Obituaries

[Odin]

One of the founders of the Millennial Saeculum's popular culture, RIP.

[pbrower2a]

James Earle "Jimmy" Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City,[1] and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

Breslin was born on October 17, 1928,[2] in Jamaica, New York. His alcoholic father, James Earl Breslin, a piano player, went out one day to buy rolls and never returned. Breslin and his sister, Deirdre, were raised by their mother, Frances (Curtin), a high school teacher and New York City Welfare Department investigator, during the Great Depression.[1][3]

Breslin attended Long Island University from 1948 to 1950. He left without graduating.[4]


Breslin began working for the Long Island Press as a copy boy in the 1940s.[2] After leaving college, he became a columnist. His early columns were attributed to politicians and ordinary people that he chatted with in various watering holes near Queens Borough Hall. Breslin was a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune,[5] the Daily News, the New York Journal American, Newsday, and other venues. When the Sunday supplement of the Tribune was reworked into New York magazine by editor Clay Felker in 1962, Breslin appeared in the new edition, which became "the hottest Sunday read in town."[5]
One of his best known columns was published the day after John F. Kennedy's funeral and focused on the man who had dug the president's grave.[4] The column is indicative of Breslin's style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered "newsworthy" affect the "common man". Breslin's public profile in the 1960s as a regular guy led to a brief stint as a TV pitchman for Piels Beer, including a bar room commercial wherein he intoned in his deep voice: "Piels—it's a good drinkin' beer!"[6]
In 1969, Breslin ran for president of the New York City Council in tandem with Norman Mailer, who was seeking election as mayor, on the unsuccessful independent 51st State ticket advocating secession of the city from the rest of the state. His memorable quote from the experience: "I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed."[7]


Mailer–Breslin campaign button, 1969

Breslin's career as an investigative journalist led him to cultivate ties with various Mafia and criminal elements in the city, not always with positive results. In 1970, he was viciously attacked and beaten at The Suite, a restaurant then owned by Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill. The attack was carried out by mobster Jimmy Burke, who objected to an article Breslin had written involving another member of the Lucchese family, Paul Vario. Breslin suffered a major concussion and nosebleeding, but survived the ordeal without any permanent injury.[8]

In 1977, at the height of the Son of Sam scare in New York City, the killer, later identified as David Berkowitz, addressed letters to Breslin.[9][10] Excerpts from the letters were published and used later in Spike Lee's film Summer of Sam, which Breslin, portraying himself, bookends.[11] In 2008, the Library of America selected one of Breslin's many Son of Sam articles published in the Daily News for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime writing.[12]
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In 1978, Breslin, without significant acting experience, appeared in Joe Brooks' feature film If Ever I See You Again in a main supporting role playing "Mario Marino", the assistant to two Madison Avenue jingle composers.[13][14] Breslin's performance received a Golden Turkey Award nomination for "Worst Performance by a Novelist".[15]
In 1985, he received a George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting.[16] In 1986, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.[17]

In 1986, Breslin revealed that Donald Manes, the Borough President of Queens, was involved in a kickback scheme. Manes later committed suicide.[2]

In October 1986, Breslin landed his own twice-weekly late night television show on ABC, Jimmy Breslin's People, in which he was seen interviewing poor New Yorkers at home. Some of them were incarcerated. Because many network affiliates had already had committed to syndicated programming for Breslin's time slot when the new season started a month earlier, Breslin's show was often delayed or preempted altogether; even the network's flagship station WABC pushed it back from its midnight slot to 2 a.m., and would occasionally only air it one night a week. Disgusted, Breslin took out a full-page ad in The New York Times announcing that he was "firing the network" and would be ending the show after its December 20 broadcast (at which time his 13-week contract expired).[18]

[pbrower2a]

Chuck Barris, producer of some of the crappiest network TV shows ever (The Gong Show, The Dating Game, The Newlyweds Game), a big contributor to the dumbing-down of American life.

