Obits

RIP, Ed McMahon

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I knew Ed McMahon was a Marine, but not the details. This post gives some details of his service. (I got the text as part of an email blitz from a friend. I am not 100% sure of its veracity, but take it with that caveat). Col. McMahon was quite a guy, and he did more that is worthy of respect than Michael, or even Farrah.

He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw combat. He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and were gone in seconds. Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire.

RTWT.

I grew up on The Johnny Carson show. I was half comatose in high school from sleep-deprivation since I watched Johnny (which ended at 1:00 a.m.) and then often watched Tom Snyder on the Tomorrow Show (which ended at 2:00 a.m.) then I had to be up and out the door by 7:30 a.m. for school. This was good training for a lifetime of sleep deprivation. Johnny, Ed, Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra were part of my daily routine. Yet another link to a very different world now broken.

This belated obituary is out of respect for Col. McMahon’s service to our country. Rest in Peace, sir.

Farrah Fawcett, RIP

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I was never a big fan. I liked Cheryl Ladd way better.

I paid no attention to Farrah whatsoever since the ’70s, other than noticing tabloid headlines in the grocery store, from time to time, that indicated she was having a rough go of things.

So I was surprised to find myself a little sad when I heard she died.

It took me way back to the ’70s, and made me think of all kinds of long-gone people, places and things. I don’t miss those times. But they are part of me.

I liked this video that I saw on Ann Althouse.

There is another one on there with the BeeGees singing. That is the correct decade, of course, the ’70s. But the Archies doing “Sugar Sugar” goes better, since there is something sweet about many of these images of the young Farrah that goes better with the ’60s pop song, that the ’70s disco song does not capture. I like especially where she is dancing at :31 and at :49. She looks young, normal and happy, except, of course, also being incredibly good looking. I get a kick out of seeing her with Danny Partridge, too. I grew up on the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch, like a lot of people did.

She was only on Charlie’s Angels for one year, and made one iconic poster, and she became this massively famous person. Everyone in the world knew her name and her face … and her hair. She really was the American face of the ’70s. A very Warholesque 15 minutes.

Fame and youth and beauty and all worldly goods pass away.

Rest in peace. We will remember you as young and beautiful forever.

RIP Paul Harvey

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As I was growing up I listened to Paul Harvey every day on my parents radios on the way to school.   He always seemed to have interesting and inspirational tales to tell.   He had a great sense of humor, and frankly, I don’t really know what political affiliation he had.   I suppose I could find out if I looked, but I prefer to remember him as a great broadcaster, who just seemed to enjoy his work.   Paul Harvey….good day!


Andrew Wyeth, R.I.P.

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Andrew Wyeth dies at 91. His portraits of America help us understand Frost and Wyeth’s friend, Hopper. Most of all they move us by evoking the beauty and terror of isolation. A&L aggregates obits. American loneliness, accompanying individualism, connects Natty Bumppo to Ishmael to Huck Finn; Wyeth’s art respects that vitality in toughness, the mundane, the daily.

Neuhaus, R.I.P.

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Father Richard John Neuhaus has died. Joseph Bottum’s obituary in First Things includes links to tributes, including Brian Anderson’s “A Priest in Full” in City Magazine and Ross Douthat in The Atlantic. Douthat observes:

No modern intellectual did so much to make the case for the compatibility between Christian belief and liberal democratic politics – and in the future, when the two have parted ways (as I suspect they will) more completely than at present, both Christians and liberals will look back on the synthesis he argued for with nostalgia, and regret.