Obituaries for 2019

[jmyrlefuller]

The Briefing Room's annual running thread for deaths in calendar year 2019.

[jmyrlefuller]

2018 thread:
http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,297509.0.html

[txradioguy]

R.I.P WWF hall of Famer "Mean" Gene Okerlund.  He was 76.

[jmyrlefuller]

R.I.P WWF hall of Famer "Mean" Gene Okerlund.  He was 76.

"Mean" Gene Okerlund
Hall of Fame pro wrestling announcer dies at 76



Beginning his career in radio, Okerlund began announcing pro wrestling bouts in 1970 and joined the World Wrestling Federation in 1983. He stayed with WWF throughout the Rock-and-Wrestling era that saw a boom in the popularity of the "sport," then joined WCW, the WWF's chief rival, in 1993. In 2001, ahead of WCW's collapse, he rejoined what would soon become WWE, where he would remain until his 2009 retirement. For most of his career, Okerlund affected a mostly straight, but distinctive fast-paced patter and was the oft-beleaguered straight man in many-a WWF promo during his career.

No cause of death was stated. He had previously undergone two kidney transplants.

Obituary from Newsweek

Wikipedia

[Restored]

For some reason, I thought he was already dead. The local bowling alley has his pizza.

[jmyrlefuller]

For some reason, I thought he was already dead. The local bowling alley has his pizza.

76 is like 102 in pro wrestler years.

[jmyrlefuller]

Bob Einstein
Comedian best known for his error-prone stuntman character Super Dave Osborne dies at 76



Einstein, the older brother of actor Albert Brooks, began his career as a writer for variety shows such as Sonny & Cher and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In the 1980s he became best known for his character "Super Dave Osborne," a hilariously inept stuntman. He continued acting in other comic roles, including Marty Funkhouser in Curb Your Enthusiasm and a role on Arrested Development.

Einstein died of suspected complications of cancer.

Obituary from The Hollywood Reporter

Wikipedia

IMDB


Sorry...

[txradioguy]

Bob Einstein
Comedian best known for his error-prone stuntman character Super Dave Osborne dies at 76


Einstein at left.

Einstein, the older brother of actor Albert Brooks, began his career as a writer for variety shows such as Sonny & Cher and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In the 1980s he became best known for his character "Super Dave Osborne," a hilariously inept stuntman. He continued acting in other comic roles, including Marty Funkhouser in Curb Your Enthusiasm and a role on Arrested Development.

Einstein died of suspected complications of cancer.

Obituary from The Hollywood Reporter

Wikipedia

IMDB


Sorry...

Bummer.  I used to love watching his Super Dave Osborne character on Bizarre with John Byner.  They did a hilarious duet of the theme song from "An Officer and A Gentleman".

[truth_seeker]

Sooper Dave reminds me of the next Sooper conservative, that can recite the Constitution, whilst riding an outhouse with no hands, on his way to the next college law school debate championships.

Paul Ryan, Trey Gowdy, etc.

[txradioguy]

Sooper Dave reminds me of the next Sooper conservative, that can recite the Constitution, whilst riding an outhouse with no hands, on his way to the next college law school debate championships.

Paul Ryan, Trey Gowdy, etc.

Just couldn't resist could you?

[jmyrlefuller]

Daryl Dragon
Keyboardist who was the "Captain Keyboard" of the Captain & Tennille dies at 76


Dragon at left.

A lifetime resident of southern California, he was the son of symphony conductor Carmen Dragon; Daryl's brother, Dennis, later had regional success as a musician.

Daryl Dragon first earned fame working with The Beach Boys as they were transitioning away from strictly beach music and began broadening their sound. It was with the Beach Boys that he earned his "Captain Keyboard" nickname. He kept the motif when he broke from the band in 1972 to launch a duo act with Toni Tennille, whom he married in 1975. He continued to contribute keyboards to numerous acts including the Carpenters. As the Captain and Tennille, Toni would be the lead singer while Daryl would silently play keyboards, charting several top-40 hits.

The two divorced in 2014, with Tennille later citing lack of intimacy and Dragon claiming he had been drugged and that his worsening medical state had played a role in the unexpected divorce. The two reconciled toward the end of his life.

