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+--- Thread: Obituaries (/thread-59.html)
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 04-26-2019
John Havlicek, NBA Hall of Fame
John Joseph "Hondo" Havlicek (/ˈhævlɪtʃɛk/ HAV-li-chek; April 8, 1940 – April 25, 2019)[1] was an American professional basketball player who competed for 16 seasons with the Boston Celtics, winning eight NBA championships, four of them coming in his first four seasons.
In the National Basketball Association, only teammates Bill Russell and Sam Jones won more championships during their playing careers, and Havlicek is one of three NBA players with an unsurpassed 8–0 record in NBA Finals series outcomes.[2] Havlicek is widely considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game and was inducted as a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1984. He was a three-sport athlete at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Ohio.
Havlicek played college basketball at Ohio State University with future seven-time NBA All-Star Jerry Lucas, who was his roommate, future first-round NBA draft pick Larry Siegfried, future coaching legend Bobby Knight, and Mel Nowell, among many others. The 1960 Ohio State Buckeyes, coached by head coach Fred Taylor and assistant coaches Jack Graf and Frank Truitt, won the 1960 NCAA title. Havlicek was named as an alternate of the 1960 United States national team that competed in the 1960 Summer Olympics.[3]
Havlicek was drafted by both the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League in 1962. After competing briefly as a wide receiver in the Browns' training camp that year, he focused his energies on playing for the Celtics, with head coach Red Auerbach later describing him as the "guts of the team."[4] He was also known for his stamina, with competitors saying that it was a challenge just to keep up with him.[5]
Nicknamed "Hondo" (inspired by the 1953 movie of the same name starring John Wayne), Havlicek revolutionized the "sixth man" role, and has been immortalized for his clutch steal in the closing seconds of the 1965 Eastern Conference championship. In the seventh and final game, played at Boston Garden on April 15, the Celtics led the Philadelphia 76ers 110–109 with five seconds left, and only needed to inbound the ball underneath their basket to secure the victory and advance to the 1965 NBA Finals; however, Bill Russell's pass struck a wire that hung down from the ceiling and helped support the baskets, the turnover giving the 76ers and Wilt Chamberlain the ball and a chance to win the game and the series. Hal Greer was set to throw the inbounds pass for the 76ers. Havlicek stood with his back to Greer, guarding Chet Walker. But as Greer's pass came inbounds, Havlicek spun, leaped, and tipped the pass to Sam Jones. Veteran referee Earl Strom, who wrote about this in his memoir "Calling the Shots", called Havlicek's reaction one of the greatest plays he ever saw in his 32 years as a professional official.[6] Announcer Johnny Most's call of "Havlicek stole the ball!" was dubbed by the NBA as "the most famous radio call in basketball history."[7]
Havlicek is the Celtics' all-time leader in points and games played, scoring 26,395 points (20.8 points per game, 16th all-time in points scored in the NBA), and playing in 1,270 games (30th all-time).[8] He became the first player to score 1,000 points in 16 consecutive seasons, with his best season coming during the 1970–71 season when he averaged 28.9 points per game.[9]
The Celtics won the 1974 NBA Championship and Havlicek was named NBA Finals MVP.[10]
In the second overtime of game five of the 1976 NBA Finals, Havlicek made a leaning, running bank shot that appeared to be the game-winner, as fans spilled onto the floor, but Havlicek's shot went in with one second left and Phoenix was allowed one final shot (after Jo Jo White converted the technical foul shot for Phoenix's illegal timeout), which Gar Heard scored to force the game's third overtime. The Celtics went on to win the game in triple overtime.[11][12][13]
When he retired after the 1977–78 NBA season Havilicek finished his career as the Celtics all-time leading scorer, a distinction he still holds. He was the progenitor of the swingman position in basketball, a hybrid guard/forward position that took advantage of Havilicek's diverse skill set. Besides his prolific scoring, he was also well-regarded for his defensive skills, having been named to five NBA all-defensive teams, especially for his ability to harass ball carriers and steal the ball. He finished with 8 NBA championships, which was less than only two of his teammates when he retired, and was also named to thirteen all-star teams in his sixteen year career.[5]
A thirteen-time NBA All-Star, Havlicek retired in 1978 and his number 17 jersey was immediately retired by the Celtics. At the time of his retirement, Havlicek was the NBA career leader in games played (surpassed in 1984 by Elvin Hayes and now held by Robert Parish) and third in points behind Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. Havlicek also retired as the career leader in field goal attempts (later surpassed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and missed field goals (later surpassed by Kobe Bryant). Havlicek is now 30th, 16th, 6th and 2nd, respectively, in those stats.[9]
In 1984 Havlicek became a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1997, he was selected as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. Havlicek was ranked 17th on SLAM magazine's Top 50 NBA Players of all time in 2009 and once again at the same position in the magazine's Top 500 NBA Players of all time in 2011. He was also named the 14th best player of all-time in Bill Simmons's Book of Basketball.[14]
The Bridgeport High School Gymnasium was renamed the "John J. Havlicek Gymnasium" in January 2007. He shares the honor with National High School Hall of Fame member Frank Baxter, a longtime coach at Bridgeport High School. The court is named after Baxter.[15]
Fellow Hall of Famer Chris Mullin wore number 17 as a tribute to Havlicek.[16]
Pony International still produces a model of athletic shoes named after the iconic basketballer called the "John Havlicek" bearing John's signature.[17]
[/url]
- Career statistics and player information from [url=http://stats.nba.com/player/76970/]NBA.com
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 04-26-2019
Good riddance. I don't like the death penalty, but this fellow is one of the most deserving.
