IN MEMORY, 2017 – Tony Filipovitch
A popular trope in science fiction explores Schrodinger’s theory of multiple simultaneous universes—the “multiverse” (Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter is a particularly good recent example). You do not have to be an astrophysicist, however, to experience the multiverse. When anyone dies, an entire world dies with them. Like the supernova of a dying star, we leave behind cosmic dust that give some hint of who we were and how we lived; and the gravity waves from our lives continue to radiate out into the universe and affect others (sometimes in subtle, almost imperceptible ways). But the greater part of the manifold of our lives is interior to each of us; the unique character of our experiences and memories, of the ways we loved and the things we learned—and the mistakes we made and the regrets we hid—die with us when we go. As LeRoi Jones put it in his poem, “The Liars”: “…whatever sits/ Counting the minutes till you die./ When they say, “It is Roi/ Who is dead?”/ I wonder/ Who will they mean?”
So, today we celebrate the lives—the multiple universes—of people who have died since the last Memorial Day. We know them for one, or a few, things that they have done. But each was a whole person, an interior life that, out of the infinity of possibilities, was unique. And while we shall not see their like again, together they made up the constellations, the wandering planets and the shooting stars in our heavens. Just as we make out patterns and forms in the stars above us, we can discern patterns in the lives they lead even as each pursued his or her own course in the world. And, whether by attraction or repulsion, those patterns have guided our lives and constituted the universes in which we in our turn live.
Our time together today is too brief. Even with drastic culling, I fear I will go on too long (if you stand up and walk out, I’ll understand). A fuller list will be posted on the webpage version of this service, if you are curious.
I usually begin with people who have had an effect on the world stage. But this year our own little world experienced the passing of a number of people who were central in bringing us where we are today:
Jane Armour Foster, 102. She, along with her husband John, was a founding member of our congregation in 1953. A graduate of Mount Holyoke and University of Chicago, she studied in Japan in 1938-39 on a Kobe College Fellowship. She worked in Intelligence for the War Department, and, newly married after the war, went with her husband to Beijing until the civil war sent them home. They settled here in Mankato, where John taught English at “the College” (it was Mankato Teachers College, back then). Jane, along with Louise Roth, was pivotal in establishing the religious education program here.
Joan Christensen, 88. Joan was raised in a sod-roofed log cabin on the banks of the Missouri River in North Dakota. After a divorce, she moved to Mankato with her two children, earned a Bachelors and Master’s degree at Mankato State College, and taught Biology, first at Mankato High and then at the Mankato East when it opened in 1973. She served on the UUFM Board for 18 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and was treasurer for a number of DFL campaigns in the area (including Tim Walz).
Lisa Cook, 85. Lisa was raised in Cloquet, and moved to Mankato when her husband, Roy, was hired to teach Sociology at Mankato State College. She served as President of the UUFM and on the Board of the UUA, and until her death was active both in the UUFM and the West Valley UU Church in Glendale, AZ.
Mary Gover, 82. Trained in chemistry (she graduated magna cum laude from Smith College), she was a lifelong advocate for women’s rights and the League of Women Voters. She served 16 years on the St. Peter city council, and also served as chair of the school board. She was a longtime member of this congregation, until a few years ago when she and her husband moved to Richfield.
Lisa Coons, 50. Eleanor’s mother and Patti’s spouse. The grief is always sharp when a mother’s death leaves a child behind. But Lisa’s is a story of survival and joyful living. She beat a rare cancer when she was still a teenager, but the therapy damaged her heart. Making the most of what she was given, she and Patti founded the Coffee Hag as a community gathering place. She went on to teach in the Women’s Studies program at MSU and serve as co-director of the Center for Earth Spirituality at Good Counsel. And she brought to the world a daughter, a hope who might otherwise not have been born.
Since I have begun with local people, let’s continue in that vein—it is less depressing than my customary introduction with victims around the world of war and violence.
Local and Regional
Gladys Olson, 101. She was orphaned when both her parents died in the flu epidemic of 1918-19 (it’s hard to remember how dangerous the flu can become). She taught English at MSU, but is probably better known for her strong support for International Students at MSU.
Florence Cobb, 95. She grew up with a grandmother who had been born into slavery, and walked past an all-white school on the 3-mile journey to her own segregated school in Okmulgee, OK. She and her husband came to Minnesota when he was selected to lead the Department of Health Sciences in 1968. They were among the only black residents of Mankato then, and dance was part of physical education. She established the minor in Dance at MSU in 1976.
Darrell Apitz, 95. Geography professor at MSU for 26 years.
Ellsworth Beetch, 93. Professor of Chemistry at MSU for 33 years—and second president of the National Association of Rocketry when he brought the national convention to Mankato in 1967—attended by Vice President Humphrey and astronaut Thomas Manning II.
