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Obit watch: March 19, 2020.

Thursday, March 19th, 2020

Alfred M. Worden, Apollo 15 astronaut. NASA tribute page.

Apollo 15 was NASA’s first moon mission devoted mainly to science. The flight of Apollo 11 in July 1969 had fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s call for America to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s. But the three lunar landings that preceded Apollo 15 had yielded relatively modest insight into the moon’s origin and composition.
Major Worden, of the Air Force, spent three days in orbit operating a pair of cameras in his space capsule Endeavour.
Those photos provided the sharpest images ever taken of the moon, an achievement that led to the mapping of its rugged terrain. Major Worden also operated an extensive package of instruments to enhance knowledge of space and the moon itself.
En route home, he released a “sub-satellite” — carried by Endeavour and weighing about 78 pounds — that was designed to orbit the moon for at least a year and radio back data on its gravitational field and other technical information. It was the first time such a space vehicle had been deployed.
He also undertook the first walk in deep space, spending 38 minutes tethered to Endeavour while more than 196,000 miles from Earth as he retrieved canisters of film attached to the skin of the craft.
The other Apollo 15 crewmen — Col. David R. Scott and Lt. Col. James B. Irwin, also Air Force officers — became the seventh and eighth men to land on the moon, having descended in their Lunar Module, Falcon, from the space capsule piloted by Major Worden. They spent 18½ hours exploring its surface and covered about 17½ miles in their rover — both NASA records — and returned to the capsule for the flight home with some 170 pounds of rock and soil samples.

Posted in History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 4, 2020.

Wednesday, March 4th, 2020

I’m dropping into the obscure here, but I have reasons.

Rafael Cancel Miranda. Mr. Miranda was one of the four men who shot up the US Capital on March 1, 1954.

Mr. Cancel Miranda, a hero to many who favor independence for Puerto Rico but a terrorist to many others, was 23 when he and three companions attacked the Capitol, spraying gunfire from the gallery into the House chamber and injuring five congressmen as 243 House members were debating a bill involving migrant workers from Mexico.
The four — the others were Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores Rodríguez and Andres Figueroa Cordero — were not satisfied with the agreement that had made Puerto Rico a United States commonwealth in 1952, believing that it was a sham and that the island essentially remained an occupied colony.
Ms. Lebrón waved a Puerto Rican flag briefly and shouted about independence as the attack unfolded and House members sought cover. The four were overpowered and arrested.
Although the scene was chaotic, Mr. Cancel Miranda, at least, was convinced that most of those injured “got hurt by my gun,” as he put it when he was freed in 1979.
“No congressman in particular was the target,” he said then. “It was just an effort to shoot up the place. If we aimed to kill, believe me, that would have happened.”

All four men served “lengthy prison sentences”, at least by NYT standards. Wikipedia says that Mr. Miranda was sentenced to 85 years.

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentence of Mr. Figueroa Cordero, who had cancer and died in 1979. President Carter freed the other three in 1979, though they had never sought clemency, considering themselves political prisoners.

Mr. Miranda was the last surviving member of the quartet.

I’ve been going back and forth about this one, and came down on the side of inclusion. Not because this person was famous, but because this is another example of the kind of thing the paper of record does well: the obit for the person who was important to the community in some way, without necessarily being famous.

In this case, Matvey “Falafel” Natanzon, backgammon player.

His illness prematurely ended a roller-coaster career during which he went from sleeping under a bench in Washington Square Park, where he lived for nearly six months after college, to mastering backgammon, a board game that combines rolls of the dice with strategic checker moves.

…

In his short pants, sweatshirt and knitted wool hat, Mr. Natanzon could look like an amiable loser to his easy marks, as he baited them with his nonstop babble and swaggering hubris.
He would graduate to winning (and, on rarer occasions, losing) tens of thousands of dollars in as little as an hour; achieve celebrity status in a game that had migrated from black-tie casino tables to cheesy hotel ballrooms, where baseball caps worn backward were de rigeur; and be named the top player in an unofficial ranking by his peers, known as the Giants of Backgammon.
“Falafel is, without a doubt, backgammon’s No. 1 commentator and is probably its best-known celebrity,” Joe Russell, the chairman of the backgammon federation’s board, said when he awarded Mr. Natanzon the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. “He has been in the top 10 of the Giants list seven straight times, and has been voted No. 1 twice and No. 2 once.”