Prior Occupation
carpenter, laborer
Prior Prison Record
TDCJ-ID #624420, 10-year sentence for one count of Burglary; 7/28/97 released on Parole to Orange County
Summary of Incident
On 06/07/98, during the nighttime hours, the subject and co-defendants, Lawrence Brewer and Shawn Allen Berry, murdered James Byrd Jr., a 49-year old black male, by dragging the victim behind their 1982 gray Ford pickup truck, located on Huff Creek Road, in Jasper, Texas. The subject and the co-defendants picked the victim up while he was hitchhiking in Jasper.
Co-Defendants
Berry, Shawn; Brewer, Lawrence Russell
Race and Gender of Victim
Black male
Name
King, John William
TDCJ Number
999295
Date of Birth
11/03/1974
Date Received
02/25/1999
Age (when Received)
24
Education Level (Highest Grade Completed)
10
Date of Offense
06/07/1998
Age (at the time of Offense)
23
County
Jasper
Race
White
Gender
Male
Hair Color
Brown
Height
5' 9"
Weight
198
Eye Color
Brown
Native County
Atlanta
Native State
Georgia
https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/kingjohn.html
...Lawrence Brewer, a co-defendant also convicted in the dragging death of James Byrd, was executed in 2011.
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 04-28-2019
Former US Senator and Mayor of Indianapolis Richard Lugar has died at age 87.
Richard Green Lugar (April 4, 1932 – April 28, 2019) was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Indiana from 1977 to 2013. He was a member of the Republican Party.
Born in Indianapolis, Lugar graduated from Denison University and Oxford University. He served on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners from 1964 to 1967 before he was elected to two terms as Mayor of Indianapolis, serving from 1968 to 1976. During his tenure as Mayor, Lugar served as the President of the National League of Cities in 1971 and gave the keynote address at the 1972 Republican National Convention.
In 1974, Lugar ran his first campaign for the U.S. Senate. In the year's senate elections he lost to incumbent Democratic senator Birch Bayh. He ran again in 1976, defeating Democratic incumbent Vance Hartke. Lugar was reelected in 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006. In 2012, Lugar was defeated in a primary challenge by Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, ending his 36-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. Lugar ran for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 1996 primaries but lack of success led to his withdrawal early in the campaign.
During Lugar's tenure, he served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1985 to 1987 and from 2003 to 2007, serving as the ranking member of the committee from 2007 until his departure in 2013. Lugar also twice served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, from 1995 to 2001 and briefly again in part of 2001. Much of Lugar's work in the Senate was toward the dismantling of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons around the world, co-sponsoring his most notable piece of legislation with Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn: the Nunn–Lugar Act.
Following his service in the Senate, Lugar created a nonprofit organization which specializes in the policy areas he pursued while in office. The Lugar Center focuses on global food security, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, foreign aid effectiveness, and effective bipartisan governance.[1] Located in Washington, D.C., the nonpartisan Center works with academics, experts, and policymakers in order to create proposals for these 21st century issues. The Center works to highlight these specific topics and their implications, as well as educating the public on them. Lugar was also a member of Partnership for a Secure America's bipartisan Advisory Board.[2]
Much more at Wikipedia
P.S.:
In a November 2017 interview, Lugar stated that Trump had not "demonstrated civility in his leadership" and that his usage of Twitter and "other bombastic avenues" were not solving issues.[152]
He would have been a better President than some others.
RE: Obituaries - Tim Randal Walker - 05-03-2019
Peter Mayhew, 74. The actor who played Chewbacca in Star Wars.
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-03-2019
Member of the National Hockey League's Hall of Fame, Red Kelly:
Leonard Patrick "Red" Kelly CM (July 9, 1927 – May 2, 2019) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and coach. He played on more Stanley Cup-winning teams (eight) than any other player who never played for the Montreal Canadiens; Henri Richard (11), Jean Beliveau (10), Yvan Cournoyer (10) and Claude Provost (9) won more with the Canadiens. He was also the only player to have never played for the Canadiens to be part of two of the nine dynasties recognized by the National Hockey League (NHL) in its history.[1]
In 2017, Kelly was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.[2] He was also a Liberal Member of Parliament for the Toronto-area riding of York West from 1962 to 1965, while playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
..................
The Maple Leafs passed on Kelly after a scout predicted he would not last 20 games in the NHL, and the 19-year-old joined the Detroit Red Wings in 1947. In 1954 he was runner-up for the Hart Memorial Trophy and won the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the NHL's top defenceman, the first time the trophy was awarded and also won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1951, 1953 and 1954 as the NHL's most gentlemanly player. In over 12 years as a Red Wing the team won eight regular-season championships, the Stanley Cup four times and Kelly was chosen as a First Team All-Star defenceman six times.
