I prefer:

But the film also came in for subsequent criticism. Some people pointed out that Mr. Spurlock refused to release the daily logs tracking his food intake. Health researchers were unable to replicate his results in controlled studies.
And in 2017, he admitted that he had not been sober for more than a week at a time in 30 years — meaning that, in addition to his “McDonald’s only” diet, he was drinking, a fact that he concealed from his doctors and the audience, and that most likely skewed his results.
The admission came in a statement in which he also revealed multiple incidents of sexual misconduct, including an encounter in college that he described as rape, as well as repeated infidelity and the sexual harassment of an assistant at his production company, Warrior Poets.

Posted in Books, Cars, Geek, Mammals, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

The time for action is over. Now is the time for senseless bickering.

Thursday, May 23rd, 2024

J.B. Bickerstaff out as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

170-159 regular season, 6-11 in the playoffs. Cleveland’s made the playoffs two years in a row and seems to be improving, but they got knocked out by the Celtics in the second round this season.

ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2024.

Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

I made it home in one piece, but I’m still catching up. Lawrence sent over a handful of obits:

Jim Otto, center for the Oakland Raiders.

Otto was an original Raider. He played for the team during its American Football League days, from 1960 to 1969, and then in the National Football League from 1970-74, following the merger of the two leagues. He started 210 consecutive games, was voted to the A.F.L. all-star team in each of its 10 seasons, and helped the Raiders win seven division championships. In 1980, the first year he was eligible, he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

…

…Otto offered a list of injuries that seemed more appropriate for a whole battalion in an army than for a single man. There were about 30 concussions, about 25 broken noses, a broken jaw, teeth kicked out, a detached retina, two cauliflower ears from getting kicked in the side of the head, several broken ribs, torn muscles, groin pulls, sprained ankles, a detached and torn diaphragm, two broken kneecaps, 150 facial stitches and arthritis in virtually all his joints. He once experienced amnesia so severe, he said, that he looked at his wife and thought, Who is she?

Gloria Stroock, actress. Other credits include “Death Car on the Freeway”, “Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy”, and “The Day of the Locust”.

Barbra Fuller, actress. IMDB.

Dolores Rosedale, also known as “Roxanne”, from the original “Beat the Clock”. IMDB.

Ivan Boesky, inside trader.

An inspiration for the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street” and its sequel, Mr. Boesky made a fortune betting on stock tips, often passed to him illegally in exchange for suitcases of cash. His guilty plea to insider trading in November 1986 and his $100 million penalty, a record at the time, sent shock waves through Wall Street and set off a cascade of events that marked the end of a decade of frenzied takeover activity and the celebration of conspicuous wealth.
As federal investigators closed in on Mr. Boesky, he agreed to cooperate, providing information that led to the downfall of the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert and its junk bond king, Michael Milken.

Posted in Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Friday, May 10th, 2024

Frank Vogel out as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.

49-33 in his one and only season with the team.

The Suns will now have a third different head coach in three seasons. This is after Vogel said he had “full support” from Suns team owner Mat Ishbia going into Game 4 against the T-Wolves they lost at home to end the season.

Previously. ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 8, 2024.

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

Wow. Busy.

Susan Buckner, actress. We may have to add “Deadly Blessing” to the movie list. Other credits include “B.J. and the Bear”, “Switch”, and “Police Academy 6: City Under Siege”.

Judy Devlin Hashman, badminton champion.

Before badminton established a world championship or joined the Olympics, the All England Open Badminton Championships was the sport’s pinnacle. Hashman won the women’s singles title in that event for the first time in 1954 at age 18. Then she added her record-setting nine more, the last in 1967.
She also won seven women’s doubles titles, six of them with her sister Susan Devlin, later known as Susan Peard.

Ian Gelder, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Father Brown”, and “Rumpole of the Bailey”.

The paper of record finally ran an obit for Dick Rutan.

Steve Albini. NYT (archived).

Milton Diamond, who the NYT describes as a “sexologist and advocate for intersex babies”.

