Obit watch: October 23, 2024.

October 23rd, 2024

Fernando Valenzuela. ESPN. NYT (archived).

As I’ve noted before, I am not a baseball fan, and I hate the Dodgers. But I remember Fernandomania. And I get the impression he was a class act.

Bruce Ames.

The so-called Ames Test, developed in the 1970s, is still used by drug manufacturers and pesticide companies to check the safety of their products. It involves exposing chemicals to a mutant strain of salmonella bacteria that Dr. Ames created; how the bacteria responds to a chemical makes it possible to determine whether that chemical caused DNA damage and therefore might lead to cancer in humans.

…

He stumbled on one of his most publicized discoveries accidentally, when he asked his undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, to bring in a chemical of their choosing to undergo testing. All of the chemicals tested negative, except for one: contained in a bottle of hair dye a student had borrowed from his girlfriend.
Dr. Ames sent a lab technician, Edith Yamasaki, to buy out every type of hair dye at a local drugstore, and after extensive testing concluded that the dyes — used by more than 20 million Americans at the time — were very likely linked to cancer and birth defects.

…

A year later, his work made headlines again when he discovered that a chemical called Tris, used to make children’s pajamas flame-retardant, caused genetic mutations. By some estimates, 45 million children were wearing Tris-treated pajamas. The chemical was later banned from garment manufacturing.

…

Later in his career, as Dr. Ames’s opinions about the dangers of man-made chemicals began to shift, his legacy in the environmental movement became more complicated.
He felt that some activists were overstating the risks of these chemicals and targeting chemical companies unfairly. He often said that he thought there was too much focus on substances that were technically mutagenic but that were no more likely to cause DNA damage than the “natural” chemicals found in fruits and vegetables.
“I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t real problems with some synthetic chemicals, but the environmentalists are wildly exaggerating the risks,” he told The Times in 1994. “If our resources are diverted from important things to unimportant things, this doesn’t serve the public.”

I’ve known about this one for a few days, but was waiting for something I was comfortable linking to: Ward Christensen, early computer BBS pioneer.

Then, on Jan. 16, 1978, a blizzard hit Chicago, covering the city in 40 inches of snow and stranding Mr. Christensen at his home in the suburbs. He phoned Mr. Suess, suggesting that they use the time to start building their messaging system. He wondered if they should get help from other club members, but Mr. Suess argued that involving more people would slow the project down.
“Forget the club. It would just be management by committee,” Mr. Suess said, as Mr. Christensen recalled their conversation to The New York Times in 2009. “It’s just me and you. I will do the hardware, and you will do the software.”

…

In 1977, he developed a protocol, called XMODEM, for sending computer files across phone lines; it was later used on C.B.B.S.

…

The next fall, Mr. Christensen described their creation in an article he wrote for Byte, a magazine for computer hobbyists. When they retired their system less than a decade later, its phone line had received more than a half-million calls.

By way of Greg Ellifritz: Ed Lovette, trainer and gun guy. I have a copy of The Snubby Revolver, and would recommend picking it up if you find it used.

I also wanted to link this because Mr. Ellifritz’s post contains an excellent list of other books you should have in your gun library. I will say I have many, but not all, of them: some of them I am still trying to find. (And someone should get the rights to reprint that old Paladin Press stuff, like the Lovette and Cirillo books.)

As a side note, I haven’t forgotten about gun books. I’ve just been busy, and my dealer of choice has taken some time off. I do want to try to get up a post this week, but it is probably going to be shorter than usual. The books I plan to post about are all new books, available from Amazon (with one exception). And one of those books is also going to be an entry in the “Leadership Secrets” series, too.

Keep watching the skies.

Posted in Books, Geek, Hoplobibilophilia, Obits, Sports | 6 Comments »

Obit watch: October 21, 2024.

October 21st, 2024

John Kinsel Sr. died on Saturday at the age of 107.

Mr. Kinsel was one of the Navajo Code Talkers.

An estimated 400 Navajo Code Talkers served during World War II, transmitting a code crafted from the Navajo language that U.S. forces used to confuse the Japanese and communicate troop movements, enemy positions and other critical battlefield information. Mr. Kinsel, who served from October 1942 to January 1946, was part of the second group of Marines trained as code talkers at Camp Elliott in California, after the original 29 who developed the code for wartime use.

…

The Associated Press reported that the only two surviving Navajo Code Talkers are Thomas H. Begay and Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo chairman.

Nicholas Daniloff passed away last Thursday. He was 88.

