Those We Lost in 2017

2017 is now behind us. As with every year, the world lost many notable people...most notable for positive contributions but some notorious for bad deeds. The list of those who died in 2017 was very long.  I've presented a cross section here representing various professions and geographic locations. The names are listed in chronological order.

Jan 12: William Peter Blatty, 89. A former Jesuit school valedictorian who conjured a tale of demonic possession and gave millions the fright of their lives with the best-selling novel and Oscar-winning movie The Exorcist.

Jan 16: Gene Cernan, 82. A former astronaut who was the last person to walk on the moon.

Feb 8: Peter Mansfield, 83. A physicist who won the Nobel Prize for helping to invent MRI scanners.

Feb 18: Norma McCorvey, 69. Her legal challenge under the pseudonym "Jane Roe" led to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision that legalized abortion but later she became an outspoken opponent of the procedure.

Feb 25: Bill Paxton, 61. A prolific and charismatic actor who had memorable roles in such blockbusters as Apollo 13 and Titanic along with his work in One False Move and other low-budget movies and in the HBO series Big Love. Complications due to surgery.

Mar 6: Robert Osborne, 84. The genial face of Turner Classic Movies and a walking encyclopedia of classic Hollywood.

Mar 10: Robert James Waller, 77. His best-selling, bittersweet 1992 romance novel The Bridges of Madison County was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later into a soaring Broadway musical.

March 16: Carl Clark, 100. A California man who was recognized six decades after his bravery during World War II with a medal of honor that had been denied to him because he was black.

March 18: Chuck Berry, 90. He was rock 'n' roll's founding guitar hero and storyteller who defined the music's joy and rebellion in such classics as Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen, and Roll Over Beethoven.

Mar 22: Francine Wilson, 69. Her trial for killing her abusive husband became a landmark spousal abuse case and the subject of the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed. Complications from pneumonia.

Apr 6: Don Rickles, 90. The big-mouthed, bald-headed comedian whose verbal assaults endeared him to audiences and peers and made him the acknowledged grandmaster of insult comedy.

Apr 19: Aaron Hernandez, 27. The former New England Patriots tight end was sentenced to life behind bars for a 2013 murder and committed suicide in prison.

Apr 24: Robert M. Pirsig, 88. His philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance became a million-selling classic and cultural touchstone after more than 100 publishers turned it down.

May 14: Powers Boothe, 68. The character actor known for his villain roles in TV's Deadwood and in the movies Tombstone, Sin City, and The Avengers.

May 18: Roger Ailes, 77. He transformed TV news by creating Fox News Channel, only to be ousted at the height of his reign for alleged sexual harassment.

May 19: Stanislav Petrov, 77. A former Soviet military officer known in the West as "the man who saved the world" for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile warning at the height of the Cold War. I recently saw a segment of a tv show about this—Soviet radar detected a launch of five missiles from the U.S. headed toward Russia. Petrov had the responsibility of determining a glitch or declaring an attack and about one second to make the decision to launch Soviet missiles or not. He reasoned that the U.S. would launch hundreds and maybe even thousands of missiles if they were attacking, not a mere five missiles. He declared it a glitch which is exactly what it turned out to be.

May 23: Roger Moore, 89. The suave star of several James Bond films and prior to that he portrayed Simon Templar, The Saint, in several films. He also co-starred with Tony Curtis in a 1970s television series, The Persauders.

May 27: Gregg Allman, 69. A music legend whose bluesy vocals and soulful touch on the Hammond B-3 organ helped propel The Allman Brothers Band to superstardom. Formerly married to Cher. Cancer.

May 29: Manuel Noriega, 83. A former Panamanian dictator and onetime U.S. ally who was ousted as Panama's dictator by an American invasion in 1989.

Jun 9: Adam West, 88. His straight-faced portrayal of Batman in a campy 1960s TV series of the same name lifted the caped crusader into the national consciousness. He also voiced several animated characters, most notably Mayor West on the Family Guy series.