He was 51. A brain tumor got him.

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 25, 2020.

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020

Hosni Mubarak, deposed Egyptian leader. Hat tip to Lawrence on this, and I’m going to defer to him on any geopolitical angle: I just don’t know enough about Middle Eastern affairs.

John Franzese, Mafia guy.

Prosecutors portrayed him in his prime as one of the Mafia’s top “earners,” generating many millions of dollars in loot, and as one of its most fearsome killers. In 1967, prosecutors asserted that an informer had heard Mr. Franzese boast that he had been involved in 40 or 50 underworld executions.
At his last trial, in 2011, prosecutors said a turncoat had secretly recorded him graphically describing how hit men should dismember and dispose of bodies to evade arrest. “I killed a lot of guys,” he was quoted as saying in a pretrial hearing. “You’re not talking about four, five, six, ten.”

…

His first felony conviction — on federal charges of masterminding four nationwide bank robberies — came in March 1967. Nine months later, in December 1967, he was the subject of a state trial in Queens on charges of ordering the death of a suspected government informer, whose body, with 17 stab wounds and six bullet wounds and weighted with two concrete blocks, was discovered in Jamaica Bay. He was found not guilty.
After appeals lasting three years in the bank robbery case were denied, Mr. Franzese, in 1970, began serving an indeterminate term of up to 50 years. He was paroled in 1978, but, in a series of revolving-door parole violations, he spent about 20 of the next 30 years in federal penitentiaries.

He was convicted of extortion in 2011, sentenced to eight years, and was released in 2017. In the “who’d thunk it” department (hi, Borepatch!), Mr. Franzese was 103 when he died (apparently of natural causes, though his family declined to give details).

Diana Serra Cary, also known as “Baby Peggy”. I’d never heard of her, and I apologize for the long quotes, but I think this is a sad story (though maybe with a happy ending). She was a famous child star in silent films:

Her name was Peggy-Jean Montgomery, and she was a precocious 2½-year-old in 1921 when Century Studio cast her as Baby Peggy, opposite Brownie the Wonder Dog. America soon fell in love with the chubby-cheeked little girl as she fled burning buildings, held thugs at bay with a pistol and clung to the underside of a train.
A Century fire in 1926 and decaying celluloid have left only a few of her vintage films in museum archives, in the Library of Congress and on the internet, including “Playmates” (1921), “Miles of Smiles” (1923), “Helen’s Babies” (1924) and “Captain January” (1924). But silent film aficionados say she could evoke terror, joy, pity and sorrow with the best of them, and was a good mimic, too, satirizing adult stars of the day, including Rudolph Valentino and Pola Negri in “Peg o’ the Movies” (1923).
By age 5 she had made more than 150 pictures, mostly short comedies and melodramas, for Century, Universal and Principal Pictures, and was a multimillionaire. Home was a Beverly Hills mansion near Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. A $30,000 chauffeur-driven limousine took her to work every day.

…

“I had identity problems from the time I was growing up,” Ms. Cary recalled in a 1999 interview with silentsaregolden.com. “Baby Peggy was very powerful. She was very popular. Nobody knew who I was — I mean, me. So I had this terrific personality that the whole world knew, and then I had me to deal with. So I couldn’t get my head together, and I couldn’t be me as long as I was carrying her.”
In 1925, Baby Peggy’s career crumbled. A $1.5 million contract was canceled, and she was virtually blacklisted in Hollywood after her father, a cowboy stuntman and stand-in for the Western star Tom Mix, had a bitter falling out with a studio boss over her salary. She made one last picture, “April Fool,” in 1926, and then found no more work in Hollywood. She was washed up, a 7-year-old has-been.

,,,

For several years after her film career faded, Baby Peggy performed on a grueling vaudeville circuit to support her parents in the style to which they had become accustomed. They squandered much of her $2 million fortune on hotels, luxury cars and travel. The rest was lost or embezzled by a stepgrandfather who absconded, or it evaporated in the stock market crash of 1929. The home in Beverly Hills was sold, as were the cars, jewels and other luxuries.
As the Depression deepened, the family moved to a ranch in Wyoming. Dirt poor and struggling, they pawned everything of value. A friend lent the family $300, and against Peggy’s wishes they returned to Hollywood and put her back to work, now as a teenager in the talkies. From 1932 to 1938, she appeared in eight films as an anonymous extra or in small roles credited to Peggy Montgomery.