Jerry Zukerman, 91. Professor of English at MSU for 26 years.
Jack Auger, 90. Professor of counselor education at MSU.
Bob Graham, 90. Professor and Chair of Chemistry at MSU.
Bob Willson, 89. One of three faculty who started the Computer Science program at MSU in 1969. He introduced Graphics and Robotics into the department, and taught 9 computer languages.
John Hodowanic, 86, who established radio station KMSU, and went on to edit Twin Cities Magazine and served as President of the World Press Institute and Chairman of the Minnesota Press Club.
LaVon “Bonnie” Krueger, 85. Administrative assistant at MSU’s Student Union and Women’s Bowling Coach for years. She led two teams to national collegiate championships, and was a charter member of the Mankato Bowling Hall of Fame. Gives a little more meaning to those bowling alleys in the basement of the Union, doesn’t it?
Chan Lee, 85. He established the Financial Planning Certificate Program at MSU in 1998.
Edward Olson, 75. Mathematics professor at MSU for 27 years
Scott Hagebak, 67. Student activities director and operations director of the student union at MSU.
John Rezmerski, 84. Professor of writing and literature at Gustavus, and one of Minnesota’s best-known poets.
Luverne “Coach” Klar, 92. Hired by Louie Todnem to start a wrestling program and coach baseball at Mankato High in 1951. He taught health, physical education, and driver’s education. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
June Hughes, 89. Music teacher for 23 years in Mankato’s elementary schools.
George Eckert, 85, guidance counselor at Mankato East High School
Leon DeWitte, 79, head custodian at Mankato East High School
Bill Gray, 74. Principal at Mankato East Junior High School and history teacher at Dakota Meadows.
Carol Grimmer, 69, music teacher at Franklin and Mankato East, and founder and for 40 years the director of the Mankato Valley Chapter of the Sweet Adelines.
Tim Johnson, 69, physical education teacher at Mankato East for 33 years, and coach of tennis and swimming and diving—including diving coach at MSU and Gustavus Adolphus.
Esther Schmidt, 105. She and her husband, Gerhardt, established Schmidt’s Meat Market in Nicollet in 1947. She continued to help with the accounting and bookkeeping until she was 93.
Dwayne Andreas, 93. Farmer’s son from Worthington and college dropout, with his brother Lowell he bought the Honeymead plant in Mankato, and later became CEO of ADM from 1970-1997 and kept an office at the Mankato ADM plant. He stepped down as a result of a price-fixing scandal for which his son went to jail. The story is told that when Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House, was introduced to Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, Gorbachev told him “I hear you know my friend Dwayne Andreas.”
Donna Nordgren, 91. With her husband, Lee, she opened Artcraft Camera in Mankato. She was recognized by the Mankato YWCA as one of its first “Women of Distinction.” And she was Jane Schostag’s sister-in-law.
Herb Wagner, 91. Founder of Jim’s Apple Farm, the big yellow barn on Hwy 169 near Jordan.
John Pfau, 89. Owned 9 Taco John’s franchises, and, among many community activities, served on the Board of VINE and the Summit Center.
Bill Bassett, 84. Mankato city manager for almost 30 years, he laid the groundwork for the downtown revival, for the floodwall, the Mahkato Wacipi, River Hills Mall, and the development of the Hilltop. Although, he did it at the price of “urban renewing” many of Mankato’s historic buildings. He could be combative, and would not shy away from telling you why he wasn’t going to do what you wanted him to do. And yet he could be gracious and even courtly—he was the only city manager I know who would quote Shakespeare at a Council meeting.
Bob Ringhofer, 76. Hired as North Mankato’s City Superintendent at age 22, he went from the youngest city administrator to the longest-serving after 33 years in the chair. On his watch, the city built up its park system, the industrial park, the flood wall, and inaugurated North Mankato Fun Days.
Dick Lundin, 75. Founder of Southern Minnesota Construction (SMC), and moving force behind “Rockin’ in the Quarry,” the July 4 celebration in his gravel quarry with the Mankato Symphony and City Mouse Band.
Linda Hruska, 71. Although she was the matriarch of the Dam Store in Rapidan for 44 years, she was not the founder—the store has been around for 106 years.
Dr. Anthony Jaspers, 68. A family physician in Mankato for 40 years, he was named Minnesota Family Physician of the Year in 2010. He was also a member of the Lake Crystal City Council.
Tom Riley, 63. Local kid who became vice president at Hickory Tech and then at Midwest Wireless, and finishing his career as Director of New Business Development at Greater Mankato Growth. He was a very active volunteer, and helped get the Children’s Museum off the ground.
