Obituaries

[Uji]

She was a class act. What a loss...

[fangz1956]

Damn.......I'm officially heartbroken.

Dennis Hopper


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[Wise One]

Daniel Schorr

Great guy, most recently as Scott Simon's sidekick on NPR Saturday mornings. He was a very, very smart man and excellent journalist, right up until nearly the very end.
This obituary is excellently written about a most excellent human being.
And here is Scott Simons radio tribute to Dan Schorr. (Apologies for ad, and a dead zone from 1:00 to 1:30 for news - you can drag to skip it.)

[Trend Setter]

Mitch Miller is dead.
(If you recognize the name, you're probably old.)
His contribution to music and national happiness was substantial.
Here he is with one of his buddies, Satchmo.


So find others to sing along with, to carry on Mitch's tradition.

[Wise One]

Thinking Out Loud: Muffin

Life relentlessly chips away at the adolescent assumption that those who we love and most cherish will be here forever.

Then comes the death, sudden or otherwise, of one and then another and another who framed our sense of self and served as safe harbor in times of distress and confusion..

I can’t recall the beginnings of my relationship with Muffin; it just seems to have always been a significant part of my life, first because she was married to the postmaster and the mother of mechanical marvel Charles, collegiate wrestler who went to a high school with no wrestling team Madison and Carl, who, then and now, always seemed to squire a good-looking woman on his arm..

Then Mr. Cummings died suddenly over 40 years ago, and the three boys flew away from the nest, and there she was, alone only when she made that choice, but otherwise interacting with all around her. For Muffin, every encounter with another mattered. Did each person become her close friend? Well, no, because that’s not how it works when one is willing to make a memory of every moment.

Like many garrulous, social types, she had places of retreat. For decades she maintained a huge garden plot adjacent to her home, the very last house on the left before you were confronted by Maple Lane’s dead end. It will scandalize some, which would give her reason to giggle while working alone in the dirt of her garden, to learn that she was a regular participant in an all-ladies poker group, where money talked and you-know-what walked.

Muffin and I started our long love affair based on our mutual fascination. with information. We weren’t hurting anyone, and we both enjoyed working our way through the floor-to-ceiling stacks of newspapers and periodicals she kept in her home.

And she buzzed through them on her solitary days, clipping out any item she thought another might enjoy reading. Among my most cherished possessions is a small box of articles directed my way with notes in the margins.

More than a few articles aimed my way dealt with the necessity of ceasing fingernail chewing and how to achieve that goal. She would grab my hands and snap, “Yech! You’re a big boy now; you’ve got to stop that.”

Some time early in the past decade, I did. I thought she hadn’t noticed, which hurt my feelings because she noticed everything.

We talked about that many times. Why did we seem to be observers by nature, yet we were both skilled at keeping others at such a distance that they wouldn’t garner a substantial amount of scoop about us? “I just figure that’s the way it is,” she would conclude.

Her thirst for information centered particularly on her unabashed love for anything that had to do with her beloved alma mater, Lexington High School, from which she graduated in 1933 and where she worked as school secretary during World War II.

She was a fanatic when it came to LHS. Her obsessive collection of information about each and every LHS graduate was the primary source of the publication of the “Lexington High School Alumni Directory in 1998” by the Lexington High School Alumni, Inc., a group she served throughout its life as historian.

I have never much thought about my age, and I had never thought about hers until recent years. I think we both always figured we were stuck on 16.

As she passed 90, she was slowed down physically, yet her immobility seemed to enhance her thought processes. But when she was no longer able to drive, that was tough for mobility is the greatest tool of connectors like Muffin.

She moved from Maple Lane to Kendal, and that cut down on our ability to slip away, just the two of us, to giggle and gaggle and talk about the many things we’d never mention to another.

Her hearing began to suffer, and that was tough, too. About a year ago, she and I had a little verbal tiff, like so many we had survived through the years. Mary Frances Niceley “Muffin” Cummings had managed to hurt my feelings. For months I centered on why she had done that before one day my thoughts turned to why does it seem to bother me so?

That very day of realization I drove quickly to Kendal, hoping she would be alone when I arrived.

She was, sitting in her wheel chair outside her room with her familiar white bucket cap pulled down over her hair.

“I understand I made you angry; I just want you to know that I would never do that to you purpose. I’m sorry,” were the first words out of her mouth.

She reached out and grabbed my hands in hers. “Have I ever told you that you have beautiful hands?

“Madison is coming for lunch; you want to join us?”

I did, and it was wonderful. That was the last time I saw Muffin before she died on Sunday at 94, five days short of her 95th birthday.

Today I no longer feel my body is eternally 16, but my heart is still young. And I’m still curious about nearly person, place and circumstance I encounter, and that’s a gift Muffin gave me a long time ago.

