(starting with the earliest)
Johnny Carson
Spencer Dryden (drummer)
Phillip Johnson (architect)
Samuel Francis (essayist)
Sandra Dee (actress)
John Raitt (Broadway performer)
Peter Benenson (founder of Amnesty International)
Ossie Davis (actor)
Bobby Short (singer)
George F. Kennan (diplomatic great)
John DeLorean (car by his name)
Andre Norton (SF writer)
Terry Schiavo (cause celebre for the resuscitate-everyone group)
Mitch Hedberg, comedian
Pope John Paul II
Saul Bellow, novelist
Prince Rainier of Monaco
Andre Dworkin (radical feminist)
Peter Rodino (led impeachment against Nixon)
Col. David P. Hackworth (promoter of advancement through military ranks)
David Sutherland, D&D artist
Chet Helms, rock impresario
Gaylord Nelson, former US Senator
James W. Stockdale (POW hero, Perot's VP choice)
James Doohan (Montgomery Scott in the original Star Trek)
General William Westmoreland (top US general in the Vietnam War)
Peter Jennings, ABC TV news anchor
John Johnson, editor of Ebony and Jet Magazines
Barbara bel Geddes, actress
Robert Moog, inventor of Moog synthesizer
Jude Wanninski, conservative thinker
Chief Justice William Rehnquist
Bob Denver (Gilligan of Gilliigan's Island)
Don Adams (Maxwell Smart of Get Smart)
M. Scott Peck, self-help guru
Simon Wiesenthal, hunter of Nazi war criminals
August Wilson (no live link)
Nipsey Russell, comedian
Rosa Parks, pioneer of the Civil Rights struggle in the South
Peter Drucker, management expert
Link Wray (discoverer of the "Power Chord" in rock
Pat Morita, actor
Alfred Anderson, last soldier to hear the guns go silent for the Christmas truce
Stan Berenstain (co-writer of the Berenstain Bears of child literature)
Clarence Laking, last Canadian WWI veteran
Senator Eugene McCarthy
Richard Pryor, comedian
someone identified as the Queen of Bootleggers
Senator William Proxmire ("no Golden Fleece to line his coffin!")
Jack Anderson, journalist
Shelly Winters, actress
Wilson Pickett (obscure)
Lew Rawls, singer
Coretta Scott (Mrs. Martin Luther) King
(Western Union telegram services)
Al Lewis ("Grandpa Munster")
Betty Friedan (Feminine Mystique)
Wendy Wasserstein, writer
Friedrich Engel, Nazi war criminal, a/k/a "Butcher of Genoa" -- bad guys make history too.
Peter Benchley (Jaws)
Dave Tatsuno, secret photographer of the Topaz 'relocation' camp
Phil Brown, actor
Curt Gowdy, sportscaster
Andreas Katsoulas (SF writer)
Don Knotts, comedian
Claude R. Kinsey, escaper from a Nazi POW camp
Darren McGavin, actor
Octavia Butler, novelist
Dennis Weaver, actor
Harry Brown, financial writer
Jack Wilde, child actor
Dana Reeve, handicap advocate
Kirby Puckett, HOF baseball star
Ali Farka Toure (sorry, link dead)
Gordon Parks, photographer
Luna (dead link)
Slobodan Milosevich (dictator, kleptocrat, and war criminal -- roast in Hell!)
Maureen Stapleton, actress
Buck Owens, country music performer
Lyn Nofziger and Casper Weinberger, two figures of the Reagan Presidency on the same day
Stanislas Lem (Solaris)
Gene Pitney, singer-songwriter
Reverend William Sloane Coffin
Muriel Spark, novelist
Arthur Winston, perfect attendance on his job as a Los Angeles bus terminal worker (missed only the day on which he buried his wife)
Scott Crossfield, first test pilot to fly at Mach II
Tom Dundee, folk singer
Jane Jacobs, social critic
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
Louis Rukeyser, business journalist
Jean-François Revel, French social critic
Floyd Patterson, boxer
Jaroslav Pelikan, scholar on Christianity
Lew Anderson (Clarabelle the Cow on Howdy Doody)
Frankie Thomas, actor (Space Cadet)
Senator Lloyd Bentsen (great one -- and Texas is largely a political sewer now)
Marshall Fenwick, study of popular culture
Desmond Decker, reggae singer
Leon Wiel 109, who won decorations for heroism in both WWI and WWII for France
Frank Muther, survivor of Bataan Death March who got a memorial started
Ken Lay, one of the biggest economic criminals ever (Enrob Corporation)
Aaron Spelling, RV producer
Arf Mardin, pop music figure
Syd Barrett, guitarist for Pink Floyd
Jim Baen, SF writer
June Allyson
Mickey Spillane, mystery writer
Elmer Hendl, one of the most decorated WWI military chaplains
Jack Warden, actor
Harry Oliveri, inventor of the Philly cheesesteak sandwich (medical nightmare)
Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge mass murderer (Roast in Hell!)
