Obituaries

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Mitch McConnell's predecessor as US Senator

Huddleston was born in Burkesville, Kentucky.[1] After he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the United States Army and served as a tank gunner in Europe during and after World War II from 1944 to 1946.[2] He then attended the University of Kentucky with support from the G.I. Bill, and he graduated in 1949.[1][3] In 1947, Huddleston married Martha Jean Pearce, who died in 2003.[4]

After graduating from college, Huddleston worked as the sports and program director for WKCT in Bowling Green, Kentucky.[2] In 1952, he became the general manager of WIEL in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.[3] He later became president of the Kentucky Broadcasters Association.[2]

 
Huddleston entered politics in 1964 when he was elected to the Kentucky State Senate.[5] He was elected as a state senator in 1965, serving until 1972; for a time, he was the body's majority leader.[5]
In 1972, Huddleston ran for the United States Senate seat which was being vacated by retiring Republican John Sherman Cooper.[6] He narrowly defeated Republican Louie B. Nunn, a recent former governor, receiving a 51% to 48% margin.[7] Huddleston was reelected in 1978 with 61 percent of the vote over the former Republican state Representative Louie R. Guenthner Jr., of Louisville.[8]

In 1984, Huddleston's Republican opponent was Jefferson County (Louisville) Judge-Executive Mitch McConnell.[1] McConnell gained political traction with a series of television campaign ads making sport of Huddleston's attendance record in the Senate.[9] McConnell accused him of putting "his private speaking engagements ahead of his Senate responsibilities."[10] Despite these ads, the race was very close, with McConnell only defeating Huddleston when the last returns came in (49.9% to 49.5%).[11]

 
Huddleston died on October 16, 2018 in Warsaw, Kentucky, at the age of 92.[1]

Concern about current politics

Huddleston kept up with current political events in the last few years but otherwise "liked to enjoy sports and his newspapers and his books," his son said, adding that his father played golf for as long as he was able.

As for the current political climate in Washington, D.C., Huddleston was not pleased with the partisan atmosphere that has taken over in recent years, Stephen Huddleston said.

"He mentioned from time to time the deterioration of the quality of legislation and the undermining of the process,” Stephen Huddleston said. “I don’t think he was overly impressed with the character of people holding higher office.”

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/ne...657899002/

[Bill the Piper]

Joachim Ronneberg, the man who prevented Hitler from building an A-bomb

The. Greatest. G.I. Hero. Ever.

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BBC story on Joachim Ronneberg from 2013

Last surviving hero of Telemark remembers the 1942 mission

When two gliders carrying British soldiers crashed over occupied Norway in late 1942, those that did not die on impact were executed by the Nazis.

But the mission they were on was considered so important to the future of the war, that British military planners knew they would have to try again.

One of the men they turned to was Joachim Ronneberg, a Norwegian who had fled to Britain and wanted to return home to fight.
The last surviving Hero of Telemark - the operation in Norway to stop Germans developing nuclear weapons, remembers the events 70 years on.

• 25 Apr 2013
  

Complete with video at the source.

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Harry L. Ettlinger of Whippany (New Jersey) passed away on October 21st in Trenton, NJ. He was 92 years young.

Harry was recently in the spotlight with the production of the “Monuments Men” film in 2014, that portrayed Harry as part of the Allied effort to find and save billions of dollars worth of art and other culturally important items stolen by the Nazis from museums, churches and private collections from all over Europe. For his effort, Harry received the US Congressional Gold Medal and made a speech in the US Congress as the representative of the 350 other Monuments Men.

Born as a Jew in Nazi Germany, in the city of Karlsruhe, Harry witnessed first-hand the horrors of anti-Semitism and genocide. In 1938, his father was able to sneak the family out of the country, just weeks before the notorious Kristallnacht. Eventually, the Ettlingers settled in Newark, NJ, where the new immigrants learned to speak English and assimilate into American society. In 1944, after graduating from East Side High, Harry joined the US Army and eventually was sent to Europe to fight against what had been his homeland. In a fortuitous moment, as he was on a convoy heading to fight in the deadly Battle of the Bulge, he was pulled off the convoy, because of his ability to speak German. That bilingualism enabled Harry to serve as a translator and driver to James Rorimer, a key figure in the Monuments Men story, who was portrayed by Matt Damon in the film. In addition, after the German surrender, Harry spent four hours interrogating Heinrich Hoffman, Adolph Hitler’s personal photographer, prior to the Nuremberg Trials.

Ultimately, Harry met and married his wife Mimi Goldman, who was his life partner for more than 53 years until her death in 2004. They raised three children and Harry went on to a successful career in aerospace engineering where he rose to Deputy Program Director for Singer-Kearfott of Wayne, NJ.

Harry devoted massive hours to charitable and veterans causes. He was the State Commander for the New Jersey Jewish War Veterans and also the Co-Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation of NJ. He was an active and passionate member of the VFW Parsippany Post 10184 as well as the Knights of Pythias.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituari...er-8030960

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Inventor of the first portable pacemaker -- someone you know may be alive because of it

Earl E. Bakken (January 10, 1924 – October 21, 2018) was an American engineer, businessman and philanthropist . He founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.[1]



In the 1950s, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei was performing life-saving surgery on children with blue baby syndrome. That surgery often left the children needing to be temporarily attached to a pacemaker. The pacemakers at the time were large devices that required their own carts and relied on wall current for power. As a result of a power blackout on October 31, 1957, one of Dr. Lillehei's young patients died. Dr. Lillehei, who had worked with Bakken before, asked him the next day if he could solve the problem. Four weeks after finding a circuit diagram for a metronome in Popular Electronics, Bakken delivered a battery-powered transistorized pacemaker about the size of a few decks of cards to Dr. Lillehei. After successfully testing the hand-made device in the laboratory, Bakken returned to create a refined model for patients. However, much to his astonishment, when he came in the next day, he found the pacemaker already in use on a patient. (The Food and Drug Administration did not start regulating medical devices until 1976.)[2]

Over the next several years, Bakken and Medtronic worked with other doctors to develop fully implantable pacemakers, but they also veered toward bankruptcy. He borrowed money that kept Medtronic going, but the bankruptcy near-miss drove Bakken to develop the Medtronic Mission, which still guides the company.[3] The mission helped the young company to stay focused on areas where it could truly help patients.