A significant cornerstone of my forever has left the building, and I never got around to asking the obvious: “Why do they call you Muffin, Muff?”

She took that clipping with her.

[Amy Probenski]

Tony Curtis is gone. Too bad ... he had a nice run.



All three are now dead.

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[purplepixiedust]

I was very surprised to read of this.
http://www.mac-rifle.org/

Jim Thorp Memorial Sevice - September 11,2010 (more details...)

IN MEMORIAM: JIM THORP

VMI HEAD RIFLE COACH

Jim Thorp, Head Varsity Rifle Coach of Virginia Military Institute for nearly 30 years passed away July 2010.

Amongst the many honors Thorp earned were the NRA Service to Collegiate Shooting Award, the MAC Robert S. Ketzner Service Award, and two-time MAC Coach of the Year. He will be remembered for not only being a fundamentally sound coach, but a visionary of the sport by establishing three separate varsity teams while maintaining a ROTC team through a time where military marksmanship squads were dwindling in number.

MSGT Thorp was initially assigned to VMI Army ROTC back in 1979. He started his association with the Rifle team in the capacity of head coach in 1981, the founding year of the VMI NCAA rifle team. MSGT Thorp then served as VMI’s head rifle coach for the following 27 years, retiring from the head position after the 2008 rifle season.

During MSGT Thorp’s long tenure in the head coach capacity, he was able to showcase VMI as site for the NCAA Rifle Championships on four different occasions (1982, 1988, 1990 and 1992). Further, over these many years he coached rifle to upwards of 600 VMI cadets. Thorp was a notable college rifle coaching personality on the national level. He was a member of the NCAA Rifle Committee for four years (one year as Chair), a regular official and attendee at the National Championships held each July at Camp Perry Ohio and he served on the MAC Executive Committee as a Member-at-Large for sixteen years.

MSGT Thorp served as VMI’s assistant rifle coach in 2009, where his legacy still continues and where he was prominently involved and associated with VMI’s rifle program. However, in the assistant coach capacity he had more free time for leisure pursuits.

Prior to his work with VMI’s rifle team, MSGT Thorp served 21 years in the United States Army. In that regard, while on active duty he served primarily in Armor and Artillery units. He spent 1½ tours fighting in Vietnam, a tour in Korea and three tours in Germany. MSGT Thorp developed a reputation as a “troop oriented field soldier” spending over 4 ½ years in the capacity of company First Sergeant.

Besides his work with the VMI rifle team, MSGT Thorp ran the local 4H Rifle program from 1983-2004, and was a Hunter Safety Instructor, as well as an NRA Instructor and Training counselor in numerous shooting disciplines. In his spare time, MSGT Thorp was a small arms weapons enthusiast and collector as well as an amateur historian of note.

Longtime coaching colleague Paul Klimitas of the University of the Sciences Varsity Rifle Team offered a few comments after learning of Thorp’s passing. “Jim was old school. His world was either ‘this’ or ‘that’. The term ‘grey area’ was not in his vocabulary. This is a tremendous loss for VMI, his shooters, and the collegiate rifle world. If you were turned-off by his rough and gruff personality – then you missed it! No, he wasn’t soft and cuddly; no, he didn’t use fifteen letter words; but he loved his shooters and he loved the sport. Jim Thorp was one of those unique personalities in our sport. The sports world calls these people colorful. I am not only fortunate that I was able to coach against his teams for many years and work with him on conference and NCAA business, but I am honored to have counted him as a friend. I am sure that there will be many Jim Thorp stories that will be told for a long time; I know that I have a few. He will be missed.”

A memorial service will take place on the VMI campus once students return.
Paul E. Klimitas

[Wise One]

Charley's Obituary

"In his graceful, low-key way he educated readers on life in general, making us all feel better with the reassurance that he was as confused as we were by the world around us."

"February depresses. It litters the landscape with dirty, clinging snow. It sabotages the automobile battery. It brings man into bitter conflict with his furnace.”

“February has the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in it, but actually everyone in the world gets at least a year older in the course of February.”

[fangz1956]

Thanks for all of the laughs Leslie!

[fangz1956]

Elizabeth Taylor



My favorite Liz flick............what a beauty and what a telent.

[Wise One]

Dick Cavett, an all time favorite of mine, is a terrific writer as well as performer. He produced this remarkable piece on Elizabeth Taylor (and Richard Burton) on hearing of her death.

And don't fail to click on the link to this reference in the article, a piece written by Cavett's late wife Carrie Nye about her time with the Burtons. It is amazing.

[Sam]

Geraldine Ferraro, who earned a place in history in 1984 as the first woman to run on a major party national ticket for vice president, has died. She was 75-years-old. Ferraro, who was born in Newburgh, New York, passed away today at Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by her loved ones, a statement from her family read.

The cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for twelve years, her family said.
Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro earned a place in history as the first woman and first Italian-American to run on a major party national ticket, serving as Walter Mondale's Vice Presidential running mate in 1984 on the Democratic Party ticket.

My wife admired this lady allot. What is scarry, she was younger than me.

[Wise One]

The only thing scarier than the death of someone younger than you, is learning that your new doctor is younger than your son !!

Geraldine Ferraro

[Sam]

You said a mouth full there. My doctor is the age of my youngest kid and near the age of my oldest grandson. Now that sure ages one.

[fangz1956]

By SHELIA BYRD and JIM VERTUNO | Associated Press
Published: March 22, 2011

AUSTIN -- In 1969 in Buffalo, N.Y., a wiry, middle-aged chain smoker sat in on piano during a jam session and earned a spot in the band of legendary bluesman Muddy Waters.

By then, Pinetop Perkins had already performed with the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk. The old school bluesman with the aggressive keyboard style and gravelly voice had played the rickety bars among the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, and toured with rock pioneer Ike Turner in the 1950s.

"Muddy came by, and heard him jamming, and he liked what he heard. The rest is history," said Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, who was a drummer in the band.

By the time he and Waters hooked up, Pinetop was in his 50s and "had more energy than us younger folks did," Smith said.

That verve kept him playing the blues and collecting Grammy Awards until shortly before his death from cardiac arrest Monday at his Austin, Texas, home. He was 97.

Perkins' skills came not from any sort of formal training but from an innate ability and love for a musical form that arose from the South's plantation system.

"I didn't get no schooling. I come up the hard way in the world," Perkins told The Associated Press in a 2009 interview.

Bob Corritore, a harmonica player who performed occasionally with Perkins and produced some of his work, said, "Pinetop could find the cracks and fill them in and be the glue and mortar of the whole band."

Fellow great bluesman B.B. King was saddened by the loss of his friend.

"He was one of the last great Mississippi Bluesmen. He had such a distinctive voice, and he sure could play the piano. He will be missed not only by me, but by lovers of music all over the world," King said in an emailed statement.

Perkins won a Grammy in February for best traditional blues album for "Joined at the Hip: Pinetop Perkins & Willie "Big Eyes" Smith." That win made Perkins the oldest Grammy winner, edging out late comedian George Burns, who was 95 when he won in the spoken category for "Gracie: A Love Story" in 1990.

Perkins also won a 2007 Grammy for best traditional blues album for his collaboration on the "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas." He received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005.

Even at his age, he was a fixture at Austin clubs, playing regular gigs up to last month. He had more than 20 performances booked this year, said Perkins' agent Hugh Southard. And after they won the Grammy this year, Smith and Perkins discussed recording another CD.

"I thank the Lord for me being here all the time. I play any piano with a good tune," Perkins said in 2009.

Perkins, whose real first name was Willie, was born in 1913 in Belzoni, Miss. He gave himself the nickname "Pinetop" because he liked the music of an earlier performer named Pinetop Smith, said Corritore.

And, piano wasn't his first choice of instrument. He started out on the guitar.

"But due to a misunderstanding with a woman he was stabbed in the arm and had tendon damage so he switched to piano," said Corritore.

Perkins accompanied Williamson on the popular King Biscuit Time radio show broadcast on KFFA in Helena, Ark., in the 1940s, but was known mostly as a sideman until he started recording his own style decades later.

"Boogie Woogie King" was Perkins' first solo album in 1976. Beginning in 1992 with "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie," he released a string of 15 albums in as many years.

"There were times I got to spend full weeks with him working on projects. Through all of it, he was just strong and steady," Corritore said.

Perkins lived his life in the tradition of many bluesmen, rambling from place to place, watching most of his contemporaries pass on. He moved to Austin in 2004 to live with an associate since he had no family.

"We knew he lived a good life. What can you say about the man? He left here in his sleep. That's the way I want to go," said Smith, who lives in Chicago.

His manager, Patricia Morgan, said funeral arrangements were pending in Austin and a graveside service would be held near Clarksdale, Miss., where he wanted to be buried.

[fangz1956]

Big Jack Johnson

[fangz1956]

It's a one-two punch. Two tremendous talents that touched many lives in many ways........whose music has been the soundtrack of almost everyone I know.....are gone. WOW!!!!!! What an impact they have had over time.

Clarence Clemons 1942-2011



Carl Gardner: Frontman for The Coasters

[Wise One]

"Just one more thing ..."

Peter Falk is dead, long live Columbo.
Tony Shalhoub owes a debt to the detective with no first name. He made quirkiness in law enforcement really entertaining.

[Wise One]

[Sam]

So dare I ask what does the picture mean? Just a wondering.