Departed During 2023

[Woody]

South Africa's former rugby star Hannes Strydom has died in a car accident at the age of 58.
He was part of the Springbok team that famously won the 1995 Rugby World Cup after the end of apartheid in 1994.
Strydom gained 21 Springbok caps in his career between 1993 and 1997.
Former teammate and close friend Kobus Wiese told local media that details of the accident were still vague, but the vehicle Strydom was travelling in collided with a minibus taxi.
The accident took place on Sunday near the coal mining town of eMalahleni in Mpumalanga province.

[izod tester]

Elinor Otto, longest serving “Rosie the Rivetter” who continued working until she was 95.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... airplanes/

[llondel]

Terry Venables, former England football manager, has departed age 80. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67536465

[PHXPhlyer]

Charlie Munger, investing genius and Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, dies at 99
Munger made a fortune on his own before becoming vice chairman of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. He also was a real estate attorney, philanthropist and architect.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busine ... rcna127076

Billionaire Charlie Munger, who was the investing sage who made a fortune on his own before he became Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, died Tuesday at 99.

In addition to being Berkshire vice chairman, Munger was a real estate attorney, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp., a member of the Costco board, a philanthropist and an architect.

In early 2023, his fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion — a jaw-dropping amount for many people but vastly smaller than Buffett’s unfathomable fortune, which is estimated at more than $100 billion.

During Berkshire’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting, the then-97-year-old Munger apparently inadvertently revealed a well-guarded secret: that Vice Chairman Greg Abel “will keep the culture” after the Buffett era.

Munger, who wore thick glasses, had lost his left eye after complications from cataract surgery in 1980.

Munger was chairman and CEO of Wesco Financial from 1984 to 2011, when Buffett’s Berkshire purchased the remaining shares of the Pasadena, California-based insurance and investment company it did not own.

Buffett credited Munger with broadening his investment strategy from favoring troubled companies at low prices in hopes of getting a profit to focusing on higher-quality but underpriced companies.

An early example of the shift was illustrated in 1972 by Munger’s ability to persuade Buffett to sign off on Berkshire’s purchase of See’s Candies for $25 million even though the California candy maker had annual pretax earnings of only about $4 million. It has since produced more than $2 billion in sales for Berkshire.

“He weaned me away from the idea of buying very so-so companies at very cheap prices, knowing that there was some small profit in it, and looking for some really wonderful businesses that we could buy in fair prices,” Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.

Or as Munger put it at the 1998 Berkshire shareholder meeting: “It’s not that much fun to buy a business where you really hope this sucker liquidates before it goes broke.”

Munger was often the straight man to Buffett’s jovial commentaries. “I have nothing to add,” he would say after one of Buffett’s loquacious responses to questions at Berkshire annual meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. But like his friend and colleague, Munger was a font of wisdom in investing, and in life. And like one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin, Munger’s insight didn’t lack humor.

“I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are. The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. We’ve gotten good at fishing where the fish are,” the then-93-year-old Munger told the thousands of people at Berkshire’s 2017 meeting.

He believed in what he called the “lollapalooza effect,” in which a confluence of factors merged to drive investment psychology.

A son of the heartland
Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1, 1924. His father, Alfred, was a lawyer, and his mother, Florence “Toody,” was from an affluent family. Like Warren, Munger worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store as a youth, but the two future joined-at-the-hip partners didn’t meet until years later.

At 17, Munger left Omaha for the University of Michigan. Two years later, in 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, according to Janet Lowe’s 2003 biography “Damn Right!”

The military sent him to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to study meteorology. In California, he fell in love with his sister’s roommate at Scripps College, Nancy Huggins, and married her in 1945. Although he never completed his undergraduate degree, Munger graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1948, and the couple moved back to California, where he practiced real estate law. He founded the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in 1962 and focused on managing investments at the hedge fund Wheeler, Munger & Co., which he also founded that year.

“I’m proud of being an Omaha boy,” Munger said in a 2017 interview with Dean Scott Derue of the Michigan Ross Business School. “I sometimes use the old saying, ‘They got the boy out of Omaha but they never got Omaha out of the boy.’ All those old-fashioned values — family comes first; be in a position so that you can help others when troubles come; prudent, sensible; moral duty to be reasonable [is] more important than anything else — more important than being rich, more important than being important — an absolute moral duty.”

