Friday, March 31, 2006

Gone in 2005 (Part 4)

[Previous installments in my “Gone in 2005” necrology series:  Part 1 (January), Part 2 (February), Part 3 (March).]

##################

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month.  For American military personnel sent to Iraq as cannon fodder, it was neither the cruelest nor the least so.  American GIs died as a result of our criminal government at a rate of one every 14 hours in April—52 deaths in all, bringing the total number of stains upon the souls of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice in the first four months of 2005 to 252 individuals, 252 unnecessary, pointless, wasted funerals.

While those young lives were being snuffed out in Bush’s folly, numerous other notable demises took place in April of last year.  Several of those passings are noted below.

Pope John Paul II (April 2, age 84, sequelae of Parkinson’s disease)

When I was a kid, “the pope” was Pius XII.  And no wonder—he served from 1939 through 1958.  Then came that most unlikely of Holy Fathers, John XXIII, probably the only non-conservative pope in centuries.  Though he served for 15 years, Paul VI was little more than a placeholder for reestablishing doctrinal conservatism.  The selection of John Paul I was a huge surprise to everyone, including the College of Cardinals; his death 33 days later may or may not have been as much of a surprise.  Which brings us to J-P II, of whom, after all the tributes seen far and wide, little more needs to be said.  I will remind you, though, that he was the first non-Italian pope since 1523.  With the election of the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as his successor Benedict XVI, and the rapidly changing demographics of the Catholic Church and its Cardinals, one wonders just how long will be the wait until the next Italian pope.

Saul Bellow (April 5, 89 years old)

Though born in Lachine, Quebec (a Montreal suburb), Bellow is widely considered one of the giants of American literature.  His family moved to Chicago when he was nine, and much of his novelistic inspiration arose from his lower-class Jewish upbringing there.  Bellow was at the height of his craft in the 1950s, penning such gems as The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956), and Henderson the Rain King (1959).  His was a complex, brooding world of social disaffection.  Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

Prince Rainier III (April 6, at 81, multi-organ failure)

As if the tiny, picturesque principality clinging to mountainsides above the Riviera, with its famously elegant Monte Carlo casino, wasn’t sufficiently “storybook”, the April 18, 1956 marriage of Rainier to beautiful American actress Grace Kelly made the Prince and his nation an international sensation.  The Prince succeeded to the throne in 1949, and was at his death the longest-reigning monarch in Europe.  Princess Grace, of course, died in an auto accident in 1982.

Andrea Dworkin (April 9, age 58)

The things you find out when researching these essays… Unbeknownst to me, Andrea Dworkin and I graduated from the same high school.  She was four years older (almost to the day), so we were never there at the same time, but it’s still a shared experience of a sort.  For the record, I wouldn’t quite describe moving to Cherry Hill as “being kidnapped by aliens and taken to a penal colony”, as she wrote in her autobiography Life and Death.  Dworkin was a radical feminist and anti-pornography zealot, who lived a rather unconventional life on the politico-literary fringes.

Maurice Hilleman (April 11, 85 years old)

Leader of a team of microbiologists and virologists that developed many vaccines, Hilleman was virtually unknown to the general public.  Within the research and public health communities, the Merck scientist won numerous plaudits—a lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization, the 1983 Albert Lasker Public Service Award, the National Medal of Science in 1988.  Hilleman’s team produced eight of today’s 14 childhood vaccines, among them the MMR, chicken pox, meningitis, and pneumonia vaccines.  A native of remote Miles City, Montana, Hilleman won a graduate fellowship to the University of Chicago after obtaining his undergraduate degree from Montana State.  He worked for Squibb and did research at Walter Reed before moving to Merck in 1957.

Johnnie Johnson (April 13, at 80, natural causes)

Playing the piano behind Chuck Berry for almost 30 years, Johnson was a major part of the early years of rock-n-roll.  Berry’s 1958 hit song Johnny B. Goode is said to have been inspired by, and perhaps co-written by, Johnson.  A 2001 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Johnson played a major role in all of Berry’s best-known recordings.  In 2000, Johnson filed suit against Berry, claiming he merited a share of the royalties for songs he co-developed, but the suit was dismissed in 2002.  Of much, much, much less import as a rock-n-roll star, and dying two days after Johnson, was

John Fred Gourrier (April 15, age 63, complications of kidney transplant)

A minor regional rock/R&B performer in Louisiana, Gourrier achieved one-hit-wonder status when he recorded Judy in Disguise (With Glasses), backed by Fats Domino’s musicians, in December 1967.  The novelty psychedelic parody of the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky (With Diamonds) shot up the charts, so Gourrier reformed his old college band as John Fred and His Playboy Band for a tour.  However, they quickly disappeared from the national music scene.