Bakken retired from Medtronic in 1989 and moved to a 9-acre estate in the Kona District of Hawaii he calls Bakken Hale,[4] but still returned to the company several times a year to meet new employees and explain the Medtronic Mission to them in person.
In 1996 he helped to dedicate the North Hawaii Community Hospital and was active there ever for some time afterwards, working to combine Eastern and Western approaches to medicine to develop a more holistic approach to health care.[5]
In 2001, Medtronic started the construction of its new European distribution center in Heerlen, The Netherlands. The street in which the facility was built is named after Bakken.

Bakken died at his Hawaii home on October 21, 2018 at the age of 94.[6]

[sbarrera]

Inventor of the green bean casserole.
Dorcas Reilly (Jul 22, 1926 - Oct 15, 2018), inventor of the green bean casserole, a Thanksgiving favorite, has died at 92

It started with a call from the Associated Press and a question: What’s a good recipe for a vegetable side dish that features common pantry products?

In 1955, the AP, like other newspapers and magazines of the time, was running a feature of an easy-to-make Campbell’s Soup side. The question came with a caveat: the recipe had to be built around green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, two items most Americans regularly had in their homes in the ’50s.

The request fell to the Campbell’s Soup Co. test kitchen in Camden, N.J., an arm of the company that focused on coming up with recipes for its products. Dorcas Reilly, a supervisor for Campbell’s home economics department, was tasked with leading her team to figure out what could be done. The group would test and grade recipes repeatedly. Only a perfect score would qualify it as ready to go. In November of that year, Reilly and her team settled on what would be first known as “the Green Bean Bake,” an easily adaptable six-ingredient recipe of green beans, cream of mushroom soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper and French fried onions that takes 10 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to bake.

“We worked in the kitchen with things that were most likely to be in most homes,” she told NPR in 2015. “It’s so easy. And it’s not an expensive thing to make, too.”

When Campbell’s started to put Reilly’s recipe on the cans of its cream of mushroom soup in 1960, the popularity of the dish hit new heights. More than 60 years since the dish was invented, green bean casserole is a Thanksgiving staple, with an estimated 20 million-plus American households expected to serve it this year, according to Campbell’s.

Throughout her life, Reilly, a culinary trail blazer during a time when women were often on the sidelines in corporate America, remained astonished at the success of a dish based on green beans and cream of mushroom soup, one referred to by Campbell’s as “the mother of all comfort foods.”

“We all thought this is very nice, etc., and then when we got the feelings of the consumer, we were really kinda pleasantly shocked,” she said in a Campbell’s promotional video for the dish. “I’m very proud of this, and I was shocked when I realized how popular it had become.”

Reilly, an influential innovator of beloved comfort food in the U.S., died on Oct. 15 of Alzheimer’s disease in Camden. She was 92. A visitation and celebration of her life will be held on Saturday in Haddonfield, N.J.

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dorcas Reilly, the creator of one of the most beloved American recipes, the Green Bean Casserole,” Campbell’s said in a statement, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Dorcas was an incredible woman whose legacy will live on for years to come. She will be missed by her Campbell colleagues and all those who were impacted by her creativity and generous spirit.”

Today we remember Dorcas Reilly, storied Campbell employee & creator of the iconic Green Bean Casserole, who passed away earlier this week at age 92. Her incredible legacy will live on in more than 20 million American households this Thanksgiving.

Born on July 22, 1926, Reilly was raised in Camden. She would become one of the first members of her family to attend college, earning her bachelor’s degree in home economics from the Drexel Institute of Technology, now known as Drexel University, in 1947. She headed to Campbell’s in 1949, where she was one of two full-time employees developing recipes for the company’s home economics department.

With the economy flourishing in the ’50s, there was an appetite for meals that were easy to make, delicious and cheap. Reilly found success with a tuna noodle casserole, a tomato soup cake and a Sloppy Joe made from tomato soup.

“It was about the team working together,” Reilly said in her college alumni biography. “I didn’t do it; we did it.”

But things were different when it came to her most notable side dish. Campbell’s has estimated that 40 percent of its cream of mushroom soup sold in the U.S. goes toward making Reilly’s green bean casserole. And millions of Americans have adopted it as part of their Thanksgiving celebrations.

“Thanksgiving is the Super Bowl for green bean casserole,” Jane Freiman, director of Campbell’s Consumer Test Kitchen, told NBC’s “Today” in 2015.

Reilly’s cuisine hit new heights in 2002, when Campbell’s donated the original recipe card written by Reilly to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The yellow recipe card resides in the same place as Thomas Edison’s lightbulb and phonograph and Enrico Fermi’s first controlled nuclear reactor.

Her son, Thomas B. Reilly, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that his mom was humble about her career never spoke about the achievement when he was growing up. It only started to come up more when she was recognized as the inventor of the dish.

“I think she was surprised,” her son said to the Inquirer. “I think she was even more surprised at how much of a big deal it became. She was not a flashy person. She didn’t bask in the limelight. She just went in and did her job every day, like most blue-collar people.”

