DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[Chas]

Cronkite was by far, the greatest TV journalist of all time. The braying jackasses of today's Rupert Murdochian universe aren't fit to bring Walter his coffee.

Talk about a life well-lived.

"And that's the way it was..."

 

[DecoDahlia]

Julius Shulman

Legendary architectural photographer, Julius Shulman, just died.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-julius-shulman17-2009jul17,3,4614136.story

 

[Foofoogal]

I also loved Walter Cronkite. RIP

A newsman that actually reported some news. Lost Art for sure.

 

[carouselvic]

The world's oldest man, 113-year-old World War I veteran Henry Allingham

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Henry Allingham was one of only a handful of World War I survivors, worldwide.

There is now only one man left alive in the U.S., two others in Britain, one Canadian and none left from any other country, all of them 108 or older.

There is also one unverified possible veteran from Britain, who is only 106 and claims to have been a bicycle courier, and a Polish man who is a WW I-era veteran, involved in the Polish-Soviet war.

That's six total. It's the end of an era.

karol

 

[Hondo]

Cronkite was my favorite newscaster of all time, along with Edward R. Murrow.

Rest in peace, Walter.

karol

He was always Uncle Walter, I first remember him after the JFK assassination, and from then on began to appreciate his style as press or reporter. Its a shame younger generation never saw B/W TV.
But there is as a bright spot, after JFK, Walter Cronkite reported the Beatles invasion not Ed Sullivan
RIP Walter we'll miss you!

 

[patrick1987]

Henry Allingham was one of only a handful of World War I survivors, worldwide.

There is now only one man left alive in the U.S., two others in Britain, one Canadian and none left from any other country, all of them 108 or older.

There is also one unverified possible veteran from Britain, who is only 106 and claims to have been a bicycle courier, and a Polish man who is a WW I-era veteran, involved in the Polish-Soviet war.

That's six total. It's the end of an era.

karol

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=31290

 

[miss_elise]

Frank McCourt - Author of Angela's Ashes

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.../article6720048.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=crickler

 

[KilroyCD]

"Before we go any further, Mr Rumbold, Miss Brahms and I would like to complain about the state of our drawers. They're a positive disgrace."

It went virtually unreported over here, but back in February Wendy Richard (Miss Brahms) passed away at age 65 due to breast cancer.

 

[tempestbella42]

It went virtually unreported over here, but back in February Wendy Richard (Miss Brahms) passed away at age 65 due to breast cancer.

there was a lot of tributes over here
lts not forget..............http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJYnfOCF0g

people tend to forget how beautiful she was in her young days........http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tui89ItpBP8

 

[cookie]

Frank McCourt - RIP

Article from: The Australian
OBITUARY
Frank McCourt
Author. Born Brooklyn, August 19, 1930.
Died of cancer, July 19, Manhattan, New York. Aged 78.

Author Frank McCourt in 2005 at Manhattan¿s Stuyvesant High School, where he taught in the English department.
IN 1997, a year after he burst on to the international literary stage, Frank McCourt spoke to an audience of high school students in Long Island, New York. A former public school teacher, McCourt had shot to fame after recounting the story of his impoverished Irish childhood in Angela's Ashes, his Pulitzer Prize-winning "epic of woe". Asked what he had learned from writing the book, McCourt explained how the experience had changed him.

"I learned the significance of my own insignificant life," he said.

Until his mid-60s, McCourt was mostly known around New York as a creative writing teacher and local character - the kind who might turn up in a New York novel - singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother and joining the crowds at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.

But there was always a book or two being formed in his mind and the world would learn his name, and story, in 1996, after a friend helped him get an agent and his then-unfinished manuscript was quickly signed by Scribner. With a first printing of just 25,000, Angela's Ashes was an instant favourite with critics and readers, and perhaps the ultimate case of the non-celebrity memoir, the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.

"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proven him wrong," McCourt later explained. "And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools."