Sam Mills (April 18, at 45, intestinal cancer)

He played college football at Montclair State in New Jersey, an undistinguished Division III backwater.  Far too small, at 5-9 and 225 pounds, to play middle linebacker in the pros, he repeatedly failed in tryouts with NFL and CFL teams.  Finally, three years after his college career, he got his chance to play with, and demonstrate his strength and speed for, the Philadelphia Stars of the ragtag USFL.  When that league folded, Mills went on to excel in the NFL for a dozen years with New Orleans and Carolina.  Staying with the Panthers as a coach after retiring, Mills was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and given a dire three-months prognosis.  He fought hard against long odds, as he had so often, but succumbed after a 20-month battle.  The same day was the last one for another renowned sports figure:

Clarence “Big House” Gaines (April 18, age 81, stroke)

When he retired in 1993, Gaines’s 828 victories in 47 years at Winston-Salem State University placed him second on the all-time list of college basketball coaches.  His total is still fifth on the all-time list, and he is the all-time leader in wins at historically-black colleges.  His 1966-67 team, led by the inimitable Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, went 31-1 and made Winston-Salem the first historically-black college to win an NCAA national championship (in Division II).  Enshrined in the National Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982 (eleven years before his retirement), Gaines also coached internationally and served on the Basketball HOF’s board of directors.

Zhang Chunqiao (April 21, age 88, cancer)

One of the Gang of Four who led the Chinese Cultural Revolution following the death of Mao, Zhang died in near-forgotten obscurity, long after the show-trial that ended his ascendancy in 1981. and long after the People’s Republic had turned its back on his radical agrarian authoritarian ideal in favor of state-run capitalism and modernization.

Philip Morrison (April 22, at 89, respiratory failure)

One of the youngest major physicists on the Manhattan Project, Phil Morrison (like more than a few of his colleagues) became an anti-proliferation activist soon after the success of his work at Los Alamos.  Not a top-of-the-line theoretician like Hans Bethe, who predeceased him by about six weeks, Morrison’s forte was communicating the beauty and power of natural science.  A distinguished member of the astrophysics faculty at MIT for more than 40 years, Morrison mixed brilliant teaching and solid research with outspoken antinuclear activism and an unlikely side-career as a television commentator and documentarian.  In his 1987 PBS series The Ring of Truth, the irreverent and impish Morrison made important theoretical constructs accessible to viewers of all ages.  Morrison was also one of the first serious scientists to endorse the idea of using radiotelescopes to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Earl Wilson (April 23, 70 years old, heart attack)

A major league pitcher for 11 years, Wilson was always better known for his hitting than his pitching ... not for getting hits per se, but for his power.  Twice belting 7 homers in a season, Wilson totaled 35 home runs in his career, 33 of them as a pitcher (plus two pinch-hit homers), in just 838 plate appearances.  Only Wes Ferrell (37) and Hall of Famers Warren Spahn and Bob Lemon (35 each) are above Wilson on the list of career homers by pitchers.  Wilson’s best season was 1967, when his 22-11, 3.27 ERA mark led Detroit to a very close second-place finish in the tightest pennant race in American League history.  He was the first black pitcher to throw a major league no-hitter (June 26, 1962), and the first of only two hurlers to hit a homer while throwing a no-no.  For his career (1959-1970), Earl Wilson won 121 games while taking 109 losses.

J.B. Stoner (April 23, at 81, pneumonia complications)

Ugh… What a repugnant human being this was.  Many perennial candidates are laughable, but in his campaigns J.B. Stoner—who ran for governor (1970, 1978), senator (1972, 1980), and lieutenant governor (1974, 1990) of Georgia—called blacks “apes” and “niggers”, described Jews as “vipers of hell”, and declared that Hitler was “too moderate”.  Well, what would you expect from a neo-nazi klansman who led the National States Rights Party, was (belatedly) convicted of bombing a church in Birmingham in 1958, led riotous demonstrations against Martin Luther King, and argued the appeal of James Earl Ray’s conviction for MLK’s assassination?  Good riddance.

Ezer Weizman (April 24, age 80)

Beginning a distinguished military career in the British army in 1942, Weizman became an RAF pilot before returning to combat aviation in Israel’s war of independence.  An aeronautical innovator, he rose through the ranks to lead the Israeli Air Force in the 1960s.  In that role, he was one of the principal proponents of the Six Day War in 1967.  Weizman turned to politics after retiring from his military career, running Menachem Begin‘s 1977 campaign that installed the right-wing Likud party in power after nearly three decades of Labour rule.  Weizman eventually won election as his nation’s president (a largely ceremonial position) in 1993.  Accusations of financial improprieties forced him to resign from office in 2000.  A Sabra (born in Tel Aviv, raised in Haifa), he was the nephew of Zionist pioneer Chaim Weizmann, who served as the new nation’s first president.  Ezer Weizman was, like many of his early Israeli colleagues, a polyglot; Yiddish, Russian, Arabic, English and Hebrew were all regularly spoken in his home.

Percy Heath (April 28, 81 years old, bone cancer)

Bassist in the Modern Jazz Quartet for over 40 years, Heath was one of three jazz-playing brothers—Jimmy played tenor sax, Tootie a drummer.  Raised in philadelphia, he started playing the violin when he was 8 years old.  Drafted in 1944, Heath was trained as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, but saw no combat in World War II.  Heath backed many of the giants of the post-war jazz scene, then joined Milt Jackson on the vibes, pianist John Lewis, and drummer Kenny Clarke (replaced by Connie Kay in 1955) to form the highly successful, ultra-cool MJQ in 1952.  Heath had been the last survivor of the group.  In the mid-70s, he began collaborating with his brothers, touring and recording as the Heath Brothers.  Percy Heath remained a vital and expressive musician to the end; amazingly, his first and only recording as the leader of a band was the highly-regarded A Love Song in 2004.