Though she was known for her work, Reilly had said how “food should be fun and food should be happy.” It was a mantra she carried with her in bringing green bean casserole to the Thanksgiving table. And millions would follow.

“I loved to go to work every day,” she said at Drexel in 2009. “It was just another day’s work. " She added: “I hope you enjoy green bean casserole forever.”

http://bit.ly/dorcasreilly 

(I certainly will enjoy green bean casserole for as long as I can)

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Let us honor those victims of a mass shooting in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I could say more, but words fail me.



Joyce Fienberg, 75
Rich Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69

What is so menacing about a 97-year-old woman?

Appropriate curse for the murderer: may he find upon his death that God is Jewish!

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writer Ntozake Shange

Ntozake Shange (/ˈɛntoʊˌzɑːki ˈʃɑːŋˌɡeɪ/ EN-toh-zah-kee SHAHNG-gay;[1] October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) was an American playwright and poet.[2] As a self-proclaimed Black woman, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work.

Shange is best known for the Obie Award-winning play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. She also penned several novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985), a novel about an African-American girl who runs away from home. Among Shange's honors and awards were fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, and a Pushcart Prize. In April 2016, Barnard College announced that it acquired Shange's archive.[3] Shange lived in Brooklyn, New York.[4]


Shange was born Paulette L. Williams[1] in Trenton, New Jersey,[5] to an upper-middle-class family. Her father, Paul T. Williams, was an Air Force surgeon, and her mother, Eloise Williams, was an educator and a psychiatric social worker.[6] When she was aged eight, Shange's family moved to the racially segregated city of St. Louis. As a result of the Brown v. Board of Education court decision, Shange was bused to a white school where she endured racism and racist attacks.

Shange's family had a strong interest in the arts and encouraged her artistic education. Among the guests at their home were Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, and W. E. B. Du Bois.[7] From an early age, Shange took an interest in poetry.[8] While growing up with her family in Trenton, Shange attended poetry readings with her younger sister Wanda (now known as the playwright Ifa Bayeza).[9] These poetry readings fostered an early interest for Shange in the South in particular, and the loss it represented to young Black children who migrated to the North with their parents.[8] In 1956, Shange's family moved to St. Louis, Missouri where Shange was sent several miles away from home to a non-segregated school that allowed her to receive "gifted" education. While attending this non-segregated school, Shange faced overt racism and harassment. These experiences would later go on to heavily influence her work.[7]

When Shange was 13, she returned to Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey,[10] where she graduated from Morristown High School.[11] In 1966 Shange enrolled at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. During her time at Barnard, Shange met fellow Barnard student and would-be poet Thulani Davis.[12] The two poets would later go on to collaborate on various works.[12] Shange graduated cum laude in American Studies, then earned a master's degree in the same field from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. However, her college years were not all pleasant. She married during her first year in college, but the marriage did not last long. Depressed over her separation and with a strong sense of bitterness and alienation, she attempted suicide.[13] In 1971, having come to terms with her depression and alienation, Shange changed her name. In Xhosa, Ntozake means "she who has her own things" (literally "things that belong to her") and Shange means "he/she who walks/lives with lions" (meaning "the lion's pride" in Zulu).[14]

In 1975, Shange moved back to New York City, after earning her Master's in American Studies in 1973[15] from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. She is acknowledged as having been a founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Café.[16] In that year her first and most well-known play was produced — for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. First produced Off-Broadway, the play soon moved on to Broadway at the Booth Theater and won several awards, including the Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the AUDELCO Award. This play, her most famous work, was a 20-part choreopoem — a term Shange coined to describe her groundbreaking dramatic form, combining of poetry, dance, music, and song[17] — that chronicled the lives of women of color in the United States. The poem was eventually made into the stage play, was then published in book form in 1977. In 2010, the choreopoem was adapted into a film (For Colored Girls, directed by Tyler Perry). Shange subsequently wrote other successful plays, including Spell No. 7, a 1979 choreopoem that explores the Black experience,[18] and an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1980), which won an Obie Award.[19]
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In 1978, Shange became an associate of the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Institute_for_Freedom_of_the_Press]Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).[20] WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. In 2003, Shange wrote and oversaw the production of Lavender Lizards and Lilac Landmines: Layla's Dream while serving as a visiting artist at the University of Florida, Gainesville.[21]

Shange's individual poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Black Scholar, Yardbird, Ms., Essence Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, VIBE, Daughters of Africa, and Third-World Women.[8]

 
The Black Arts Movement—also known as BAM—has been described as the "aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept."[22] The Black Arts Movement is a subset of the Black Power Movement. Larry Neal described the Black Arts Movement as a "radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic." Key concepts of BAM were focused on a "separate symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology" as well as the African American’s desire for "self-determination and nationhood."[22] BAM consisted of actors, actresses, choreographers, musicians, novelists, poets, photographers and artists. Though male artists such as Amiri Baraka heavily dominated the Black Arts Movement, some notable women writers of the movement were Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Rosa Guy, Lorraine Hansberry, Lucille Clifton, and Sonia Sanchez, among others. Although Shange is described as a "post-Black artist," her work was decidedly feminist whereas BAM has been criticized as misogynistic and "sexism had been widely and hotly debated within movement publications and organizations."[22] Corresponding with the idea that art from BAM was a "radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic," Shange herself described her atypical writing style. In regards to her plays, she stated: "A play has a form that has to be finished. A performance piece has an organic form, but it can even flow. And there doesn’t have to be some ultimate climax in it. And there does not have to be a denouement."[23]