He was a foreign correspondent in Russia for UPI and, later, for U.S. News and World Report.

After taking a call at his Moscow apartment on Aug. 30, 1986, Mr. Daniloff met a trusted Russian friend and news contact, Misha, in a park for a farewell exchange. He gave Misha several Stephen King novels, and Misha gave him a sealed packet that supposedly contained news clippings from a Soviet republic and some photographs that he said might be useful.
After they parted, a van pulled up alongside Mr. Daniloff. Several men leapt out, handcuffed him, dragged him into the vehicle and took him to the infamous K.G.B. torture center, Lefortovo Prison. Misha’s packet turned out to contain photographs and maps of military installations, all marked “secret.” The fix was in — a heavy-handed throwback to Stalinist tactics.
In Room 215, a chamber that reeked of interrogations, Mr. Daniloff was met by a tall, imposing man in a dark gray suit. “He walked toward me, pinning me with his dark eyes,” Mr. Daniloff wrote in his book “Two Lives, One Russia” (1988). “This senior K.G.B. officer said solemnly in Russian, ‘You have been arrested on suspicion of espionage. I am the person who ordered your arrest.’”
For the bewildered Mr. Daniloff, that moment set off 14 days of grueling interrogations, confinement in a tiny underground cell and the anguish of being cut off from the world, facing what his captors called years in a Siberian labor camp or a death sentence. His claims of innocence hardly mattered; as he guessed, he had been arrested as a bargaining chip in a larger game.

Ultimately, Mr. Daniloff was traded for Gennadi F. Zakharov (a confessed Soviet spy, who had been arrested two weeks before Mr. Daniloff’s arrest) and human rights activist Yuri Orlov.

But the affair continued to roil Soviet-American relations. About 100 Soviet officials, including 80 suspected spies, were eventually expelled by the United States. Moscow expelled 10 American diplomats and withdrew 260 Russian employees from the American Embassy in Moscow.

(By the way, for those of you out there who are connoisseurs, this is a Robert D. McFadden obit.)

Michael Valentine, one of nature’s noblemen. He helped pioneer the radar detector.

Mr. Valentine, who didn’t believe that road safety was determined by finite speed limits, went into battle armed with the Escort, a radar detector that he built with Jim Jaeger, his college friend and business partner, for their company, Cincinnati Microwave.
They were met with early success. In 1979, a year after the Escort’s debut, Car and Driver magazine tested 12 radar detectors and ranked it the best — “by a landslide” — for its ability to pick up the signals of police radar equipment.

…

Car and Driver’s obituary of Mr. Valentine quoted Mr. Jaeger as recalled that they disassembled a Fuzzbuster and “were amazed at how primitive it was. There was almost nothing inside. Mike and I started noodling about how to build a superior, cost-no-object detector.”

Sammy Basso, an advocate for research into progeria, an ultrarare fatal disease that causes rapid aging in children, who was known for living with gusto and humor with the condition as he faced the certainty of premature death, died on Oct. 5 near his home in Tezze sul Brenta, in the Veneto region of northern Italy. He was 28.

I wanted to share this one because cool story, bro:

He once posed outside a U.F.O. museum in Roswell, N.M., in green “alien” eyeglasses, which accentuated his egg-shaped head, to make tourists think he was a real visitor from outer space.
“He made everyone around him feel comfortable with him and with progeria,” Dr. Gordon said. “All he had to do was say two words and you’d be smiling and laughing.”

Posted in Cars, Heroism, History, Media, Obits | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

October 19th, 2024

Latricia Trammell was fired on Friday as head coach of the Dallas Wings.

The team was 9-31 this season.

In case you were wondering- and it took me longer to figure this out than it should have – the Dallas Wings are a WNBA team.

The Wings franchise started in Detroit in 1998 and won three WNBA championships there before moving to Tulsa in 2010. After six seasons in Oklahoma, the team relocated to Dallas in 2016 and became the Wings.

On a related note:

This season the WNBA will lose $40 million, a bit better than the $50 million forecast and reported by several media outlets months ago but still a loss, sources said.
Starting in the 2026 season, the WNBA will get up to $2.2 billion over 11 years as part of the new basketball media contracts.

…

But the players are expected to opt out of the current collective bargaining contract by a Nov. 1 deadline and, if they do, that means salaries are likely to rise, which would eat into that potential $60 million 2026 profit by the league — the $100M in television revenue turning the projected $40M loss into a $60M gain.

Posted in Firings, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: October 17, 2024.