Chase Tuseth, 33. Eden Prairie biology and physical education teacher and MSU alumnus, who was fatally shot by a Mankato police officer after creating a disturbance at Country Inn and Suites.
Miles Lord, 97. Called “the people’s judge.” He was Minnesota’s Attorney General and US Attorney for Minnesota before being appointed to the Federal bench by Lyndon Johnson in 1966. He was known for his criticism of corporate abuse and his rulings in favor of women, minorities, workers, consumers, antiwar protesters, and the environment. His most famous cases were the Reserve Mining pollution case and the consumer lawsuit against the maker of the Dalkon Shield.
Sid Applebaum, 92, co-founder of Rainbow Foods
Bill Cooper, 73, CEO of TCF Financial and former Chair of the Minnesota Republican Party
Earl Potter, 69. President of St. Cloud State University, he was killed in a highway accident on his way to a MnSCU meeting in St. Paul.
And this was just in Minnesota! In the larger world, one of the musicians who died this year was Chuck Berry, 90. One of the early originators of rock ‘n roll and an inaugural member of its hall of fame, he was acknowledged as an influence on the Beatles, the Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger. His hits included “Maybellene,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Back in the USA” and “Johnny B Goode,” which was included on the disc on the Voyager I spacecraft in 1977. Let’s listen.
International Affairs
Lest we forget, this was a year marked by violence—
- State violence against populations in Iraq and in Syria where over half a million people have been killed since the civil war broke out, including Khaled Omar Harrah, 31, Syrian “white helmet” killed in an airstrike, he was known for saving the 10-day-old “miracle baby;
- “irregular” violence organized or inspired by ISIS in Orlando FL , Nice & Paris FR, Berlin GER, and Manchester, ENG;
- the assassinations of Jo Cox, 42, a Labour Party MP and Oxfam policy director who championed Syrian refugees, who was shot and stabbed to death by a neo-Nazi shouting “Britain first,” and of Andrei Karlov, 62, Russian ambassador to Turkey who was shot by an off-duty Turkish police officer inspired by the Al-Nusra Front in Syria;
- the police shootings of Philando Castille, 32, in Minnesota and Alton Sterling, 37, in Louisiana, and the executions of 8 people on death rows in this country (3 in 4 days in Arkansas).
Shimon Peres, 93, former President of Israel and Noble Peace Prize Laureate. He was the last link to the founding fathers of Israel. He helped create its nuclear arsenal in the 1950s, and then he brought a skeptical nation into peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.
Fidel Castro, 90. Guerilla fighter who exported communist revolution around the world and ruled Cuba for 49 years. I remember, as a grade-school child, the nuns praising this brave young man who was fighting to overthrow the corrupt dictator Batista; a few years later their opinion had changed.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 88. For 70 years the king of Thailand. Twice he personally defused military confrontations with pro-democracy protesters. He also helped breed a better freshwater fish, a staple in the diet of Thai peasants, in the ponds of his palace and oversaw rural irrigation projects and a crop substitution plan to replace opium-farming. He was the world’s longest-reigning monarch, and its richest (his fortune was estimated at $30 billion by Forbes in 2011). And he was a devotee of jazz, playing a half-dozen instruments, and jamming with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
Ahmed Kathrada, 87. Anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, jailed with Mandela on Robben Island for 18 years, later became a member of parliament and a writer. He was not black—he was brown, the son of Indian Muslims.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 82, former President of Iran. A moderate, he was a close aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 Revolution. He acted as the go-between in the Iran-Contra deal and helped found Iran’s nuclear program—but later backed the agreement to limit it in exchange for sanctions relief.
Omar Abdel-Rahman, 78. The “blind sheikh,” convicted of plotting terror attacks in the US, died in Federal Prison.
Rene Preval, 74, twice president of Haiti, including during the devastating 2010 earthquake. An opponent of Duvalier, he served as prime minister under Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was the only president in Haitian history to have served two full presidential terms without being jailed, exiled, or killed.
Vitaly Churkin, 64, Russia’s ambassador to the UN for more than a decade and at the time of his death the longest-serving member of the Security Council.
Melvin Laird, 94, former congressman who was Nixon’s Secretary of Defense at the height of the Viet Nam War and designed the strategy, called “Vietnamization,” for withdrawing from the conflict
John Vessey, 94, Army General and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He oversaw President Reagan’s military buildup. His career started with the MN National Guard in 1939.
Dan Berrigan, 94, priest, poet, and antiwar activist. He was sent to prison for burning VietNam draft records with napalm. My mother wrote a letter to the Michigan Catholic to say that, since justice had to be served, she would volunteer to spend an afternoon a week in Berrigan’s jail cell so he could go out and keep doing the good work.
