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.