In California, he partnered with Franklin Otis Booth, a member of the founding family of the Los Angeles Times, in real estate. One of their early developments turned out to be a lucrative condo project on Booth’s grandfather’s property in Pasadena. (Booth, who died in 2008, had been introduced to Buffett by Munger in 1963 and became one of Berkshire’s largest investors.)

“I had five real estate projects,” Munger told Derue. “I did both side by side for a few years, and in a very few years, I had $3 million — $4 million.”

Munger closed the hedge fund in 1975. Three years later, he became vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

‘We think so much alike that it’s spooky’
In 1959, at age 35, Munger returned to Omaha to close his late father’s legal practice. That’s when he was introduced to the then-29-year-old Buffett by one of Buffett’s investor clients. The two hit it off and stayed in contact despite living half a continent away from each other.

“We think so much alike that it’s spooky,” Buffett recalled in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald in 1977. “He’s as smart and as high-grade a guy as I’ve ever run into.”

“We never had an argument in the entire time we’ve known each other, which is almost 60 years now,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. ... He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. ... I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.”

The melding of the minds focused on value investing, in which stocks are picked because their price appears to be undervalued based on the company’s long-term fundamentals.

“All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more than you are paying for,” Munger once said. “You must value the business in order to value the stock.”

But during the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, when Berkshire suffered a massive $50 billion loss in the first quarter, Munger and Buffett were more conservative than there were during the Great Recession, when they invested in U.S. airlines and financials like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs hit hard by that downturn.

“Well, I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes,” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in April 2020. “We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity. We’re not playing, ‘Oh goody, goody, everything’s going to hell, let’s plunge 100% of the reserves’ [into buying businesses].”

The philanthropist/architect
Munger donated hundreds of millions of dollars to educational institutions, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard Law School, often with the stipulation that the school accept his building designs, even though he was not formally trained as an architect.

At Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake prep school, where Munger had been a board member for decades, he ensured that the girls bathrooms were larger than the boys room during the construction of the science center in the 1990s.

“Any time you go to a football game or a function there’s a huge line outside the women’s bathroom. Who doesn’t know that they pee in a different way than the men?” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “What kind of idiot would make the men’s bathroom and the women’s bathroom the same size? The answer is, a normal architect!”

Munger and his wife had three children, daughters Wendy and Molly, and son Teddy, who died of leukemia at age 9. The Mungers divorced in 1953.

Two years later, he married Nancy Barry, whom he met on a blind date at a chicken dinner restaurant. The couple had four children, Charles Jr., Emilie, Barry and Philip. He also was the stepfather to her two other sons, William Harold Borthwick and David Borthwick. The Mungers, who were married 54 years until her death in 2010, contributed $43.5 million to Stanford University to help build the Munger Graduate Residence, which houses 600 law and graduate students.

Asked by CNBC’s Quick in a February 2019 “Squawk Box” interview about the secret to a long and happy life, Munger said the answer “is easy, because it’s so simple.”

“You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite,” he said.

“And staying cheerful ... because it’s a wise thing to do. Is that so hard? And can you be cheerful when you’re absolutely mired in deep hatred and resentment? Of course you can’t. So why would you take it on?”

PP

[llondel]

Henry Kissinger has died, aged 100. Breaking news, the BBC only has the basic statement up at time of posting.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67574495

[PHXPhlyer]

Mary Cleave, the first woman to fly on NASA’s space shuttle after Challenger disaster, dies at 76

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/world/ma ... index.html

CNN
—
Mary Cleave, the NASA astronaut who in 1989 became the first woman to fly on a space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster, has died at the age of 76, the space agency announced on Wednesday.

NASA did not give a cause of death.

“I’m sad we’ve lost trail blazer Dr. Mary Cleave, shuttle astronaut, veteran of two spaceflights, and first woman to lead the Science Mission Directorate as associate administrator,” said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana in a statement. “Mary was a force of nature with a passion for science, exploration, and caring for our home planet. She will be missed.”

Cleave — who died Monday, according to the statement — was a native of Great Neck, New York. She studied biological sciences at Colorado State University before going on to earn her master’s in microbial ecology and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Utah State University.

From air to space
She told NASA’s Oral History Project in 2002 that she was enamored with flying airplanes growing up, and she earned her pilot’s license before her driver’s license. At one point, Cleave said, she had wanted to be a flight attendant, but found that at 5-foot-2, she was too short for the role under airline rules at the time.

Cleave noted that affirmative action helped pave the way for her passions, allowing her the opportunity to fly supersonic jets known as T-38s.