Hugh Montgomery, 94, last link to the OSS and the beginning of the CIA. Studying languages at Harvard, he enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor. He parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne. He was recruited into the OSS in counterintelligence, and was there at the liberation of Buchenwald. After the war, he returned to school and earned his doctorate in 1952, when he joined the newly formed CIA.
Doris Bohrer, 93. Initially hired as a typist at the OSS in 1942, by the end of the war she was spying on the Nazis (and carried a pistol in a shoulder holster) from vantage points in Africa and Italy. When the OSS became the CIA after the war, she went to Germany to spy on the Soviets and interview captured German scientists. She retired in 1979 as deputy chief of counterintelligence. She noted that, in Africa and Italy, the men she worked with were addressed as “major” or “captain” or “lieutenant,” while she the women were just called “the girls.”
Phyllis Schlafly, 92. Conservative activist and founder of the Eagle forum. She attended every Republican National Convention since 1952, helping nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and attending last year’s convention as a delegate for Donald Trump. She is most famous for opposing the Equal Right Amendment (she thought it would pave the way for same-sex marriage and women in the draft—perhaps she was right), where she taught grass-roots women to lobby their Legislatures with home-baked bread and pies. Asked once if she had any hobbies, she replied “Nuclear strategy, and Republican National Conventions.”
Abner Mikva, 90, credited by President Obama as one of his mentors. Mikva was born in Milwaukee to Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian immigrants. “We all wore the same blue wool caps and big bulky shoes and same jackets,” he said. “So everybody knew if you were on relief.” He rose to serve in all three branches of the federal government (US House for Illinois, Chief Judge of US Court of Appeals for DC District, and White House counsel to Clinton). He famously told the story of going to a Chicago ward boss when he was in his early 20s, asking for a volunteer campaign job. The cigar-chomping ward boss asked him who sent him. Mikva answered that nobody sent him. The boss responded, “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.”
Charlie Liteky, 85. A Catholic priest and army chaplain in Viet Nam, he dragged 20 wounded comrades to a helicopter landing zone while under fire and wounded himself. For this he was awarded the Medal of Honor. He left the priesthood in the 80s and married a peace activist who worked with Salvadorian refugees. In 1987 he left his medal and a letter to President Reagan at the VietNam Memorial, protesting the US policy backing dictators in Central America.
Roger Ailes, 77. Founder of Fox News, and home for conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. He learned his chops as media advisor to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George HW Bush. And he was taken down for sexually harassing women who worked for him.
Tom Hayden, 76. While a student at UofMichigan, he helped found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and wrote the first draft of its Port Huron Statement—the opening shot in the radical student movement of the ‘60s—arguing for a multiracial, egalitarian society. He led protests of the Viet Nam war, and was one of the Chicago Eight who disrupted the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. He married Jane Fonda in the 1970s, and they took some highly-publicized trips to Cambodia and North Viet Nam. Later he was elected, first to the California Assembly and then to its Senate. In his 1988 memoir, he called himself a “born-again Middle American” who regretting allowing his antiwar zeal to turn into anti-Americanism.
Norma McCorvey, 69. You probably know her better by her pseudonym—“Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade. While her case established abortion rights, by that time she had given birth and given her daughter up for adoption. In the 1980s and 90s, she was an ardent, public supporter of abortion rights, worked at a Dallas women’s clinic, and lived with a lesbian partner. But later she converted to evangelical and then Roman Catholicism, and changed her mind on both abortion and gay rights.
Business and Science
Mary Anderson, 107. An avid mountaineer, she and her husband found it difficult to get quality climbing gear at a reasonable price in the 1930s. So they started a home business in their living room that purchased inexpensive, high-quality Austrian ice-axes, and formed a co-op to sell them. Membership in the co-op was $1, and 21 people were the first members. It was called the “Recreational Equipment Co-op”—you know it as REI. Today it has 135 stores in 35 states.
David Rockefeller, 101. Grandson of John D Rockefeller, and the last of this generation. He was CEO of the Chase Manhattan bank and an advocate of “enlightened capitalism”—he favored capitalism at home and assisting economies abroad on the grounds that prosperity in the Third World would create customers for American products.
Beatrice Trum Hunter, 98. She wrote The Natural Foods Cookbook—in 1961, and shared her research on the effects of pesticide exposure with Rachel Carson. Inspired by a 1933 book that argued the population was being exposed to massive experimentation by the food and drug industries, she explored ways to cook without sugar and using whole grains and fresh vegetables—and was labeled a kook by nutritionists because she didn’t used processed foods.
