Category: Obituaries

“Concrete” Chuck Bednark 1925-2015

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I always thought that he got a bad rap over this

Chuck Bednarik was the last player in the NFL to play both offense and defense for the whole game throughout his career:

If you were born in 1959 (or later), you missed out on a lot of cool stuff. Here’s Exhibit A: You never got to see the great Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik play football for the Philadelphia Eagles.

 Instead, a young kid starting to watch the game in the mid-late 1960s felt only the shadow of a legend, looming over the game at a moment when the world was changing so quickly. In that era, NFL TV announcers spoke of Bednarik — who’d retired two seasons after leading the Eagles to their last-ever pro football championship in 1960 — in almost reverent tones. Much of the awe was inspired by Bednarik’s most remarkable accomplishment — playing the entire 60 minutes in a game, as both a center on offense and a bone-crushing linebacker on defense. He was pro football’s last two-way player.

 Also, for all of us latecomers, there was The Picture — Bednarik, looking like an ambulatory slab of granite and exalting after he’d flattened the Giants’ Hollywood-handsome star receiver Frank Gifford (not realizing that Gifford was out cold, and about to spend the next year-and-a-half out of football) during a key game that propelled them toward that 1960 title.

………

Two years ago, I reported that, with little fanfare, Bednarik — along with two other now-deceased Eagles’ Hall of Fame legends Steve Van Buren and Pete Pihos — had joined the NFL’s Plan 88 to pay medical bills for ex-players dealing with dementia or related health issues. This weekend, Bednarik’s oldest daughter voiced anger at the Eagles for the team’s announcement that Bednarik died from “a brief illness.” “He died from dementia from football-related head injuries,” Charlene Thomas told the Express-News newspaper. “It was not brief.”

And, of course, CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) raises its head once again.

I Has a Sad

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Terry Pratchett, the convention tweaking fantasy author, has died of early onset dementia:

Terry Pratchett, the immensely popular British fantasy novelist whose more than 70 books include the series known as Discworld, died on Thursday at his home near Salisbury, England. He was 66.

 The cause was posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of dementia, Suzanne Bridson, an editor at Transworld Publishers, said in an email.

 An accomplished satirist with a penchant for sending up cultural and political tomfoolery, Mr. Pratchett created wildly imaginative alternative realities to reflect on a world more familiar to readers as actual reality.

 Often spiced with shrewd and sometimes wryly stinging references to literary genres, from fairy tales to Elizabethan drama, his books have sold 85 million copies worldwide, according to his publisher. And though Mr. Pratchett may have suffered from the general indifference of literary critics to the fantasy genre, on the occasions when serious minds took his work seriously, they tended to validate his legitimate literary standing.

 In 2003, the novelist A. S. Byatt wrote that critics were paying attention to the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling but rarely to other fantasists.

 “They do not now review the great Terry Pratchett,” Ms. Byatt wrote, “whose wit is metaphysical, who creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a multifarious genius for strong parody as opposed to derivative manipulation of past motifs, who deals with death with startling originality. Who writes amazing sentences.”

 Mr. Pratchett’s primary setting, Discworld, is a planet of sorts, Frisbee-like in shape and balanced on the backs of four elephants who themselves stand upon the shell of a giant turtle.

 Mr. Pratchett introduced it in 1983 in the novel “The Colour of Magic.” Its protagonist, Rincewind, one of a number of recurring characters in the series, is a feckless wizard-wannabe who was an unsuccessful student at Unseen University, the principal school for wizards in the city-state of Ankh-Morpork.

 ………

 He is survived by his wife, the former Lyn Purves, and a daughter, Rhianna.

 Three Twitter posts on Mr. Pratchett’s account on Thursday described his demise in imitation of his fiction.

 “AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER,” the first said.

 “Terry took death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night,” the second said.

 The third said simply, “The End.”

I would note that The Colour of Magic is responsible for one of my bucket list items:  I want to go to the top of a hill in a thunder storm in full (metal) armor, and shout curses at the gods.*

As a bonus, let me give you my favorite non Diskworld quote:

I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.

I will miss his writing.

*At one point in The Colour of Magic, the protagonist, Rincewind, is asked what exactly it meant to be a tourist like Twoflower, he explained, “Let’s just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards’.”

The End of the Vulcan Bar Matzvah*

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Nimoy has had a varied career, actor, director, poet, photographer, and writer.
As such, it’s hard to find his best moment, but his worst moment is clearly singing this song

Leonard Nimoy has died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at 83:

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

Seriously. If you smoke, stop today.

*It’s an old family story. My mom was talking to a friend in Alaska, Danny Plotkin, and asked how he was doing. He replied to her that he was flying down to the lower 48 to go to a “Vulcan bar Mitzvah”. It turns out that Leonard Nimoy was his nephew, and Nimoy’s son was having a Bar Mitzvah

Cue the Internecine Clusterf%$#

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The Saudi King, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, has died at age 90, and will be replaced by his brother, Salman ibn Abdilaziz Al Saud, who is 79 and is rumored to be suffering from dementia:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has died at age 90, state television reported early on Friday, with his brother Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz succeeding him as the new ruler of the world’s top oil exporter.

 King Salman, 79, immediately appointed his half-brother Muqrin as his crown prince and heir, a move seen to avert widespread speculation about the path of the royal succession.