The book has been published in 25 languages and 30 countries.

A native of New York, McCourt was good company in the classroom and at the bar, but few had such a burden to unload. His parents were so poor that they returned to their native Ireland when he was a young child and settled in the slums of Limerick. Simply surviving his childhood was a tale; McCourt's father was an alcoholic who drank up the little money his family had. Three of McCourt's seven siblings died, and he nearly died from typhoid fever.

The book was a long Irish wake, finding laughter and lyricism in life's very worst.

Although some in Ireland complained that McCourt had revealed too much, Angela's Ashes became a bestseller, won a Pulitzer prize and was made into a movie of the same name, starring Emily Watson as the title character, McCourt's mother.

Author Peter Matthiessen, who became friendly with McCourt after Angela's Ashes came out, said he was stunned when he read it. "I remember thinking, 'Where did this guy come from?"' Matthiessen said. "His book was so good and it came out of nowhere."

The white-haired, sad-eyed, always quotable McCourt, his Irish accent still thick despite decades in the US, became a regular at parties, readings, conferences and other gatherings, so much the eager late-life celebrity that he later compared himself with a "dancing clown, available to everybody".

His friend and fellow memoirist Mary Karr once kidded him that her idea of a rare book was an unsigned copy of Angela's Ashes.

McCourt told the Associated Press in 2005 that he wasn't prepared for fame. "After teaching, I was getting all this attention," he said. "They actually looked at me - people I had known for years - and they were friendly and they looked at me in a different way. And I was thinking, 'All those years I was a teacher, why didn't you look at me like that then?"'

But the part of it he liked best, he said, was hearing "from all those kids who were in my classes. At least they knew that when I talked about writing I wasn't just talking through my hat," he said.

Much of his teaching was spent in the English department at the elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, where he defied the advice of his colleagues and shared his personal stories with the class; he slapped a student with a magazine and took on another known to have a black belt in karate.

After Angela's Ashes, McCourt continued his story, to strong but diminished sales and reviews, in 'Tis, which told of his return to New York in the 1940s, and in Teacher Man. He also wrote a children's story, Angela and the Baby Jesus, which was released in 2007.

Teacher Man, about his experiences as a public school teacher, opens with the story of his first day in the classroom in New York.

Then 27, he ate a student's sandwich that had been thrown at another student. McCourt had picked up the sandwich from the floor - "This bread was dark and thick, baked by an Italian mother in Brooklyn, bread firm enough to hold slices of a rich baloney, layered with slices of tomato, onions and peppers, drizzled with olive oil and charged with tongue-dazzling relish" - and ate it in front of the stunned class.
"On the first day of my teaching career, I was almost fired for eating the sandwich of a high school boy," he wrote. "On the second day I was almost fired for mentioning the possibility of friendship with a sheep. Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about my 30 years in the high school classrooms of New York City. I often doubted if I should be there at all. At the end I wondered how I lasted that long." According to The New York Times, many of his former students became writers and kept in touch through the years.

One of them, Susan Jane Gilman, told the paper: "We all thought, 'He's such a genius, what's he doing just teaching us?' Everybody thought he was destined for bigger and better things. And when he became a global phenomenon, we felt it was justice."

More than 10 million copies of his books have been sold in North America alone, says Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

"We have been privileged to publish his books, which have touched, and will continue to touch, millions of readers in myriad positive and meaningful ways," Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy says.

McCourt was married twice and had a daughter, Maggie McCourt, from his first marriage. His younger brother Malachy McCourt, an actor, commentator and singer, wrote two memoirs of his own, A Monk Swimming in 1998 and Singing Him My Song, published two years later. Malachy's son Conor made two television documentaries about the family, The McCourts of Limerick and The McCourts of New York, featuring interviews with the McCourt brothers.

But none would match the successes of Angela's Ashes, which stayed on the top of the bestseller lists for more than two years.

"I'm a late bloomer," McCourt said soon after the book was published in 1996.