Though Shange's work did have a "radical reordering of western cultural aesthetic" with its spelling, structure, and style, Baraka—one of the leading male figures of the movement denied her as a post-Black artist.[22] In regards to Shange as a part of the black aesthetic and as a post-Black artist, he claimed "that several women writers, among them Michelle Wallace [sic] and Ntozake Shange, like [Ishmael] Reed, had their own 'Hollywood' aesthetic, one of 'capitulation' and 'garbage.'"[22] In regards to a black aesthetic, Shange described different styles of writing for different parts of the country. She stated: "There’s not a California style, but there are certain feelings and a certain freeness that set those writers off from those in the Chicago-St. Louis-Detroit tripod group…so that the chauvinism that you might find that’s exclusionary, in that triangle, you don’t find too much in California."[8] Shange set her writing apart from the Black aesthetic of the Black arts movement by creating a "special aesthetic" for black women "to an extent." She claimed, "the same rhetoric that is used to establish the Black Aesthetic, we must use to establish a women’s aesthetic, which is to say that those parts of reality that are ours, those things about our bodies, the cycles of our lives that have been ignored for centuries in all castes and classes of our people, are to be dealt with now."[8]

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gangster James "Whitey" Bulger


Notorious Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger was found dead at a federal prison in West Virginia Tuesday — on the morning after he arrived — and the FBI has launched an investigation, federal officials said.

Bulger, 89, was found unresponsive about 8:20 a.m. at the high-security penitentiary USP Hazelton in West Virginia, according to a Justice Department statement.

"Life-saving measures were initiated immediately by responding staff," the statement said.

But Bulger was subsequently pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner, the Justice Department said.
No other staff or inmates were injured, officials said. Bulger had arrived at the West Virginia prison on Monday.
The FBI and the The US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of West Virginia has opened a probe into the death., officials said.


The feared former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, Bulger was convicted in 2013 of participating in 11 murders stretching from Massachusetts to Florida to Oklahoma. Bulger was serving a life sentence.
He was previously relocated from a Florida prison to a facility in Oklahoma. Though Bulger is known to have medical ailments, it's not clear why he was on the move, the Boston Herald reported.

Bulger had spent 16 years as as one of the nation's most wanted fugitives before he was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011.

[Marypoza]

RlP Dennis Banks. I knew him personally when he lived in the area during the 1990s he was a very cool dude.

[Eric the Green]

I got to see Willie Mac hit a big home run over the center field fence in 1963, right after May hit his 400th just over the left field wall, and was followed by another by Orlando Cepeda. Willie was a great gentleman and a gentle giant. We all will miss him in the Bay Area.

Willie McCovey, the Hall of Fame first baseman who played 19 of his 22 seasons with the San Francisco Giants and slugged 521 career home runs, died Wednesday at age 80.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25138...nd-dies-80

The Giants said McCovey died "peacefully" after battling "ongoing health issues."

"San Francisco and the entire baseball community lost a true gentleman and legend, and our collective hearts are broken," Giants president and CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. "Willie was a beloved figure throughout his playing days and in retirement. He will be deeply missed by the many people he touched.

"For more than six decades, he gave his heart and soul to the Giants -- as one of the greatest players of all time, as a quiet leader in the clubhouse, as a mentor to the Giants who followed in his footsteps, as an inspiration to our Junior Giants, and as a fan cheering on the team from his booth."

The Giants paid tribute to McCovey on Wednesday afternoon by flying the flags at AT&T Park at half-staff.

Nicknamed "Stretch" because of his 6-foot-4 frame, McCovey teamed with Willie Mays to create a formidable 1-2 punch in the Giants' lineup for the 13 seasons the two played together.

McCovey retired in 1980 with the most home runs ever by a left-handed hitter in the National League, a mark that stood until 2001 when Barry Bonds, another Giant, broke it. He finished his career with 18 grand slams (second only to Lou Gehrig at the time), and led the league in home runs three times and RBIs twice. He was a six-time All-Star who finished his career with a .270 batting average, 521 home runs and 1,555 RBIs.

McCovey made his major league debut in 1959, going 4-for-4 in his first game. He hit .354, with 13 home runs and 38 RBIs in 52 games that season and was named Rookie of the Year.

One of McCovey's best seasons came in 1969, when he won MVP honors. That year, he led the league in home runs (45), RBIs (126) and on-base percentage (.453).

Bonds remembered McCovey in a series of emotional tweets late Wednesday night, writing in part, "I am crying over losing you even when you told me not to. ... Uncle Mac thank you for your mentorship and unconditional love for me and my family. You will be dearly missed."

Rest in peace, Uncle Willie McCovey. I love you. pic.twitter.com/7cWguIR6SD

— Barry L Bonds (@BarryBonds) November 1, 2018

Fellow Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, who played with McCovey in San Francisco from 1959-66, also saluted his former teammate in a tweet.

Rest peacefully my brother. #Forever44 #ForeverGiant pic.twitter.com/NO7ZCeWMpx

— Orlando Cepeda (@OrlandoCepeda30) November 1, 2018

McCovey was traded by the Giants to the San Diego Padres in 1973. He played in San Diego and Oakland before returning to San Francisco as a free agent for his final four seasons. He won the Sporting News NL Comeback Player of the Year award his first season back with the Giants in 1977.

McCovey is one of seven players in history to win a rookie of the year award, a league MVP and an All-Star Game MVP award. The others are Cal Ripken Jr., Mays, Mike Trout, Frank Robinson, Fred Lynn and Ichiro Suzuki.

"Willie McCovey was one of our game's greatest power hitters," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "He won the National League MVP in 1969 and, alongside fellow Hall of Famer and Alabama native Willie Mays, was a key part of many memorable Giants' teams. For 22 years on the field and many more after retiring, Willie was a superb ambassador for the Giants and our game."

