Category: obits

Rodney King Dead

Rodney King died before he turned 50. His beating, painful as it was, followed by the acquittal and subsequent riots, promoted awareness of racial inequities in our country. Too bad we need chaos to promote learning, not only about ourselves, but the national ethos we support.

Would have liked to see him beat the demons and survive. The great experiment in which America has been engaged suffered a setback when Mr. King became ten-minutes-famous, but it advanced as people who never thought about the problems realized how deep and pervasive they were and are.

 

Paul O’toole Be Dead


Someone found Paul dead on a grate in downtown Burlington, probably in the same place I had found him time and time again. I just wasn’t around this time. Many tried to help him, too. They weren’t there either. Come on now; we all got lives. His sister, Mary, and Matt Young had a plan in place to put him back in treatment. He went to FAHC, I am told, and wasn’t able to deal with the protocols. So he died, needlessly, or so it seems. So it goes, Vonnegut would say.

 

 

No one has published a book for do gooders, especially those who don’t expect and aren’t interested in thanks for their charity. We do mitzvot because we can, not because we want something in return. Let us thank others for the chance to give, before we ask for thanks from those we serve.

 

 

Others out there who are also in need should not suffer the same fate. While we can never do enough, we should not stop trying, despite the best efforts of those in trouble to resist or obstruct. Our community is only as good as our committment to those least desirable to help.

You might think our friendship wasn’t worth the effort! Could be. But, I will do it again, gladly. And may God comfort his family among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. Amen, brother.

Amy Winehouse, Dead at 27

 

 

What did she say in F*uck Me Pumps, “… don’t be upset if they call you a skank.” Only two albums, one of which I, yes, me, own. Great ink. But don’t compare her to the others who only made it to 27 (Cobain, Janice, Jimmy, Jim, Brian Jones). I still cry for Lennon whose longer life would have made the world betta, betta, betta. When your obit can only refer to one great song whose point is that you should have gone to rehab and didn’t, I cannot mourn her, especially with what happened in Norway.

 

Sherwood Schwartz, Dead at 94

Sherwood Schwartz gave us Gilligan and the show’s theme song. Who didn’t love Gilligan? Like Robinson Crusoe, I never wanted them to get off the Island. Before that he worked with Jim Backus on I Married Joan; the Nelsons on Ozzie and Harriet and Red Skelton on the Red Skelton Show. He must have been a very funny guy. Lived a long life and productive life, too. But, what is more important, is that I never heard of him, yet his TV work had an enormous effect on my life.

Don’t remember any people of color or ethnics on the show. He created the shows in the 50’s through the mid 70’s. Men didn’t have real jobs; if they did, they weren’t very good at them. The Captain was incompetent, Gilligan was a fool, and Ozzie didn’t have recognizable employment. The women looked good and spoke and acted stupidly. Everyone got along in the end, even if they were of different social and economic classes. There were people who acted retarded. They were accepted also.

 

Jack Kevorkian, Dead at 83

Jack Kevorkian encouraged people to take control of their lives at a time when that life might not have been worth living. Others say that people cannot do that; alleging all lives have merit despite the drain on family, friends, and resources and the depression that comes with not being able to function as one once did, pain or no pain, awareness or no awareness. He served 8 years in jail for helping people end lives that were more difficult to endure than to terminate, a feat accomplished by the system who amended laws to make him subject to them.

Some religions make saints out of people who perform miracles that sometimes ease suffering and pain. Dr. Jack qualifies not only due to his mission, but the fact he had to do time and then was forced to renounce his faith to earn his freedom. Then, ironically, he died the common way, in a hospital bed, without anyone’s help.

Stanley Bleifeld, Sculptor, Dead at 86

I visit the Lone Sailor regularly. Watch him watching the water, waiting to begin his mission. Stanley Bleifeld knew him better than I could.

He stands in the cold.

His eyes always open.

The wind sometimes picks up his jacket which is a composite of five naval tops. Some in the service don’t like seeing his hand in his pocket.

The sun plays tricks with his skin, some of which comes from famous Naval vessels.

He likes the sun, too.

Birds don’t always show his broad back respect.

Not his position to complain.

Harry Coover, dead at 93 as is Paul Baran, 83

Harry Coover didn’t set out to make it easier for the average person to join two things together for life. Paul Baran probably didn’t forsee the democratic effects of the internet, yet alone how his work would bring people together, either. Both helped people do things we would not have been able to do before their discoveries, without requiring us to belong to a privileged class or know very much. Both made their finds working for the defense industry. In their own ways, they made the world more secure.