Pamela Waechter, murder victim
Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, opera singer
Susan Butcher, dog-driving champion at Iditarod
Arthur Lee, rock musician
James Van Allen, physicist (Van Allen radiation bands)
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan dictator
Glenn Ford, actor
Steve Irwin, wildlife showman
Ann Richards, former Texas Governor (successor would be George W. Bush)
Jeff Cooper, rewrote the Marine Corps 'book' on the use of small arms
Ed Benedict, creator of The Flintstones
Freddy Fender, Tejano musician
Christopher Glenn, TV/radio journalist
William Styron, novelist Sophie's Choice
Ed Bradley, TV journalist
Jack Williamson, SF writer
Jack Palance, actor
Milton Friedman, economist
Bob Altman, movie director
Boz Burrell, bassist
Jean Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the United Nations
Moses Hardy, last African-American veteran of WWI
Chilean dictator Pinochet (Roast in Hell!)
Elizabeth Bolden, then the oldest living person (116 in 2006)
Lamar Hunt, billionaire
Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records
James Brown, "Godfather of Soul"
US President Gerald R. Ford
Sadam Hussein, horrific tyrant, warmonger, and serial mass murderer. Roast in Hell! (I called him "Satan Hussein").
Peter Boyle, actor
Del Reeves, country music singer
Mamofuko Ando, inventor of ramen noodles
Yvonne de Carlo "Lily Munster"
Benny Parsons, auto racer and commentator
Art Buchwald, political cartoonist
world's oldest person (age 115 in 2007, WWI vet)
his successor, then 114 in 2007
Molly Ivins, liberal columnist in the lion's den for liberals (Texas)
Anna Nicole Smith, gold-digger
Lothar-Guenther Buchheim, author of Das Boot
Arthur Schlesinger, historian
Brad Delp, lead singer for Boston
My first post there:
Jack Stone, eccentric character
Kurt Vonnegut, author
Boris Yeltsin, first President of the Russian Federation
David Halberstam, political critic
Bobby Puckett, novelty singer "Monster Mash"
Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist (first of my entries as an obituary -- others to get asterisks)*
Walter Schirra, astronaut
Jerry Falwell, television preacher
Phillip Kaiser, diplomat
Stanley Miller, biologist
Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert, TV star
John Barber, tuba player
lady Bird Johnson, former US First Lady
Ingmar Bergman, great Swedish director
Tom Snyder, TV host
former King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan (couldn't the world have left well enough alone?)
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director
Bill Walsh, football coach (San Francisco 49ers)
Lee Hazlewood, singer-songwriter
Rocco Petrone, director of launch operations at NASA during the 1960s
E. Howard Hunt, political dirty work in Watergate
Brooke Astor, heiress and philanthropist
Leona Helmsley, entrepreneurial bully and convicted criminal for tax fraud
Noah Charles Pierce (dead link)
Richard Jewell, wrongly-accused of terrorist act
Luciano Pavarotti, opera tenor
Madeleine L'Engle, writer of children's books
Sir Tasker Williams, WW 2 Hero
Robert Jordan, fantasy writer
Marcel Marceau, mime
Lois Maxwell, actress
Robert Goulet, singer
Porter Wagoner, country music singer
Fup, senior cat at Powell's Book Store
Washoe, chimp who used sign language
Norman Mailer, writer
Paul Warfield Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima*
Beverly Sills, opera singer
Laraine Day, actress
second-to-last survivor of the RMS Titanic
Ira Levin, novelist*
Dick "Don't squeeze the Charmin" Wilson
Vladimir Kryuchkov, KGB chief and plotter against Gorbachev *
Evel Knievel, stunt motorcyclist
Floyd Red Crow Westerman (dead link)
Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria
Dan Fogelberg, singer-songwriter
Bill Strauss, 60; Political Insider Who Stepped Over Into Comedy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121802158.html
(the William Strauss of the theory)
Oscar Peterson, 1925-2007 *
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/arts/25petersoncnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin][/url]
Johnny Carson
Spencer Dryden (drummer)
Phillip Johnson (architect)
Samuel Francis (essayist)
Sandra Dee (actress)