“For me, space flight was great, but it was gravy on top of getting to fly in great airplanes,” she told NASA.

Cleave said she had been working at a research lab and finishing her doctoral studies in Utah when she saw an ad at a local post office stating that NASA was searching for scientists to join the astronaut corps. She applied and was selected in 1980.

Getting to orbit
On her first mission, flying on NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1985, Cleave became the 10th woman to travel into space. On the mission, she served as a flight engineer and helped operate the shuttle’s robotic arm.

“It seemed like they assigned women to fly the arm (Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) or Canadarm) more often than guys, and the rumor on the street was because they thought women did that better,” Cleave said in her 2002 NASA interview, noting that she never confirmed the rumor.

Cleave’s second flight in 1989, STS-30, also on Atlantis, came after NASA had reverted to flying all-male crews for three missions in the wake of the Challenger explosion in 1986, which killed all seven crew members on board, including the first teacher to be selected to fly to space.

Cleave was known to downplay the “firsts” she marked as a female astronaut during her time at NASA, saying, “People tried to make a point of it, and I just let everybody know that I didn’t think that anybody should be making a special point out of this.

“It was just a normal part of the thing, and I just didn’t think it was good to make anything special out of it, because at that point we really were part of the corps,” she added, noting that she was close friends with astronaut Judith Resnick, who died on Challenger.

Women in space
Cleave emphasized that to women on the corps at that time, the focus was always on their jobs.

She was also part of a historic first when she served on NASA mission control’s CapCom — or capsule communication system — as Sally Ride became the first woman ever to travel to space on the STS-7 mission in 1983. When Cleave spoke to Ride in orbit, it became the first female-to-female space communication in the agency’s history. Neither Cleave nor Ride acknowledged the milestone during their conversation.

“I didn’t even notice it. Here’s Sally and I, we didn’t even notice it,” Cleave said, though a reporter did ask her about the event afterward.

Over the course of her two shuttle missions, Cleave spent more than 10 days in orbit.

NASA and beyond
She was assigned to another flight after STS-30. But Cleave said she began to have a change of heart as she waited to fly, spending four years on the ground between her first and second mission. During that time she became increasingly concerned about environmental issues.

Cleave said she could see the planet changing as she stared back at Earth from space. “The air looked dirtier, less trees, more roads, all those things,” she told NASA’s Oral History Project.

“I just couldn’t get that excited about what I was doing, because it wasn’t related to (the environment),” she added, referring to her job as an astronaut.

Cleave said she made the difficult decision to move on from the corps and NASA’s astronaut hub in Houston, taking a role at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1991. There, she worked on a project called SeaWiFS, an ocean-monitoring sensor that measured global vegetation, according to NASA.

Cleave eventually moved to work at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, in 2000, going on to become the first woman ever to hold the title of associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate — the top role overseeing the space agency’s research programs. In that role, Cleave “guided an array of research and scientific exploration programs for planet Earth, space weather, the solar system, and the universe,” according to NASA.

She retired from NASA in 2007, choosing to engage in volunteer work and encourage young women to join scientific pursuits, according to her bio on the Maryland government’s website.

PP

[Woody]

Probably not well known on this site, but the last few paragraphs certainly are relevant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67575906

[Woody]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67546785

Always surprised that he lasted this long

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I'm buried 'neath the sod
But the angels won't receive me
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

[PHXPhlyer]

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice, dead at 93
From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2006, she was the indisputable swing justice

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/suprem ... rcna127589

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the justice who held the court’s center for more than a generation, died Friday, the court said in a statement.

Her cause of death was complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. She was 93.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that O'Connor "blazed an historic trail as our nation's first female justice."

He said the justices "mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education."

From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2006, she was the indisputable swing justice, often casting the deciding vote in the court’s most contentious cases. Her lack of a consistent judicial philosophy rankled some, but others praised her practical bent as a moderating influence.

She sometimes sided with the court’s conservatives, approving taxpayer-funded vouchers for students at religious schools, voting to end the 2000 Florida recount between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and advocating for states’ rights against federal control.

But she joined with the court’s liberals in affirming abortion rights, upholding affirmative action in college admissions, approving the creation of more congressional districts with African-American voters in the majority, and keeping a wall of separation between government and religion.

As the court has moved further to the right in recent years, her legacy has been undermined, with the 6-3 conservative majority ending the right to abortion and the consideration of race in college admissions, emphasizing how her modest approach to judging was the hallmark of a different era.