Peng Chang-kuei, 97. Hunanese chef who created the recipe for General Tso’s Chicken (and you thought it was a traditional dish!). He was personal chef to Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, and fled to Taiwan after the 1949 Revolution.
Greta Friedman, 92. You probably don’t know her name, and you wouldn’t even recognize her face—but you know her photo. She is the nurse in the iconic Life magazine photo on VJ-day.
Charles “Mike” Harper, 88. ConAgra CEO. It took a heart attack and his wife’s insistence a new diet, but the result was the Healthy Choice line of packaged food.
Mike Illitch, 87. Son of Macedonian immigrants, he founded Little Caesar’s Pizza. And then he bought the Detroit Tigers and the Red Wings.
Victor Korchnoi, 85. Russian chess grandmaster, but never a World Champion. He is the only player to have won or drawn (in individual game(s)) against every World Chess Champion, disputed or undisputed, since the world chess championship resumed after World War II
Junko Tabei, 77. First woman to climb Mt. Everest, in 1975. In 1992, she became the first woman to complete the “Seven Summits” (the highest peaks on each of the continents). She was still climbing in 2015, ticking off the tallest peaks in Niger, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Oman.
Denton Cooley, 96. He performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States—and also worked on valve replacement, bypass surgery, aortic aneurysms, and developing the heart-lung machine.
Henry Heimlich, 96. The surgeon devised the emergency maneuver for treating choking in 1974. In 2016 he finally had a chance to perform it, on a woman choking on food at his senior living center.
John Glenn, 95. First US astronaut to orbit the earth, for 24 years the Senator from Ohio, and returning to space in 1998 on the shuttle Discovery, the oldest person in space. He told the story of coming to Cape Canaveral to watch the first unmanned rocket test: “We watched this thing go up and up and up… and all at once it blew up right over us and that was our introduction to the Atlas. We looked at each other and wanted to have a meeting with the engineers in the morning.”
Joe Sutter, 95. Chief engineer on the design of the Boeing 747.
Lou Harris, 95. Yes, the developer of the Harris Poll. One of the first to provide polling services directly to candidates and officeholders—most famously, to John Kennedy.
Lloyd Conover, 93. A research chemist at Pfizer, he invented the antibiotic, tetracycline.
Thomas Starzl, 90. A surgeon who pioneered liver-transplant surgery and then turned to work on anti-rejection drugs.
Alexei Abrikosov, 88. Russian-born physicist who worked at the Argonne Lab in Illinois and was awarded the Nobel in Physics for his work on superconductivity.
Vera Rubin, 88. American astronomer, she discovered the first evidence of dark matter.
Seymour Papert, 88. Co-director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and creator of Logo, a computer programming language that was designed to teach children how to use computers.
Alvini Toffler, 87. Author of Future Shock, he coined the phrase “Information Age” and predicted the shift from manufacturing based economies to knowledge and data-driven economies.
James Cronin, 84. University of Chicago astrophysicist who was awarded the Nobel prize for his work on the asymmetry in physical laws. His discoveries help explain the predominance of matter over antimatter and, as he put it, explain our own existence and our very presence in nature.
Gilbert Baker, 65. Creator of the Rainbow flag for gay rights, he taught himself to sew and make banners for gay and anti-war marches in the Bay Area. He rejected advice to patent the flag design and never made a penny from it.
Writers
E.R. Brathwaite, 104. Guyanese author, educator, and diplomat (he was Guyana’s UN ambassador), he is best known for his novel To Sir, With Love.
Richard Adams, 96. British author of Watership Down.
Peter Shaffer, 90. English playwright who wrote Equus and Amadeus. He won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and numerous Tony Awards.
Edward Albee, 88. 3-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, his plays include “A Zoo Story,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and “Tiny Alice”—none of which won the Pulitzer. As one of his characters in “The Play About Baby” put it, “If you have no wounds, how can you know you’re alive?”
Robert Pirsig, 88. Writer and philosopher. Born in Minnesota (his father was Dean of the UofM Law School), Pirsig graduated high school at age 14 (his IQ tested at 170) and enrolled in the UofM to study biochemistry. He got so tangled up in questions about the epistemology of science that he eventually failed out of his program. He enlisted in the Army at 18, served four years in Korea, and returned to earn his bachelor’s from the UofM. He then studied Eastern Philosophy at Banaras University in India and earned a master’s in Journalism at the UofM. He taught writing for a few years, but his struggle with schizophrenia and depression led him to resign. In his recovery, he wrote two books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a picaresque meditation on western metaphyiscs), which became an instant classic for a generation and earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, which in turn enabled him to write Lila (another journey, this one on a sailboat, extending metaphysics into ethics).