 State television said King Abdullah, who took power in 2005 after the death of his brother King Fahd, died of pneumonia. He was admitted to the hospital on December 31, state media reported at the time.

It’s pretty clear that Salman is a place holder.

It is tough to figure out what is going on in the mess that is the dynastic mess that is the House of Saud, but a year ago, I would a have argued that Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was next in line after King Salman, but seeing as how he has been the driving force behind backing the group now known as ISIS/ISIL/IS while trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, and it appears that he was fired from his position as Director General of Saudi Intelligence Agency as a result.

This sort of dynastic instability has does not bode well for the future of the House of Saud, which to my mind, is a good thing.

The World Just Got a bit Less Funny, and a Lot Less Weird

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Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today

Tom Magliozzi, the older, taller half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today at 77 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Tom and his brother Ray Magliozzi first broadcast their public radio call-in show Car Talk in 1977 from the studios of WBUR in Boston.

They offered advice on cars and life, but it was the duo’s sense of humor and Tom’s iconic laugh that made the show so memorable for millions of fans across the country.

NPR began distributing Car Talk nationally in 1987. More than 4 million people tuned in each week, making it one of public radio’s most successful shows ever.

I was actually was on Car Talk once, in 1997.

I asked them about the edibility of automotive fluids, which, come to think of it, may explain how my writing style developed.

Thoughts on the Passing of James Garner

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The Americanization of Emily
I cannot imagine seeing this in a movie today

I’ve had to think about it for a while.

He paid a big part in my childhood, both as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files, and as Brett Maverick in Maverick. (I’m not that old, it was rerun in Portland, Oregon during my High School years.)

Well, following his death, I read his Wiki, and discovered a number of interesting facts:

  • He got two purple hearts in the Korean war, one for wounds in his butt from friendly fire while diving into a fox hole.
  • While in Korea, he was the the scrounger for his unit, which kind of mirrors a lot of roles that he played, most notably The Americanization of Emily.

I will note that of all the PI shows and police procedurals that I saw growing up, The Rockford Files was the only show that had a pro civil liberties/due process/privacy bent.

There was an episode about prosecutorial abuse of the grand jury process, “So Help Me God”, another about private efforts to create massive server farms to invade people’s privacy, “The House on Willis Avenue,” and law enforcement misconduct was a frequent theme in the show.

My older (hairier) brother always noted that it was rather ironic that The Rockford Files was regularly scheduled for broadcast with Quincy, M.E., which routinely used civil rights and due process as a bogeyman for plot purposes.

In any case, he was always fun to watch.

I have to turn my kids onto Support Your Local Gunfighter, which is IMNSHO the classic Garner movie role.

The Ultimate 2nd Stringer

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I am referring, of course, to Earl Morrall, who died today:

Earl Morrall stepped in when the 1972 Miami Dolphins needed him most. And then he willingly stepped aside, earning enduring admiration from his teammates and coach Don Shula.

 Morrall, who started 11 games during the Dolphins’ perfect season and spent 21 years as an NFL quarterback, died Friday at age 79. He had been in failing health for some time.

 “There would be no perfect season, and probably no Super Bowl win in 1972, without Earl Morrall,” Bob Griese said Friday.

 When Griese broke his ankle in 1972, Morrall came off the bench and started the final nine games of the regular season. Morrall won praise from Shula for returning to the sideline without complaint when Griese came back to play in the final two postseason games, including the Super Bowl to cap the only perfect season in NFL history.

 Morrall also played for the 49ers, Steelers, Lions, Giants and Colts, winning three Super Bowl rings. He came off the bench to replace an injured Johnny Unitas and help the Colts win the Super Bowl to cap the 1970 season, and he was the backup to Griese on the Dolphins’ 1973 championship team.

 Morrall also was the starting quarterback opposite Joe Namath in the 1969 Super Bowl after guiding the Colts to the conference title and winning the league’s MVP award. He struggled in that famous 16-7 loss to the Jets, throwing key interceptions, and was benched during the second half for Unitas.

Morrall as the steady backup was sort of a fixture of my youth.

Farewell Mikhail………

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Kalashnikov, father of the AK-47 assault rifle is dead at 94.

He was a giant in light weapons design, not quite at the level of John Browning or but certainly at the level of Eugene Stoner.

He did not produce the first mass produced assault rifle, that was the German StG-44, but he created a truly inexpensive (Once they got the stamped spot welded sheet metal receiver perfected with the AKM) weapon with reliability and simplicity that are still the standard. (Not so much on accuracy).

It fit the doctrine of the Soviet military, as well as the numerous irregular “liberation” movements throughout the world, and something in the neighborhood of 100 million have been produced to date.

Much of this production was because licenses to manufacture were freely and fully available to any government that indicates some sort of favor toward “international socialism”.

In a very real way, this was an open source licensing model applied to steel, wood, and lead.

As such, it is doubtlessly responsible for more deaths than any other military firearm in history.

Helen Thomas Dead at 92

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Link.

While it was clear from her statements later in life, she was aggressively anti-Zionist, it should be noted that this was not her journalistic beat.

On her beat, the White House, she was a pain in the ass to 10 successive administrations, which is what a reporter assigned to the White House is supposed to do.