[pbrower2a]

George Dallas Green (August 4, 1934 – March 22, 2017) was an American professional baseball pitcher, manager, and executive in Major League Baseball. After playing for the Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Senators, and New York Mets from 1960 through 1967, he went on to manage the Phillies, the New York Yankees, and the Mets. Green managed the Phillies when they won their first World Series title in 1980 over the Kansas City Royals. Green had a losing record both as a pitcher and as a manager. Nonetheless, in 1983, he was inducted into the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame. He achieved notoriety for his blunt manner.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Green_(baseball)

[pbrower2a]

Stepan Mikoyan

© Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS

MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Stepan Mikoyan has died at the age of 94, the MiG Aircraft Corporation press office reported on Friday.

"On March 24, 2016, Hero of the Soviet Union, merited test pilot of the USSR Aviation Lieutenant-General Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan passed away at the age of 94," the press office said in a statement.

Stepan Mikoyan was born on July 12, 1922 in Tbilisi (Georgia) into the family of Soviet state figure and future Socialist Labor Hero Anastas Mikoyan. Stepan’s father was a brother of renowned Soviet aircraft designer Artyom Mikoyan. Anastas Mikoyan headed the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium in 1964-1965.

Stepan Mikoyan graduated in 1941 from the Kachinsk military aviation school and in December that year he went to the front. During the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany in 1941-1945 he fought as a fighter plane pilot.


More:
http://tass.com/defense/937379

He fought in the 32nd Guards Aviation Regiment near Stalingrad and on the North-Western Front and then in the 12th Guards Air Regiment of the Moscow Air Defense Force. During World War Two, he learnt to operate Yak-1, Yak-7 and Yak-9 fighter planes and was credited with six combat victories as part of an air group.

In 1951, he graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and started work as a test pilot in the Air Force Research Institute. He tested MiG combat planes for 23 years. In 1975, he was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for the state trials of the MiG-25 plane. He was also awarded an Order of the Red Banner (1942), four Orders of the Red Star (1944, 1956, 1957 and 1966), an Order of Lenin (1975), an Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class (1985) and medals, including a Medal for Combat Merits.

Mikoyan performed flights until 1978. Overall, he learned to operate 102 types of aircraft, including MiG-23, MiG-25 and MiG-27 planes. He logged a total of 3,500 flight hours.


More:
http://tass.com/defense/937379

[gabrielle]

(03-27-2017, 02:58 AM)taramarie Wrote: RIP Roy Hayman. My grandpa. You are father and grandpa all rolled into one. An angel on this earth. You are in a better place than I am right now. I am severely depressed and sick of living. I miss you grandpa.

Sorry for your loss, Taramarie.

[Snowflake]

(03-27-2017, 02:58 AM)taramarie Wrote: RIP Roy Hayman. My grandpa. You are father and grandpa all rolled into one. An angel on this earth. You are in a better place than I am right now. I am severely depressed and sick of living. I miss you grandpa.

My condolences to you and your family, as well.

[The Wonkette]

(03-27-2017, 02:58 AM)taramarie Wrote: RIP Roy Hayman. My grandpa. You are father and grandpa all rolled into one. An angel on this earth. You are in a better place than I am right now. I am severely depressed and sick of living. I miss you grandpa.

Hang in there, Tara Marie. Things will look up.

[pbrower2a]

Grief is difficult for anyone with a conscience. My sympathy, Tara.

[Eric the Green]

MORNING MESSAGE

Robert Borosage
Roger Wilkins: A Man of Honor for a Tempestuous Time

Roger Wilkins has left us, just after his 85th birthday. A great champion of social justice, proud father and good friend, he will be missed ... As the civil rights movement drove change from the streets, Roger became its advocate and translator on the inside. There he pushed against the arrogance, ignorance and complacency of the powerful ... Few have provided greater insight into how racism has scarred this nation. Few wrestled so fiercely with the contradiction between the nation’s ideals and its flawed reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Wilkins

[pbrower2a]

Good Riddance and may he roast in Hell!