Derek Walcott, 87. A poet from St. Lucia in the Caribbean, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In an early poem, “Islands,” he declared his ambition “to write/ Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight/ Cold as the curved wave, ordinary; As a tumbler of island water.”
Elie Wiesel, 87. Or, A-7713 as his Auschwitz tattoo labelled him. He told his story in the novel Night, which is ranked with Anne Frank’s Diary among Holocaust writings. In his 1986 Nobel acceptance speech, he said “Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” When asked his advice for living a good life, Wiesel replied “Think higher. Live deeper.”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 84. Dissident Russian poet who criticized Stalinism and anti-Semitism, he is best known in the US for his poem “Babi Yar” which recounts the slaughter of 34,000 Jews by the Nazis just outside Kiev. It begins “No monument stands over Babi Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid.” Yevtushenko came to the US and taught at the University of Tulsa until his death.
Natalie Babbitt, 84. Winner of the Newberry and EB White awards, she wrote Tuck Everlasting, Herbert Rowbarge (“for women over 40,” she said), and Goody Hall.
W.P. Kinsella, 81. Canadian author of Shoeless Joe, which became the movie Field of Dreams, and gave us the lines “If you build it, they will come” and “Go the distance.”
Jim Northrup, 73. Minnesota author and columnist, he wrote the “Fond du Lac Follies” column in tribal newspapers and published Walking the Rez Road and Rez Road Follies.
And a number of well-known journalists also died this year.
Nat Hentoff, 91. Columnist and critic for the Village Voice. He claimed the “freedom to be infuriating on a myriad of subjects,” ranging from music (he wrote liner notes for Aretha Franklin and Charlie Parker) to the Constitution (he quit the ACLU over their support for speech codes in schools) to abortion (he turned against Obama’s 2008 candidacy because the candidate rejected legislation banning partial-birth abortion).
John McLaughlin, 89. Conservative political commentator and host of his own TV show. He missed the taping for his show the weekend before he died—the first time in 34 years.
Jimmy Breslin, 88. Author and columnist for the New York Daily News. He won several Pullitzers, and his books included The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight, a biography of Damon Runyon, and a memoir I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me. One of his most famous scoops was his interview with Clifton Pollard, the gravedigger at Arlington Cemetery, on the Sunday morning following JFK’s assassination.
Gwen Ifill, 61. Co-anchor of PBS NewsHour (with Judy Woodruff). She started in print with the NY Times and the Washington Post, then to television for NBC News and PBS on Washington Week. She moderated the vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008.
Also, two well-known cartoonists died this year:
Tyrus Wong, 106. Born Wong Gen Yeo in a farming village in China, when he was 10 he immigrated with his father to the US (he never saw his mother again). And while you probably don’t recognize his name, you know his creation. He is the artist who created Bambi.
Richard Thompson, 58. He created the cartoon “Cul de Sac” for the Washington Post—Alice and Petey Otterloop and their friends at Blisshaven Academy Preschool.
Actors and Actresses
Zsa Zsa Gabor, 99. Although she performed in 30 films, she is mostly known for her flirtatious persona and fractured English (she was born and raised in Budapest). Calling everyone “dahlink” and married 9 times, she would would toss off one-liners like “Husbands are like fires—they go out if unattended” and “I am a mahvelous housekeeper—every time I leave a man I keep his house.”
Joseph Wapner, 97. As a retired California judge, he hosted “The People’s Court” on TV in the 80s and 90s.
Barbara Hale, 94. For years, she played Della Street to Richard Burr’s Perry Mason on TV
Mike Connors, 91. Born Krekor Ohanian (his father was an Armenian immigrant), he was a basketball player in college. He starred in the 60s and 70s in the TV detective show, Mannix.
Don Rickles, 90. The master of insult comedy, Johnny Carson called him “Mr. Warmth.” Trained as a classical actor, he was a master of improv. At his first performance on the Tonight Show, Rickles started out with “Hi, dum dum…” When Carson started to ask a question, Rickles broke in, “Where does it say you butt in dummy? I’m fed up with you already, you know that?”
Roger Moore, 89. He played James Bond in 7 films, although he acknowledged that the James Bond was Sean Connery (apart from himself, of course). As he was filming his first Bond movie, his young son once asked him at a restaurant if he could beat up anyone in the room. He said he could. “But what if James Bond came in?” “I am going to be James Bond,” he replied. “No, I mean the real one,” his son replied, “Sean Connery.” Married four times, Moore once described his wives as “lovely ladies with bad taste in men.”
William Christopher, 84. He played Fr. Mulcahy on “M*A*S*H”.
Robert Osborne, 84. Protégé of Lucille Ball who escorted Bette Davis to the Academy Awards, he was the face of Turner Classic Movies and a walking encyclopedia of classic Hollywood movies.