…

After graduating, she eloped in 1938 with her first boyfriend, Gordon Ayres, a movie extra. They were divorced in 1948. She was a switchboard operator and a bookstore clerk, and then managed a gift shop in Santa Barbara. She told no one of her past, and took the name Diana Serra. In 1954, she married Bob Cary, an artist, and took his surname. They had a son, Mark. Her husband died in 2001. Besides her son, she is survived by a granddaughter, Stephanie.
The Carys settled in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he painted and she became a freelance journalist, writing magazine articles. In 1970, they moved to La Jolla, part of San Diego, and she began a new career as a film historian. Her first book, “The Hollywood Posse” (1975), was a well-received account of stunt riders in film. Her second, “Hollywood’s Children” (1978), recounted the often troubling stories of child actors.
But it was the years of work on her memoir, “Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy? The Autobiography of Hollywood’s Pioneer Child Star” (1996), that proved therapeutic and redemptive. She re-examined her life in silent films, her parents’ conduct in frittering away her fortune, the studios’ harsh working conditions and the fates of child stars who, like her, were left impoverished, emotionally scarred and largely forgotten.
In “Jackie Coogan: The World’s Boy King: A Biography of Hollywood’s Legendary Child Star” (2003), she wrote about her old friend, who sued his mother and stepfather in 1938 for spending his more than $3 million in earnings on furs, diamonds, homes and expensive cars.

…

In recent years, Ms. Cary also appeared at silent film festivals, lectured, gave interviews and appeared in documentaries about her career, including Vera Iwerebor’s “Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room,” which was shown on Turner Classic Movies in 2012.

She was 101 years old, and is considered (at least by the paper of record) to have been the last surviving child star of that era. (“About a dozen other silent-era actors survive, but most were uncredited extras or ensemble players in series like the “Our Gang” pictures of the 1920s.”)

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

Obit watch: February 24, 2020 (rocket science edition)

Monday, February 24th, 2020

Katherine Johnson.

“NASA was a very professional organization,” Mrs. Johnson told The Observer of Fayetteville, N.C., in 2010. “They didn’t have time to be concerned about what color I was.”
Nor, she said, did she.
“I don’t have a feeling of inferiority,” Mrs. Johnson said on at least one occasion. “Never had. I’m as good as anybody, but no better.”
To the end of her life, Mrs. Johnson deflected praise for her role in sending astronauts into space, keeping them on course and bringing them safely home.
“I was just doing my job,” Ms. Shetterly heard her say repeatedly in the course of researching her book.

I thought about noting this over the weekend, but I couldn’t find a way to write about it without being disrespectful to the dead. So: Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes.

Mr. Hughes “didn’t really care if the Earth was flat, and was fully ready to concede his error once he could see it with his own eyes in a final stunt that he was working towards,” the post read.
Mr. Shuster, his publicist, maintained that Mr. Hughes’s professed flat-Earth beliefs were simply intended to garner money and publicity for his stunts.
“He was eccentric and believed in some government conspiracies, for sure, but it was a P.R. stunt,” Mr. Shuster said.

Posted in Geek, History, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 9, 2020.

Sunday, February 9th, 2020

Let’s get down to it.

Paul Farnes. He was 101, and the last surviving RAF ace from the Battle of Britain.

…for three months, through the end of October, the R.A.F. battled the Luftwaffe for supremacy in the skies over Britain. Flying a Hurricane fighter for the 501 Squadron, Mr. Farnes, a sergeant pilot, proved supremely adept at attacking German aircraft.
In August alone he shot down three Junkers Ju Stuka bombers, a Dornier 17 light bomber and a Messerschmitt 109E fighter.At the end of September, as Mr. Farnes maneuvered his malfunctioning Hurricane back to the R.A.F.’s Kenley base, he spotted a German bomber flying directly at him at about 1,500 feet.
“I thought, ‘Good God,’ so I whipped out and had to reposition myself and managed to get ’round behind him,” he said in an interview with the website History of War in 2017. “I gave him a couple of bursts, and he crashed at Gatwick just on the point between the airport and the racecourse.”

…

Aerial warfare against the Germans meant breaking away from the squadron, finding something to shoot at, firing away, then breaking away to safety. But by Mr. Farnes’s account it was also enjoyable, because he was able to combine his love of flying with the mission to protect Britain.
“The C.O. would quite often pick the next members of the squadron that had to be at ‘readiness,’ and the two or three who weren’t picked would be pretty fed up,” he told History of War. “If you weren’t picked, you’d think, ‘Why can’t I go?’ I’m sure one or two must have felt, ‘Well, thank God I’m not going!’ But a lot of us were quite happy to go.”