Late in the 1959 season, Kelly broke his ankle. The Red Wings kept the injury a secret, and Kelly played through the pain as the Red Wings missed the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. When Red Wings general manager Jack Adams got wind of the story, he brokered a four-player deal in which Kelly was sent to the New York Rangers. Kelly scuttled the deal, however, when he announced he would retire rather than go to New York. Maple Leafs head coach Punch Imlach stepped in and tried to talk Kelly into playing for him. Though he disliked Maple Leaf Gardens and as a young player was disappointed by the scathing assessment of that Toronto scout, Kelly agreed to be traded to the Leafs. Kelly switched positions and played centre for Toronto.[4]
Kelly won his fourth Lady Byng Award in 1961. In his eight seasons with the Leafs, they won the Stanley Cup four times – the same number of times he'd won in Detroit. In 1,316 regular season games, he scored 281 goals and 542 assists for 823 points. At the time of his retirement, he was seventh all time in career points, fifth in assists, 13th in goals, and second only to Gordie Howe in games played. In 164 playoff games, he scored 33 goals and 59 assists for 92 points.
.....................
Kelly was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1962 federal election at the York West riding under the Liberal party led by Lester B. Pearson. He defeated Conservative incumbent John Hamilton. He was re-elected there in the following year's election in which his Progressive Conservative opponent was future NHL agent Alan Eagleson. Kelly continued to play with the Toronto Maple Leafs during his terms as a Member of Parliament. During the Great Canadian Flag Debate, he received opposition from Leafs owner Conn Smythe who opposed Pearson's plans to replace the Red Ensign flag with the Maple Leaf.[16] He did not seek re-election in 1965, but left federal politics after his two terms in the 25th and 26th Canadian Parliaments, because he wanted more time with his family.[17] He was succeeded in York West by fellow Liberal Robert Winters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Kelly
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-04-2019
The proof of his conjecture came close to proving Fermat's Last Theorm that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation a^n + b ^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than 2. This is a simple theorem to express, and seemingly self-evident, but it took nearly 350 years to prove after Fermat expressed it in 1637 despite it seeming so basic in mathematics.
Gorō Shimura (志村 五郎 Shimura Gorō, 23 February 1930 – 3 May 2019) was a Japanese mathematician and Michael Henry Strater Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Princeton University who worked in number theory, automorphic forms, and arithmetic geometry.[1] He was known for developing the theory of complex multiplication of abelian varieties and Shimura varieties, as well as posing the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture which ultimately led to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goro_Shimura
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-06-2019
Very old bit actress, but she got some bits over a very long time in some very good TV shows.
Barbara Perry (June 22, 1921 – May 5, 2019)[1][2] was an American actress, singer and dancer who worked in Hollywood and on Broadway.
Perry was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father, William Covington Perry, of Hopewell, Virginia, was a classical and jazz keyboardist/orchestra+band conductor/orchestral arranger with the Happiness Boys, the New York NBC Radio Studios' (Blue Network) "Interwoven Stocking Co. Hour", his own band called "Perry's Hot Dogs", with Ben Selvin and his Orchestra, and with many Broadway shows. He died of tuberculosis in Banning, California on October 30, 1936. Her mother, Victoria Mae (Gates) Perry of New Castle, Pennsylvania, sang soprano in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera at the Old Metropolitan Opera House under General Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza starting around 1925 (He managed the Met for 27 seasons from 1908-1935).
Being separated from her husband around the time she sang with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, as a form of "childcare", she enlisted her only daughter, Barbara, as a member of the children's ballet of the Met's corps de ballet. This was the start of Barbara's lifelong dance training and career. Barbara's daughter also became an international opera singer in the 1980s, and her ancestor, Harriett Bellows Pierce, "...was educated in a college of music in Boston. She gave music and singing lessons on the frontier" while emigrating West.
Barbara began her film career in 1933, when she appeared in Counsellor at Law. She also had a small part in The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1935.
She headlined as a solo dancer (ballet-tap) in many top line nightclubs internationally, including work on Broadway and off-Broadway, in various productions. She was Eddie Foy Jr.'s dance partner, playing Anna in "Rumple" at the Alvin Theatre in 1957, starring Gretchen Wyler and Stephen Douglass, and with a young Elliott Gould in the Chorus. In 1950 she was Mrs. Larry in Happy as Larry on Broadway.
By the mid-1950s to the early-1960s, she had studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, while performing opposite George Formby, Warde Donovan, and Sara Gregory in Zip Goes a Million at the Hippadrom and Palace Theatres, and upon her return to the USA had started appearing in numerous television series such as The Donna Reed Show, The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons and The Dick Van Dyke Show, where she played Buddy Sorrell's wife Pickles, before being replaced by Joan Shawlee.[3][4]
She also played Thelma Brockwood on The Hathaways.
Perry's last known role was in the television series Baskets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Perry_(actress)
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-10-2019
Alvin Sargent (April 12, 1927 – May 9, 2019) was an American screenwriter. He won two Academy Awards, one in 1978 and another in 1981, for his screenplays of Julia and Ordinary People. His most popular contribution has been being involved in the writing of most of the films in Sony's Spider-Man film series (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the first exception to this).