Debbie Reynolds, 84. Star of the 1952 classic, “Singing in the Rain” and the 1964 musical, “Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
Carrie Fisher, 60. Daughter of Debbie Reynolds, with whom she had a complicated relationship. She is best known for her role as Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise, but she was also an author, including Postcards from the Edge, for which she also wrote the screenplay. She went public with her struggles with drug addiction and bipolar disorder.
Kenny Baker, 81. Since we’re on Star Wars—the 3’6” actor played R2D2. The producers said he was perfect for the role—small enough to get into the suit, and strong enough to be able to move it.”
Gene Wilder, 83. Born Jerome Silberman in Milwaukee, he studied acting at the Old Vic in England, and partnered with Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor. He is probably best known for his roles in “Young Frankenstein” (it was he who suggested the tap dance routine with Peter Boyle as the monster), “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Willy Wonka.” Mel Brooks described him as “…an Everyman with all the vulnerability showing. One day God said, ‘Let there be prey,’ and he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs, and Gene Wilder.”
Robert Vaughn, 83. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He graduated from North High in Minneapolis, and before the TV series he earned an Oscar nomination for his role in The Philadelphia Story and the next year he played the role of gunfighter who had lost his nerve in The Magnificent Seven (which, by the way, was shot without a script). He later earned a PhD from USC, with a dissertation on the impact of the House UnAmerican Activities Commission’s impact on American Theater.
Florence Henderson, 82. Matriarch Carol Brady of the TV series “The Brady Bunch”—a show so beloved that it kept coming back in various revivals. Before that, she starred on Broadway in “Oklahoma!”—both in the original run and in its 1954 revival.
Gary Marshall, 81. Creator of “Happy Days” and “Mork and Mindy” on TV, and director of the movies Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, and Princess Diaries.
Mary Tyler Moore, 80. She won 7 Emmies, 2 for her role as Laura Petrie on the Dick VanDyke show, 4 for her role on the Mary Tyler Moore show (the show won 29 Emmies in its 7-year run). She won a Golden Globe for her role in “Ordinary People” (adapted from a novel by Minnesota writer Judith Guest), and a Tony for her role as a quadriplegic in the Broadway show, “Whose Life Is It Anyway?”
Grant Tinker, 90. Second husband of Mary Tyler Moore, as partners in MTM enterprises, besides “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” they produced “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere,” and “WKRP in Cincinnati.” He also helped develop “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
John Hurt, 77. He won Oscar nominations for his role in The Elephant Man and in Midnight Express. You younger people knew him as the wand-maker, Mr. Ollivander, in Harry Potter.
Jonathan Demme, 73. A director of many faces, he directed documentaries like Stop Making Sense, comedies like Married to the Mob, crime thrillers like Silence of Lambs (for which he won an Oscar), and dramas like Philadelphia and Rachel Getting Married.
Charmian Carr, 73. Her fame came at age 21 when, playing Liesl von Trapp in The Sound of Music, she sang “16 Going on 17.”
Anton Yelchin, 27, who played Chekov in the rebooting “Star Trek” films. He was killed when his car went out of gear and pinned him against a security pillar at his home in LA.
Music
Leonard Cohen, 82. Canadian poet/songwriter/singer—which term best describes him? His work spans 4 decades. A private man who publicly explored his weaknesses and failings, he referred to himself in one of his songs as “the patron saint of envy and the grocer of despair.” A sophisticated ladies man, he spent almost a decade in a Zen monastery. As he faced his impending death (much of his last album, You Want It Darker, was recorded at his home because he was too weak and in too much pain to travel to a studio), the refrain of the title song was “I am ready, Lord.” He wrote so many wonderful songs, including “Suzanne” and “Hallelujah,” but I think “A Bird on a Wire” best captures his complicated life and the wisdom he won from it. Let’s listen.
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, 93. Conductor laureate of the MN Orchestra. He started as a pianist, but in WWII a wall, blown up by a bomb, crushed his hand. So he turned to conducting, first of the Warsaw National Orchestra, then the Cleveland, and finally the MSO. The MSO used to play at Northrup Hall at the UofM. When an interviewer asked him what could be done to improve the sound there, he replied “Dynamite.”
Pete Fountain, 86. Born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, he began playing clarinet because his doctor said it would help build his lung capacity. He developed his Dixieland style as a teenager playing in what he called his “conservatory”—the Bourbon Street clubs. His rendition of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” became the unofficial anthem for traditional New Orleans jazz. You might have listened to it when you came into the sanctuary this morning.