Robert Conrad. THR. Variety.

I was a little young for “Wild Wild West” in first run; if it was syndicated in Houston when I was a kid, I don’t remember it. It could have been on the station we were never able to pick up (the same one OG “Star Trek” was on). And “Hawaiian Eye” was before my time. But if you’re my age or a little on either side of it, this was like candy for us:

He also appeared multiple times on “Mission: Impossible” and other series, either as the lead of some less than successful ones (“High Mountain Rangers”) or doing guest shots. He did do a “Mannix”. (“The Playground”, season 3, episode 4.) And I didn’t know this, but he played G. Gordon Liddy in the TV movie version of “Will”.

Orson Bean. Variety. THR. Interesting guy: I remember him from “Being John Malkovich” and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him on some of those old game shows on Buzzr. In the 1960s, he founded a progressive school in New York City.

Believing that America’s generals were planning an imminent coup d’état, Mr. Bean abandoned his thriving career and moved his family to Australia in 1970. He became a disciple of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and wrote a book about his psychosexual theories, “Me and the Orgone.” (Orgone is a concept, originally proposed by Reich, of a universal life force.)
When the book appeared in 1971, Mr. Bean returned to America with his wife and four children. For years he led a nomadic life as an aging hippie and self-described househusband, casting off material possessions in a quest for self-realization.

In the 1980s, he settled down again and resumed acting. He was 91 years old when he died: he was hit by a car while walking, fell, and was run over by a second car (according to Variety).

After the jump, more obits.

(more…)

Posted in 1970s, Books, History, Law, Mannix, Movies, Nixon, Obits, Planes, Theatre, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: February 4, 2020.

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020

Mike “Mad Mike” Hoare, legendary mercenary.

“Legendary”? Yes. At least, if you were reading SOF in the early 1980s like some people…

Mr. Hoare crossed seas on a sailboat and Africa (south to north) on a motorcycle. He searched for the fabled lost city of the Kalahari and retraced the steps of Victorian explorers to the sources of the Nile. He fought the Japanese in Burma in World War II, rescued hostages from rebel forces in Congo, found nuns and priests hacked to death in the bush and was imprisoned in South Africa for hijacking an airliner.
The exploits of Mr. Hoare, who was called “Mad Mike” for his recklessness under fire, were recounted in books by him and others, in a film starring Richard Burton, and in sheaves of foreign correspondents’ dispatches, now faded yellow in old newspaper morgues with datelines from far-off places.

The film in question was “The Wild Geese“. Burton’s character was based on “Mad Mike”.

Tiring of life as an explorer and safari guide, Mr. Hoare first hired out as a mercenary in 1960-61, leading a European force fighting for Moise Tshombe, whose Katanga province was trying to break away from the newly independent Republic of Congo.
His mercenaries, while paid to fight, were largely motivated by anti-communism and lust for adventure, crushing larger, less well-armed Congolese forces and sometimes saving civilians from massacres.
But news correspondents covering the mercenaries said some were racists who killed with gusto. Indeed, these soldiers of fortune were largely undisciplined, sometimes looting towns and killing indiscriminately — clearly war crimes, the correspondents said.
By his account, Mr. Hoare did not condone such atrocities but, vastly outnumbered by his out-of-control forces, he had been powerless to stop the carnage, though he claimed to have once shot off the big toes of a man as he was assaulting a woman.

…

Katanga’s secession failed. But in the chaos of killings and regional revolts that followed independence from Belgium, Congo faced a new crisis in 1964 when rebels — warrior-soldiers called “Simbas,” Swahili for “Lions,” backed by Cuban and Chinese Communist advisers — rebelled against the central government in Léopoldville, which by then was led by Mr. Tshombe, and seized half the country. The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara joined his countrymen fighting in Congo in 1965.
Mr. Tshombe again hired Mr. Hoare, who recruited and trained 500 German, Italian, Greek, Belgian, Rhodesian and South African mercenaries, each paid $364 to $1,100 a month, to lead Congolese forces against the rebels. Emerging on the world stage in news reports for the first time, Mr. Hoare — or Colonel Hoare, as he called himself, replete in his black beret, military khakis and a cravat at his throat — drove the Simbas back to Stanleyville, their capital.
As the mercenaries closed in, fears mounted for thousands of Europeans trapped in the city. Belgian paratroopers were flown in, and most of the Europeans were rescued by the Belgians and Mr. Hoare’s forces. But the troops also found scores of hostages massacred, including nuns hacked to death and priests with throats cut.

