The NYT obit wants to attribute her career decline to her anti-gay views. But was that really the case? Or did her career go into eclipse because American musical tastes changed? I honestly don’t know.
Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category
Obit watch: January 10, 2024.
Friday, January 10th, 2025Obit watch: January 8, 2025.
Wednesday, January 8th, 2025Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front party in France (now the National Rally).
An arm-waving reactionary with the swagger of a circus pitchman making outrageous claims, Mr. Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for the French presidency five times, making it to a runoff in 2002, riding waves of discontent and xenophobia and raising specters of a new fascism as he excoriated Jews, Arabs, Muslims and other immigrants — anyone he deemed to be not “pure” French.
Mr. Le Pen’s youngest daughter, Marine Le Pen, succeeded him as leader of his party, the National Front, in 2011 and rose to prominence on a tide of populist anger at the political mainstream. She was defeated in France’s presidential elections three times — in 2012, placing third with 17.9 percent of the vote behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy; in 2017, with 33.9 percent, losing to the centrist Emmanuel Macron; and in 2022, with 41.5 percent, defeated again by Mr. Macron.
But that year’s elections also sent a record number of representatives from the party, renamed National Rally, to the lower house of Parliament — 89 in all — testimony to the success of Ms. Le Pen’s efforts to normalize it and moderate its message in some regards.
By then it had became the leading opposition party, no longer an outcast widely viewed as a threat to the republic, and in 2023 the National Rally backed Mr. Macron’s bill restricting immigration, an embarrassment for the French president.
Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary.
Obit watch: January 2, 2025.
Thursday, January 2nd, 2025Lenny Randle, who the obits describe (not without reason) as “the most interesting man in baseball”. He was 75. NYT. Baseball Reference.
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Randle’s Rangers tenure ended when he punched manager Frank Lucchesi on March 28, 1977. Randle had lost his second base job to Bump Wills during spring training and asked to be traded if he wasn’t going to play regularly. Lucchesi told media he was tired of “$80,000‐a‐year punks” complaining.
Randle punched Lucchesi three times before a spring training game against Minnesota, and the manager suffered a triple fracture of his right cheekbone and needed plastic surgery. Randle said he approached Lucchesi along the third‐base line to talk to him and Lucchesi told him: “What do you got to say, punk?”
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Texas suspended Randle for 30 days, fined him $10,000 and withheld $13,407.90 of his $80,000 salary.
Randle issued a public apology. He was charged with felony aggravated battery, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery and was fined $1,050. In 1978, he settled a lawsuit filed by Lucchesi.
Mr. Randle does, of course, show up in Seasons in Hell. Mike Shropshire I think makes a good point about the Randle/Lucchesi incident: Mr. Lucchesi apparently did not understand that “punk” had a very specific and highly offensive connotation at that time (3b). I’m not saying I condone it, but I sort of understand it…
Obit watch: December 30, 2024.
Monday, December 30th, 2024I have been running around with Mike the Musicologist, and will be continuing to do so through the first of the year. So I’m a little behind in obits, but I’m trying to catch up.
Warren Upton. He was 105.
Mr. Upton was the oldest living Pearl Harbor survivor, and the last remaining survivor of the Utah.
Mr. Upton was serving as a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Utah on Dec. 7, 1941. He was below deck, reaching for his shaving kit, when the Utah was struck in quick succession by two torpedoes at about 8 a.m.
“It was quite an inferno,” Mr. Upton, a resident of San Jose, Calif., told the San Francisco TV station KTVU in 2021. “I went over the side then,” he added, “and slid down the side of the ship as she rolled over.”
The ship began capsizing within minutes. Mr. Upton and others left the ship and swam to Ford Island, adjacent to the row of battleships in Pearl Harbor. Along the way, he helped another shipmate who couldn’t swim.
The NYT quotes the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors as stating there are 15 remaining survivors.
Former president Jimmy Carter, for the historical record: NYT. WP. I don’t have a lot to say about this, and it has been thoroughly covered elsewhere. But: I am excited that we’re going to get a new stamp.
Linda Lavin. I don’t know how many people realize she had a considerable Broadway career in addition to “Alice”. Other credits include “Harry O”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, and “The Muppets Take Manhattan”.
Olivia Hussey. Other credits include voice work in “Pinky and the Brain”, “Death on the Nile”, and “Black Christmas”.
Obit watch: January 27, 2024.
Friday, December 27th, 2024Geoffrey Deuel, actor.
Other credits include “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Magician”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Eagles Sometimes Can’t Fly”, season 3, episode 1. “Chance Meeting”, season 8, episode 15.)
(Lawrence, I’m about halfway tempted to add “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” to the list. It is available on DVD at a reasonable price, and it seems like a lot of big names from the time are in it. My only issue, other than convincing folks to watch it, is that Ed Mireles says it isn’t completely accurate. We might want to accompany that with the “FBI Files” episode, which I think is more historically accurate.)