John Raitt (Broadway performer)
Peter Benenson (founder of Amnesty International)
Ossie Davis (actor)
Bobby Short (singer)
George F. Kennan (diplomatic great)
John DeLorean (car by his name)
Andre Norton (SF writer)
Terry Schiavo (cause celebre for the resuscitate-everyone group)
Mitch Hedberg, comedian
Pope John Paul II
Saul Bellow, novelist
Prince Rainier of Monaco
Andre Dworkin (radical feminist)
Peter Rodino (led impeachment against Nixon)
Col. David P. Hackworth (promoter of advancement through military ranks)
David Sutherland, D&D artist
Chet Helms, rock impresario
Gaylord Nelson, former US Senator
James W. Stockdale (POW hero, Perot's VP choice)
James Doohan (Montgomery Scott in the original Star Trek)
General William Westmoreland (top US general in the Vietnam War)
Peter Jennings, ABC TV news anchor
John Johnson, editor of Ebony and Jet Magazines
Barbara bel Geddes, actress
Robert Moog, inventor of Moog synthesizer
Jude Wanninski, conservative thinker
Chief Justice William Rehnquist
Bob Denver (Gilligan of Gilliigan's Island)
Don Adams (Maxwell Smart of Get Smart)
M. Scott Peck, self-help guru
Simon Wiesenthal, hunter of Nazi war criminals
August Wilson (no live link)
Nipsey Russell, comedian
Rosa Parks, pioneer of the Civil Rights struggle in the South
Peter Drucker, management expert
Link Wray (discoverer of the "Power Chord" in rock
Pat Morita, actor
Alfred Anderson, last soldier to hear the guns go silent for the Christmas truce
Stan Berenstain (co-writer of the Berenstain Bears of child literature)
Clarence Laking, last Canadian WWI veteran
Senator Eugene McCarthy
Richard Pryor, comedian
someone identified as the Queen of Bootleggers
Senator William Proxmire ("no Golden Fleece to line his coffin!")
Jack Anderson, journalist
Shelly Winters, actress
Wilson Pickett (obscure)
Lew Rawls, singer
Coretta Scott (Mrs. Martin Luther) King
(Western Union telegram services)
Al Lewis ("Grandpa Munster")
Betty Friedan (Feminine Mystique)
Wendy Wasserstein, writer
Friedrich Engel, Nazi war criminal, a/k/a "Butcher of Genoa" -- bad guys make history too.
Peter Benchley (Jaws)
Dave Tatsuno, secret photographer of the Topaz 'relocation' camp
Phil Brown, actor
Curt Gowdy, sportscaster
Andreas Katsoulas (SF writer)
Don Knotts, comedian
Claude R. Kinsey, escaper from a Nazi POW camp
Darren McGavin, actor
Octavia Butler, novelist
Dennis Weaver, actor
Harry Brown, financial writer
Jack Wilde, child actor
Dana Reeve, handicap advocate
Kirby Puckett, HOF baseball star
Ali Farka Toure (sorry, link dead)
Gordon Parks, photographer
Luna (dead link)
Slobodan Milosevich (dictator, kleptocrat, and war criminal -- roast in Hell!)
Maureen Stapleton, actress
Buck Owens, country music performer
Lyn Nofziger and Casper Weinberger, two figures of the Reagan Presidency on the same day
Stanislas Lem (Solaris)
Gene Pitney, singer-songwriter
Reverend William Sloane Coffin
Muriel Spark, novelist
Arthur Winston, perfect attendance on his job as a Los Angeles bus terminal worker (missed only the day on which he buried his wife)
Scott Crossfield, first test pilot to fly at Mach II
Tom Dundee, folk singer
Jane Jacobs, social critic
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
Louis Rukeyser, business journalist
Jean-François Revel, French social critic
Floyd Patterson, boxer
Jaroslav Pelikan, scholar on Christianity
Lew Anderson (Clarabelle the Cow on Howdy Doody)
Frankie Thomas, actor (Space Cadet)
Senator Lloyd Bentsen (great one -- and Texas is largely a political sewer now)
Marshall Fenwick, study of popular culture
Desmond Decker, reggae singer
Leon Wiel 109, who won decorations for heroism in both WWI and WWII for France
Frank Muther, survivor of Bataan Death March who got a memorial started
Ken Lay, one of the biggest economic criminals ever (Enrob Corporation)
Aaron Spelling, RV producer
Arf Mardin, pop music figure
Syd Barrett, guitarist for Pink Floyd
Jim Baen, SF writer
June Allyson
Mickey Spillane, mystery writer
Elmer Hendl, one of the most decorated WWI military chaplains
Jack Warden, actor
Harry Oliveri, inventor of the Philly cheesesteak sandwich (medical nightmare)
Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge mass murderer (Roast in Hell!)