One honor that eluded McCovey was a World Series ring. He came close in 1962, coming up short in a nail-biting seven-game series against the New York Yankees. McCovey went to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, his team down 1-0, with runners on second and third base. McCovey sliced a drive toward right field that looked like it could drive in the winning run but instead was caught by Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson to end the game and the series. The moment was so iconic that it was featured in a Peanuts comic strip.

"I still think about it all the time," he said in 2014. "I still think, 'If I could have hit it a little more.'"

google:
McCovey's legacy in San Francisco has endured past his career. Home runs hit over the right field wall at AT&T Park splash into the water of McCovey Cove, and the "Willie Mac" Award, voted on by players, coaches and training staff, is awarded by the Giants every year to recognize the team's most inspirational player.

McCovey had spent the past 18 years in a senior advisory role for the Giants. He had been getting around in a wheelchair in recent years because he could no longer rely on his once-dependable legs, yet was still regularly seen at the ballpark in his private suite. He had attended games at AT&T Park as recently as the final game of the 2018 season.

Willie Lee McCovey, nicknamed "Mac", "Big Mac", and "Stretch", was an American professional baseball first baseman. He played for the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball for 19 seasons, and three more in MLB for the San Diego Padres and Oakland Athletics, between 1959 and 1980. Wikipedia
Born: January 10, 1938, Mobile, AL
Died: October 31, 2018, Stanford Hospital, Stanford University, CA
Spouse: Karen McCovey (m. 1964–1966)
Number: 44 (San Francisco Giants / Infielder)
Hall of fame induction: 1986

[Eric the Green]

(11-01-2018, 11:29 AM)Marypoza Wrote: RlP Dennis Banks. I knew him personally when he lived in the area during the 1990s he was a very cool dude.

Indeed. A great, courageous and wise activist.

Dennis Banks (Ojibwe, April 12, 1937 – October 29, 2017) was a Native American activist, teacher, and author. He was a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, which he co-founded inMinneapolis, Minnesota in 1968 to represent urban Indians.

Born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, he was also known as Nowa Cumig(Naawakamig in the Double Vowel System), which in the Ojibwe language means "in the center of the universe."

In 1968, Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis.[1] They were seeking to ensure and protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas.[2]

Banks participated in the 1969–1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island, initiated by Indian students from San Francisco of the Red Power movement. It was intended to highlight Native American issues and promote Indian sovereignty on their own lands. In 1972, he assisted in the organization of AIM's "Trail of Broken Treaties", a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C. to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. The caravan members anticipated meeting with United States Congress leaders about related issues, but government officials, most notably Harrison Loesch, the Interior Department Assistant Secretary responsible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), refused to meet with delegates.[3] The activists seized and occupied the headquarters of the Department of Interior; in the process some vandalized the offices of the BIA. Many valuable Indian land deeds were destroyed or lost during the occupation.[citation needed]


In 1973 Banks went to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota when the local Lakota civil rights organization asked for help in dealing with law enforcement authorities in nearby border towns. Residents of Pine Ridge believed the police had failed to prosecute the murder of a young Lakota man. Under Banks' leadership, AIM led a protest in Custer, South Dakota in 1973 against judicial proceedings that had resulted in the reduction of charges of a white man to a second degree offense for murdering a Native American.

[pbrower2a]

Kitty O'Neill, stuntwoman amd daredevil driver

The Hollywood Reporter


Kitty O'Neil, a deaf Hollywood stuntwoman, daredevil and protege of Hal Needham who doubled for Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman and set a land-speed record as the fastest woman driver ever, has died. She was 72.

O'Neil died Friday at Eureka Community Hospital in Eureka, South Dakota. Her longtime friend, former stuntman Ky Michaelson, told The Hollywood Reporter that she died of pneumonia and had recently suffered a heart attack.

Five-foot-2 and 97 pounds, O'Neil worked on such movies as Airport 1975, Two-Minute Warning (1976), Airport '77, Damien: Omen II (1978), Foul Play (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980) and the Needham-directed Smokey and the Bandit II (1980).

She accomplished her most famous Hollywood stunt in 1979 when, dressed as Wonder Woman, she plunged headfirst 127 feet from atop the Valley Hilton in Sherman Oaks onto an inflatable air bag set up on the hotel's pool deck.

"If I hadn't hit the center of the bag, I probably would have been killed," she told The Washington Post in 1979.

O'Neil was set on fire during her career and was the first woman to pull off a "cannon-fired" car roll, in which an explosive charge under the vehicle propels it to rise up and tumble over and over.

On Dec. 6, 1976, the native Texan shattered the land-speed record for female drivers, posting an average speed of 512.71 mph while piloting a hydrogen peroxide-fueled, three-wheeled machine over a 5/8th-mile straightaway in the Alvord Desert in Oregon.

O'Neil also raced boats, dune buggies and motorcycles and was a champion three-meter and platform diver. She had her own Barbie doll, and Stockard Channing portrayed her in a 1979 CBS telefilm, Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story.

"She scared the heck out of me," Michaelson told THR. "I never met a human being that had no fear." In the Mojave Desert in 1977, O'Neil drove a rocket dragster built by Michelson to a top speed of 279.5 mph.

Kitty Linn O'Neil was born on March 24, 1946, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her father was an Irish oilman and her mother a full-blooded Cherokee Native American who became a speech therapist. She contracted measles and smallpox when she was 4 months old and lost her hearing. Her parents didn't know she couldn't hear until she was 2.

"My mother pushed me to read lips," she told People magazine in 1977, "but she didn't push me in sports — I did that myself. Because I was deaf, I had a very positive mental attitude. You have to show people you can do anything."