Seven years later, he told The Hartford Courant how he was still surprised by his sudden fame. "At 66, you're supposed to die or get haemorrhoids," he said. "I just wrote the book and was amazed and astounded that it became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer prize. It still hasn't sunk in."

The book caused some controversy, with residents of Limerick challenging the accuracy of some of his stories.

The local newspaper, the Limerick Leader, reportedly published a photograph of a young McCourt, along with his brother Malachy, that showed them looking happy and well-dressed in their scout uniforms.

A local radio host, Gerry Hannan, even published a book, 'Tis Me Ass, that contained his own memories of Limerick.

During a visit to Australia in 1997, McCourt told The Australian he was aware many of the Limerick locals were unhappy with him: "I've besmirched the fair name of Limerick, which would be a neat trick, and insulted Ireland and my poor old mother."

At the time, he was still coming to terms with his new fame, including news that he had become a millionaire.

"I found out a couple of weeks ago, when I read it in a magazine," he said. "I suppose I'll just have to learn to live with it."

 

[Kid Mac]

Brenda Joyce -- Jane

"Tarzan's 'Jane' dies aged 92." Brenda Joyce was the only actress to play Jane with two different movie Tarzan actors, Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5889818/Tarzans-Jane-dies-aged-92.html

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Taco Bell Chihuahua, Gidget, dies at 15.....

Was such a nice doggie...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-quick23-2009jul23,0,4725645.story

 

[duggap]

"Tarzan's 'Jane' dies aged 92." Brenda Joyce was the only actress to play Jane with two different movie Tarzan actors, Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5889818/Tarzans-Jane-dies-aged-92.html

My mother named my older sister after her.

 

[Marzipan]

Taco Bell Chihuahua, Gidget, dies at 15.....

Was such a nice doggie...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-quick23-2009jul23,0,4725645.story

I just heard about this. Sad, but most probably she had a wonderful life...

 

[Carlisle Blues]

I just heard about this. Sad, but most probably she had a wonderful life...

I think so....but I am still a little choked up. :cry:

"Although she was hard of hearing, Gidget was otherwise in good health up to the day of her death, eating well and playing with her favorite squeaky toys at the home of trainer Sue Chipperton, McElhatton said.

"She was retired. She lived like a queen, very pampered," McElhatton said.

Gidget was found at a kennel and wasn't show quality, McElhatton said; she had an undershot jaw and huge ears.

But Gidget knew she was a star, McElhatton said."

 

[Marzipan]

I think so....but I am still a little choked up. :cry:

"Although she was hard of hearing, Gidget was otherwise in good health up to the day of her death, eating well and playing with her favorite squeaky toys at the home of trainer Sue Chipperton, McElhatton said.

"She was retired. She lived like a queen, very pampered," McElhatton said.

Gidget was found at a kennel and wasn't show quality, McElhatton said; she had an undershot jaw and huge ears.

But Gidget knew she was a star, McElhatton said."

Awwwwww.... I love how she knew she was a star despite her looks. She's the little underdog!

 

[jamespowers]

It went virtually unreported over here, but back in February Wendy Richard (Miss Brahms) passed away at age 65 due to breast cancer.

Oh No! Her too?! RIP Wendy.
Mr. Lucas is still alive anyway. [huh]

 

[Orsini]

Special at Taco Bell tonight...

 

[Mike in Seattle]

Special at Taco Bell tonight...

lol lol lol lol lol lol
I mean...."Oh, that's TERRIBLE! How could you do such a thing?!?!?!?!"

I'm well rehearsed on the latter. We were out to brunch with a friend and his 10 year old, and the latter let loose with a monumental belch, for which I high-fived him, laughed and applauded, because you would never think such a big loud noise would come out with this short scrawny kid. I got the dirty looks from the friend and my other half. "Hey, it's a guy thing! Get over it! It's not like he pooped in the punchbowl at a presidential reception."