You know, this is getting long. How about a musical interlude?

In 1981, when he was 62, Mr. Hoare again made headlines, leading a gaggle of over-the-hill mercenaries from South Africa, Zimbabwe and several European nations in a bizarre attempt to overthrow the Socialist government of the Seychelles, an Indian Ocean island republic.
Apparently with Pretoria’s connivance, they flew to the Seychelles posing as rugby players and members of a beer-drinking club, the Ancient Order of Foam Blowers, carrying equipment bags with false bottoms hiding weapons and walkie-talkies. But a customs agent spotted a gun muzzle and a firefight erupted.
After hours of combat, 44 mercenaries escaped by hijacking an Air India jet on the tarmac. They flew to South Africa, where most, including Mr. Hoare, were tried and convicted of air piracy. The affair had none of the glamour of his earlier exploits. A judge called it “a farce,” and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. He was released three years later under an amnesty for aging inmates.

Mr. Hoare passed away at the age of 100 in a nursing home in South Africa. As Borepatch said when I sent him this clipping, “Damn, who would have seen THAT coming?”

Willie Wood, Hall of Fame defensive back for the Green Bay Packers during the Lombardi era.

Playing for the Packers from 1960 to 1971, Wood did not have much speed and he was only 5 feet 10 inches and 180 pounds at best. But he was an outstanding tackler, often hitting opponents around the ankles when he was not intercepting passes or batting them down. Roaming the secondary at free safety, he was quick to dissect plays and get to the ball. He was also a league-leading punt returner.
A key figure in the Packers’ dynasty built by Coach Vince Lombardi, Wood was a first-team All-Pro five times and was selected for eight Pro Bowl games. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989 and selected to its all-decade team of the 1960s.

Daniel arap Moi, former ruler of Kenya.

But after suppressing opposition and consolidating power in a single-party state, he began a 24-year dictatorial reign. Mr. Moi — with his nimbus of silver hair, buttonhole rose and ivory baton — dominated life in Kenya. He put his face on bank notes, ordered his portrait hung in offices and shops, enriched his family and tribal cronies and, as investigations showed, stashed billions in overseas banks. For much of his tenure, it was illegal even to speak ill of him.
Kenya remained an island of political stability in East Africa, but a democracy in name only, and a land of stark contrasts: dire poverty and fabulous wealth, natural beauty and decaying infrastructures, luxury safaris for foreigners and vast slums for Kenyans, who faced unemployment, crime, epidemic AIDS and one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates.

…

Investigations after Mr. Moi stepped down found that his government had lined the pockets of his family and its allies with as much as $4 billion. The biggest fraud in Kenya’s history, the Goldenberg affair, in which the central bank paid incentives to a company for exporting gold, diamonds and jewelry that did not exist, cost taxpayers billions and sent Kenya’s economy into a tailspin in the early 1990s.

…

As Mr. Moi retired, his successors found even more corruption and human rights abuses than had been suspected. A 2003 inquiry exposed torture cells at Nyayo House in Nairobi, a government building where dungeons yielded evidence supporting the accounts of victims.
Mr. Moi was never prosecuted, though corruption inquiries implicated him and his family. Kenya in 2003 found $1 billion in stolen funds in overseas accounts. Others in his administration were pursued, but Mr. Moi was treated as an elder statesman.

Posted in History, NFL, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 31, 2019.

Tuesday, December 31st, 2019

Last one of the year.

Sonny Mehta, book guy.

He published the work of nine Nobel literature laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day” (1989), and of winners of Pulitzer and Booker prizes and National Book Awards; memoirs by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Pope John Paul II; and new translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and Albert Camus.

Mr. Mehta also published popular books by Toni Morrison, John Updike, Anne Rice, John le Carré, P.D. James and Gabriel García Márquez; Geoffrey Ward’s companion to Ken Burns’s PBS series “The Civil War”; Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”; Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo trilogy; and the work of many important French, German, Italian, Spanish, African and Asian writers.

Gen. Paul X. Kelley, former commandant of the United States Marines.