O'Neil took up the sport of diving, and in 1962 she moved to Anaheim to train with two-time Olympic gold medalist Sammy Lee. Her hopes of competing in the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo were derailed when she broke her wrist and then contracted spinal meningitis, which threatened to paralyze her.

In the '70s, O'Neil joined Needham's racing team, and he trained her to become a stuntwoman. She was the first female to join Stunts Unlimited, an elite group of performers co-founded by Needham; there were fewer than 40 members when she came aboard in 1976.

O'Neil set the women's water-skiing record of 104.85 mph and once drove a boat 275 mph. She retired in 1982 with nearly two dozen speed records on land and water.

"I'm not afraid of anything," she said in 2015. "Just do it. It's good when you finish, [you know] you made it."

O'Neil always regretted not getting the opportunity to top the male driver record of 630.388 mph set by Gary Gabelich at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 1970. She even thought breaking the sonic barrier (about 767 mph) was within her reach.

In 1993, she relocated to Eureka. "I got tired of living in L.A.," she said. "I don't like the big city, too many people. So I moved here and fell in love with it. The people are so friendly."

Some of her racing and stuntwoman memorabilia can be found in the town's Eureka Pioneer Museum.

O'Neil had no children and no survivors, Michaelson said. She was romantically involved with Needham and another stuntman, Duffy Hambleton. (Michaelson said she was never married to Hambleton — portrayed by James Farentino in the Channing telefilm — contrary to news stories over the years.)

Rhett Bartlett contributed to this report.

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Football Hall of Fame member Wallace Triplett


Wallace Triplett (April 18, 1926 – November 8, 2018) was a professional American football player, the first African-American draftee to play for a National Football League team.[1] For that reason, his portrait hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.


Triplett, the son of a postal worker, was born and raised in the Philadelphia suburb of La Mott, Pennsylvania, part of Cheltenham Township.[2] His reputation as a talented high school football player, combined with his upscale address, prompted the University of Miami to offer him a scholarship sight unseen, under the assumption Triplett was white. The then-segregated university rescinded the scholarship when they discovered Triplett was black. Triplett instead earned a Senatorial Scholarship for his academics and chose to attend Penn State University in the fall of 1945.[2]

Although Triplett was the third African-American chosen in the 1949 NFL Draft, he was the first of the draftees to take the field in a league game. Undrafted "free agent" African-Americans had previously played in the league.[4] The 5'-10", 173-pound running back and return specialist played for the Detroit Lions from 1949–50.
On October 29, 1950, in a game against the Los Angeles Rams, Triplett set the Lions' single-game record for kickoff return yardage with 294 yards, the second-highest total (NFL record is 304 yards) in NFL history, including a 97-yard touchdown return.[5][6] His average of 73.5 yards per return in that game is also an NFL record.[6]
Following the 1950 season, Triplett became the first NFL player drafted into military service for the Korean War. When he returned from active duty, the Lions traded him to the Chicago Cardinals. He retired from professional football in 1953. After his playing days, Triplett worked as a teacher, in the insurance business, and in management for the Chrysler Corporation.


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

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In case you forgot, horse racing and horse training have their dangers to Man and horse alike.



Exercise rider and horse dead after early-morning accident at Churchill Downs
Jacob Bogage
8 hrs ago


© Churchill Downs/ Exercise rider Odanis Acuna died Saturday morning at Churchill Downs. (Courtesy of Churchill Downs)

A longtime exercise rider and the horse he was riding both died after a training accident early Saturday morning at Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville.

Odanis Acuna was “breezing,” or gently working out, 2-year-old colt New York Harbor just before 6 a.m., when the horse broke down about a sixteeth of a mile from the finish line. The horse broke either one or several bones in his leg and Acuna sustained fatal injuries to the head and neck during the fall, trainer Kenny McPeek told racing magazine Blood Horse.
On-site emergency workers arrived quickly to treat the rider, Churchill Downs said in a news release, but they “believe he died instantly.” Acuna was 42.

“He was a good man — a very good man,” McPeek told Blood Horse. “It’s not an easy day. Just a really bad day. Our heart was swallowed.”

Churchill Downs halted training after the accident. The track held a moment of silence before the afternoon’s first race at 1 o’clock.
Acuna was a native of Cuba who had worked for McPeek for close to a decade. Churchill Downs officials said he was focused on saving money to bring his wife and three sons, including twin boys, from Cuba to Kentucky. He was in the process of purchasing a home and completing immigration paperwork for the move.
“He was just a wonderful, wonderful person,” Sherry Stanley, executive director of the Backside Learning Center at the racetrack, said in the release.

Acuna also worked a side job selling feed to send money home to his family, McPeek told Blood Horse.
“When he started with me he had little or nothing and he got himself pretty well set up and had been saving money,” McPeek said. “He bought himself a car and was getting ready to buy a house. He was hard at it all day, every day. We worked together a long time and he traveled with us wherever we went. He rode a lot of my best horses for years and was a guy who could handle just about any horse you put him on. He was just a good guy and loved what he was doing. I am just sickened by this tragedy.”

The horse, New York Harbor, was an unraced colt. He was euthanized shortly after the accident. Broken bones in horses' legs are often very difficult to heal. More than 300 racehorses have died either training or during a race in 2018, according to Horseracingwrongs.com.
It has been “several decades” since an exercise rider died at Churchill Downs, the track said in the news release. McPeek said he has never had a rider sustain serious injuries.