I probably would have skipped this one for notability, but the obit starts off with an account of the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, at which Dr. Diamond got into a confrontation with Dr. John Money. Dr. Money was an advocate of “genital correction” surgery, while Dr. Diamond advocated leaving them alone.

Dr. Money rushed over to Dr. Diamond, getting in his face, furiously insisting he was right.
Dr. Diamond only replied, “The data is not there.”
At one point, eyewitnesses reported that Dr. Money slugged Dr. Diamond, though Dr. Diamond later said he didn’t remember it.

Turns out Dr. Diamond may have been right, and Dr. Money was (at best) a crank and possibly worse.

Since the 1990s, Money’s work and research has been subject to significant academic and public scrutiny. A 1997 academic study criticized Money’s work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer. Money allegedly coerced David and his brother Brian to perform sexual rehearsal with each other, which Money then photographed. David Reimer lived a troubled life, ending with his suicide at 38; his brother died of an overdose at age 36.

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

All right, give me a Hamm on five, hold the Mayo.

Friday, May 3rd, 2024

Darvin Ham out as head coach of the Lakers.

The Lakers went 47-35 this season, the eighth-best record in the West. They won their play-in tournament game and advanced to face the Nuggets, who they again lost to in a tightly contested five-game series.

Why can’t LeBron James make change for a dollar?

Because he doesn’t have a 4th quarter.

Ham, who had two years remaining on his contract, went 90-74 (.549) during the regular season and 9-12 (.429) in the postseason — which does not include his two play-in tournament wins — since being hired to replace Frank Vogel in 2022. He also guided the Lakers to the inaugural in-season tournament title in Las Vegas in December.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2024.

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024

Playing catch-up from the past few days:

Terry Anderson, journalist who was kidnapped and held for six years by Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.
“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”
He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Roman Gabriel, quarterback for the Rams and Eagles.

He was voted the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player when he led the league in touchdown passes, with 24, in a 14-game season with the 1969 Rams.
He was also named the comeback player of the year by pro football writers in 1973, his first season with the Eagles. Coming off knee problems and a sore arm, he led the N.F.L. in touchdown passes (23), completions (270) and passing yardage (3,219) that season.
He played in four Pro Bowl games, three with the Rams in the late 1960s and another with the Eagles in 1973. But he reached the postseason only twice, and his Rams were eliminated in the first round both times.

Terry Carter, actor. This is buried a bit in the article, but he was McCloud’s partner and played “Colonel Tigh” on the original “Battlestar Galactica”.

Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Search”…

…and “Mannix” (“Medal For a Hero”, season 3, episode 14).

And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Frederick Celani, serial con man. He conned people into thinking he was going to build a package delivery hub in Springfield (Illinois), conned inmates into giving him money to have their convictions overturned (he wasn’t a lawyer), and ran various real estate cons.

Fred Neulander. You may recall that name, as his trial was a brief sensation back in the 1990s.

The rabbi and his wife, Carol Neulander, 52, were well-known in the community through both the shul and Classic Cakes, the popular bakery Carol co-founded, CNN reported.
The mother of 3 had just returned from the bakery when she bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the couple’s Cherry Hill home on the evening of Nov. 1, 1994, the outlet said.

…

Neulander was indicted for the murder in 1999, but the case did not come together until the following year, when private investigator Len Jenoff told police that the rabbi paid him and another man, Paul Daniels, $30,000 to kill his wife.
At trial in 2001, prosecutors argued that the rabbi wanted to get rid of Carol to continue his two-year affair with Philadelphia radio host Elaine Soncini.
Soncini, who was Catholic, had even supposedly converted to Judaism to be with the rabbi, whom she met when he performed funeral rites for her late husband.

…

When the first trial ended in a hung jury, the 2002 retrial was moved from Camden County to Monmouth County to downplay the local scrutiny.
Following the retrial, Neulander was convicted of Carol’s murder. He narrowly avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
Soncini testified against Neulander at both trials, as did two of his three children.

