In Memoriam, 2021: Michael Nesmith (78), Anne Rice (80), Les Emmerson (77), Desmond Tutu (90), John Madden (85), Betty White (99)

[JM_]

1 hour ago, gurn said:

Sad news.

On of his many  O. J. riffs:

 

man thats Norm right there. Big brass ones to say something like that. 

[thedestroyerofworlds]

[SID.IS.SID.ME.IS.ME]

Condolences to Gino and the Odjick family. RIP Giselle Odjick.  

[thedestroyerofworlds]

 

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/alan-kalter-dead-letterman-late-show-announcer-1235025323/

Alan Kalter, David Letterman’s ‘Late Show’ Announcer, Dies at 78

He also performed in hilarious comic bits during his stint, which lasted from September 1995 until the host retired in May 2015.

 

Alan Kalter GARY GERSHOFF/WIREIMAGE

[Ilunga]

The happiest man on earth died today.

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/12/beacon-of-hope-holocaust-survivor-and-peace-campaigner-eddie-jaku-dies-at-101

 

I have heard Eddie speak a few times on the radio guy was a true legend.

 

Lived through both Buchenwald and Auschwitz, got to 101 and truly was a happy,gentle man.

 

Talk about heroes,this guy was one.

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Ilunga

[thedestroyerofworlds]

Only posted this for the older members or those who saw the show.  

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/betty-lynn-dead-andy-griffith-show-1235032777/

Betty Lynn, Barney’s Girlfriend Thelma Lou on ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ Dies at 95

The onetime contract player at Fox appeared in films opposite Bette Davis, Maureen O'Hara and Clifton Webb early in her career.

 

[nuckin_futz]

Former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell dies of complications from COVID-19

 

Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants who rose to become the first Black U.S. secretary of state and top military officer but whose reputation was tainted in 2003 when he touted spurious intelligence to the United Nations to make the case for war with Iraq, has died at the age of 84.

 

Powell died of complications from COVID-19, his family said early Monday on his Facebook page. He was 84.

 

In the post, his family said Powell had been fully vaccinated and was receiving care at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The Powell family's social media post did not address whether Powell had any underlying illnesses, but Peggy Cifrino, Powell's longtime aide, told The Associated Press he had been treated over the past few years for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

 

In a long military career that included service in the Vietnam War, Powell rose to public prominence by serving as national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan beginning in 1987, two years later becoming the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the latter role he oversaw the U.S. invasion of Panama and later the U.S. invasion of Kuwait to oust the Iraqi army in 1991.

 

Powell, who resisted calls to run for president himself later that decade, would go on to be nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as secretary of state in 2001. Powell was the first Black person to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state.

 

Bush called him a "great public servant" in a statement mourning his death.

 

"He was such a favourite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom — twice," said Bush.

 

more in the link https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-powell-obit-1.6214736

[DonLever]

10 hours ago, thedestroyerofworlds said:

Only posted this for the older members or those who saw the show.  

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/betty-lynn-dead-andy-griffith-show-1235032777/

Betty Lynn, Barney’s Girlfriend Thelma Lou on ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ Dies at 95

The onetime contract player at Fox appeared in films opposite Bette Davis, Maureen O'Hara and Clifton Webb early in her career.

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by DonLever

[Jack Fig]

Brother Duane Allman ... gone 50 years today. One of the great electric blues players ever.

 

[Gurn]

Dean Stockwell, long time actor, from childhood and onwards has passed away:

For me he was Al, from Quatum Leap.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/news/quantum-leap-star-dean-stockwell-dead-at-85/ar-AAQvbpc?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

 

Dean Stockwell, best known for his starring role in Quantum Leap, has died at the age of 85.

Representatives for the actor said he died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday while at home, according to Variety.

Stockwell was born in 1936 to Hollywood acting couple Harry and Betty Veronica Stockwell. He got an early start to his career at the age of 7 when he was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer following a Broadway role in The Innocent Voyage.

He continued down the path of stardom as a child actor with 1948's The Boy with Green Hair before snagging other major roles in his career like 1959's Compulsion, 1962's Long Day's Journey into Night, 1984's Dune, 1986's Blue Velvet, and more.

"I started at a very early age in this business and I'm sure most of you have read stories about people who have started as children and ended up in very difficult lives and bad consequences," Stockwell previously said, according to his IMDB bio. "It's not the easiest life in the world, but then no life is easy."