Her reputation as a moderate took a hit when she sided with the conservative justices in the 5-4 Bush. v. Gore ruling, a decision she later expressed regret over. The court perhaps should have stayed out of the Florida recount issue altogether, she said in a 2013 interview with the Chicago Tribune editorial board. The ruling, she added, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less than perfect reputation."

O'Connor also faced criticism for retiring in 2005, allowing Bush to replace her with the more aggressively conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who in 2022 wrote the ruling that overturned the abortion rights landmark Roe v. Wade, a step she had been unwilling to take.

O’Connor grew up on the Lazy B, a 160,000-acre cattle ranch in the high desert country straddling the Arizona-New Mexico border. She graduated from law school at Stanford University, where she met her future husband, John, and struck up a lifelong friendship with William Rehnquist, a classmate who would eventually become the nation’s chief justice.

Following four years of service in the Arizona attorney general’s office, she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate in 1969. After being re-elected, she became the first woman in the country to be a state senate majority leader.

She then turned her attention to the courts, running for and winning a position as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

In 1981, she came highly recommended when President Ronald Reagan was looking for someone to help him keep a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. She sounded like a conservative during her Senate confirmation hearing, expressing opposition to the notion that the right to abortion was constitutionally protected.

“My own view in the area of abortion is that I’m opposed to it as a matter of birth control or otherwise,” she said. After she was unanimously confirmed, 99-0, she at first criticized Roe v. Wade, but she later joined the court’s majority in a series of cases upholding abortion rights.

As the first female justice, her every action was scrutinized, attention that she would later say was intimidating. “It’s thrilling, in a way, to be the first to do something, the first woman ever to serve on the court. But it’s dreadful if you’re the last. And if I didn’t do the job well, that’s what would happen.”

Seven years after coming to the court, she underwent surgery for breast cancer. Years later, she said the disease “fostered a desire in me to make each and every day a good day.”

She and John were married in 1952 and had three children. The O’Connors were frequent guests at Washington social events. An encounter at formal dinner with Washington Redskins star John Riggins made national headlines when he told her at one point, “Loosen up, Sandy baby.”

At age 75, O’Connor abruptly announced her intention to step down from the Supreme Court to attend to John, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He died, at age 79, in 2009.

She remained active, urging states to do away with elections for judges, which she said made the courts too political. And she was outspoken in saying that the nation’s public schools were shirking their responsibility to provide civics education.

O’Connor’s appointment as the first woman justice not only made history. It also prodded other states to start putting women on their supreme courts. But she recoiled at the thought that a woman would decide cases differently. She was fond of quoting a letter from a supporter who wrote, “Dear Justice O’Connor: Don’t be intimidated by all those men and especially the chief justice. You put on your robes the same way.”

CORRECTION (Dec. 1, 2023, 12:25 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article, in a headline and text, misstated when O’Connor retired. It was in 2006, not 2005.

Personal note: She grew up not too far, relatively speaking of distances in the West, from where I went to flight school.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Denny Laine, British musician who founded The Moody Blues and Wings with Paul McCartney, dies at 79
The acclaimed singer and guitarist died Tuesday morning after health setbacks from interstitial lung disease, his wife wrote on social media.

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop ... rcna128186

Denny Laine, the British star musician who founded the iconic rock bands The Moody Blues and Wings with Paul McCartney, has died.

He was 79.

Laine died "peacefully" Tuesday morning at his home following "health setbacks" from interstitial lung disease, his wife, Elizabeth Hines, shared on his Facebook page.

"I was at his bedside, holding his hand as I played his favorite Christmas songs for him. He’s been singing Christmas songs the past few weeks and I continued to play Christmas songs while he’s been in ICU on a ventilator this past week," she wrote.


Hines said that the couple was hopeful he'd "overcome his health setbacks and return to the rehabilitation center and eventually home."

"Unfortunately, his lung disease, Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD), is unpredictable and aggressive; each infection weakened and damaged his lungs. He fought everyday. He was so strong and brave, never complained," she wrote.

She thanked his fans who "sent him so much love" over the past few months, and his surgeons, doctors and nurses.

"I thank you all for sending both of us love and support. It was my absolute honor and privilege to not only be his wife, but to care for him during his illness and vulnerability," Hines said.

She remembered her husband as "an amazingly wonderful person, so loving and sweet to me" who made her days "colorful."