(Comment: he obviously won't be making any more contributions to that highly-successful series of movies!)
Sargent was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1945. As of 2006, he was one of 35 alumni to be on the school's Wall of Fame.
Sargent began writing for television in 1953 and through the 1960s he scripted episodes for Route 66, Ben Casey and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He collaborated on his first screenplay for a motion picture in 1966 and gained recognition for I Walk the Line and Paper Moon for which he won the WGA Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and was nominated for an Academy Award. He won the Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay in 1978 for the film Julia and again in 1981 for Ordinary People. He collaborated on the 2004 screenplay for Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 released in 2007.
He had a longtime relationship with producer Laura Ziskin; they were married from 2010 until her death in 2011.[1] His brother was writer and producer Herb Sargent.
Filmography
- Gambit (with Jack Davies) (1966)
- The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)
- The Stalking Moon (with Wendell Mayes) (1969)
- I Walk the Line (1970)
- The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
- Paper Moon (1973)
- Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973)
- A Star Is Born (1976) (uncredited)
- Julia (1977)
- Bobby Deerfield (1977)
- Straight Time (with Jeffrey Boam) (1978)
- Ordinary People (1980)
- Nuts (with Tom Topor and Daryl Ponicsan) (1987)
- Dominick and Eugene (1988)
- White Palace (with Ted Tally) (1990)
- Other People's Money (1991)
- What About Bob? (with Laura Ziskin) (1991) (Story Only)
- Hero (with Laura Ziskin and David Webb Peoples) (1992) (Story Only)
- Bogus (1996)
- Anywhere but Here (1999)
- Unfaithful (with William Broyles Jr.) (2002)
- Spider-Man (2002) (uncredited)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004)
- Spider-Man 3 (with Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi) (2007)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (with James Vanderbilt and Steve Kloves) (2012)
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-12-2019
actress Peggy Lipton
Margaret Ann "Peggy" Lipton (August 30, 1946 – May 11, 2019) was an American actress and model. Lipton became an overnight success through her best-known role as flower child Julie Barnes in the ABC counterculture television series The Mod Squad (1968–1973) for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama in 1970. Her fifty-year career in television, film, and on stage[1] included many roles, including Norma Jennings in David Lynch's Twin Peaks. Lipton was formerly married to the musician and producer Quincy Jones and was mother to their two daughters, Rashida Jones and Kidada Jones, who also became actresses.
Moree at Wikipedia.
RE: Obituaries - Marypoza - 05-13-2019
RlP Cincy girl Doris Day
Another GI gone
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-13-2019
It is hard to believe, but she was not in a film after 1968. But she kept active, as one expects of a GI. She seems to have not made the switch from comedy to drama as many aging stars do. Maybe she did not like Hollywood as much as it liked her, which I can easily understand.
I thought that she might crack the century mark (see also the late Carol Channing), as she seemed to do most things right for reaching an extreme old age. I did not realize it, but she was one of the last surviving musical performers of the Big Band Era.
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. After she began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her popularity increased with her first hit recording "Sentimental Journey" (1945). After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, she recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967, which made her one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century.
Day's film career began during the latter part of the Classical Hollywood Film era with the 1948 film Romance on the High Seas, and its success sparked her twenty-year career as a motion picture actress. She starred in a series of successful films, including musicals, comedies, and dramas. She played the title role in Calamity Jane (1953), and starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) with James Stewart. Her most successful films were the ones she made co-starring Rock Hudson and James Garner, such as Pillow Talk (1959) and Move Over, Darling (1963), respectively. She also co-starred in films with such leading men as Clark Gable, Cary Grant, James Stewart, David Niven, and Rod Taylor. After her final film in 1968, she went on to star in the CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968–1973).