Stockwell's biggest role was portraying Admiral 'Al' Calavicci in NBC's sci-fi series Quantum Leap — which ran for five seasons from 1989 to 1993. The role earned him four Emmy nominations and he won a Golden Globe award in 1990 for his performance.

Among other accolades, Stockwell was also named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival in both 1959 and 1962 and earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Married to the Mob, per IMDB. In 1992, the actor received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Following the news of his death, the official account for Quantum Leap shared a statement about the actor.

"Dean's magnificent career spanned over 70 years, and saw him become an icon of the science fiction genre," the Facebook post read. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time."

Stockwell is survived by his wife Joy and their two children, Austin Stockwell and Sophie.

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by gurn

[Gurn]

[thedestroyerofworlds]

1 hour ago, gurn said:

Dean Stockwell, long time actor, from childhood and onwards has passed away:

For me he was Al, from Quatum Leap.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/news/quantum-leap-star-dean-stockwell-dead-at-85/ar-AAQvbpc?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

 

Dean Stockwell, best known for his starring role in Quantum Leap, has died at the age of 85.

Representatives for the actor said he died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday while at home, according to Variety.

Stockwell was born in 1936 to Hollywood acting couple Harry and Betty Veronica Stockwell. He got an early start to his career at the age of 7 when he was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer following a Broadway role in The Innocent Voyage.

He continued down the path of stardom as a child actor with 1948's The Boy with Green Hair before snagging other major roles in his career like 1959's Compulsion, 1962's Long Day's Journey into Night, 1984's Dune, 1986's Blue Velvet, and more.

"I started at a very early age in this business and I'm sure most of you have read stories about people who have started as children and ended up in very difficult lives and bad consequences," Stockwell previously said, according to his IMDB bio. "It's not the easiest life in the world, but then no life is easy."

Stockwell's biggest role was portraying Admiral 'Al' Calavicci in NBC's sci-fi series Quantum Leap — which ran for five seasons from 1989 to 1993. The role earned him four Emmy nominations and he won a Golden Globe award in 1990 for his performance.

Among other accolades, Stockwell was also named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival in both 1959 and 1962 and earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Married to the Mob, per IMDB. In 1992, the actor received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Following the news of his death, the official account for Quantum Leap shared a statement about the actor.

"Dean's magnificent career spanned over 70 years, and saw him become an icon of the science fiction genre," the Facebook post read. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time."

Stockwell is survived by his wife Joy and their two children, Austin Stockwell and Sophie.

 

Loved me some Quantum Leap.  Happened to watch Columbo recently and it was the one on the cruise ship that Dean guest starred on.  RIP.  Spoiler,

Spoiler

he wasn't the killer, he was being framed.

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by thedestroyerofworlds

[Heretic]

Dr. Yueh!!!!

RIP Mr. Stockwell...RIP...

 

 

[4petesake]

 

Steven Sondheim dead at 91.

 

 

 

[Gollumpus]

3 hours ago, 4petesake said:

 

Steven Sondheim dead at 91.

 

 

 

 

                                         regards,  G.

[thedestroyerofworlds]

 

 

 

https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/golf-legend-lee-elder-first-black-player-to-compete-in-the-masters-dies-at-87/

Golf legend Lee Elder, first Black player to compete in the Masters, dies at 87

One of the most inspirational golfers of all time -- and a 2021 Masters honorary starter -- has died

 

[Heretic]

Eddie Mekka, ‘Laverne & Shirley’ Actor, Dies at 69.

 

Eddie Mekka, an actor on “Laverne & Shirley” who played Carmine “The Big Ragoo” Ragusa, died on Saturday, Nov. 27, at his home in Newhall, Calif. He was 69.

An official Facebook account for Mekka announced the news on Thursday morning. No cause of death was given, except that he “passed away peacefully.”

[Gurn]

Bob Dole- former Washington heavy weight, and presidential candidate at 98:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/senate-leader-presidential-candidate-bob-dole-dies-at-98/ar-AARuxUD?ocid=msedgntp

OPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Bob Dole, who overcame disabling war wounds to become a sharp-tongued Senate leader from Kansas, a Republican presidential candidate and then a symbol and celebrant of his dwindling generation of World War II veterans, has died. He was 98.

 

His wife, Elizabeth Dole, posted the announcement Sunday on Twitter.

Dole announced in February 2021 that he’d been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. During his 36-year career on Capitol Hill, Dole became one of the most influential legislators and party leaders in the Senate, combining a talent for compromise with a caustic wit, which he often turned on himself but didn’t hesitate to turn on others, too.