Dragon died January 2 of kidney failure.

Obituary from Broadway World

Wikipedia


Sorry...

[Ghost Bear]

Looks like 2019 is getting started with a flurry...   

[edpc]

The two divorced in 2014, with Tennille later citing lack of intimacy



I guess he took ‘do that to me one more time’ a bit too literally.

[kevindavis007]

Just couldn't resist could you?

Sometimes they can't.

[Applewood]

Blake Nordstrom, co-president of Nordstrom, dies at age 58 after fight with cancer

Blake Nordstrom, the 58-year-old co-president of Nordstrom, died early Wednesday morning, the retailer announced on Wednesday.
…
The company disclosed in December that Blake had been diagnosed with lymphoma. At the time, Blake had the lymphoma was “treatable.” He had expected to work through his illness.

It could not be immediately determined whether the lymphoma was the cause of Blake’s death.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/blake-nordstrom-co-president-of-nordstrom-has-died-at-age-58.html

[Skeptic]

The Nordstroms seem like good people. 58 is too young.

[EasyAce]

Howell Begle, lawyer who championed penniless R&B stars, dies at 74

By Emily Langer

Ruth Brown was a chart-topping rhythm-and-blues singer whose popularity in the 1950s brought her label, Atlantic Records, a reputation as “the house that Ruth built.” Years later, scraping by as a domestic, she heard a familiar sound on the air. “I turned on the radio while I was scrubbing,” she recalled, “and I heard my records come on.”

Like many artists from R&B’s original heyday in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, Brown — remembered for numbers such as “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and “Teardrops From My Eyes” — was a victim of what ABC News once declared the “dirty little secret of the music business.” Through skewed contracts and sloppy bookkeeping, record companies reaped the profits of original R&B sales and subsequent reissues while leaving performers, many of whom were African American, in poverty.

“Where’s the check?” Brown demanded to know.

In 1983, she found a champion in Howell E. Begle, then a partner in a Washington law firm and a boyhood fan of her music who by then had amassed a library of old 78s — many of them Brown’s recordings — numbering in the thousands.

During a years-long pro bono legal fight, Mr. Begle represented Brown and other R&B artists, helping them claim royalties from past sales, industry-standard royalty agreements going forward, and other benefits in what became known as the royalty reform movement.

Mr. Begle, 74, died Dec. 30 at a hospital in Lebanon, N.H., of injuries he sustained in a skiing accident a week earlier. His wife, Julie Eilber, confirmed his death . . .

RIP Mr. Begle.

[EasyAce]

RIP Herb Kelleher, the Man Who Democratized Air Travel
The swashbuckling Southwest Airlines honcho is dead at 87.
By Matt Welch
http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/04/rip-herb-kelleher-the-man-who-democratiz

Herb Kelleher, the larger-than-life Southwest Airlines impresario who taught the world that air travel did not have to be the exclusive plaything of the rich, died yesterday at 87.

"Our basic thinking [was that] Southwest would democratize the skies," Kelleher told me in 2010. "Which we did. I mean, a couple of years ago 85 percent of [Americans] had flown at least one commercial flight as opposed to 15 percent in 1966."

Kelleher was not the founder of Southwest, but rather the founding lawyer—which came in handy, since the Texas-based upstarts spent five years in court before getting its first plane off the ground in 1971. Why so much litigation? Because back then, as in pretty much all the world, America's airline industry was a heavily regulated cartel, with the federal Civil Aeronautics Board effectively letting the country's four main incumbent airlines veto the routes, prices, and even existence of any would-be competitor. Southwest's investors blew through their $500,000 seed money in legal fees, so Kelleher legendarily vowed to pay out of his own pocket if they lost their appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. They won, and he became CEO.

"One of the [government's] fundamental purposes was to throttle competition," Kelleher told me. "Their thesis was that if a new airline was gonna take one passenger—one, that's what they said—one passenger away from an existing airline, it can't be certificated....The fact that the existing airlines had 90 percent of all the revenue passenger miles in 1938, and also had 90 percent of all the revenue passenger miles in 1978, at the time of deregulation, would give you somewhat of a hint" . . .