Day was usually one of the top ten singers between 1951 and 1966.[vague] As an actress, she became the biggest female film star in the early 1960s, and ranked sixth among the box office performers by 2012.[2][3][4] In 2011, she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, which became a UK Top 10 album featuring new material. Among her awards, Day has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. In 1960, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress,[5] and in 1989 was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Career Achievement Award. She was one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Day
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-14-2019
Small-town mayor in Mississippi - but the first African-American female mayor of any town in Mississippi:
Unita Zelma Blackwell (March 18, 1933 – May 13, 2019) was an American civil rights activist who was the first African American woman, and the tenth African American, to be elected mayor in the U.S. state of Mississippi.[1] Blackwell was a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi. She was also a founder of the US China Peoples Friendship Association, a group dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between the United States and China. Barefootin', Blackwell's autobiography, published in 2006, charts her activism.[2]
Blackwell first got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in June 1964, when two activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came to Mayersville and held meetings in the church she belonged to concerning African Americans' right to vote.[18] The following week she and seven others went to the courthouse to take a voter registration test so that they could vote.[19][20] While they were outside the courthouse waiting to take the test, a group of white farmers from the area heard what was happening and tried to scare them off.[19] The group stayed there all day, but only two were able to take the test. The racism that the group experienced, Blackwell says, made that day "the turning point" of her life.[21] Jeremiah and Unita lost their jobs the next day after their employer found out that they had been part of the group.[22] After losing her job, Blackwell recounts her family's means of survival:
Quote:We had a garden; people would give us a pot of beans ... SNCC was supposed to send us eleven dollars every two weeks. My husband worked three months of the year for the Army Corps of Engineers, then we'd buy lots of canned goodsBlackwell attempted to pass the test three times over the next few months. In early fall she took the test successfully and became a registered voter.[23]
— Unita Blackwell[17]
When the United States Commission on Civil Rights came to Mississippi in January 1965, Blackwell testified in front of them about her experiences with voter discrimination:[24]
Quote:I filled it out and I had section 97 and I wrote it down and looked it over and I picked some of the words out of, you know, what I had wrote down; put that in there and turned it over. And I misspelled 'length' and I said 'Oh, my Lord.' And so then I filled out the rest of it and when I got through I handed it to her, and I said 'Well, I misspelled this, and well, I didn't date the top,' and she said 'Oh, that's all right, it's all right, it's all right.' And then she ran and got the book and [registered me].As a result of Blackwell's involvement with voter registration campaigns, she and other activists endured constant harassment.[26]
— Unita Blackwell[25]
SNCC and other movements
After meeting Fannie Lou Hamer in the summer of 1964 and hearing her experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, Blackwell decided to join the SNCC.[27] As a project director for the SNCC, she organized voter registration drives across Mississippi.[28] Later that year, she became a member on the executive committee of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which provided a party for voters that SNCC had been registering to vote.[4][11][29] In late August she and 67 other elected MFDP delegates traveled to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, intending to get the MFDP seated as "the only democratically constituted delegation from Mississippi."[30][31] They were eventually offered two at-large seats but refused that compromise; the event, particularly Hamer's nationally televised testimony before the credentialing committee, brought the party and the Mississippi civil rights movement into the public eye.[30][32]
Blackwell was involved in the introduction of Head Start for black children in 1965 in the Mississippi Delta, a project led by Child Development Group of Mississippi.[33][34]
In the late 1960s Blackwell worked as a community development specialist with the National Council of Negro Women. In the 1970s, through the National Council of Negro Women, she worked on a development program for low-income housing and encouraged people across the country "to build their own homes."[11] During her time participating in the Civil Rights Movement, she was jailed over 70 times because of her role in civil rights protests and other actions.[26]
Blackwell v. Issaquena County Board of Education
![[Image: 100px-Logo_SNCC.svg.png]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_SNCC.svg)
The Blackwells filed a suit, Blackwell v. Issaquena County Board of Education, against the Issaquena County Board of Education on April 1, 1965, after the principal suspended over 300 black children, including Jerry, the Blackwells' son, for wearing pins that depicted a black hand and a white hand clasped with the word "SNCC" below them.[35] The suit covered several issues including the students' use of the "freedom pins", and asked that the Issaquena County School District desegregate their schools per the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.[36] The United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi decided that the students were being disruptive with their use of the freedom pins, but that the school district had to desegregate their schools to comply with federal law, by the Fall of 1965.[37] The case was taken to the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit in July 1966, where the previous decision by the District Court was upheld.[38] Due to the case resulting in a desegregation plan, Blackwell referred to it as "one of the very first desegregation cases in Mississippi."[39]
Blackwell's son and approximately 50 other children boycotted the school, because of its decision to not let the children wear the SNCC freedom pins.[40] As a result, Blackwell and some other activists in the community decided that it was vital to school those children. She helped open freedom schools in Issaquena County to resolve the issue.[41] The schools became popular and continued to teach classes every summer until 1970, when the local schools finally desegregated.[42]
Starting in 1973, Blackwell was a part of 16 diplomatic trips to China.[43] As part of her commitment to better relations between the United States and China, she served for six years as president of the US-China Peoples Friendship Association, an association dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between the United States and China.[11] In 1979 Blackwell was appointed to the U.S. National Commission on the International Year of the Child.[8] She was elected mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi in 1976 and held this office until 2001, making her the first female African-American mayor in Mississippi.[44]
As mayor, she oversaw the construction of several sets of public housing, the first time that federal housing had been built in Issaquena County.[43][45] Blackwell obtained federal grant money that provided Mayersville with police and fire protection, a public water system, paved streets, housing accommodations for the elderly and disabled, and other infrastructure.[11] She gained national attention by traveling across the country to promote the construction of low-income housing.[26]
Blackwell also served on the Democratic National Committee and as co-chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.[46] The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party sent Blackwell and 67 other delegates to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in New Jersey.[26][47] Their voices heard at the convention helped contribute to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[26] In late 1982 Blackwell went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and received a Master of Regional Planning.[43] Although Blackwell did not attend high school, the National Rural Fellows Program helped her gain admittance to the University of Massachusetts by awarding her a scholarship and providing her credit based on her activism and life experience.[11]
As part of her community development efforts, she helped found Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE), a community-development organization in Greenville, Mississippi.[48] From 1990 to 1992, Blackwell was president of the National Conference of Black Mayors.[49] In 1991, she co-founded the Black Women Mayors' Conference as a corollary to the National Conference of Black Mayors and served as its first president.[11] Blackwell became a voice for rural housing and development, and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter invited her to an energy summit at Camp David. Blackwell was also awarded a $350,000 MacArthur Fellowship genius grant in 1992, for her part in creating the Deer River housing development among other creative solutions to housing and infrastructure problems in her state.[43][50] Blackwell ran for Congress in 1993, but she was defeated by Bennie Thompson in the primary.[11]
Blackwell, with help from JoAnne Prichard Morris, wrote an autobiography, Barefootin': Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom, that covers her life working as a sharecropper for her parents, being elected mayor of Mayersville causing her rise from "Poverty to Power", and her actions in the Civil Rights Movement. It was published in 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unita_Blackwell
RE: Obituaries - Tim Randal Walker - 05-14-2019
Tim Conway, age 85.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Conway
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-14-2019
...and as the Silent go, so does their greatest cultural contribution to American life, the self-effacing humor that kept many of us from getting too full of ourselves.