"Thank you sweetie for loving me, for all the laughter, friendship, fun and for asking me to be your wife. I will love you forever," she wrote.



Laine helped form The Moody Blues in 1964 with hits like “Nights in White Satin”, and “Go Now.” Laine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Moody Blues member in 2018.

In 1971, he joined McCartney and his wife, Linda, to form Wings, helping write the songs “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and “London Town.” After his time with Wings, he continued to make music in a solo career.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Norman Lear, boundary-breaking TV master behind ‘All in the Family’ and progressive activist, dies at 101
Lear created or developed some of the most seminal comedies in television history, including “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/ ... -rcna42283

Norman Lear, the influential television impresario who dominated the American prime-time comedy lineup in the 1970s and smashed barriers with topical sitcoms that wrung humor out of the country’s fierce culture wars, has died, his family said Wednesday.

He was 101.

In an astonishingly prolific career that spanned more than six decades, Lear created or developed some of the most seminal comedies in television history, including “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time,” as well as its 2017 reboot anchored by a Latino cast.

Lear’s hugely popular shows tackled hot-button issues that network executives and some viewers had long considered taboo, such as racism, sexism, the women’s liberation movement, antisemitism, abortion, homophobia, the Vietnam War and class conflict. In his off-screen life, Lear was a committed progressive and outspoken champion of civic responsibility.

Lear’s most lasting creation might be Archie Bunker, the irascible antihero at the center of “All in the Family” (1971-79). Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, was a cantankerous yet tender family patriarch who endeared himself to millions of viewers despite his regressive views — or perhaps because of them. Lear based the character on his own father.

"For all his faults, Archie loved his country and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries. If Archie had been around 50 years later, he probably would have watched Fox News. He probably would have been a Trump voter.

"But I think that the sight of the American flag being used to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him,” Lear wrote in an editorial published in The New York Times in July 2022, referring to the Jan. 6 riot.

In the course of his celebrated career, Lear received an array of honors, including induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame; six Emmy Awards; a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award; a National Medal of Arts; and, most recently, the Carol Burnett Award for lifetime achievement at the virtual Golden Globes in February 2021.

Lear was revered by generations of showrunners, writers, producers and performers, who saw him as a gifted master of small-screen entertainment and a revolutionary who made television more politically vital, morally urgent and socially relevant. Lear’s imprint can be found on innumerable contemporary series that confront the American status quo.

He was born Norman Milton Lear on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Jeanette and Hyman “Herman” Lear. When Lear was 9 years old, his father — a man he later characterized as a “rascal” — was arrested and imprisoned for selling fake bonds. Lear described it as one of the defining episodes of his life.

“The night that he was taken away, there were a ton of people at the house, and somebody puts their hand on my shoulder, and says, ‘You’re the man of the house now, Norman,’” Lear said in a 2017 interview with PBS NewsHour. “What a fool that person was. But somehow I got it. You know, a sense of the foolishness of the human condition.”

Lear said his political conscience was awakened around the same time when he first heard the Rev. Charles Coughlin, a demagogic antisemitic Catholic priest, on the radio. Lear, who was raised in a Jewish household and received a bar mitzvah, was deeply troubled by Coughlin’s racist propaganda and screeds against the Jewish people.

Lear graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford in 1940 and then enrolled at Emerson College in Boston. But he dropped out in 1942 to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces, serving as a radio operator and gunner. When World War II ended, he found work in public relations.

He got his first break in entertainment in the early 1950s, teaming up with comedy writer Ed Simmons and collaborating on sketches for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, and other major comics of the Eisenhower era.

Lear eventually found work as a TV writer and producer on short-lived sitcoms, and in 1959 he created his first series: “The Deputy,” a Western starring Henry Fonda. He then turned to writing and producing movies such as “Come Blow Your Horn” (1963); the Oscar-nominated “Divorce American Style” (1967); and the satire “Cold Turkey” (1971), which he directed.

He returned to the small screen in the early 1970s to create and produce “All in the Family.” The show was loosely inspired by the British series “Till Death Us Do Part” (1965-75), but Lear invested his version with a thoroughly American spirit.

The show often revolved around the bitter but frequently hilarious clashes between Bunker and his liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic, played by the future filmmaker and activist Rob Reiner. They argued about the most contentious subjects of the era with an intensity rarely seen on American narrative television, let alone a prime-time network sitcom.

