DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[docneg]

Last year a friend introduced me to a woman who is a descendant of Mike Fink! For those of you who remember Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race, Fink is the one Davy challenged and beat. I amazed her by reciting:
"Ladies hide
And brave men shiver
I'm Mike Fink
King of the River!"

Just more proof that there is a very deep Fess Parker pigeonhole in the brain of the average boomer!

 

[Speedbird]

Roy Chapman Andrews

Just a belated entry to note that this month (March) saw the 50th Anniversary of the passing of Roy Chapman Andrews.

A great and original adventurer, considered by many as the real 'Indy' though that remains speculation and perhaps in some ways distracts from the real legend of the man.

Douglas Preston, of the American Museum of Natural History, described him thus:

"Andrews was an accomplished stage master. He created an image and lived it out impeccably—there was no chink in his armor. Roy Chapman Andrews: famous explorer, dinosaur hunter, exemplar of Anglo-Saxon virtues, crack shot, fighter of Mongolian brigands, the man who created the metaphor
of 'Outer Mongolia' as denoting any exceedingly remote place."

A true inspiration...

In memory of Roy Chapman Andrews (January 26, 1884 – March 11, 1960)

RIP

 

[Solid Citizen]

PARKER Keelboat Race & Boomer IDOL!

Last year a friend introduced me to a woman who is a descendant of Mike Fink! For those of you who remember Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race, Fink is the one Davy challenged and beat. I amazed her by reciting:
"Ladies hide
And brave men shiver
I'm Mike Fink
King of the River!"

Just more proof that there is a very deep Fess Parker pigeonhole in the brain of the average boomer!

THANKS, for mentioning my fave Crockett episode, always reminds me when he fakes catching the bullet in his teeth!

Fess Parker the 6'6" Texan had a GREAT career, Crockett, Boone, real estate & winery. PLUS he lived well into his 80's!

Solid citizen

 

[Story]

Shirley Eleanor Nash : pre-war reporter in China, former 1st Lieutenant in the Marines during WWII, also a Hollywood dancer, college professor, Amazonian explorer & award-winning photographer.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanluisobispo/obituary.aspx?n=shirley-eleanor-nash&pid=140977192

 

[Speedbird]

Shirley Eleanor Nash : pre-war reporter in China, former 1st Lieutenant in the Marines during WWII, also a Hollywood dancer, college professor, Amazonian explorer & award-winning photographer.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanluisobispo/obituary.aspx?n=shirley-eleanor-nash&pid=140977192

A truly amazing woman. Thank you Story.

 

[dhermann1]

Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the great German opera composer Richard Wagner. Controversial, OF COURSE.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...R?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

 

[patrick1987]

Big Star Alex Chilton. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/o...h-the-powerpop-pioneers-big-star-1925070.html

 

[Kid Mac]

Robert Culp, RIP

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/actor-robert-culp-dies-after-falling-at-his-hollywood-home.html

Great in the Outer Limits "Demon with a Glass Hand," as well as many other roles.

 

[Foofoogal]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191685/

RIP. I liked him. Nice smile.

 

[MrBern]

boxtops

Big Star Alex Chilton. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/o...h-the-powerpop-pioneers-big-star-1925070.html

The Replacements had a song titled for him:

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round

Its always been hard to fathom that he was only 16 with that worldly vocal in The Letter....

 

[MrBern]

Rock Photographer Marshall

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/jim-marshall-photographer-of-rock-stars-dies

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/03/24/jim-marshall-legendary-rock-photographer-passes-away-at-74/

awesome gear:
http://members.multimania.co.uk/JemK/Pic-A-Week/marshall.htm

 

[LocktownDog]

I hadn't heard about Robert Culp's passing. Terribly sad news.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

The Replacements had a song titled for him:



Its always been hard to fathom that he was only 16 with that worldly vocal in The Letter....

Then he changed his voice completely. I miss him already.

 

[dhermann1]

June Havoc

June Havoc died at the age of 96. Folks may remember her as Gypsy Rose Lee's sister, Baby June, from the show "Gypsy". She was starring in Vaudeville when she was barely out of diapers.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=htt...KkEgu82jCU&h=9e35e954f9281d1f1f011570572dc144

 

[Feraud]

Elinor Smith, One of the Youngest Pioneers of Aviation, Is Dead at 98

March 26, 2010
Elinor Smith, One of the Youngest Pioneers of Aviation, Is Dead at 98
By DENNIS HEVESI
In the days of rickety open-cockpit biplanes seemingly held together by baling wire, 8-year-old Elinor Patricia Ward got her first flying lesson — at her kitchen table in Freeport, N.Y., on Long Island.

“My earliest memory was at dinner with Dad using a knife to show us how the controls of a plane worked,” she told The New York Daily Mirror in 1942.

Within weeks Elinor’s father, Tom Ward, took her to a makeshift airfield on a potato farm, where a pilot strapped her into the rear seat for a fast flight, for a fee. Mr. Ward was a vaudeville song-and-dance man who hated trains and, while on the road, had hired pilots to take him from town to town. (There was another Tom Ward on the vaudeville circuit, so he changed the family name to Smith.)

That first flight sealed Elinor Smith’s fate. Ten days after she turned 16, Elinor received her pilot’s license, becoming one of the youngest pioneers of aviation. Soon, she was breaking records, doing daredevil stunts and making headlines as the “The Flying Flapper of Freeport.”

