Obituaries for 2018

[Sanguine]

He had me from boyhood, his years with New York when it was the Sunday magazine offering of the dying New York Herald-Tribune and from his first anthology, The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. Few were so deft at harpooning the pretenses creeping into culture the way he did in such work as Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The Painted Word, and From Bauhaus to Our House.

RIP Mr. Wolfe. Your books still occupy some of the most reachable space on my shelves.

High praise indeed.

[jmyrlefuller]

There's something ironic about mourning Tom Wolfe's death, considering his deep-seeded hatred of blogs and social media, on the very Internet he despised.

[Gefn]

There's something ironic about mourning Tom Wolfe's death, considering his deep-seeded hatred of blogs and social media, on the very Internet he despised.

No, he was old school. I know a lot of writers like that. I even know a few who only write on typewriters. I know one writer who I'm related to who doesn't even have a cell phone or a TV, much less a computer

[endicom]

RIP, Tom Wolfe. Your work lives on.

[EasyAce]

No, he was old school. I know a lot of writers like that. I even know a few who only write on typewriters. I know one writer who I'm related to who doesn't even have a cell phone or a TV, much less a computer

I'm worse. Often as not when I sit down to write, I write in longhand with a fountain pen. A lifelong habit even my accommodations to the computer age hasn't broken yet.

[TomSea]

Joseph Campanella dies at 93 after six-decade Hollywood career as prolific character actor
By Dailymail.com Reporter
Published: 00:17 EDT, 17 May 2018 | Updated: 00:17 EDT, 17 May 2018

He had more than 200 titles to his name after an acting career in Hollywood spanning six decades.

Joseph Campanella, 93, passed away on Wednesday at his home in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of LA on Wednesday, Variety reported.

His most famous roles included long-running stints on crime drama Mannix, primetime soaps The Colbys and Dallas and daytime soap The Bold And The Beautiful.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5738921/Joseph-Campanella-dies-93-six-decade-Hollywood-career-prolific-character-actor.html#ixzz5Flu6q3tr
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

I saw him on a lot of tv shows, I accidentally opened up the 2017 obits thread the other day, the mod was saying, stay on topic. A good idea.

[Applewood]

Campanella was a good actor as was his brother, Frank.  Rest in peace.

[endicom]

Richard Pipes, 94.

RIP

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/richard-pipes-rip.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes

[TomSea]

Richard Pipes, 94.

RIP

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/richard-pipes-rip.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes

Richard Pipes was a Reagan aide as well, it appears he is the father of Daniel Pipes who writes on Islam and terrorism.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pipes

[Bigun]

Richard Pipes, 94.

RIP

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/richard-pipes-rip.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes

One of the truly great ones is gone.  He made his mark for sure.

[jmyrlefuller]

Professional football player Billy Cannon dies at 80



Cannon was a major star at Louisiana State University in the late 1950s, where he was a unanimous All-American and won the Heisman Trophy. He would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame for his play at that level.

In 1960, the Los Angeles Rams, in violation of league policy prohibiting players from joining teams until after the end of the semester, coerced Cannon into signing a contract after they drafted him first overall in that year's college draft. A court later declared that contract invalid, and the American Football League, which had yet to even begin play, secured Cannon's services, a major boost in credibility for the fledgling league. Cannon would play running back for the AFL throughout its ten-year existence, making that league's all-star game two times and appearing in Super Bowl II for the Oakland Raiders. He finished his career in 1970 after the AFL merged with the NFL and finished his life as a dentist.

Obituary from ESPN

Wikipedia

AFL/NFL stats

[Free Vulcan]

Couple a weeks old, just came across it. If you ever heard a Menards commercial, it was this guy:

'Menards Guy' Ray Szmanda, longtime company spokesman, dies at 91



https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/menards-guy-ray-szmanda-longtime-company-spokesman-dies-at-91

Ray Szmanda, known to generations of Wisconsinites as the man who brought Menards commercials to life, has died at age 91.