Pamela Waechter, murder victim
Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, opera singer
Susan Butcher, dog-driving champion at Iditarod
Arthur Lee, rock musician
James Van Allen, physicist (Van Allen radiation bands)
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan dictator
Glenn Ford, actor
Steve Irwin, wildlife showman
Ann Richards, former Texas Governor (successor would be George W. Bush)
Jeff Cooper, rewrote the Marine Corps 'book' on the use of small arms
Ed Benedict, creator of The Flintstones
Freddy Fender, Tejano musician
Christopher Glenn, TV/radio journalist
William Styron, novelist Sophie's Choice
Ed Bradley, TV journalist
Jack Williamson, SF writer
Jack Palance, actor
Milton Friedman, economist
Bob Altman, movie director
Boz Burrell, bassist
Jean Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the United Nations
Moses Hardy, last African-American veteran of WWI
Chilean dictator Pinochet (Roast in Hell!)
Elizabeth Bolden, then the oldest living person (116 in 2006)
Lamar Hunt, billionaire
Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records
James Brown, "Godfather of Soul"
US President Gerald R. Ford
Sadam Hussein, horrific tyrant, warmonger, and serial mass murderer. Roast in Hell! (I called him "Satan Hussein").
Peter Boyle, actor
Del Reeves, country music singer
Mamofuko Ando, inventor of ramen noodles
Yvonne de Carlo "Lily Munster"
Benny Parsons, auto racer and commentator
Art Buchwald, political cartoonist
world's oldest person (age 115 in 2007, WWI vet)
his successor, then 114 in 2007
Molly Ivins, liberal columnist in the lion's den for liberals (Texas)
Anna Nicole Smith, gold-digger
Lothar-Guenther Buchheim, author of Das Boot
Arthur Schlesinger, historian
Brad Delp, lead singer for Boston
My first post there:
Quote:Much delayed. I see Johnny Carson as one of the leading characters of the Silent Generation, a prime example of a memorable contributor to the American character.
The Silent may have had the largest collection of self-effacing comics, and as such types as Johnny Carson, Alan King, Bob Denver, and Richard Pryor leave the scene through death, we are going to miss them as we become more deadly in our seriousness in increasingly-dangerous time.
We need to poke fun at ourselves when egos bloat among people whose egos have no justification. But even without deaths we notice that the likes of Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, and Bill Cosby no longer creating the humanistic comedy that we once thought the norm.
The Silent, a generation that many of us remember from youth (I was born in 1955) are now... old.
Comedy is not as easy an art as it looks.
Jack Stone, eccentric character
Kurt Vonnegut, author
Boris Yeltsin, first President of the Russian Federation
David Halberstam, political critic
Bobby Puckett, novelty singer "Monster Mash"
Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist (first of my entries as an obituary -- others to get asterisks)*
Walter Schirra, astronaut
Jerry Falwell, television preacher
Phillip Kaiser, diplomat
Stanley Miller, biologist
Don "Mr. Wizard" Herbert, TV star
John Barber, tuba player
lady Bird Johnson, former US First Lady
Ingmar Bergman, great Swedish director
Tom Snyder, TV host
former King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan (couldn't the world have left well enough alone?)
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director
Bill Walsh, football coach (San Francisco 49ers)
Lee Hazlewood, singer-songwriter
Rocco Petrone, director of launch operations at NASA during the 1960s
E. Howard Hunt, political dirty work in Watergate
Brooke Astor, heiress and philanthropist
Leona Helmsley, entrepreneurial bully and convicted criminal for tax fraud
Noah Charles Pierce (dead link)
Richard Jewell, wrongly-accused of terrorist act
Luciano Pavarotti, opera tenor
Madeleine L'Engle, writer of children's books
Sir Tasker Williams, WW 2 Hero
Robert Jordan, fantasy writer
Marcel Marceau, mime
Lois Maxwell, actress
Robert Goulet, singer
Porter Wagoner, country music singer
Fup, senior cat at Powell's Book Store
Washoe, chimp who used sign language
Norman Mailer, writer
Paul Warfield Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima*
Beverly Sills, opera singer
Laraine Day, actress
second-to-last survivor of the RMS Titanic
Ira Levin, novelist*
Dick "Don't squeeze the Charmin" Wilson
Vladimir Kryuchkov, KGB chief and plotter against Gorbachev *
Evel Knievel, stunt motorcyclist
Quote:Two disparate, elderly figures of music:
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)
It's been a bad year for classical music -- Mstislav Rostropovich, Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, and now Stockhausen.
-- and
Ike Turner (1931-2007)*
Floyd Red Crow Westerman (dead link)
Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria
Dan Fogelberg, singer-songwriter
Bill Strauss, 60; Political Insider Who Stepped Over Into Comedy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121802158.html
(the William Strauss of the theory)
Oscar Peterson, 1925-2007 *
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/arts/25petersoncnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin][/url]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.