During his 36-year career on Capitol Hill, Dole became one of the most influential legislators and party leaders in the Senate, combining a talent for compromise with a caustic wit, which he often turned on himself but didn’t hesitate to turn on others, too.

He shaped tax policy, foreign policy, farm and nutrition programs and rights for the disabled, enshrining protections against discrimination in employment, education and public services in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Today’s accessible government offices and national parks, sidewalk ramps and the sign-language interpreters at official local events are just some of the more visible hallmarks of his legacy and that of the fellow lawmakers he rounded up for that sweeping civil rights legislation 30 years ago.

Dole devoted his later years to the cause of wounded veterans, their fallen comrades at Arlington National Cemetery and remembrance of the fading generation of World War II vets.

Thousands of old soldiers massed on the National Mall in 2004 for what Dole, speaking at the dedication of the World War II Memorial there, called “our final reunion.” He’d been a driving force in its creation.

“Our ranks have dwindled,” he said then. “Yet if we gather in the twilight it is brightened by the knowledge that we have kept faith with our comrades.”

Long gone from Kansas, Dole made his life in the capital, at the center of power and then in its shadow upon his retirement, living all the while at the storied Watergate complex. When he left politics and joined a law firm staffed by prominent Democrats, he joked that he brought his dog to work so he would have another Republican to talk to.

He tried three times to become president. The last was in 1996, when he won the Republican nomination only to see President Bill Clinton re-elected. He sought his party’s presidential nomination in 1980 and 1988 and was the 1976 GOP vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket with President Gerald Ford.

Through all of that he carried the mark of war. Charging a German position in northern Italy in 1945, Dole was hit by a shell fragment that crushed two vertebrae and paralyzed his arms and legs. The young Army platoon leader spent three years recovering in a hospital and never regained use of his right hand.

To avoid embarrassing those trying to shake his right hand, Dole always clutched a pen in it and reached out with his left.

Dole could be merciless with his rivals, whether Democrat or Republican. When George H.W. Bush defeated him in the 1988 New Hampshire Republican primary, Dole snapped: “Stop lying about my record.” If that pales next to the scorching insults in today’s political arena, it was shocking at the time.

But when Bush died in December 2018, old rivalries were forgotten as Dole appeared before Bush’s casket in the Capitol Rotunda. As an aide lifted him from his wheelchair, an ailing and sorrowful Dole slowly steadied himself and saluted his one-time nemesis with his left hand, his chin quivering.

In a vice presidential debate two decades earlier with Walter Mondale, Dole had famously and audaciously branded all of America’s wars that century “Democrat wars.” Mondale shot back that Dole had just “richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man.”

Dole at first denied saying what he had just said on that very public stage, then backed down, and eventually acknowledged he’d gone too far. “I was supposed to go for the jugular,” he said, “and I did — my own.”

For all of his bare-knuckle ways, he was a deep believer in the Senate as an institution and commanded respect and even affection from many Democrats. Just days after Dole announced his dire cancer diagnosis, President Joe Biden visited him at his home to wish him well. The White House said the two were close friends from their days in the Senate.

Dole won a seat in Congress in 1960, representing a western Kansas House district. He moved up to the Senate eight years later when Republican incumbent Frank Carlson retired.

There, he antagonized his Senate colleagues with fiercely partisan and sarcastic rhetoric, delivered at the behest of President Richard Nixon. The Kansan was rewarded for his loyalty with the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 1971, before Nixon’s presidency collapsed in the Watergate scandal.

He served served as a committee chairman, majority leader and minority leader in the Senate during the 1980s and ’90s. Altogether, he was the Republicans’ leader in the Senate for nearly 11 1/2 years, a record until Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell broke it in 2018. It was during this period that he earned a reputation as a shrewd, pragmatic legislator, tireless in fashioning compromises.

After Republicans won Senate control, Dole became chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee and won acclaim from deficit hawks and others for his handling of a 1982 tax bill, in which he persuaded Ronald Reagan’s White House to go along with increasing revenues by $100 billion to ease the federal budget deficit.

But some more conservative Republicans were appalled that Dole had pushed for higher taxes. Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich branded him “the tax collector for the welfare state.”

Dole became Senate leader in 1985 and served as either majority or minority leader, depending on which party was in charge, until he resigned in 1996 to devote himself to pursuit of the presidency.