Roberta Peters, 86. Taken out of school at age 13 so she could devote herself to classical singing (she never earned a high school or a college degree), at age 20 she was called in by the Met on 5 hours’ notice to sing the role of Zerlina in Don Giovanni (she had been scheduled to debut the following year as the Queen of the Night in Magic Flute—another easy role). She went on to more than 500 appearances at the Met over 35 years.
Marni Nixon, 86. You don’t know her name, but you know her voice. It is her voice you hear when Anna is singing in The King and I, Maria in West Side Story, and Eliza in My Fair Lady. Sworn to silence at the time (if she ever wanted to work in Hollywood again), she later told audiences, “I allowed all these actresses to dub their bodies to my voice.” Her last film role was Grandmother Fa in Mulan.
Alwyn Lopez (Al) Jarreau, 76. 7-time Grammy winner (in 3 genres—jazz, R&B, and pop), he had Minnesota roots. He had started singing in church and high school, and had a few gigs in Chicago and New York that weren’t going anywhere. He ended up in Minneapolis at the Depot (now First Ave), where he honed his style before moving west.
Robert Velline, 73. Bobby Vee, as he was known, the 15-year-old kid from Fargo who filled in for a show in Moorhead when Buddy Holly’s plane crashed. His hits included “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “Run to Him,” “Rubber Ball,” and “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”
John (J) Geils, 71 Guitarist of his eponymous band, whose hits included “Centerfold,” “Freeze-Frame,” and “Love Stinks.”
Gregg Allman, 69. Founder of Southern Rock as a musical form, he won 7 Grammies.
Joni Sledge, 60. With her three sisters recorded the dance anthem “We Are Family.” Their song became the rallying cry for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979.
Georgious Panayiotou, 53. The English superstar, George Michael. His hits included “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Young Guns,” and “Freedom.” He was also known for his charitable activities, including helping needy children, raising money to combat AIDS, and supporting gay rights.
Sports
Gordie Howe, 88. “Mr Hockey.” The kid from a farm in Saskatchewan led the Detroit Red Wings to 4 Stanley Cups in his 25 years with the team—6 times MVP, six times leading scorer, scoring 801 goals along the way, and coming out of retirement to play with his sons in the WHA until he was 52. While he was genuinely liked, by other players as well as the fans, 3 times he led the NHL in penalties and had over 400 stitches and many broken noses. A “Gordie Howe Hat Trick” was a goal, an assist, and fight in the same game.
Arnold Palmer, 87. He won 7 majors and 62 PGA tour wins, trailed on the tour by “Arnie’s Army.” He was also a pioneer in sports marketing, leading the way to well-paying endorsements. Fellow pro, Gene Littler, said of him, “When he hits the ball, the earth shakes.”
Don Roberts, 83. Hockey coach at Gustavus, in his 33 years racked up 532 victories, the winningest coach in NCAA D III history.
Muhammad Ali, 74. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., he was arguably the greatest boxer of the Twentieth Century. An Olympic gold medalist, he won his first title in an upset of Sonny Liston. He converted to Islam and was stripped of his title when he refused induction during VietNam (his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court). He came back to the ring after a 4 year hiatus, and won championship bouts against George Foreman, Joe Frazier, and Leon Spinks. In later life he was known for his charitable work and his practice of Islam.
Dennis Green, 67. Head coach of the MN Vikings in the 90s, then of the Arizona Cardinals. In his 10 years with the Vikings he had 8 playoffs and 2 NFC championship games. His record was second only to Bud Grant.
Pat Summitt, 64. Winningest coach in Division I women’s basketball history. In her 38 seasons, she led Tennessee’s Lady Volunteers to 6 national titles and 18 NCAA Final Four appearances.
Aaron Hernandez, 27. All-American for the University of Florida and standout tight end for the New England Patriots for 3 seasons, until he was convicted of murder. He committed suicide in prison while his conviction was under appeal.
UUFM Relatives & Friends
Ruth Marie (Gerringer) McPhillips, 105. Tricia Nienow’s mother.
Henry Ziaja, 95. Kathy Brynaert’s uncle.
Marjorie Wiggins Dusek, 90. Dan Dusek’s mother.
Shirley Anne Dunn, 90. Steve Dunn’s mother.
John Tabor, 85. Sue Chamber’s uncle.
Rhoda Faye Holland Jutting, 82. Faye Mattison’s aunt.
Molly Palmer, 81 . Barb Brindle’s close friend.
Curtis Lee Peffer, 51. Laura Bealey’s son-in-law.
Natalie Coopman, 34. Henry Panowitsch’s grand-niece.
There are many others whose names I have not read—some known to most of us, some special to one of us. I will ring the bell one more time, and invite you all to speak aloud the name of those have died this year who hold a special place in your memory.