Peace Tree Farm

Annual mortality (part 1)

An occasional feature of this blog has been a review of notable deaths during the previous week. As the year 2003 wraps into 2004, we’re at the point of enlarging the review to cover the entire year. To do so, I considered a number of organizational schemes. Should it be done chronologically? Or is alphabetical order a better way? Perhaps some recognition of the person’s “importance” in the world should be part of the review. Would it work better to categorize the year’s decedents based on their livelihoods, by the reasons for which they’re sufficiently well known to be in this remembrance?

In the end, I decided to go with the simplest approach ... chronological order. In that way, before you decide to skip past this posting you may get to read a few words about people you might have forgotten about because it’s been so long since they left us. A number of the names in this listing are displayed as hyperlinks; those links will take you to the entry during the year in which I memorialized those people, often more extensively.

The first six months will be reported today, with July through December coming very soon (maybe even tomorrow!).

January

Joe Foss (Jan 1, age 87)—WWII fighter pilot, governor, NRA president, first commissioner of the American Football League
Sydney Omarr (Jan 2, at 76)—leading writer of newspaper horoscopes
Sid Gillman (Jan 3, at 91)—innovative American football coach, at college and professional levels
Mamie Till Mobley (Jan 6, age 81)—mother of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder in Mississippi was one of the seminal events in the Civil Rights Movement
Maurice Gibb (Jan 12, at 53)—Bee Gee, cowriter, coproducer, coperformer with his brothers Barry and Robin
Leopoldo Galtieri (Jan 12, age 76)—Argentinean dctator, led his country into the disastrous Falklands War in 1982
Will Cloney (Jan 16, age 91)—directed the Boston Marathon for 37 years, turned it into the world’s best-known distance race
Richard Crenna (Jan 17, age 76)—actor on TV ("Our Miss Brooks”, “The Real McCoys") and in movies ("Rambo", “The Sand Pebbles")
Al Hirschfeld (Jan 20, at 99)—caricaturist of popular entertainment, father of Nina
Burns Roper (Jan 20, age 77)—pioneer public opinion pollster
Bill Mauldin (Jan 22, age 81)—Pullitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of life among military grunts, from World War II to Vietnam
Nell Carter (Jan 23, at 54)—pop/jazz/blues singer and actor on stage and small screen
Giovanni Agnelli (Jan 24, age 81)—Italian industrialist, head of Fiat

February

Rick Husband (age 45), William McCool (age 41), Michael Anderson (age 43), David Brown (age 46), Kalpana Chawla (age 41), Laurel Clark (age 41), Ilan Ramon (age 48) (Feb 1)—crew of the shuttle Columbia
Mongo Santamaria (Feb 1, at 85)—Cuban jazz percussionist, whose 1963 cover of Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man was a Top 10 hit
Shigeo Sasaki (Feb 4, age 87)—peace activist whose daughter famously folded origami cranes while dying of Hiroshima-caused leukemia
Ron Ziegler (Feb 10, at 63)—White House press secretary for Richard Nixon
Walt Rostow (Feb 13, age 86)—in Kennedy’s White House and as Johnson’s National Security Advisor, a major architect of the Vietnam War
Johnny Longden (Feb 14, age 96)—jockey who rode Triple Crown winner Count Fleet in 1943, winner of 6033 races, holder of record for career wins from 1956 through 1970
Johnny PayCheck (Feb 18, at 64)—Take This Job and Shove It, 1977 hit.
Tom Glazer (Feb 21, age 88)—yes, someone actually wrote the children’s song On Top of Spaghetti
Fred Rogers (Feb 27, age 74)—without him, days in the Neighborhood aren’t quite so wonderful

March

Hank Ballard (Mar 2, at 75)—wrote and first performed the ‘50s dance craze, The Twist
Malcolm Kilduff (Mar 3, age 75)—assistant press secretary who made first official announcement of President Kennedy’s death
Howard Fast (Mar 12, age 88)—leftist novelist, blacklisted in 1950, who wrote the book from which Stanley Kubrick adapted Spartacus
Joseph Coors (Mar 15, age 85)—Colorado brewer of weak beer, major funder of far-right foundations
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Mar 26, at 76)—erudite and brilliant sociologist, ambassador, senator, statesman

April

Edwin Starr (Apr 2, at 61)—War...what is it good for?...absolutely nothing!...Say it again...
Michael Kelly (Apr 3, age 46)—magazine editor and journalist, killed in a Humvee accident in Iraq
David Bloom (Apr 6, at 39)—NBC reporter, pulmonary embolism while embedded in Iraq
Babatunde Olatunji (Apr 6, age 75)—Nigerian drummer who introduced Americans to African music in 1959
Cecile de Brunhoff (Apr 7, age 99)—her bedtime stories about an elephant inspired her husband Jean to create Babar
Eva Narcissus Boyd (Apr 10, about 58)—Carole King and Jerry Goffin helped out their cleaning lady in 1962, writing #1 hit The Loco-Motion for Little Eva
Robert Atkins (Apr 17, at 72)—guru of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet
Nina Simone (Apr 21, age 70)—incomparable jazz stylist and political activist
Felice Bryant (Apr 22, age 77)—co-writer of Bye Bye Love for the Everly Brothers and the bluegrass classic Rocky Top

May

Vincent Freda (May 7, age 75)—physician who saved many thousands of lives by helping to develop RhoGAM, preventing Rh incompatibility disease in fetuses.
Robert Stack (May 14, at 84)—steely television and film actor
June Carter Cash (May 15, age 73)—half of a pair of departed musical giants

June

Donald Regan (Jun 10, age 84)—Treasury Secretary under Reagan, forced out during Iran-Contra
David Brinkley (Jun 11, age 82)—"Good night, David. And good night for NBC News."
Gregory Peck (Jun 12, at 87)—one of the true giants of cinema history, and a man of heartfelt conscience
Robert Good (Jun 13, age 81)—performed history’s first successful human bone-marrow transplant in 1968
Hume Cronyn (Jun 15, at 91)—one of America’s great character actors
Larry Doby (Jun 18, age 79)—first black player in the American League
George Axelrod (Jun 21, at 81)—wrote The Seven Year Itch and The Manchurian Candidate
Leon Uris (Jun 21, age 78)—author of many novels, including Exodus
Maynard Jackson (Jun 23, at 63)—Atlanta’s first black mayor
Lester Maddox (Jun 25, age 87)—Atlanta’s last unreconstructed segregationist
Strom Thurmond (Jun 26, at 100)—governor, presidential candidate, Senator, racist, segregationist, miscegenationist
Katharine Hepburn (Jun 29, at 96)—fiercely independent, powerful and talented giant of American stage and screen
Buddy Hackett (Jun 30, age 78)—Borscht Belt comic and actor, one of the lead players in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and supporting player in the movie version of The Music Man