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

Firings watch.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

This kind of stretches the definition of “firing” just a little bit, but I claim noteworthiness.

Jontay Porter, forward for the Toronto Raptors, has been banned from the NBA for life.

The NBA said that Porter provided confidential information to bettors, limited his own participation in games for gambling purposes and bet on NBA games.
“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter’s blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
“While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players. Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game,” Silver said.

…

Porter, the league said, gave a bettor information about his own health status before Toronto’s game on March 20. The league said another individual, known to be an NBA bettor, placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would not hit the numbers set for him in parlays through an online sportsbook. That bet would have won $1.1 million.
Porter took himself out of that game after only a few minutes, claiming illness, with none of his stats meeting the totals set in the parlay. The bet was frozen and not paid out, and the NBA started an investigation.
The NBA’s investigation found the Porter placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using an associate’s account, with the bets ranging from $15 to $22,000, totaling $54,094. The NBA said the total payout from those bets was $76,059, a net winnings of $21,965. None of Porter’s bets involved games in which he played. Three of his bets were multigame parlays that included one Raptors contest — and Porter bet that the Raptors would lose. All three bets lost, the NBA said.

“List of people banned or suspended by the NBA” from Wikipedia.

As critical as I’ve been of Gregg Easterbrook’s “pro-topless, anti-gambling” trope, I find myself thinking he’s right: the growth of sports betting has already had a negative impact on major league sports. And I think it is likely to just get worse.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 17, 2024.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

Man, it has been a rough few days for baseball.

Whitey Herzog.

Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from Manager Casey Stengel at spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams over eight seasons with only modest success.
But Herzog found his niche as a manager with what came to be called Whiteyball, molding teams with speed, defense and pitching to take advantage of ballparks with fast artificial turf and spacious outfields, first at Royals Stadium in Kansas City and then at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Herzog managed the Kansas City Royals to three consecutive American League division championships in the 1970s, then took the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title with a team he had built while general manager as well. And he managed the Cardinals to pennants in 1985 and 1987.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2009.

He was 92, and the second oldest member of the Hall of Fame (behind Willie Mays). Baseball Reference.

As Bruce Sutter, the Cardinal reliever and also a Hall of Famer, once told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “How many managers can you blow a game for and go out fishing with him the next morning?

Carl Erskine, pitcher.

Erskine was the last survivor of the 13 Dodger players of his time who were profiled by Roger Kahn in his 1972 book, “The Boys of Summer,” telling of their exploits on the field and the lives they led when their baseball years had ended.
Although struggling with a sore pitching shoulder throughout his career, Erskine, an unimposing presence on the mound at 5 feet 10 inches and 165 pounds, employed a superb overhand curveball to help the Dodgers capture five pennants (the first in 1949 and the rest in the 1950s) and the 1955 World Series championship, the only one in their history before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
His 14 strikeouts in Game 3 of the 1953 World Series against the Yankees, a complete-game 3-2 victory, has been eclipsed only by the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, who had 15 strikeouts against the Yankees in 1963, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, who struck out 17 Detroit Tigers in 1968.
In the 1952 World Series, also against the Yankees, Erskine pitched an 11-inning complete game, retiring the last 19 batters in the Dodgers’ 6-5 victory.
He pitched no-hitters against the Chicago Cubs in 1952 and the New York Giants in 1956, both at Ebbets Field. His best season was 1953, when he was 20-6 and led the National League in winning percentage at .769.

Baseball Reference.

Ken Holtzman, the “winningest Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball”. He played for the Cubs and the Oakland A’s.