“All in the Family” flailed in its first season, but it went on to become one of the most popular and critically adored shows of the 1970s. Lear received four Emmys and a Peabody for the series, which reached younger viewers over the years through cable reruns. O’Connor reprised the role of a lifetime in the moderately popular series “Archie Bunker’s Place” (1979-83).

In the wake of “All in the Family,” Lear (along with his producing partner Bud Yorkin) went on to create a streak of well-known and similarly topical shows, including the “All in the Family” spin-off “Maude” (1972-78), starring Bea Arthur, and the family sitcom “One Day at a Time” (1975-84), which was remade in 2017 with a Latino cast and Trump-era themes.

Three of Lear’s best-known shows — “Sanford and Son” (1972-77); “Good Times” (1974-79); and “The Jeffersons” (1975-85), also a spin-off of “All in the Family”— were all norm-breaking depictions of Black family life on TV.

“Sanford and Son” addressed racism frankly. “The Jeffersons,” a comedy about a wealthy Black couple that moves to a “deluxe apartment in the sky,” was notable for portraying upscale Black leads as well as an interracial couple as their neighbors. “Good Times” has been called the first show to portray a two-parent Black household. However, all three series drew scrutiny for relying on what critics described as stereotypical character traits.

Lear also developed “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” (1976-77), a parody of daytime soap operas with a boldly surrealistic streak that was well ahead of its time. The brief-lived satirical show, featuring a character who drowns in a bowl of chicken soup, later became a cult favorite and helped lay the groundwork for dreamlike series such as David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.”

Lear then turned his attention to progressive activism. In the early 1980s, at the dawn of the Reagan era, he founded the People for the American Way, a nonprofit advocacy group that was meant to counterbalance the nascent Christian right movement, particularly Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority.

Progressive champion
Lear strongly opposed the growing influence of organized religion in American politics and rallied for liberal causes over the decades. He was especially passionate about the First Amendment and civic awareness; in the early 2000s, he purchased a copy of the Declaration of Independence for a national tour of the document.

In the late 1980s, Lear produced several popular films — including three titles directed by Reiner: “The Sure Thing” (1985), “Stand by Me” (1986) and “The Princess Bride” (1987). In the early 1990s, he attempted a network TV comeback, but his shows from that period failed to attract wide audiences.

In his later years, Lear remained active in various entertainment projects, political initiatives, business endeavors and educational programs. He was the subject of the insightful 2016 documentary “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” which surveyed his path-breaking career and emotional journey as a human being.

When he accepted his lifetime achievement prize at the virtual Golden Globes in February 2021, Lear said his family had been deeply important all through his life. He paid tribute to his wife of three decades, Lyn Davis Lear; five daughters and a son, who at the time ranged “in age from 25 to 74”; and four grandchildren.

“At close to 99,” Lear said, “I can tell you that I’ve never lived alone, I’ve never laughed alone, and that has as much to do with my being here today as anything else I know.”

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Ryan O’Neal, star of ‘Love Story’ and ‘Peyton Place,’ dead

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/08/entertai ... index.html

Oscar-nominated actor Ryan O’Neal, star of several landmark films including “Love Story” and “Paper Moon,” has died, according to his son, Patrick, who posted the news to social media. He was reportedly 82.

“My dad passed away peacefully today, with his loving team by his side supporting him and loving him as he would us,” Patrick O’Neal wrote.

He added: “My father Ryan O’Neal has always been my hero. I looked up to him and he was always bigger than life.”

O’Neal’s breakout role was in 1967 on the nighttime soap opera “Peyton Place.” His other notable roles included “Barry Lyndon” and “A Bridge Too Far.”

CNN has reached out to a representative for Ryan O’Neal.

PP

[Karearea]

Ryan O’Neal, star of ‘Love Story’ and ‘Peyton Place,’ dead
...

Oh! He always looked so youthful.
Never saw Love Story but remember him in A Bridge Too Far.

[PHXPhlyer]

This was a fun movie he was in.
"What's Up, Doc?"
Great cast as well.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069495/?ref_=nm_knf_t_4

PP

[Karearea]

This was a fun movie he was in.
"What's Up, Doc?"
...

Of course! another of my dvd's.

[PHXPhlyer]

Jeffrey Foskett, longtime member of The Beach Boys, dies at 67
Foskett, who was deemed the “vice principal of the Beach Boys” by its core members, was the rare musician who found favor in all of that group’s sometimes competing camps over the decades.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/je ... rcna129485

Jeffrey Foskett, a musician familiar to The Beach Boys fans for more than four decades as a presence in the touring bands led by both Brian Wilson and Mike Love, died Monday at age 67. He had been diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer.