“As long as I’ve been at it,” he said to Blood Horse, “I’ve had a rider hurt an arm or a leg — never anything major. We’re just all really sad and trying to work through it.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/exe...smsnnews11

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the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Douglas Rain (March 13, 1928 – November 11, 2018) was an Canadian actor and narrator. Though primarily a stage actor, he is also known for providing the voice of the HAL 9000 computer for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and its sequel, 2010 (1984).

Rain was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He studied acting at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Banff, Alberta and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England. As a stage actor, his association with the Stratford Festival of Canada spans more than four decades.

He has performed in a wide variety of theatrical roles, most notably in a Stratford, Ontario production of Henry V, which was adapted for television in 1966.[1] In 1972, Rain was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) for his performance in Vivat! Vivat Regina![citation needed] Douglas Rain died in November 11, 2018, at the age of 90 at St. Marys Memorial Hospital of natural causes.[2]

[Marypoza]

No mo superhetoes- RlP Stan Lee, another Gl gone

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...and farewell to one of the few truly great country musicians, Roy Clark, virtuoso of the banjo. 



Clark was born in Meherrin, Virginia. Roy also grew up in Staten Island, New York and lived as a teenager in southeast Washington, D.C., where his father worked at the Washington Navy Yard. At 14, Clark began playing banjo, guitar, and mandolin, and by age 15 he had already won two National Banjo Championships[5] and world banjo/guitar flatpick championships. He was simultaneously pursuing a sporting career, first as a baseball player and then as a boxer, before dedicating himself solely to music. At 17, he had his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry.

At the age of 23, Clark obtained his pilot's license and then bought a 1953 Piper Tri-Pacer (N1132C), which he flew for many years. This plane was raffled off on December 17, 2012, to benefit the charity Wings of Hope.[6] He has owned other planes, including a Mitsubishi MU-2, Stearman PT-17[7] and Mitsubishi MU-300 Diamond 1A bizjet.[8]

 
By 1955, he was a regular on Jimmy Dean's Washington, D.C., television program. Dean, who valued punctuality among musicians in his band, the Texas Wildcats, fired Clark for habitual tardiness, telling him, "You're the most talented person I've ever fired." Clark married Barbara Joyce Rupard on August 31, 1957.[9] In 1960, Clark went out to Las Vegas, where he worked as a guitarist in a band led by former West Coast Western Swing bandleader-comedian Hank Penny. During the very early 1960s, he was also prominent in the backing band for Wanda Jackson—known as the Party Timers—during the latter part of her rockabilly period.[10]

When Dean was tapped to host The Tonight Show in the early 1960s, he asked Clark to appear, introducing him to a national audience for the first time. Subsequently, Clark appeared on The Beverly Hillbillies as a recurring character (actually two: he played businessman Roy Halsey and Roy's mother, Myrtle). Once, in an episode of the Sunday evening Jackie Gleason Show dedicated to country music, Clark played a blistering rendition of "Down Home". Later, he appeared in an episode of The Odd Couple, where he played "Malagueña".[11]


In 1963, Clark signed to Capitol Records and had three top ten hits. He switched to Dot Records and again scored hits. He later recorded for ABC Records, which had acquired Dot, and MCA Records, which absorbed the ABC label.[citation needed]

In the mid '60s, he was a co-host (along with Molly Bee and Rusty Draper) of a weekday daytime country variety series for NBC entitled "Swingin' Country", which was cancelled after two seasons. In 1969, Clark and Buck Owens were the hosts of Hee Haw. The show was the longest syndicated television show from 1969 to 1997 During its tenure, Clark was a member of the Million Dollar Band and participated in a host of comedy sketches. In 1983, Clark opened the Roy Clark Celebrity Theatre in Branson, Missouri, becoming the first country music star to have his own venue there, thus beginning a trend which led to Branson becoming a center of live music performance, as it is today. Many of the celebrities who play in Branson first performed at the Roy Clark Celebrity Theatre.
Clark frequently played in Branson during the 1980s and 1990s. He sold the venue (now owned by the Hughes Brothers and renamed the Hughes American Family Theatre) and went back to a fairly light touring schedule, which usually included a performance with Ramona Jones and the Jones Family Band at their annual tribute to Clark's old Hee Haw co-star Grandpa Jones in Mountain View, Arkansas.


Roy Clark performing onstage in New York, late 1980s or early 1990s

In addition to his musical skill, Clark often displayed his talents as a comedian and actor. During his years on Hee Haw, Clark entertained with numerous comedy sketches, including a recurring feature where he played the reservation desk clerk of the "Empty Arms Hotel". Clark released several albums of his comedic performances, to varying critical acclaim and commercial success.[citation needed]


Clark married his wife Barbara in 1957 and they had 4 children together.
For many years Clark has made his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Roy Clark Elementary School in Tulsa's Union School District was named in his honor in 1978. Fellow Oklahoma resident Mickey Mantle arranged for Clark to sing "Yesterday When I Was Young" at his funeral (which Clark did in 1995).[14]

Clark died at his home in Tulsa due to complications of pneumonia, on November 15, 2018, aged 85.[15]

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

The Mstislav Rostropovich of the banjo. There might be an interesting duet in Heaven tonight.

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Screenwriter of some renowned movies.  

William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 15, 2018)[1][2] was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist, before turning to writing for film. He won two Academy Awards for his screenplays, first for the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and again for All the President's Men (1976), about journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon for the Washington Post. Both films starred Robert Redford.
His other notable works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and comedy-fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which Goldman adapted for film.