Holtzman won 174 games, the most for a Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball — nine more than the Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, who is considered one of the best pitchers ever and who had a shorter career.
In addition to his win total, Holtzman, who at 6 feet 2 inches and 175 pounds cut a lanky figure, had a career earned run average of 3.49 and was chosen for the 1972 and 1973 All-Star teams.
Holtzman, at 23, threw his first no-hitter on Aug. 19, 1969, a 3-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves — a performance distinguished by the fact that he didn’t strike out any Braves. It was the first time since 1923 that a no-hitter had been pitched without a strikeout.
“I didn’t have my good curve, and I must have thrown 90 percent fastballs,” Holtzman told The Atlanta Constitution afterward. “When I saw my curve wasn’t breaking early in the game, I thought it might be a long day.”
His second no-hitter came on June 3, 1971, against the Cincinnati Reds at their ballpark, Riverfront Stadium, where he struck out six and walked four.

…

Holtzman left the Cubs in 1971 with a 74-69 record. He fared substantially better with the A’s, a 1970s dynasty whose players included Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers. In Oakland’s World Series championship years, from 1972 to 1974, Holtzman had a 59-41 regular season record. In World Series games, he was 4-1.

Baseball Reference.

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and US Senator.

Ron Thompson, actor. He did a lot of theater work, and some movies and TV. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, “Baretta”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Death Has No Face”, season 8, episode 6.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, Politics, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Loser update.

Monday, April 15th, 2024

Our long national nightmare is trudging to an end.

The NBA regular season ended yesterday.

Detroit finished 14-68, for a .171 winning percentage. That’s bad, but it just missed historically bad.

Washington finished 15-67, for a .183 winning percentage. Again, bad, but short of historically bad.

In case you were wondering, there are no MLB teams that can go 0-162 this season. But the Chicago White Sox are 2-13, for a .133 winning percentage. Projecting that out, that’s about 140 losses this season, which I think is well within the margins of historically bad. As a matter of fact, if this holds up, it would be within striking distance of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2024.

Friday, April 12th, 2024

Robert MacNeil, of “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” fame. NYT (archived).

On the eve of his retirement from the broadcast in October 1995 to concentrate on writing, he was asked why TheMacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour gave “very little coverage” to the O.J. Simpson story.
“We don’t normally cover big murder stories, for one thing … It is inconceivable to me that a generation ago, NBC News and CBS News would night after night have said to their audience, ‘This is the most important thing that happened in the world today,’ by leading with Simpson and coming back to it later in the program,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “What’s interesting to me is how frightened the mainstream media are of the tabloid shows and the new networks.”

He was also in the motorcade when JFK was shot.

Eleanor Coppola. NYT (archived). IMDB.

“I may hold the world’s record for the person who has made the most documentaries about their family directing films,” she said. Her career, she wrote in “Notes on a Life,” a 2008 book, reflected that “I am an observer at heart, who has the impulse to record what I see around me.”

Fritz Peterson, Yankees pitcher and baseball footnote.

The southpaw was traded to Cleveland ahead of the 1974 season, ending his pinstripes tenure after nine seasons, going 109-106 with a 3.10 ERA — and an original Yankee Stadium-record 2.52 ERA in home games.
He last pitched for the Rangers in the 1976 season, accumulating a 133-131 record with a 3.30 ERA and seven seasons of 12-plus wins.

He was also involved in the strangest trade in baseball history.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were friends. They hung out together with their wives. One thing led to another, and this was the 1970s…

On March 4, 1973, the ballplayers held separate press conferences to announce they’d swapped wives, kids and even their dogs — a tale the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck once hoped to turn into a movie.
“Actually, it was a husband trade — Mike for me or me for Mike,” Peterson said. “It’s a love story. It wasn’t anything dirty.”

Fritz Peterson and Susanne, Kekich’s wife, married a year later. As far as I can tell, they stayed married. Mike Kekich and Marilyn, Peterson’s wife, broke up a few months after the press conference.

Fritz Peterson’s Baseball Reference page.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 11, 2024.

Thursday, April 11th, 2024

Akebono.

He was a native Hawaiian who moved to Japan and began training in sumo.

When he became Japan’s 64th yokozuna, or grand champion sumo wrestler, in 1993, he was the first foreign-born wrestler to achieve the sport’s highest title in its 300-year modern history. He went on to win a total of 11 grand championships, and his success set the stage for an era during which foreign-born wrestlers dominated the top levels of Japan’s national sport.