That campaign, Dole’s last, was fraught with problems from the start. He ran out of money in the spring, and Democratic ads painted the GOP candidate and the party’s divisive House speaker, Gingrich, with the same brush: as Republicans out to eliminate Medicare. Clinton won by a large margin.

He also faced questions about his age because he was running for president at age 73 — well before Biden was elected weeks before turning 78 in 2020.

Relegated to private life, Dole became an elder statesman who helped Clinton get a chemical-weapons treaty passed. He also tended his wife’s political ambitions. Elizabeth Dole ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then served a term as senator from North Carolina.

Dole also endeared himself to the public as the self-deprecating pitchman for the anti-impotence drug Viagra and other products.

He also continued to comment on issues and endorse political candidates.

In 2016, Dole initially backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for the GOP presidential nomination. He later warmed to Donald Trump and eventually endorsed him.

But six weeks after the 2020 election, with Trump still refusing to concede and promoting unfounded claims of voter fraud, Dole told The Kansas City Star, “The election is over.”

He said: “It’s a pretty bitter pill for Trump, but it’s a fact he lost.”

In September 2017, Congress voted to award Dole its highest expression of appreciation for distinguished contributions to the nation, a Congressional Gold Medal. That came a decade after he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Congress honored Dole again in 2019 by promoting him from Army captain to colonel, in recognition of the military service that earned him two Purple Hearts.

Robert Joseph Dole was born July 22, 1923, in Russell, a western Kansas farming and oil community. He was the eldest of four children. His father ran a cream and egg business and managed a grain elevator, and his mother sold sewing machines and vacuum cleaners to help support the family during the Depression. Dole attended the University of Kansas for two years before enlisting in the Army in 1943.

Dole met Phyllis Holden, a therapist at a military hospital, as he was recovering from his war wounds in 1948. They were married and had a daughter, Robin. The couple would divorce in 1972.

Dole began his political career while a student at Washburn University, winning a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives.

He met his second wife, Elizabeth Dole, while she was working for the Nixon White House. She also served on the Federal Trade Commission and as transportation secretary and labor secretary while Dole was in the Senate. They married in 1975.

Dole published a memoir about his wartime experiences and recovery, “One Soldier’s Story,” in 2005. The Dole Institute of Politics on the University of Kansas keeps an archive of World War II veterans from Kansas.

___

[Gurn]

5 minutes ago, gurn said:

Charging a German position in northern Italy in 1945, Dole was hit by a shell fragment that crushed two vertebrae and paralyzed his arms and legs. The young Army platoon leader spent three years recovering in a hospital and never regained use of his right hand.

To avoid embarrassing those trying to shake his right hand, Dole always clutched a pen in it and reached out

This tells me he was a high quality guy.

My condolences to his family, his friends and the entire republican party who just lost a steady, rational voice.

[DonLever]

Charley Pride, legendary Black country singer, dead at age 86.

 

Charley Pride, country music's first Black superstar, dies at 86 of COVID-19 complications (yahoo.com)

 

Charley Pride — a sharecropper's son who rose from rural Mississippi to become the first Black superstar in country music — died Saturday at age 86.

The "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin" singer died in Dallas, Texas, due to complications from COVID-19, according to a news release from his publicist, Jeremy Westby.

In a career spanning more than five decades, Pride cemented a trailblazing legacy unlike any entertainer before him.

 

He overcame club audiences unwilling to hear a Black singer cover Hank Williams and promoters equally skeptical at hosting his performances to once being the best-selling artist on RCA Records since Elvis Presley.

Pride topped country charts 29 times in his career, singing stories rich with honesty — "I Can't Believe That You've Stopped Loving Me," "I'm Just Me" and "Where Do I Put Her Memory," among others — in his distinct, welcoming baritone voice.

CMA Awards honor Charley Pride for remarkable career

Though he detailed his struggles in his 1995 autobiography, Pride wasn’t always one to dwell publicly on the magnitude of his accomplishments. As he spoke to The Tennessean in November, he said he was often asked which of his songs was his favorite to sing.

His response? “The one that I'm singing at the moment. Out of 500 and some songs, that's what my answer is.”

Pride's vast accolades include Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year in 1971, Male Vocalist of the Year wins in 1973 and '74 and a 1993 invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry.

 

And, in 2000, he became the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

"To be doing that at a time when nobody really wanted him here, it's crazy to look back now ... that must've been so hard," Darius Rucker told The Tennessean in November. "I can deal with whatever comes my way because it can't be near what Charley went through."

Edited December 6, 2021 by DonLever