Donald Harvey (April 15, 1952 - March 30, 2017) was an American serial killer who claims to have murdered 87 people, though official estimates are that he has from 37 to 57 victims. Harvey claimed he started out killing to "ease the pain" of patients.[2] As time progressed, he began to enjoy it more and more and became a self-described "angel of death". Harvey is currently serving 28 life sentences at the Toledo Correctional Institution in Toledo, Ohio, having pleaded guilty to murder charges to avoid the death penalty. His inmate number is A199449.[3]

Dating as far back as the age of eighteen, Donald Harvey worked in and around the medical profession, beginning his career as an orderly at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. He later confessed that during the ten-month period he worked at this hospital, he killed at least a dozen patients. Harvey is insistent that he killed purely out of a sense of empathy for the sufferings of those who were terminally ill. He has also admitted that many of the killings he committed were due to anger at the victim.[4] Harvey is notable for having kept his crimes from coming to light for over 17 years. The true extent of his crimes may never be known since so many were undetected for so long. Harvey is also notable for having used numerous methods to kill, such as arsenic; cyanide; insulin; suffocation; miscellaneous poisons; morphine; turning off ventilators; administration of fluid tainted with hepatitis B and/or HIV (which resulted in a hepatitis infection, but no HIV infection, and illness rather than death); insertion of a coat hanger into a catheter, causing an abdominal puncture and subsequent peritonitis. Cyanide and arsenic were his favorite methods, with Harvey administering them via food, injection, or IV. The majority of Harvey's crimes took place at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, the Cincinnati V.A. Medical Hospital, and Cincinnati's Drake Memorial Hospital.

Harvey did not limit his victims to helpless hospital patients. When he suspected his lover and roommate Carl Hoeweler of infidelity, he poisoned Hoeweler's food with arsenic so he would be too ill to leave their apartment. He poisoned two of his neighbors—sickening one, Diane Alexander, by putting hepatitis serum in her drink and killing the other, Helen Metzger, by putting arsenic in her pie. He also killed Hoeweler's father Henry with arsenic.[5]

Harvey was incarcerated in Toledo Correctional Institution. His first parole hearing was scheduled for April 2043.[3] On March 29, 2017, authorities reported that Harvey had been found in his cell severely beaten and in critical condition.[6].

[pbrower2a]

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. (July 7, 1920 – March 31, 2017) was an American attorney and politician.[1][2] Coleman was the fourth United States Secretary of Transportation, from March 7, 1975, to January 20, 1977, and the second African American to serve in the Cabinet. As an attorney, Coleman played a major role in significant civil rights cases. At the time of his death, Coleman was the oldest living former U.S. Cabinet member.

He began his legal career in 1947, serving as law clerk to Judge Herbert F. Goodrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1948. He was the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court law clerk.[5] Coleman was hired by the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in 1949.[6] Coleman was one of the lead strategists and coauthor of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in which the U.S. Supreme Court held racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

He served as a member of the NAACP's national legal committee, director and member of its executive committee, and president of board of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Coleman was also a member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Committee on Government Employment Policy (1959–1961), a senior consultant and assistant counsel to the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (1964), and a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1963–1975).

During the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy, the committee received word via a backchannel that Fidel Castro, then Prime Minister of Cuba, wanted to talk to them. The commission sent Coleman as an investigator and he met with Castro on a fishing boat off the coast of Cuba. Castro denied any involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy during Coleman's three-hour questioning. Coleman reported the results of his investigation and interview with Castro directly to Chief Justice Earl Warren.[7]

In 1969, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the twenty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Coleman was also a member of the National Commission on Productivity (1971–1972). He was senior partner in the law firm of Dilworth, Paxson, Kalish, Levy & Coleman at the time of his appointment to the Ford administration.

President Gerald Ford appointed Coleman to serve as the nation's fourth Secretary of Transportation on March 7, 1975.[8] During Coleman's tenure at the department, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's automobile test facility at East Liberty, Ohio commenced operations, and the department established the Materials Transportation Bureau to address pipeline safety and the safe shipment of hazardous materials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Th...Coleman_Jr.