…

Akebono’s rivalry with the Japanese brothers Takanohana and Wakanohana, both grand champions, was a major driver of sumo’s renewed popularity in the 1990s. During the opening ceremony for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Akebono demonstrated the sumo ring entrance ritual for an international audience, commanding the arena with his hulking physique and captivating stare.

…

He later said in interviews that he rarely considered his nationality in the ring, thinking of himself as a sumo wrestler first and foremost. He became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1996, and changed his name to Taro Akebono. His chosen sumo name, “Akebono,” means dawn in Japanese.

I’m a little late on this one, but everyone was on it: Peter Higgs, of Higgs boson fame.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Bruce Kessler, TV director. Before that, he raced cars:

In 1958, Kessler suffered serious injuries in a fiery crash in the middle of the night in the rain while driving a Ferrari in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (his co-driver was fellow American Dan Gurney). A year later, he spent days in a coma after a race accident in Pomona, California, then retired from the sport after yet another serious crash in 1962 in Riverside, California.

His credits as a director include “The Hat Squad”, “Renegade”, “Enos”, “The Misadventures Of Sheriff Lobo”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”…

…and the episode “Chopper” of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, which is my own personal favorite episode. One of these days, I’m going to write that Top Five “Kolchak” episodes list. (“Chopper”, “Firefall”, “The Sentry”…)

Finally: O.J. Simpson. THR. LAT (archived). ESPN. (Edited to add: Lawrence.)

I don’t have a lot to say about this. Whatever he did or didn’t do, he’s facing judgement for it now, and I don’t feel like making jokes.

Posted in 1970s, California Über Alles, Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Physics, Sports, Sumo, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2024.

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024

LTC Lou Conter (USN – ret.) passed away on Monday. He was 102. Internet Archive link.

LTC Conter was the last known survivor of the USS Arizona.

He rejected any notion that the dwindling number of Arizona survivors should be hailed as heroes. “The 2,403 men that died are the heroes,” he said in a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, referring to all the Americans who perished in the Pearl Harbor attack. “I’m not a hero. I was just doing my job.”

…

Mr. Conter, who held the rank of quartermaster, a position assisting in the Arizona’s navigation, was on his shift shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when a Japanese armor-piercing bomb penetrated five steel decks and blew up more than one million pounds of gunpowder and thousands of rounds of ammunition stored in its hull as the ship was moored in the harbor, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“The ship was consumed in a giant fireball,” he wrote in his memoir.
Mr. Conter, who was knocked forward but uninjured, tended to survivors, many of them blinded and badly burned. When the order to abandon ship came, he was knee deep in water. A lifeboat took him ashore, and in the days that followed he helped in recovering bodies and putting out fires. Only 93 of those who were aboard the ship at the time lived; 242 other crew members were ashore.

But wait, there’s more.

Mr. Conter later attended Navy flight school and flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific, some of them involving nighttime dive bombing of Japanese targets. During one three-night period, his crew rescued 219 Australian coast watchers from New Guinea who were in danger of being overrun by approaching Japanese. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for that exploit.

200 combat missions. And the DFC. But wait, there’s more.

Holding the rank of lieutenant, Mr. Conter went on to fly 29 combat missions during the Korean War and serve as an intelligence officer for a Navy aircraft carrier group.

But wait, there’s more.

In the late 1950s, he helped establish the Navy’s first SERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) to train Navy airmen in how to survive if they were shot down in the jungle and captured.

The Lou Conter Story: From USS Arizona Survivor to Unsung American Hero on Amazon.

Barbara Baldavin, actress. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “Airport 1975”, “McMillan and Wife” and “Columbo”…

…and “Mannix”. (“You Can Get Killed Out There”, season 1, episode 19. “To Save a Dead Man”, season 5, episode 14.)

Vontae Davis, former NFL cornerback. He was 35.

Posted in Heroism, History, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

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