Author Sean Egan has described Goldman as "one of the late twentieth century’s most popular storytellers."[3]

 
According to his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), Goldman began writing when he took a creative-writing course in college. His grades in the class were "horrible".[8] An editor of Oberlin's literary magazine, he would submit short stories to the magazine anonymously; he recalls that the other editors, upon reading his submissions, remarked "We can't possibly publish this shit."[8] He did not originally intend to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1956 he completed an MA thesis at Columbia University on the comedy of manners in America.[9]
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His brother, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Goldman]James Goldman, who died in 1998, was a playwright and screenwriter. They shared an apartment in New York with their friend John Kander (also Oberlin and Columbia MA) and helped out Kander, a composer, by writing the libretto for his dissertation. All three later won separate Academy Awards (Kander was the composer of Cabaret, Chicago, and a dozen other famous musicals).[8]
On 25 June 1956 Goldman started writing what became his first novel, The Temple of Gold. It was written in less than three weeks.[10] He sent the novel to an agent, Joe McCrindle, who agreed to represent Goldman; McCrindle submitted the novel to Knopf, who agreed to publish once Goldman doubled the novel in length. It sold well enough in paperback to launch Goldman on his career.[11]

After a 50-week break, Goldman wrote his second novel, Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow (1958), in a little over a week. It was followed by Soldier in the Rain (1960), based on Goldman's time in the military; it sold well in paperback and was turned into a film (Goldman had no involvement in the screenplay).

Goldman began writing a long novel, which became Boys and Girls Together. He found during writing that he suffered writer's block. He and his brother received a grant to accompany a production of the musical Tenderloin (1960), on which they did some rewriting. Goldman and his brother then collaborated on an original play, Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961), and a musical (written with John Kander), A Family Affair (1962). Both had only short runs.

His writer's block on Boys and Girls Together continued, but Goldman then had an idea for another novel, No Way to Treat a Lady (1964). He wrote it in two weeks, and it was published under a pseudonym, Harry Longbaugh (a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name). It was later made into a movie. Goldman then finished Boys and Girls Together, which became a best seller.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid


Goldman returned to novels, writing The Thing of It Is... (1967). He went to teach at Princeton, and wanted to write something but could not come up with an idea for a novel. So he decided to write his first original screenplay, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which he had been researching for eight years. He sold it for $400,000, then the highest price ever paid for an original screenplay.[8] The resulting movie was a massive critical and commercial success and earned Goldman an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

The money enabled Goldman to take some time off and research a non-fiction book on Broadway, The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969).[13]

He adapted a book, In the Spring the War Ended, into a screenplay but it was not filmed. Neither were scripts he did of The Thing of It Is and Papillon. He returned to novels with Father's Day (1971), a sequel to The Thing of It Is... He also wrote the screenplay for The Hot Rock (1972).

The Princess Bride

Goldman's next novel was The Princess Bride (1973) which became perhaps his most beloved work. Goldman also wrote a screenplay but it took many years before a film was made.

In 1973, Goldman contracted a rare strain of pneumonia which resulted in his being hospitalized and affected his health for months. This inspired him into a burst of creativity, including several novels and screenplays.[14]

He says his novel writing moved in a more commercial direction following the death of his editor Hiram Haydn in late 1973.[15] This started with a children's book, Wigger (1974), but then he wrote a thriller, Marathon Man (1974), which he sold to Delacorte as part of a three book deal worth $2 million. He sold movie rights to Marathon Man for $450,000.[16]

His second book for Delacorte was Magic (1976), a thriller, which sold to Joe Levine for $1 million. He did screenplays for the films of Marathon Man (1976) and Magic (1978).

He also wrote screenplays for The Stepford Wives (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976) and A Bridge Too Far (1977). He wrote a promotional book Story of A Bridge Too Far (1977). He signed a three-film contract with Joe Levine worth $1.5 million.[16]

All the President's Men

Goldman wrote the famous line "Follow the money" for the screenplay of All the President's Men; while the line is often attributed to Deep Throat, it is not found in Bob Woodward's notes nor in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book or articles.[17] However, the book does have the far less-quotable line from Woodward to Senator Sam Ervin, who was about to begin his own investigation: "The key was the secret campaign cash, and it should all be traced..."[18]

Goldman was unhappy with the movie; The Guardian says that he changes the subject when asked about the movie, but suggests that his displeasure may be because he was pressured to add a romantic interest to the film.[8] In his memoir, Goldman says of the film that if he could live his life over, he would have written the same screenplays, "Only I wouldn't have come near All the President's Men."[19] He said that he has never written as many versions of a screenplay as he did for that movie.[19] Speaking of his choice to write the script, he said "Many movies that get made are not long on art and are long on commerce. This was a project that seemed it might be both. You don't get many and you can't turn them down."[10]

In Michael Feeney Callan's book Robert Redford: The Biography, Redford is reported as stating that Goldman did not actually write the screenplay for the movie,[20] a story that was excerpted in Vanity Fair.[21] Written By magazine conducted a thorough investigation of the screenplay's many drafts and concluded, "Goldman was the sole author of All The President's Men. Period."[19]

He wrote a novel about Hollywood, Tinsel (1979), which sold well. He had enjoyed working with Joseph E. Levine on Bridge and Magic and signed a three-picture deal with him; only two scripts resulted, The Sea Kings and Year of the Comet. A script about Tom Horn, Mr. Horn (1979), was filmed for TV.[22]

Goldman was the original screenwriter for the film version of Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff; director Philip Kaufman wrote his own screenplay without using Goldman's material, because Kaufman wanted to include Chuck Yeager as a character; Goldman did not.[13]

He wrote a number of other unfilmed screenplays around this time, including The Ski Bum; a musical adaptation of Grand Hotel; and Rescue, the story of the rescue of Electronic Data Systems employees during the Iranian Revolution.

More at Wikipedia.

[Marypoza]

RIP Malcolm Young Angus will have 2 carry on without you