Thomas Daniel "Tim" Conway (December 15, 1933 – May 14, 2019)[1] was an American comedic actor, writer and director. He portrayed the inept Ensign Parker in the 1960s World War II situation comedy McHale's Navy, was a regular cast member on the 1970s variety and sketch comedy program The Carol Burnett Show, co-starred with Don Knotts in several films in the late 1970s and early 1980s, starred as the title character in the Dorf series of comedy films, and provided the voice of Barnacle Boy in the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants.
The Steve Allen Show
Comedic actress Rose Marie visited WJW in 1961, as part of CBS's promotional practice of sending their major show stars directly to local affiliates: in this case, it was for The Dick Van Dyke Show. She viewed tapes of some of Anderson and Conway's skits and proceeded to take Conway under her wing. Following his departure from WJW, Conway moved to New York City; where, with Rose Marie's assistance, he auditioned for, and gained a spot on, ABC's The Steve Allen Show as a regular player.[9] Conway (who by this point had officially changed his first name to Tim) continued on the show through its entire run.
Conway gained a national following from his role as the bumbling, naive Ensign Charles Parker, Executive Officer of the World War II PT-73, in the 1960s sitcom McHale's Navy, alongside Ernest Borgnine and Joe Flynn. Borgnine became a mentor and a good friend. Conway appeared at Borgnine's 90th birthday celebration and, four years later, paid tribute to his friend at 7th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on TNT.[10] Conway said, "Borgnine was 'like a big teddy bear' and 'a very pleasant person to be around' when he worked with him on the World War Two sitcom 'McHale's Navy'."[11]
Afterwards, he starred in a string of short-lived TV series, starting with 1967's Rango which starred Conway as an incompetent Texas Ranger.
The Carol Burnett Show
Starting with the 1975–76 season, Conway became a regular on The Carol Burnett Show, after having been a frequent guest for the show's first eight seasons.[9] Conway's work on the show earned him four Emmy Awards: one for writing and three for performance, one of which was before he became a regular. Two of Conway's memorable characters on the Burnett Show were:
- The Oldest Man, whose shaggy white hair, slow speech, and shuffling gait ran counter to the much-needed energy levels of the various occupations in which he was usually found. His comic inability to get said jobs done — usually with slapstick results to himself and, with many an ad-lib — both frustrated and 'broke up' his fellow sketch performers.
- Mr. Tudball, a businessman whose intentions of running a 'ship-shape' office were usually sunk by the bored indifference of his secretary, Mrs. Wiggins (Burnett). Although the character was widely thought to be Swedish, Conway used a Romanian accent learned from his mother.[15] For example, his attempts to pronounce his secretary's name came out as "Mrs. Ah-huh-wiggins". He also used this accent for other characters, such as an inept dentist.
Another skit, also without a word from Conway, featured him playing Simba, a lion raised by humans then released to the wild (based on the lioness Elsa in the film Born Free). Conway, told of the upcoming eviction from the comfortable home, caused Burnett and Harvey Korman to break up with an interminable process of packing to leave.
A prime example of his ability to make his co-stars laugh uncontrollably involved Lyle Waggoner as a captured American airman, with Conway as a stereotypical blond-haired Gestapo agent charged with his interrogation. Stating that "the Fuhrer" had taken particular interest, Conway produces a small Hitler hand puppet. Conway suggests to the puppet that singing might relax Waggoner's character to the point he is willing to talk. In a long, drawn-out fashion, the Hitler puppet (Conway providing a falsetto voice, with German accent) sings "I've Been Working on the Railroad", and with each passing verse, Waggoner loses more of his composure, finally laughing hysterically when puppet-Hitler screeches, "FEE-FI-Fiddely-I-O!"A well-known outtake from the Carol Burnett Show is from the recurring "The Family" sketch, with Conway (as Mickey Hart) telling a mostly ad-libbed story about a circus elephant. As the story continues, the other cast members become increasingly unable to stay in character, leading up to Vicki Lawrence (in-character as Mama) finally asking, "You sure that little asshole's through?", resulting in all the cast members, including Conway, finally breaking up in gales of laughter.
Conway remained a regular cast member of The Carol Burnett Show until the program's run ended, in 1978.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Conway
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-15-2019
Female lead in Kurosawa's film Rashomon:
Machiko Kyō (Japanese: 京 マチ子 Hepburn: Kyō Machiko, March 25, 1924 – May 12, 2019) was a Japanese actress who was active primarily in the 1950s.