He completed two tours in Vietnam, as a battalion commander in the 1960s and later as a regimental commander, commanding and bringing home the last Marine combat unit to leave Vietnam, in 1971. His combat decorations included the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Legions of Merit. After returning to civilian life he saw to it that other veterans were honored, serving two stints as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Early in his career he had served on the Sixth Fleet’s flagship in the Mediterranean, and in 1960 and 1961 he trained as a commando with the British Royal Marines and deployed with them to Aden, followed by Singapore, Malaya and Borneo.

The Beirut bombing took place four months into his time as commandant.

“When you see 144 caskets on an airplane,” he later said, as quoted by Marine Corps Times, “it will have an impact on you for the rest of your life.”

Posted in Books, History, Obits | Comments Closed

A slightly belated Christmas present…

Wednesday, December 25th, 2019

The CBC Radio adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd.

There’s a lot of good stuff (if you’re a plane buff) linked from that page and elsewhere, including:

If you are a plane buff, I commend both the CBC links and Forsyth’s work to your attention.

(For those who may be unfamiliar with the story: young pilot is flying home for Christmas and suffers a total electrical failure over the north Atlantic. He has virtually no instruments, fog has set in, and if he bails out, he’ll probably freeze to death in the ocean. At the last possible moment, he’s led to a safe landing at an old RAF base by a Mosquito. And then the story goes in some unexpected directions from there.)

Posted in Books, Christmas, Heroism, History, Planes, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 23, 2019.

Monday, December 23rd, 2019

In keeping with the official policy of this blog: Claudine Auger. Apparently, she was a very successful actress in Europe, and less so elsewhere. But: she was the Bond girl in “Thunderball”.

Johanna Lindsey, who I have actually heard of, but never read any of her books. She actually passed away October 27th, but her death was only recently announced.

Her books sold at least 60 million copies, according to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, and she ranked among the leading romance writers of her era, most notably Jude Deveraux, Judith McNaught, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers.
“Since I was old enough to appreciate a good novel, I’ve been a romantic,” Ms. Lindsey was quoted as saying in the book “Love’s Leading Ladies” (1982), by Kathryn Falk. “I enjoy happy-ending love stories more than any other type of reading. Romance is what comes out of me.”
Ms. Lindsey set her passionate tales in many locales, including the Caribbean; the Barbary Coast; England as early as the year 873; Norway, when the Vikings ruled; 19th-century Texas, Wyoming and Montana; and the planet Kystran, in a series of science-fiction bodice-rippers.

…

Liz Perl, the marketing director of Simon & Schuster, said that Ms. Lindsey had been a shy, private person who only occasionally toured to promote her books.
“On several occasions, her mother would accompany her, which was really sweet,” Ms. Perl said by phone. “Her mother was quite outgoing, so Johanna would sign the books, and her mom would stand next to her and tell fans anecdotes about Johanna when she was young.”
She added, “When she turned her books in, she wouldn’t celebrate by buying a car or going to Paris, but by buying a video game and playing it for 12 hours before starting her next book.”

I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed hanging out with her.

Gen. Ahmed Gaïd Salah, who the paper of record describes as “Algeria’s de facto ruler”.

General Gaïd Salah’s unexpected death at 79 — his official age, though he was most likely older — less than two weeks after the army’s favored candidate was elected president, creates a power vacuum in the vast North African nation, a major oil and gas producer.
A survivor from the generation that led Algeria to independence from France in the early 1960s, General Gaïd Salah was the man who increasingly blocked the demands of the popular protest movement that has rocked the country’s politics since last February.
As chief of staff, General Gaïd Salah orchestrated a hardening crackdown on the movement, imposed a presidential election that the protesters rejected, and demanded, in regular if stiff televised speeches to other army officers, that the demonstrators back off.
The movement has rejected the newly elected president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, as a mere figurehead, put in place to carry out the general’s wishes.

I try to leave geopolitics to Lawrence, so all I’ll say is: it should be interesting to watch this play out.

Elizabeth Spencer, another author I’d heard of but have not read. She was apparently most famous for “The Light in the Piazza”.

Baba Ram Dass, counterculture guy.

He started a foundation to combat blindness in India and Nepal, supported reforestation in Latin America, and developed health education programs for American Indians in South Dakota.