Szmanda passed away at his home in Antigo on Sunday, May 6, according to an obituary posted to Bradley Funeral Home & Crematory's website.

Szmanda worked in T.V. and radio in the 1950s and operated a broadcast school in Waukesha until the late 1970s, when he joined Menards as a pitchman. After a successful run, Szmanda retired as the spokesman in 1998.

[TomSea]

Bernard Lewis, eminent historian of the Middle East, dies at 101
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bernard-lewis-eminent-historian-of-the-middle-east-dies-at-101/2018/05/19/4f0db6b8-5bad-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html

National Review:

Bernard Lewis, ‘the Imam’ |

The importance and magnificence of a Middle East scholar

More than once, after 9/11, I asked Bernard Lewis, “Did you ever think your expertise would be so useful? And so in demand?” “No!” he’d say, sometimes with a laugh.

Bernard Lewis was an historian of the Middle East, and one of the great scholars of our time. His first name, by the way, is pronounced in the British style: BER-nerd, rather than Ber-NARD.

In a long teaching career, he had hundreds or thousands of students, some of whom called him “the Imam” — the ultimate authority. Lewis, by the way, was a great friend of the Arabs. This is poorly understood both by his enemies and by some of his fans. I’ll have more to say about this in due course.

Continued: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/bernard-lewis-the-imam/

Rest In Peace, Rest In Peace Billy Cannon too, Ray Szmanda and all others....

[EasyAce]

Professional football player Billy Cannon dies at 80



Cannon was a major star at Louisiana State University in the late 1950s, where he was a unanimous All-American and won the Heisman Trophy. He would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame for his play at that level.

In 1960, the Los Angeles Rams, in violation of league policy prohibiting players from joining teams until after the end of the semester, coerced Cannon into signing a contract after they drafted him first overall in that year's college draft. A court later declared that contract invalid, and the American Football League, which had yet to even begin play, secured Cannon's services, a major boost in credibility for the fledgling league. Cannon would play running back for the AFL throughout its ten-year existence, making that league's all-star game two times and appearing in Super Bowl II for the Oakland Raiders. He finished his career in 1970 after the AFL merged with the NFL and finished his life as a dentist.

Obituary from ESPN

Wikipedia

AFL/NFL stats

Cannon is one of two professional athletes known to have become dentists after their playing days. The other: Jim Lonborg, 1967 Cy Young Award-winning pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, who became a dentist after his playing career ended, too.

Two sports legends became sports legends after giving up dentistry. Golfer Cary Middlecoff (1949, 1956 U.S. Open winner; 1955 Masters winner) was a dentist in the Army during World War II, then entered a PGA tournament in 1945 and won, deciding he had a better future as a professional golfer. His career ended thanks to back and nerve issues in his early 40s, but he made a second career as a respected golf commentator on television after that.

And Casey Stengel was a dental student when he decided baseball was more his future. How right he proved to be . . .

[Machiavelli]

Patricia Morison, Star of the Original ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’ Dies at 103

Patricia Morison, the glamorous star who originated the role of the shrewish actress diva in the delightful 1948 Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, has died. She was 103.

Morison, who also appeared on stage opposite Yul Brynner in The King and I in such films as The Song of Bernadette (1943), died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles of natural causes.

With a mane of exuberant, dark hair that reached her hips, Morison often was cast as a villainess or “the other woman” on the big screen.

More

Wikipedia

IMDb

[Gefn]

103, was a good long life.

May she Rest In Peace

[jmyrlefuller]

Cannon is one of two professional athletes known to have become dentists after their playing days. The other: Jim Lonborg, 1967 Cy Young Award-winning pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, who became a dentist after his playing career ended, too.