Kyō, an only child, was born Yano Motoko in Osaka in 1924. Her father left when she was 5 and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. She adopted Machiko Kyō as her stage name when she entered the Osaka Shochiku Kagekidan in 1936 at age 12. She trained as a revue dancer before entering the film industry through Daiei in 1949. Two years later, she achieved international fame as the female lead in Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, which won first prize at the Venice Film Festival and stunned audiences with its nonlinear narrative.[1] She starred in many more Japanese productions, including Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953), Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell (1953), Kon Ichikawa's Odd Obsession (1959), and Yasujirō Ozu's Floating Weeds (1959).
Her sole role in a non-Japanese film was as the young geisha Lotus Blossom in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) opposite Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
Kyō continued to act through her 80's. Her final role was as "Matsuura Shino" in the NHK television drama series Haregi Koko Ichiban in 2000. In 2017 she was presented with an award of merit at the 40th Japanese Academy Awards.[1] After retiring from film, she moved back to Osaka, where she resided until her death.
Kyō never married, although her romantic relationship with Daiei's president Masaichi Nagata was well-publicized in her native country.
Kyō died from heart failure on May 12, 2019. She was 95.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiko_Ky%C5%8D
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-17-2019
Architect I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei, FAIA, RIBA[1] (26 April 1917 – 16 May 2019) was a Chinese-American architect. Born in Guangzhou and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became a friend of the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, Pei was recruited by New York City real estate magnate William Zeckendorf, for whom he worked for seven years before establishing his own independent design firm I. M. Pei & Associates in 1955, which became I. M. Pei & Partners in 1966 and later in 1989 became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Pei retired from full-time practice in 1990. In his retirement, he worked as an architectural consultant primarily from his sons' architectural firm Pei Partnership Architects.
Pei's first major recognition came with the Mesa Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado (designed in 1961, and completed in 1967). His new stature led to his selection as chief architect for the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts. He went on to design Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.[2] He returned to China for the first time in 1975 to design a hotel at Fragrant Hills, and designed Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, a skyscraper in Hong Kong for the Bank of China fifteen years later. In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He later returned to the world of the arts by designing the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the Miho Museum in Japan, Shigaraki, near Kyoto, and the chapel of the school: MIHO Institute of Aesthetics, the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou,[3] Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art, abbreviated to Mudam, in Luxembourg.
Pei won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1989, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003. In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, which is sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.
Much more at Wikipedia
RE: Obituaries - pbrower2a - 05-17-2019
Novelist Herman Wouk.
Herman Wouk (/woʊk/; May 27, 1915 - May 17, 2019) was an American author. His 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other works include The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, historical novels about World War II, and non-fiction such as This Is My God, a popular explanation of Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective, written for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. His books have been translated into 27 languages.[1] The Washington Post called Wouk, who cherishes his privacy, "the reclusive dean of American historical novelists."[1] Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk's 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy.[2]
Wouk joined the U.S Navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor and served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, an experience he later characterized as educational: "I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans." Wouk served as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers (DMS), the USS Zane and USS Southard, becoming executive officer of the latter. He participated in eight invasions and won a number of battle stars.[9] During off-duty hours aboard ship he started writing a novel, Aurora Dawn, which he originally titled Aurora Dawn; or, The True history of Andrew Reale, containing a faithful account of the Great Riot, together with the complete texts of Michael Wilde's oration and Father Stanfield's sermon. Wouk sent a copy of the opening chapters to philosophy professor Irwin Edman, under whom he studied at Columbia,[11] who quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. The result was a publisher's contract sent to Wouk's ship, then off the coast of Okinawa. The novel was published in 1947 and became a Book of the Month Club main selection. His second novel, City Boy, proved to be a commercial disappointment at the time of its initial publication in 1948; Wouk once claimed it was largely ignored amid the excitement over Norman Mailer's bestselling World War II novel The Naked and the Dead.[12]
While writing his next novel, Wouk read each chapter to his wife as it was completed. At one point she remarked that if they did not like this one, he had better take up another line of work (a line he would give to the character of the editor Jeannie Fry in his 1962 novel Youngblood Hawke). The novel, The Caine Mutiny (1951), went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. A best-seller, drawing from his wartime experiences aboard minesweepers during World War II, The Caine Mutiny was adapted by the author into a Broadway play called The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and, in 1954, Columbia Pictures released a film version with Humphrey Bogart portraying Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, captain of the fictional USS Caine.[13]
His first novel after The Caine Mutiny was Marjorie Morningstar (1955), which earned him a Time magazine cover story. Three years later Warner Brothers made it into a movie starring Natalie Wood, Gene Kelly and Claire Trevor. His next novel, a paperback, was Slattery's Hurricane (1956), which he had written in 1948 as the basis for the screenplay for the film of the same name. Wouk's first work of non-fiction was 1959's This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life, a primer on the beliefs and practices of Orthodox Judaism.