Obit watch: December 24, 2024.
Tuesday, December 24th, 2024Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.
Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.
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He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.
He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.
Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.
Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.
Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.
Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.
The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.
Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.
Obit watch: December 23, 2024.
Monday, December 23rd, 2024I hope all of my readers are having a Festive Festivus.
Rickey Henderson, for the historical record, as I think this was well covered over the weekend. NYT. ESPN. Baseball Reference.
Michael Brewer, of Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over the Line”).
Miguel Angel Aguilar, fitness influencer.
Aguilar was hospitalized in a critical condition on Sept. 13 after he got caught up in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Aguilar and his wife, celebrity hair stylist Priscilla Valles, were confronted by four armed men in the driveway of their Bel-Air home on Sept. 13.
The armed intruders ultimately struck Aguilar multiple times, including once in the face, before fleeing, TMZ reports. LAPD officers were called at around 4:30 p.m. that day.
He had been hospitalized since, and passed away on Saturday.
Obit watch: December 20, 2024. (Supplemental)
Friday, December 20th, 2024Turn out the lights, Party City is over.
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The development team was recalled from its yearly trip with vendors and told to go home immediately two weeks ago, according to a former corporate office employee who spoke to CNN.
The team was informed that the company believed the trip posed a safety risk since Party City stopped paying its suppliers.
All Party City corporate employees were sent home on Dec. 10 and security locked the front entrance of company headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ.
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Party City, which is known for selling balloons and other party supplies, first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January last year, with $150 million in debtor-in-possession financing to support its operations and reported $1 billion to $10 billion of estimated assets and liabilities.
In September, the retailer reached a plan to exit bankruptcy, which saw a cancellation of about $1 billion in company debt and turned all its equity value over to the retailer’s lenders.
So what the heck happened with that plan? It isn’t clear from the article. Though “The company had considered filing for bankruptcy a second time earlier this month…”
Obit watch: December 20, 2024.
Friday, December 20th, 2024Joanne Pierce Misko, historical footnote. And I say that in the kindest possible way.
She spent 10 years as a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, but she decided she wanted to marry and have kids. She was looking for something to do other than teaching.
She signed on as a researcher in 1970. Research or clerical work were the only options available to women at that time. But when Hoover died in 1972, L. Patrick Gray III allowed women to sign up as agents.
They were the first two female FBI agents.
“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, she found her gender could be an advantage, as suspects often let their guard down around her.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Mrs. Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”
“Celebrating Women Special Agents: Joanne Pierce Misko” on the FBI website. One thing not mentioned there, but in the NYT obit:
By the way, she did marry a fellow FBI agent, but the NYT does not mention children.
Obit watch: December 16, 2024.
Monday, December 16th, 2024Robert Fernandez. He was 100.
Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.
In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”
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That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.
The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”
Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.
Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.
Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.
In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.
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Obit watch: December 11, 2024.
Wednesday, December 11th, 2024Actual direct quote from my mother when I told her this: “I wonder if he saw that coming.”
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Michael Cole, actor. NYT (archived). He was the last surviving member of the “Mod Squad” trio (preceded in death by Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III). Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “It” (the 1990 TV mini-series).
Rocky Colavito, one of the great Cleveland Indians. ESPN. Cleveland.com. Baseball Reference.
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When rumors arose that Colavito would be traded in 1958 by Cleveland’s newly arrived general manager, Frank Lane, who had been consumed with making deals in his previous stops, fans chanted, “Don’t knock the Rock!”
Colavito hit 41 home runs in 1958 and 42 in 1959, tying with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, while driving in more than 100 runs each of those seasons. Lane told The Saturday Evening Post in July 1959 that Colavito would “easily be the greatest gate attraction in the American League” when Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams wound down their careers.
But Lane thwarted Colavito’s quest for significant salary raises, and, two days before the opening of the 1960 season, he outraged Cleveland’s fans by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Harvey Kuenn. Kuenn, the league’s batting champion in 1959, was three years older than Colavito and had hit only nine home runs that season.
Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager at the time and a future Cleveland general manager, was quoted as saying, “The Indians traded a slow guy with power for a slow guy with no power.”
Colavito went on to hit at least 35 home runs in three of his four seasons as a Tiger. Kuenn played only one season for Cleveland before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.
“I loved Cleveland and the Indians,” Colavito told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 2010. “I never wanted to leave.”
And he insisted that he had never put a curse on the team. As he put it, “Frank Lane did.” Either way, Cleveland still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.
Mark Withers, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story”, and “The Wizard”.
Obit watch: December 6, 2024.
Friday, December 6th, 2024I’m going to put a jump here, because both of these obits have a macabre element to them. I’d prefer not to disturb anyone’s sensibilities (and I’m leaving some details out), but I do think they are significant enough to note.