October 17th, 2024

Mitzi Gaynor. NYT (archived). IMDB.

I found this kind of interesting, in light of another obit from not that long ago:

Her most notable television experience, however, may also have been her least triumphant. On Feb. 16, 1964, Ms. Gaynor had top billing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” She sang “It’s Too Darn Hot” and a medley of blues songs, but she was completely overshadowed by another act on the bill that night: the Beatles, in their second American television appearance. At a cast dinner afterward, she recalled, Paul McCartney asked for her autograph.

Also interesting to me:

While the couple were still honeymooners, George Abbott, the revered Broadway producer and director, asked for a meeting and told Ms. Gaynor that he wanted her to play Lola, the seductive agent of the Devil, in the musical he was planning, “Damn Yankees.” Unfortunately, Mr. Bean had just committed his new wife to a four-picture deal in Hollywood. Gwen Verdon went on to play Lola, winning one of the show’s seven Tony Awards in 1956. Except for a small part in the 1946 musical “Gypsy Lady,” when she was still billed as Mitzi Gerber, Ms. Gaynor never made it to Broadway.

Ever wonder how the history of a particular musical would have been different if the producers had been able to cast their first choice, instead of “settling” for someone who came out of left field and blew everyone away? I do.

(Okay, to be fair, Gwen Verdon didn’t exactly come out of left field. She’d already won a Tony for “Can-Can”.)

NYT obit for Bob Yerkes. Noted here because:

1) This gives me a chance to thank jimmymcnulty for his comments on the previous obit. I agree: I think Mr. Yerkes would have been a great neighbor, and a swell guy to hang with.

(Also, thanks to FotB RoadRich and FotB cm smith for their comments on the late Mr. Armes in the same obit.)

B) I thought this was interesting, and it was sort of played down in the THR obit:

During his circus days, Mr. Yerkes became deeply religious — a turnabout from his childhood.
“I was reared in an unbelieving home,” he said in “Redeeming the Screens,” a 2016 book about religion in the entertainment industry. “As a young adult, I have to confess I read the Bible planning to denounce the truth of it, but I realized that it had to be inspired by God.”
He formed a Bible-reading group for circus performers. He later served on the board of the Christian Film & Television Commission, which bills itself as being “dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media.”

Posted in Movies, Obits, Religion, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 16, 2024.

October 16th, 2024

Megan Marshack passed away earlier this month at the age of 70.

That’s a name that might ring a bell with the old people in my audience. You younger folks never heard of her.

Ms. Marshack was “with” former vice-president Nelson Rockefeller when he died on January 26, 1979.

I use “with” above because the circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death were and are unclear.

The initial account of Mr. Rockefeller’s death was supplied by Hugh Morrow, his longtime spokesman, after midnight on Jan. 27. He told The New York Times that Mr. Rockefeller had died instantly, at 10:15 p.m., while he was in his office, alone with a bodyguard, “having a wonderful time” working on an art book he was writing.
The next day, The Times began deconstructing the official story. The paper reported that someone called 911 to report Mr. Rockefeller’s death an hour after he was reported to have died; that Mr. Rockefeller was not at his office but rather at a brownstone he used as a clubhouse; and that at the time he was with Ms. Marshack, who was identified as a research assistant.
A drip-drip of revelations ensued. First The Times reported that it was Ms. Marshack who called 911; then the paper said that the caller had actually been a friend of hers, who lived in the same apartment building as Ms. Marshack, down the block from Mr. Rockefeller’s brownstone. It also turned out that Mr. Rockefeller had given Ms. Marshack the money for her apartment, a loan amounting to $45,000 (about $200,000 in today’s money), which he forgave in his will, along with other loans to top aides.

…

The circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death remain mysterious. One account said that he was found dead wearing a suit and tie and surrounded by working papers; another said that he was nude, amid containers of Chinese food. Several credible sources indicated that he did not actually die at his brownstone but rather at Ms. Marshack’s apartment. The cause of death is generally understood to have been a heart attack.
Aside from minimal statements confirming that she had indeed been with Mr. Rockefeller when he died — released to The Times by Mr. Morrow immediately after Mr. Rockefeller’s death — Ms. Marshack never publicly commented on any of the accounts.
“My understanding is that, after he passed away, she signed a nondisclosure agreement with the family at their request, and that’s why she never spoke of it,” Ms. Marshack’s brother said in an interview. “I think she had a desire to tell the story all along but held on to her obligation.”

Ms. Marshack left behind an obituary that she wrote herself.