[pbrower2a]

Gilbert Baker, artist who created one of the flags in most widespread use:




the rainbow flag, symbol of gay identity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Baker_(artist)

[pbrower2a]

Don Rickles (1926-2017), master of the insult comedy, known as "The Merchant of Venom" and (ironically) "Mr. Warmth".

Too many people (especially the President) of the Boom Generation still deserve his sort of skewering.

I missed:

Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute?, career guidance for multitudes.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Soviet/Russian poet.
Thomas Brandis, great violinist (concert master and chamber ensembles).

[The Wonkette]

Emma Morano, 29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017, the last human verified to have lived in the 19th century, died yesterday.

From Wikipedia.

Quote:Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017) was an Italian supercentenarian who, prior to her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world's oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s.

She was the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

[Warren Dew]

(04-16-2017, 12:12 PM)The Wonkette Wrote: Emma Morano, 29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017, the last human verified to have lived in the 19th century, died yesterday.

From Wikipedia.

Quote:Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017) was an Italian supercentenarian who, prior to her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world's oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s.

She was the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

Does that make her the last Lost?

[The Wonkette]

(04-16-2017, 12:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-16-2017, 12:12 PM)The Wonkette Wrote: Emma Morano, 29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017, the last human verified to have lived in the 19th century, died yesterday.

From Wikipedia.

Quote:Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017) was an Italian supercentenarian who, prior to her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world's oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s.

She was the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

Does that make her the last Lost?

Strauss and Howe start the GI Generation  in 1901 but it only applies to the US.  There are two living people who were born in 1900, according to Wikipedia.  One is Jamaican and one is Japanese, so I don't know whether you can properly call them (or Emma Morano, for that matter), "Lost".

The oldest living man, incidentally, is a Holocaust survivor living in Israel.

[Odin]

Our last link to the 1800s is gone.  

I remember as a little kid knowing several people born in the 1890s, including one sweet little old woman who lived in the old-folks apartment across the street from my house who would always spoil us kids with candy.

It's strange to think that at the beginning of the 22nd century we Millennials will be seen similarly to the Lost. We older Millennials will be the last people to have any memory of the 20th century.

[pbrower2a]

(04-16-2017, 12:45 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(04-16-2017, 12:21 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-16-2017, 12:12 PM)The Wonkette Wrote: Emma Morano, 29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017, the last human verified to have lived in the 19th century, died yesterday.

From Wikipedia.

Quote:Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017) was an Italian supercentenarian who, prior to her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world's oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s.

She was the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

Does that make her the last Lost?

Strauss and Howe start the GI Generation  in 1901 but it only applies to the US.  There are two living people who were born in 1900, according to Wikipedia.  One is Jamaican and one is Japanese, so I don't know whether you can properly call them (or Emma Morano, for that matter), "Lost".

The oldest living man, incidentally, is a Holocaust survivor living in Israel.

1900 is still Lost.

The last known Missionary died just before 2000. The last Lost will live into the late 2010s (we are already there). Barring unforeseen extensions of lifespans, the last GIs will be around 2040. the last Silent around 2060, and the last Boomers  most likely around 2080.

With better habits than those of the Lost and with more people, GIs and the Silent (who have been imitating GI habits) may be around for a little longer than the Lost.

Of course people have been trading off social realities (childhood diseases, early starvation) for others (war, executions, plagues, and transportation accidents) that kill young adults, heart disease and cancer, and now prion diseases. Even automobile accidents mirrored horse-related deaths in the pre-automobile era (being thrown by or trampled by horses) in the early part of the 20th century. For now, food supplies are better, medical treatment is more certain, vehicles and roads are becoming safer, and war is becoming a rarity in much of the world.

[pbrower2a]

Disgraced former football star, and more significantly convicted murderer serving a life term, Aaron Hernandez, apparently committed suicide by hanging himself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aaro...mg00000009


A hint for survival: avoid disgrace.