Foskett, who was deemed the “vice principal of The Beach Boys” by its core members, was the rare musician who found favor in all of that group’s sometimes competing camps over the decades. He was in Wilson’s solo band from 1998 through 2014, and was in Love’s Beach Boys for long periods before and after that, from 1981 through 1998, and again from 2015 until he was sidelined by stage 4 cancer in 2019.

Brian Wilson mourned his former band member’s death in a social media post, writing, “I’m so heartbroken that my dear friend Jeff Foskett has passed. Jeff was always there for me when we toured and we couldn’t have done it without him. Jeff was one of the most talented guys I ever knew. He was a great musical leader and guitarist and he could sing like an angel. I first met Jeff in 1976 when he knocked on my door in Bel Air and I invited him in, and we were friends ever since. I don’t know what else to say. Love and Mercy to Jeff’s family and friends, we will remember him forever.”

Carnie Wilson affirmed in a reply how much Foskett meant to her father, writing, “I know it hurts Daddy. We will miss him. I love you.”

In a 2012 interview with the Los Angeles Times, conducted when he was taking part in a Beach Boys 50th anniversary tour that temporarily reunited Wilson with Mike Love, Foskett compared his tenure with the Beach Boys and/or Wilson as being akin to a Little League baseball player who gets invited to join the Dodgers. “How many amateur athletes turn pro?” he said. “And how many of the thousands of musicians — tens of thousands of musicians — in Los Angeles are going to get into the band that they really loved, and tour with them?”

Foskett, who said “I don’t often post on social,” last took to Instagram himself on March 4 of this year, when he put up a video of himself ringing a bell at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after spending four years in treatment there. He called it “the best four years of my life.” Foskett praised doctors and nurses and wrote, “These people have given me what no one else on earth could have… LIFE…. Some of the past four years has been trying (I guess that’s why it’s called a clinical trial). It tries your body, mind and spirit but it has left me THRIVING and most importantly able to meet my grandson Domenic.”

Foskett told the story of meeting Wilson himself in 1976 in the L.A. Times interview. ““Brian opened the door and said ‘Hey, come on in’ — like he’d been expecting us!’ I said, ‘Great!’ We hung around and went to the music room. [Wilson’s wife at the time] Marilyn made us a sandwich. He said, ‘Stay in touch.’ And I did — and I’m glad that I did.”

But it was Mike Love who first hired Foskett to perform Beach Boys music, and whose touring edition of the group he returned to in later years, after a long stint with Wilson’s group.

Love first signed Foskett up to join his Endless Summer Band after seeing the young musician play at a bar near UC Santa Barbara when he was a student there. Subsequently he joined the Beach Boys in the early ’80s — ostensibly to fill in for Carl Wilson, at first, but remaining after Carl’s return — with his first stint there lasting through 1990, when he was dismissed for reasons never publicly discussed.

He then went on to a solo career before teaming up with Wilson for his 1998 album “Imagination” and subsequent tours. Foskett officially became a Beach Boys auxillary member again, being someone who had “remained on good terms with everyone,” when Wilson reunited with other original band members for a 50th anniversary tour and the 2012 album “That’s Why God Made the Radio.”

Foskett was not just a backing vocalist in the ensemble; on the reunion tour, he sang lead vocals on songs including “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Don’t Worry Baby.”

When Wilson and the Mike Love-led version of the Beach Boys went their separate ways again after the reunion, Foskett remained with the latter unit through 2019. At that time he took what was described as a leave of absence for surgery related to the cancer, for which he had received a stage 4 diagnosis in 2018.

Foskett also performed as a frontman during a tour by the group America in the mid-2010s, before returning to the Beach Boys for one final four-year stint.

PP

[Karearea]

Maureen Sweeney, the Irish woman whose weather forecast changed the course of the D-Day landings has died at the age of 100.

In 1944 Mrs Sweeney and her husband Ted worked at a coast guard and weather station in Blacksod Bay, County Mayo on Ireland’s west coast.

They were tasked with taking hourly barometer readings night and day in the lead up to the Allied invasion of Normandy.

Their reports contributed to the date of the invasion being pushed back due to an impending storm.

"We were told that our reports were the first to show any change coming in for good weather or bad weather," she told the BBC in 2016.