…

By the 1980s, Ram Dass had a change of mind and image. He shaved off the beard but left a neatly trimmed mustache. He tried to drop his Indian name — he no longer wanted to be a cult figure — but his publisher vetoed the idea. Ram Dass said that he had never intended to be a guru and that Harvard had been right to throw him out.
He continued to turn out books and recordings, however. He started or helped start foundations to promote his charities, to help prisoners and to spread his message of spiritual equanimity. He made sure his books and tapes were reasonably priced.
The old orthodoxies slipped away. He said he realized that his 400 LSD trips had not been nearly as enlightening as his drugless spiritual epiphanies — although, he said, he continued to take one or two drug trips a year for old time’s sake. He said other religions, including the Judaism that he had rejected as a young man, were as valid as the Eastern ones.

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Nothing more to add…

Friday, December 20th, 2019

…this is a great story.

Posted in Heroism, History | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 9, 2019.

Monday, December 9th, 2019

René Auberjonois, versatile actor. He’s getting a lot of attention for his roles in Altman’s “MASH”, “Benson”, and some minor SF TV show, but he did a lot of movies and TV: “Rockford Files”, “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, “Mrs. Columbo” (but oddly not “Columbo”)…the list goes on.

Caroll Spinney is also getting a lot of coverage, but noted here for the record.

Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve.

Ron Leibman, another one of those highly versatile actors in movies, television, and theater.

Finally, Winston Lawson. he was the Secret Service agent who did the advance work for Kennedy’s Texas trip, rode in the motorcade, and helped load the president onto the stretcher at Parkland.

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 18, 2019. (Also: historical note, suitable for use in schools)

Monday, November 18th, 2019

Werner G. Doehner. He was 90 years old.

Mr. Doehner was the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster. His father and sister died: his mother and brother lived.

“There were many facets to my dad,” Bernie Doehner said. “He was a bit of a dinosaur, a connoisseur of old operas and classical music. He was into remote-controlled airplanes and lots of traveling, but he valued the education of his kid above everything else.”

Posted in History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 13, 2019.

Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

Zeke Bratkowski, Green Bay Packers quarterback. He didn’t quite get the level of fame he probably deserved as he spent most of his time backing up some guy named Starr.

By way of Lawrence: Charles Rogers, first round NFL draft choice (and second overall pick) in 2003.

The 6-foot-3, 220-pounder had just 36 catches for 440 yards with four touchdowns in 15 games before he left the league in 2005.

Also by way of Lawrence: Virginia Leith. Possibly an obscure figure, but some folks may remember her as “Jan” (or “Jan In the Pan”) from “The Head Brain That Wouldn’t Die”, which was (of course) a MST3K.

Interestingly, she also did guest shots on some of the better cop shows of the 1970s: “Baretta”, “Starsky and Hutch”, “Barnaby Jones”. “Police Woman”.

Frank Giles, former editor of The Sunday Times of London. He may be best remembered as the man who published the Hitler diaries, though he claimed he knew they were fake and Rupert Murdoch ordered them published anyway.

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

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, folks!

Tuesday, November 5th, 2019

Tweet of the day:

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 5, 2019.

Tuesday, November 5th, 2019

The part of me that doesn’t really want to acknowledge reality TV stars is outweighed by the part of me that thinks Rudy Boesch deserves acknowledgement for honorable service to his country.

He joined the merchant marine in 1944 and enlisted in the Navy the next year, training in underwater demolition and serving on ships over the next 17 years.
In 1962 he was among the first SEALs, given charge of setting physical fitness and other standards for Team 2.
“Rudy Boesch had a special understanding of his men,” Mr. Watson wrote, “what they did, and why they did it. That is very rare. There was never a man more devoted to the Navy and the SEALs.”
Mr. Boesch served two tours in Vietnam, though he never talked much about what specifically he did in the service. Between the tours he worked and competed with the Navy bobsled team. He retired from the Navy in 1990 as a master chief petty officer.

Also worth noting: the Wikipedia entry on his military career. I don’t want to quote it here because it has a lot of citations, but suffice it to say that are a lot of Boesch stories.

Overall, in his history of SEAL operations in Vietnam, former SEAL T.L. Bosiljevac writes that Boesch symbolizes much of what the SEAL teams represent and that, “There are a lot of colorful personalities among the teams, but even considering the best of those, Rudy Boesch is a legend. Everybody knows Rudy, and you can bet that Rudy knows everyone in return … [including] some of the Navy’s top brass.”

Posted in History, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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