Ms. Marshack’s self-written obituary disclosed some previously unreported details about her association with Mr. Rockefeller but did not mention a romance — although it ended suggestively, quoting from the 1975 musical “A Chorus Line.” Ms. Marshack wrote that she “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”

And another historical footnote: Richard V. Secord, of Iran-Contra fame.

Paul Lowe, photojournalist.

Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital in modern history.

He was stabbed by his 19-year-old son, who was apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

Posted in History, Obits, Photography, Politics | No Comments »

Obit watch: October 15, 2024.

October 15th, 2024

John Lasell, actor. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “Perry Mason”, “The New Perry Mason”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Broken Mirror“, season 6, episode 4.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: October 11, 2024.

October 11th, 2024

Ethel Kennedy.

Thomas Rockwell, author. His most famous book is perhaps How to Eat Fried Worms.

He was also Norman’s son.

Posing for a painting that depicted him rummaging through his grandfather’s overcoat pocket was one of his favorite childhood memories, he told Cobblestone, a children’s magazine, in 1989. That image appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
“I had to stand on tiptoe while reaching into the overcoat, which was hung on an easel,” Mr. Rockwell said, describing how his father had composed the painting. “My father gave me a present for posing, and I remember feeling so proud and pleased that I’d helped him with his work. I know I’ve never enjoyed any gift as much as that one.”

This one goes out to great and good FotB pigpen51: Greg Landry, quarterback.

He wore the Lions’ Honolulu blue and silver for 11 seasons, tallying 12,451 yards and 80 touchdown passes.
In 1971, his first year as a starter, Landry passed for 2,237 yards and 16 touchdowns, earning a first-team All-Pro nod and his only trip to the Pro Bowl. He was the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction until Matthew Stafford was named an alternate for the 2014 Pro Bowl.

…

Unusual for an era marked by pocket passers, Landry did damage with his legs as well as his right arm: He rushed for 2,655 yards over his career, which concluded with stints with the Baltimore Colts and the Chicago Bears. In both 1971 and 1972, he ran for more than 500 yards.

…

But with Landry, who was physically imposing at 6-foot-4, the Lions designed running plays for him, as would later be the case with current dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The Lions even took a page from college football playbooks and drew up option plays, in which the quarterback has the option to carry the ball himself after the snap or pitch it to a running back, a rarity in the N.F.L.
Landry showed off his burst early in his career, during the Lions’ rout of the Green Bay Packers in the opening game of the 1970 season. Closing out the game in relief of the starter Bill Munson, Landry called a quarterback sneak on third down with two yards to go at the Lions’ 13-yard line. Instead of gutting out a few yards for a first down, he burst through the Packers’ defense and galloped for 76 yards — the longest run for a Lion since 1951.

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Nobuyo Oyama, Japanese voice actress.

For about 25 years, Ms. Oyama was the voice of Doraemon, a character that first appeared in a manga created in 1969. Doraemon is a robot from the future, sent by its owner to the present day to help his great-great-grandfather solve his childhood problems and change his family’s fortunes.
The plump, earless, catlike robot typically helped the boy, Nobita Nobi, using gadgets from the future that he kept in his magical pocket. His deepening friendship with Nobita and his family was part of what made “Doraemon” one of the longest-running shows in Japan and beyond.

Posted in Art, Books, History, NFL, Obits, Sports | No Comments »

Que Saleh Saleh…

October 8th, 2024

Robert Saleh out as head coach of the Jets. ESPN.

He was 20-36 over roughly three and a half seasons with the Jets. Noted:

Saleh becomes the third NFL coach to be fired after losing a game in London, according to ESPN Research. The Raiders fired coach Dennis Allen in 2014 the day after they lost 38-14 to the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium, while the Dolphins fired coach Joe Philbin in 2015 the day after they lost 27-14 to the Jets at Wembley. Saleh’s firing comes two days after the Jets lost 23-17 to the Minnesota Vikings at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

In other news, Josh Wolff was fired on Sunday as head coach of Austin FC, the soccer team. 45-30-60 over four seasons. Austin FC made the playoffs once in that period (2022).

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | No Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 5, 2024.

October 7th, 2024

It was a full rich weekend. I was out all day Saturday and all day Sunday (at separate events) and did not get home until 10 PM last night. So blogging has been kind of constrained, and will be probably until tomorrow. (I have to drop my rental car off this morning, and I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon that’s going to leave my eyes messed up.)

Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

None.

I was right about the Jacksonville -Indianapolis game, but that gives me no satisfaction.