Two sports legends became sports legends after giving up dentistry. Golfer Cary Middlecoff (1949, 1956 U.S. Open winner; 1955 Masters winner) was a dentist in the Army during World War II, then entered a PGA tournament in 1945 and won, deciding he had a better future as a professional golfer. His career ended thanks to back and nerve issues in his early 40s, but he made a second career as a respected golf commentator on television after that.

And Casey Stengel was a dental student when he decided baseball was more his future. How right he proved to be . . .

There's also the case of Jim Ailinger, who quit football after his one season in the NFL in 1924 to avoid damaging his hands and protect his planned move into dentistry. He ended up dying just short of 100 years old, and despite not playing football after that, he had a long career as an official.

[Gefn]

The Simpsons ended their 29th season with a tribute card to Tom Wolfe. Classy. Imho.

Meanwhile on Family Guy, still no mention of the deaths of Carrie Fischer or Adam West.

[jmyrlefuller]

Robert Indiana, pop artist, dies at 89



Indiana's most famous work was a rendering of the word "Love" into a square with the letter "O" tilted diagonally. Too simple to be eligible for copyright, Indiana complained for the rest of his life that his work was one of the most plagiarized pieces of art in history. He was closely associated with Andy Warhol and the pop art movement of the 1960s. His design of the basketball court at MECCA Arena in Milwaukee was the subject of an ESPN documentary.



Obituary from The New York Times

Wikipedia

[TomSea]

Clint Walker, star of TV's 'Cheyenne,' dies at age 91
Associated Press

May 22, 2018 | 3:10 PM

| Grass Valley, Calif.
Clint Walker, star of TV's 'Cheyenne,' dies at age 91

Clint Walker appears on the set of "The Dirty Dozen" in Morkyate, Bedfordshire, England, on Aug. 5, 1966. Walker died Monday of congestive heart failure at a hospital in Grass Valley, Calif. He was 91. (AP Photo)

Clint Walker, who played the title character in the early TV western "Cheyenne," has died.

Walker's daughter Valerie Walker tells the Associated Press that her father died Monday of congestive heart failure at a hospital in Grass Valley, Calif., at age 91.

The towering, strapping Walker played Cheyenne Bodie, who traveled the West and handed down justice on the TV series that ran for seven seasons starting in 1955.

Read more at:   http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-et-clint-walker-obituary-20180522-story.html

[musiclady]

Wow.   I used to watch every show to see him take his shirt off.  ^-^

(I didn't know he was still around!)

[mountaineer]

Handsome guy, wasn't he?

[EasyAce]

Classic story about Clint Walker---Before he did Cheyenne, he was invited to meet with Cecil B. DeMille regarding a role in The Ten Commandments. En route, he stopped to help an older woman change a tire on her car. When he got to the meeting, DeMille told him he was late. Walker explained what he'd done on the way there. "I know all about it," DeMille replied. "That was my secretary."

He's tall in the saddle and has snow on his shoulders six months out of the year.---A television critic.

I'm not going to get that far carrying a gun and a badge. It doesn't pay well. If you make movies, you make some pretty good money---and the bullets aren't real.---Clint Walker, who was a Las Vegas sheriff's deputy doing security at the Sands Hotel when Van Johnson discovered him and suggested he try acting.

RIP, Mr. Walker.

[Free Vulcan]

Faith Whittlesey, 'Keeper of Reagan's Flame,' Dies at 79

Faith Whittlesey, a senior White House staff member under President Ronald Reagan and two-time U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, died Monday at the age of 79 following a long battle with cancer.

Whittlesey, who also served in the Pennsylvania State House, was considered a political trailblazer, overcoming tremendous obstacles facing the women of her time and going on to become an influential figure in the sculpting of the modern conservative agenda.

She once famously quipped: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.”

Read more at: https://www.newsmax.com/john-gizzi/faith-whittlesey-ronald-reagan-pennsylvania-obit/2018/05/22/id/861862/

[Gefn]

Philip Roth, American novelist has died at 85. Breaking.



Obit to follow.