Jun 16: Helmut Kohl, 87. The physically imposing German chancellor whose reunification of a nation divided by the Cold War put Germany at the heart of a united Europe.

June 19: Otto Warmbier, 22. An American college student who was released by North Korea in a coma after almost a year and a half in captivity.

Jul 10: Betty Dukes, 67. The Walmart greeter who took the retail giant all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the largest gender bias class-action lawsuit in U.S. history.

Jul 15: Martin Landau, 89. The chameleon-like actor who gained fame as the crafty master of disguise in the 1960s TV show Mission: Impossible, then capped a long and versatile career with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi in 1994's Ed Wood.

Jul 25: Marian Cleeves Diamond, 90. She was a neuroscientist who studied Albert Einstein's brain and was one of the first to show that the brain can improve with enrichment.

Aug 8: Glen Campbell, 81. The affable superstar singer of Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman whose appeal spanned country, pop, television, and movies.

Aug 20: Jerry Lewis, 91. The manic, rubber-faced showman who rose to fame in a lucrative partnership with Dean Martin, settled down to become a self-conscious screen auteur and found an even greater following as the host of the annual muscular dystrophy telethons.

Aug 22: Tony de Brum, 72. He saw the effects of rising seas from his home in the Marshall Islands and became a leading advocate for the landmark Paris Agreement and an internationally recognized voice in the fight against climate change.

Sep 6: Kate Millett, 82. The activist, artist, and educator whose best-selling Sexual Politics was a landmark of cultural criticism and a manifesto for the modern feminist movement.

Sep 19: Jake LaMotta, 95. An iron-fisted battler who brawled his way to a middleweight title and was later memorialized by Robert De Niro in the film Raging Bull.

Sep 20: Liliane Bettencourt, 94. The L'Oreal cosmetics heiress and the world's richest woman.

Sep 27: Hugh M. Hefner, 91. The Playboy magazine founder who revved up the sexual revolution in the 1950s and built a multimedia empire of clubs, mansions, movies, and television.

Sep 30: Monty Hall, 96. The genial TV game show host whose long-running Let's Make a Deal traded on love of money and merchandise and the mystery of which door had the car behind it.

Oct 2: Tom Petty, 66. An old-fashioned rock superstar and everyman who drew upon the Byrds, the Beatles and other bands he worshipped as a boy and produced new classics such as Free Fallin', Refugee, and American Girl.

Oct 3: Jalal Talabani, 83. The Kurdish guerrilla leader who became Iraq's president after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein and who embodied hopes for a unified, peaceful future.

Oct 8: David Patterson Sr., 94. A Navajo Code Talker who used his native language to outsmart the Japanese in World War II.

Oct 24: Robert Guillaume, 89. He rose from squalid beginnings in St. Louis slums to become a star in stage musicals and win Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the sharp-tongued butler in the TV sitcoms Soap and Benson.

Nov 19: Charles Manson, 83 (pictured above). The hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after orchestrating the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969.

Nov 19: Della Reese, 86. The actress and gospel-influenced singer who in middle age found her greatest fame as Tess, the wise angel in the long-running television drama Touched by an Angel.

Nov 21: Joseph L. White, 84. A psychologist, social activist, and teacher who helped pioneer the field of black psychology to counter what he saw as rampant ignorance and prejudice in the profession. Heart attack.

Nov 30: Jim Nabors, 87. The Alabama-born comic actor who starred as TV's dim but good-hearted Southern rube Gomer Pyle, a character first introduced on The Andy Griffith Show and later spun off to his own series of Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. who constantly surprised audiences with his twang-free operatic singing voice.

Dec 4: Christine Keeler, 75. The central figure in the sex-and-espionage Profumo scandal that rocked Cold War Britain.

Dec 19: Clifford Irving, 87. His scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s and stands as one of the all-time literary hoaxes.

Dec 20: Cardinal Bernard Law, 86. The disgraced former archbishop of Boston whose failure to stop child molesters in the priesthood sparked what would become the worst crisis in American Catholicism.

Dec 28: Sue Grafton, 77. She was the author of the best-selling alphabet series of mystery novels.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2018.