And, in other news, I’m thinking the only reason this wasn’t a forfeit is that it was a playoff game, and that would have been a bad look for MLB.

I am also waiting on the results of the Alabama appeal. As I understand it, SEC bylaws specifically forbid any team from scoring more points in a game than Alabama, so I’m thinking the conference is going to overturn Vanderbilt’s win and award the victory to ‘Bama.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sarcasm, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 3, 2024.

October 3rd, 2024

Jay J. Armes passed away on September 19th. He was 92.

I had been thinking about him recently, wondering if he was still around and enjoying a comfortable retirement, or if he was still working.

I’m not sure how many people remember him, but he was a pretty famous private investigator in El Paso.

Described as “armless but deadly” by People magazine, Mr. Armes appeared to live the life of a superhero. In the 1970s, the Ideal Toy Corporation even reproduced him as a plastic action figure, with hooks like those he began wearing in adolescence after an accident in which railroad dynamite exploded in his hands.

…

In May 1946, Julian and an older friend were horsing around one afternoon with a teenager who had a pair of railroad blasting caps. Julian was holding them when they blew up, shooting him into the air, mangling his hands and nearly killing him.
A few months later he was fitted with prosthetic hooks.

He tried acting for a bit, but went into PI work.

Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”

He was a self-promoter. Perhaps a bit too much of one.

After Newsweek, People and other national publications chronicled his adventures, the Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright went to El Paso to write a profile of Mr. Armes. His article — headlined “Is Jay J. Armes For Real?” — is widely regarded as a classic of magazine writing.

The Cartwright article is linked from the obit, but Texas Monthly is kind of skirty about reading without a subscription. Here’s an archived version. Brutally summarizing (you should really read the whole thing), Mr. Cartwright found a lot of inconsistencies between what Mr. Armes claimed and what could be documented.

Mr. Armes’s son said in an interview last week that Mr. Cartwright’s article was a “hatchet job” and that it was retaliation for his father’s unsuccessful campaign for sheriff of El Paso County against a friend of the writer. Mr. Cartwright died in 2017.
In 2016, the public radio program “Snap Judgment” revisited the Texas Monthly article and the puzzle of Mr. Armes.
The private eye couldn’t tolerate even hearing Mr. Cartwright’s name.
“He’s got a wilted hand, and I guess he had an inferiority complex,” Mr. Armes told “Snap Judgment.” “He saw Jay Armes had accomplished all this. So, he had to write a cutthroat story. Don’t tell me about anything about this corrupt Gary Cartwright. Don’t even mention his name to me.”

…

He told interviewers that he appeared in more than three dozen movies and television shows. But he is credited as an actor with just one TV appearance on the Internet Movie Database — a 1973 episode of “Hawaii Five-O” in which he played an assassin.

“Hookman”, season 6, episode 1. He was a violent criminal who was out for revenge against the four cops that caused him to lose his hands…one of whom was Steve McGarret. I admit, I haven’t seen every episode of the good “Hawaii Five-O”, but I have seen this one, and I would agree it is one of the best of those I’ve seen. Mike Quigley seems to agree with me.

(It was remade for the bad “5-0” (season 3, episode 15), but without Mr. Armes.)

He had some notable successes and seemed to earn enough money to support his lifestyle. In 1991, he was credited by authorities with tracking down the body of Lynda Singshinsuk, a Northwestern University student who had gone missing. Mr. Armes also persuaded the suspect, Donald Weber, to confess to killing her.
“Without Mr. Armes’s assistance, there is a significant possibility that Mr. Weber would not be brought to justice,” a prosecutor told The Chicago Tribune.

I found two action figures on eBay. One is $61.19 and it doesn’t look complete. The other one is $149.99. I can’t tell how complete it is, but it does have the “briefcase” with the various “hands”.

In other news, Masamitsu Yoshioka has passed away. He was 106.

His death was announced on social media on Aug. 28 by the Japanese journalist and author Takashi Hayasaki, who spoke with Mr. Yoshioka last year. He provided no other details.

He was “the last known survivor among some 770 crew members who manned the Japanese airborne armada that attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941”.

He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”

This made me snort:

He participated in the attack on Wake Island on Dec. 11, 1941, and a raid in the Indian Ocean early in 1942. (As Professor Morgan put it, he “was involved in many additional campaigns for the liberation of Asia from white colonialism.”) But when Emperor Hirohito announced his nation’s surrender, Mr. Yoshioka was on an air base in Japan.