RIP Mr. Kelleher. You are now free to move about heaven . . .

[Cyber Liberty]

BKMK

[verga]

Daryl Dragon
Keyboardist who was the "Captain Keyboard" of the Captain & Tennille dies at 76


Dragon at left.

A lifetime resident of southern California, he was the son of symphony conductor Carmen Dragon; Daryl's brother, Dennis, later had regional success as a musician.

Daryl Dragon first earned fame working with The Beach Boys as they were transitioning away from strictly beach music and began broadening their sound. It was with the Beach Boys that he earned his "Captain Keyboard" nickname. He kept the motif when he broke from the band in 1972 to launch a duo act with Toni Tennille, whom he married in 1975. He continued to contribute keyboards to numerous acts including the Carpenters. As the Captain and Tennille, Toni would be the lead singer while Daryl would silently play keyboards, charting several top-40 hits.

The two divorced in 2014, with Tennille later citing lack of intimacy and Dragon claiming he had been drugged and that his worsening medical state had played a role in the unexpected divorce. The two reconciled toward the end of his life.

Dragon died January 2 of kidney failure.

Obituary from Broadway World

Wikipedia


Sorry...

Saw them in concert once, Great performance.
I heard the reason they divorced was that he did not want her being saddled with the debts from his medical treatments. Supposedly he put everything in her name, so that he was literally penniless and the hospitals could not come after his estate.

[Smokin Joe]

Howell Begle, lawyer who championed penniless R&B stars, dies at 74
RIP Mr. Begle.

Indeed. Pro bono? To recover their royalties? It doesn't often get more righteous than that. Bless him!

[jmyrlefuller]

Kwamie Lassiter
Ten-year NFL vet dies at 49 of a heart attack

🐦42
Lassiter's jersey number with Arizona

Lassiter played in the NFL from 1995 to 2004. His career was never Hall of Fame caliber (he was only once considered for the Pro Bowl), but the free safety had brief moments of spectacular play, including a playoff-clinching performance in 1998 where he recorded four interceptions in a single game (the same amount he had recorded the entire year up to that point).

Following his playing career, he dabbled in broadcasting and coaching (his highest level in the latter being defensive backs coach for the 2012 Las Vegas Locomotives, the de facto champion of the UFL in its final season).

Lassiter died January 6 of a heart attack sustained while working out.

Obituary from NFL.com

Wikipedia

NFL career stats

[sneakypete]

Indeed. Pro bono? To recover their royalties? It doesn't often get more righteous than that. Bless him!

@Smokin Joe

 

It's enough to make me wonder how he avoided being disbarred.

[sneakypete]

Kwamie Lassiter
Ten-year NFL vet dies at 49 of a heart attack

🐦42
Lassiter's jersey number with Arizona

Lassiter played in the NFL from 1995 to 2004. His career was never Hall of Fame caliber (he was only once considered for the Pro Bowl), but the free safety had brief moments of spectacular play, including a playoff-clinching performance in 1998 where he recorded four interceptions in a single game (the same amount he had recorded the entire year up to that point).

Following his playing career, he dabbled in broadcasting and coaching (his highest level in the latter being defensive backs coach for the 2012 Las Vegas Locomotives, the de facto champion of the UFL in its final season).

Lassiter died January 6 of a heart attack sustained while working out.

 

@jmyrlefuller

I keep telling people that working out is dangerous,but do any of them every listen to me?

[Applewood]

Pegi Young, 66, Musician Who Started a School for Disabled, Dies

Pegi Young, a late-blossoming folk-rock musician who was a founder of a school for children with severe physical and speech impairments, like her son from her marriage to the singer-songwriter Neil Young, a performer at its many star-studded benefit concerts, died on Tuesday in Mountain View, Calif. She was 66.

Her brother Paul Morton said the cause was cancer.
...

She occasionally sang backup for Mr. Young, most notably at the 1994 Academy Awards telecast, when he sang his Oscar-nominated song, “Philadelphia.” But it was not until she was in her 50s that she recorded her first album, “Pegi Young” (2007). She followed it with four more.

More at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/obituaries/pegi-young-dead.html