On 3 June the readings showed a storm approaching from the Atlantic.

This information led to the invasion of Nazi-occupied France by Allied troops being postponed by a day, allowing the weather to improve.

The landings, which were the biggest invasion by sea in history, marked the start of the campaign to free north-west Europe from German occpation.

Their success helped pave the way for the defeat of the Nazi regime

Despite the official neutrality of Ireland during World War Two, information gathered by the Irish Meteorological Service was shared with the Allies.

Preparations for the invasion of Normandy has been in the works for years, with Allied leaders agreeing that the invasion could only be attempted under certain weather conditions.

The most important of these were were wind and visibility.

The original date chosen for the invasion was 5 June 1944.

But at 13:00 on 3 June, 21-year-old Ms Sweeney was first to forecast a severe storm approaching Europe from over the Atlantic Ocean.

Her forecast was then phoned into London.

In 2014, Mrs Sweeney recalled to the Irish Independent that she had received a phone call from London asking for the readings to be checked again.

These observations from the west of Ireland formed an important part of the forecasting decisions of a team of American and British forecasters who urged that the invasion be delayed.

In 2021, Ms Sweeney was awarded a special US House of Representatives honour.

Her family said she passed away peacefully at the Sonas Tí Aire Nursing Home, Belmullet, on Sunday.

Her husband Ted died in 2001.

Mrs Sweeney's funeral Mass is due to take place Friday at 12:00 at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Aughleamon.

She is then to be buried in Faulmore Cemetery.

BBC: Irish woman whose forecast saved D-Day dies at 100

[PHXPhlyer]

Tom Smothers, one half of famed comedy duo, dies at 86

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/entertai ... index.html

Comedian Tom Smothers, who with his brother performed as the singing comedy duo the Smothers Brothers, has died, according to a family statement shared by the National Comedy Center.

He was 86.

Dick Smothers, Tom’s younger brother and professional partner, said his brother was at home at the time of his death related to cancer.

“Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner,” Dick Smothers said in a statement. “I am forever grateful to have spent a lifetime together with him, on and off stage, for over 60 years. Our relationship was like a good marriage – the longer we were together, the more we loved and respected one another. We were truly blessed.”

The folk singing brothers became pioneers with their biting satirical comedy that was at the forefront of their CBS variety show “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” which ran from 1967 to 1969.

CBS famously yanked the show from the air after they ran afoul of both the network and censors for their outspoken politics, defense of civil rights and their opposition to the Vietnam War.

“Fifty years later I look back on us being fired and I’m still pissed off,” Tom Smothers said to laughs in a 2019 interview shared by “All Arts TV.”

Smothers was born in 1937, a year before his brother Dick, and the pair grew up in California and began performing after attending San Jose State University.

In an interview with CBS News that aired last year, Tom Smothers said he and his sibling didn’t initially think of themselves as stand up comedians.

“We thought of ourselves as folk singers,” he said.

After breaking into TV with their music, their comedy show became a hit, topping the then-popular series “Bonanza” in the ratings. Soon after, the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” began airing.

“It was just the biggest thrill, it was unbelievable!” Dick Smothers told CBS News.

But their mix of music, skits and political send-ups were often a challenge for the network censors.

The brothers often joked about criticism they faced for their candor during their comedy hour, but freedom of speech was something they took seriously.

“The right for us not to allow even to give our viewpoints to other people who are interested in hearing it is contrary, I think, to the principle of our country and to the principle that makes the world go round,” Tom Smothers once said on their program.

“The times were changing so quickly in the sixties and we didn’t change them,” Dick Smothers said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Sixties” docuseries.

“We just reflected ‘em,” his brother added.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Gaston Glock, inventor of the namesake pistol, dies at 94

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/business ... index.html

Gaston Glock, the inventor of the ubiquitous gun bearing his name, died on Wednesday. He was 94.

The Glock company announced his death on its website, without giving a cause or other details.

The Glock is universal in mainstream culture, from use in over 65% of US federal, state and local agencies, according to the company, to a staple reference in media, movies, books and songs.

Glock had his start in Austria as an engineer. He founded the Glock company in 1963, according to the company’s website. He developed the semi-automatic Glock service pistol for the Austrian military in the early 1980s.

By the mid 1980s, the Glock pistols were introduced to the US market.

“Gaston Glock charted the strategic direction of the Glock Group throughout his life and prepared it for the future. His life’s work will continue in his spirit,” a statement on Glock’s site said.

PP