“…the liberation of Asia from white colonialism”.

The Rape of Nanjing.

“Now I think of the men who were on board those ships we torpedoed. I think of the people who died because of me,” Mr. Yoshioka said. “They were young men, just like we were. I am so sorry about it; I hope there will not be any more wars.”

Bob Yerkes, stuntman. IMDB.

His backyard was equipped with rigs for high falls, mats to practice flips and a springboard powered by compressed air that launched people end-over-end. He is said to have invented the airbag for stunt use.
“There will never be another backyard like Bob’s where you could train for free or even live for free if you needed a place to stay,” Williams wrote.

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: October 2, 2024.

October 2nd, 2024

John Amos. NYT (archived). Other credits include “The Rockford Files: Shoot-Out at the Golden Pagoda”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Hunter”.

Frank Fritz, of “American Pickers”.

Burning in Hell watch: Song Binbin, commie.

A daughter of a prominent general in the People’s Liberation Army, Ms. Song was enrolled at Beijing Normal University Girls High School when she and classmates responded to Mao’s call for young people to turn against intellectuals, educators and others who supposedly held bourgeois values.
On Aug. 5, 1966, students attacked Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old mother of four who headed the school. She was kicked and beaten with sticks spiked with nails. After passing out, she was thrown onto a garbage cart and left to die.
Her death has been widely described as the first killing of a teacher during the Cultural Revolution, a violent spasm establishing Mao’s cult of personality, with masses waving his Little Red Book of his writings.

…

Two weeks after Ms. Bian’s death, more than one million young Red Guards thronged Tiananmen Square, where Ms. Song had been selected to pin a red armband around Mao’s left sleeve as they stood atop the towering Gate of Heavenly Peace. A photograph of the moment appeared across the country. Praised by Mao, Ms. Song, at 19, became a kind of celebrity in China.
But the whirlwind of the Cultural Revolution soon turned on Ms. Song’s family. Her father, Song Renqiong, was purged from the Communist Party in 1968, and Ms. Song and her mother were put under house arrest. The Cultural Revolution ended only when Mao died in 1976.

…

On Jan. 12, 2014, Ms. Song visited her old school and expressed remorse, bowing before a statue of Ms. Bian and delivering a 1,500-word speech. “I am responsible for the unfortunate death of Principal Bian,” she said, according to The Beijing News. (Ms. Bian’s title was officially deputy principal, but she was referred to as the principal because she was serving in that role at the time in an acting capacity.)
In 2004, Wang Youqin, a schoolmate of Ms. Song’s who later became a historian at the University of Chicago, published “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a book that included a description of the death of Ms. Bian and of Ms. Song’s role in the turmoil at the girls’ high school.
After Ms. Bian’s death, Ms. Wang wrote, “Every school in China became a torture chamber, prison or even execution ground, and many teachers were persecuted to death.”
Ms. Song denied that she had participated directly in the beating; she said, in fact, that she had tried to stop others who did. But she acknowledged that she and a fellow student were Red Guard leaders and that they were among the first to post so-called big-character posters — publicly displayed signs handwritten in a large format — denouncing teachers.

…

Some commenters stressed that Ms. Song should bear a greater burden because of her prominence among the Red Guards. “It’s meaningless to say you witnessed a murder and then say you don’t know who the killers were,” said Cui Weiping, a retired professor of literature who writes about China’s past, as quoted by The New York Times in 2014.
One person who was unsatisfied was Ms. Bian’s widower, Wang Jingyao. He had taken photos of his wife’s battered body after her death as well as of the posters that her tormentors had hung in their apartment after breaking in. One sign threatened to “hack you to pieces,” another to “hold up your pigs’ ears.”
“She is a bad person, because of what she did,” Mr. Wang told The Times in 2014, when he was 93. “She and the others were supported by Mao Zedong. Mao was the source of all evil. He did so much that was bad.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: October 1, 2024.

October 1st, 2024

Pete Rose. NYT (share link). ESPN. MLB.

As everyone knows, I am not a baseball fan. And if I was a baseball fan, I would be pulling for the Astros, Rangers, or Indians Guardians.

But I’ve always felt a little sorry for Pete Rose. He did pretty much the worst thing you can do in baseball, and what happened to him is a result of his own actions. But I think he probably got crapped on more than he deserved, and I kind of wish people had shown him a bit more compassion. The ban from baseball was an appropriate response, but maybe he didn’t deserve to be a pariah and the butt of jokes.

Posted in Obits, Sports | 6 Comments »

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