In the 1960s he authored Youngblood Hawke (1962), a drama about the rise and fall of a young writer modeled on the life of Thomas Wolfe, and Don't Stop the Carnival (1965), a comedy about escaping mid-life crisis by moving to the Caribbean (loosely based on Wouk's own experience). Youngblood Hawke was serialized in McCall's magazine from March to July 1962. A movie version starred James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette, which was released by Warner Brothers in 1964. Don't Stop the Carnival was turned into a short-lived musical by Jimmy Buffett in 1997.
In the 1970s Wouk published two monumental novels, The Winds of War (1971) and its sequel, War and Remembrance (1978). He described the latter, which included a devastating depiction of the Holocaust, as "the main tale I have to tell." Both were made into popular TV miniseries, the first in 1983 and the second in 1988. Although they were made several years apart, both were directed by Dan Curtis and both starred Robert Mitchum as Captain Victor "Pug" Henry, the main character. The novels are historical fiction. Each has three layers: the story told from the viewpoints of Captain Henry and his circle of family and friends; a more or less straightforward historical account of the events of the war; and an analysis by a member of Hitler's military staff, the insightful fictional General Armin von Roon.[12] Wouk devoted "thirteen years of extraordinary research and long, arduous composition" to these two novels, noted Arnold Beichman. "The seriousness with which Wouk has dealt with the war can be seen in the prodigious amount of research, reading, travel and conferring with experts, the evidence of which may be found in the uncatalogued boxes at Columbia University" that contain the author's papers.[14]
Wouk would spend the next several decades of his literary career writing about Jews, Israel, Judaism, and, for the first time, science.
Inside, Outside (1985) is the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish family and its travails in Russia, the U.S. and Israel. The Hope (1993) and its sequel, The Glory (1994), are historical novels about the first 33 years of Israel's history. They were followed by The Will to Live On: This is Our Heritage (2000), a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and sacred texts and companion volume to This is My God.[15]
A Hole in Texas (2004) is a novel about the discovery of the Higgs boson (whose existence was proven nine years later), while The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion (2010) is an exploration into the tension between religion and science that originated in a discussion Wouk had with the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. [16]
The Lawgiver (2012) is an epistolary novel about a contemporary Hollywood writer of a movie script about Moses – with the consulting help of a nonfictional character: Herman Wouk himself, a "mulish ancient" who gets involved despite the strong misgivings of his wife.[17]
Wouk's latest book, which he says will be his last,[18] is a memoir entitled Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author, and it was released in January 2016 to mark his 100th birthday.[19][20] NPR called it "a lovely coda to the career of a man who made American literature a kinder, smarter, better place."[18]
More at Wikipedia.
RE: Obituaries - Eric the Green - 05-17-2019
Pei's Louvre pyramid "mirrored by another inverted pyramid underneath, to reflect sunlight into the room" became the final symbol of the Holy Grail in Dan Brown's best-selling book The DaVinci Code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramide_Invers%C3%A9e
![[Image: 220px-Louvre_museum%27s_inverted_pyramid...ped%29.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Louvre_museum%27s_inverted_pyramid_%28cropped%29.jpg/220px-Louvre_museum%27s_inverted_pyramid_%28cropped%29.jpg)
In The Da Vinci Code
The Inverted Pyramid figures prominently on the concluding pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller The Da Vinci Code. The protagonist of his novel, Robert Langdon, reads esoteric symbolism into the two pyramids: The Inverted Pyramid is perceived as a Chalice, a feminine symbol, whereas the stone pyramid below is interpreted as a Blade, a masculine symbol: the whole structure could thus express the union of the sexes. Moreover, Brown's protagonist concludes that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid (possibly the same size as the inverted pyramid above), embedded in the floor as a secret chamber. This chamber is implied to enclose the body of Mary Magdalene.
At the climax of the film adaptation, the camera elaborately moves through the entire glass pyramid from above and then descends beneath the floor below to reveal the supposed hidden chamber under the tiny stone pyramid, containing the sarcophagus with the remains of Mary Magdalene.
Other esoteric interpretations
Brown was not the first writer to offer esoteric interpretations of the Inverted Pyramid. In Raphaël Aurillac's work Le guide du Paris maçonnique the author declares that the Louvre used to be a Masonic temple. To Aurillac, the various glass pyramids constructed in recent decades include Masonic symbolism. Aurillac sees the downward-pointing pyramid as expressing the Rosicrucian motto V.I.T.R.I.O.L. (Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificandoque / Invenies Occultum Lapidem, "Visit the interior of the earth and by rectifying you will find the secret stone"). Another writer on Masonic architecture, Dominique Setzepfandt, sees the two pyramids as suggesting "the compass and square that together form the Seal of Solomon" (quoted in Code Da Vinci: L'enquête by Marie-France Etchegoin and Frédéric Lenoir).
RE: Obituaries - Marypoza - 05-17-2019
RlP Lena Horne. 92 yrs young & a great singer
RE: Obituaries - Marypoza - 05-17-2019
(05-03-2019, 02:45 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Peter Mayhew, 74. The actor who played Chewbacca in Star Wars.
-- 1st they killed off Harrison Ford. Then Carrie Fisher died 4 real. Now Chewie's gone. Yep Star Wars has jumped the shark