On March 19, Elinor Smith Sullivan died at a nursing home in Palo Alto, Calif., her son, Patrick, said. She was 98.

“I remember so vividly my first time aloft that I can still hear the wind swing in the wires as we glided down,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Aviatrix” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981). “By the time the pilot touched the wheels gently to earth, I knew my future in airplanes and flying was as inevitable as the freckles on my nose.”

Tom Smith took flying lessons, then bought an open-cockpit Waco 10 biplane. Elinor insisted on taking lessons. She took her first solo flight when she was 15. Within two years, she was carrying passengers on short flights from Roosevelt Field over Long Island. Then, on Oct. 21, 1928 — after being baited by boys at her high school — she took off alone, headed west, then south and swooped under the four East River bridges.

“Miss Smith was informed here that the Department of Commerce might ‘ground’ her for her stunt,” The New York Times reported the next day, “but she said that she would rather take that chance than disappoint a number of persons who had expected her to carry out her plan.” She was grounded for 10 days.

Publicity soon propelled Elinor, a blue-eyed, 5-foot-3, curly blond teenager, onto the list of pioneering women in aviation, among them Bobbi Trout, Katherine Stinson, Pancho Barnes , Fay Gillis Wells, Louise McPhetridge Thaden and Amelia Earhart.

On planes provided by corporate sponsors, she began setting records. In January 1929 she set the women’s solo endurance record at 13 ½ hours. Then, three months later she reset it with a 26 ½-hour flight. In 1930, she set the women’s altitude record at 27,419 feet. Within a year, she reset the altitude record at 32,576 feet.

That flight, in a Bellanca monoplane, nearly cost her her life. As The World-Telegram reported on March 11, 1930: “The altimeters on the ship registered 30,000 and 32,000 yesterday when she was forced by motor trouble and waning gas supply to return to Roosevelt Field, where she narrowly averted an accident in making a dead-stick landing. At about 30,000 feet, as the motor sputtered, she lost consciousness. A mile lower she recovered. The plane, without her guiding hand, had glided slowly down.”

In 1934, Miss Smith became the first woman to appear on a Wheaties cereal box.

She was born on Long Island on Aug. 17, 1911, one of three children of Thomas and Agnes Ward. Her husband of 23 years, Patrick H. Sullivan II, who had been a New York State assemblyman, died in 1956. In addition to her son, she is survived by three daughters, Patricia Sullivan, Pamela Sullivan and Kathleen Worden; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Miss Smith took a long time off from flying after she married. But nine years ago, at the age of 89, she was invited to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., where she participated in a simulated landing of the space shuttle.

Always vivid in her memory was that day almost 84 years ago when she first soloed.

She was about to climb into a Farman Pusher biplane, she recalled in an interview for a 1998 PBS documentary, “Daredevils and Dreamers.” She thought it was to be just another flying lesson before she went off to school in Wantagh, a nearby town.

“I was scared silly because Russ” — her teacher — “hadn’t told me I was going to solo that day,” she said on camera. Waving her arm in imitation of her instructor’s direction, she said he suddenly jumped out of the cockpit and simply told her, “Go.”

For a moment she was stunned, then realized that he thought she was ready. “I made three landings,” she said. “Then it was time to go back to Wantagh because I had to go to school.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/28smith.html

 

[MrBern]

MUSTANG

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/us/29frey.html?hpw

Donald N. Frey, the engineer who spearheaded the design and development of the Mustang, the spunky, stylish, affordably priced “pony car” that the Ford Motor Company rolled out in the mid-1960s in one of the most successful car introductions in automotive history, died March 5 in Evanston, Ill., where he lived. He was 86.

At his death Mr. Frey owned an original Mustang, his son Christopher said, adding that he liked to drive it fast.

 

[carouselvic]

John Forsythe

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=491329&gt1=28103

 

[DanielJones]

Hello Angels... John Forsythe gone at 92

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=491329&gt1=28103

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- John Forsythe, the actor who made his fortune as TV's affable "Bachelor Father" and the scheming oil tycoon in "Dynasty," has died. He was 92.

Publicist Harlan Boll says Forsythe died late Thursday from complications of pneumonia, following a yearlong battle with cancer in Santa Ynez.

Despite his distinguished work in theater and films, Forsythe's greatest fame arose from his role of Blake Carrington in the 1981-89 primetime soap opera "Dynasty."

With his full head of silver hair, tanned face and soothing voice, Forsythe as Carrington attracted the ardor of millions of female television viewers.

While he had small roles in a couple of films in the early 1940s, Forsythe's first successes were mainly on the stage.

His smooth voice will be missed. I loved him in Scrooged. The man did a boat load of tv shows to be sure.


Cheers!

Dan

 

[DanielJones]

Eugene Allen, White House butler, dies at 90

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040103444.html?g=0

"He liked to think of himself as just a humble butler," his only child, Charles, said Thursday. Aside from his son, Mr. Allen is survived by five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Imagine what that man was privy to all those years. Seemed like a interesting life even as a butler.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Kid Mac]

Edward Roberts: personal computer pioneer

"In the mid-1970s computers were still vast intimidating machines found mainly in university laboratories...Ed Roberts believed that these processing machines could be developed to the extent that they could be provided for people in their own homes. His first product may have been clunky and cumbersome but it led to a revolution in personal computer use and it marked the beginning of what became one of the world’s biggest industries."

"He later realised a childhood ambition by training as a medical doctor. He established a medical practice in the town of Cochran, Georgia from 1988."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7086081.ece