The Rest In Peace & Remembrance Thread #2

Gumby creator Art Clokey dies at 88
Sat Jan 9, 4:15 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Art Clokey, the creator of the iconic cartoonish
clay figure Gumby, died in his sleep on Friday at his home in Los Osos,
California, at age 88, after battling repeated bladder infections, his son
said.

Clokey, 88, invented the whimsical green clay character Gumby in the early
1950s that debuted on the "The Howdy Doody Show" and went on to become the
star of his own successful television show, "The Adventures of Gumby."

Bendable creation Gumby and Pokey, his horse friend, became popular
figures in the 1960s, and still remain favorites among many kids, adults
and collectors around the world.

Clokey was born Arthur Farrington in Detroit in October 1921 and grew up
making mud figures on his grandparents' Michigan farm, the Los Angeles
Times said, citing his son Joseph. "He always had this in him," Joseph
told the Times.

Gumby was the outcome of an 1953 experimental clay animation film by
Clokey called "Gumbasia." Clokey also created and produced the Christian
TV series "Davey and Goliath" in the 1960s.

Clokey has said he based Gumby's sloping head and hair on a picture of his
father, who died in a car accident when the filmmaker was 8 years old.

Clokey was later adopted by music teacher and composer Joseph W. Clokey,
who taught him the arts and took his new son on adventures in Mexico and
Canada.

Joseph Clokey told the Times that those journeys and Clokey's love of
fossil hunting helped inspire Gumby's own adventures.

The lovable character saw renewed popularity in the 1980s after comedian
Eddie Murphy mimicked Gumby as a gruff cigar-smoking character for
"Saturday Night Live."
 
Source: EW: Jay Reatard dies at age 29
Acclaimed indie rocker Jay Reatard has died at age 29. His label, Matador Records, confirmed his passing in an online post: “We are devastated by the death of Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., aka Jay Reatard. Jay was as full of life as anyone we’ve ever met, and responsible for so many memorable moments as a person and artist. We’re honored to have known and worked with him, and we will miss him terribly.” Details on the date, place, and cause of his death were not immediately available.


Source Memphis Fox 13: Local Musician Jay Reatard Passes
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., better known to his fans as Jay Reatard, passed away on January 13th in his sleep.

Lindsey, 29, was a Memphis music legend in the garage rock scene.

Lindsey had a lengthy musical resume from band like The Reatards to The Lost Sounds, but was best know for his self titled project Jay Reatard.

Goner Records writes, "It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard. Jay died in his sleep last night. We will pass along information about funeral arrangements when they are made public."

Reatard put albums out on Memphis label Goner Records, but ultimately landed a coveted contract on the Matador record label that put out the likes of Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.

"Jay was as full of life as anyone we've ever met, and responsible for so many memorable moments as a person and artist. We’re honored to have known and worked with him, and we will miss him terribly," adds Matador Records.
 
R&B singer Pendergrass dead in Pa. at 59

NEW YORK – R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who had been one of the most electric and successful figures in music until a car crash 28 years ago left him in a wheelchair, has died of colon cancer. He was 59.

This is a long story so For More On This Story Click Here.
 
Chicago Bears' Defensive End Gaines Adams Dies At 26

GREENWOOD, S.C. (AP) -- Gaines Adams, a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears who was an all-American at Clemson, died Sunday in South Carolina, the Bears said. He was 26.
The team said Adams died Sunday morning at Self Regional Hospital in his hometown of Greenwood, S.C.
Adams went into cardiac arrest at his family's home early Sunday morning, said Marcia Kelley-Clark, chief deputy coroner for Greenwood County. He was pronounced dead about an hour later, she said.

An autopsy conducted Sunday showed Adams had an enlarged heart, a condition Kelley-Clark said can often lead to a heart attack. But Adams' relatives didn't know about it.
"Nobody was aware of any kind of medical condition," Kelley-Clark said.
Toxicology tests are being run by the State Law Enforcement Division, though drug use was not suspected as a factor in Adams' death. However, those results probably will not be available for at least two months, Kelley-Clark said.

Adams was selected fourth overall in the 2007 NFL draft by Tampa Bay, but was traded to the Chicago Bears in October 2009 for a second-round pick in the 2010 draft. He had not been able to live up to expectations that he would revive the Buccaneers' once-feared pass rush, having just 17 tackles and one sack in 15 games this season.
Adams fell short of the benchmark set by Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, who said at the start of training camp that Adams would be considered a "bust" if he didn't reach double digits in sacks.
The 6-foot-5, 258-pound defensive end was well-known among Clemson fans for breaking up Wake Forest's field goal try and returning it for a touchdown in 2006 to defeat the Demon Deacons.

Adams said during training camp that he welcomed the challenge posed by Morris, who also called out the third-year pro after Adams began the season with lackluster performances in the first three games.
"In football you need that. Players tend to get in their own element and do things that they want to do. They need to be called out sometimes. He's the coach. Whatever he says, goes," Adams said in early August.
"I take it as a challenge. Being drafted fourth overall, that comes with the territory. It's year three for me. Obviously it's time for me to step up."
With the Bears, Adams played brief stints on defense. He made five tackles.
"We thought the player was a quality player, and if we get him in our system with our coaches, we have a lot of confidence we can make it work," Chicago general manager Jerry Angelo said after the Bears acquired Adams.

Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher told the Chicago Tribune that Adams' death was "crazy."
"I didn't know him that well because he came in during the middle of the season," Urlacher said. "But I did know him. I still saw him every day when I went into work. It's just weird.
"I had a teammate die when I was in college. You just don't know how to handle it. It's just sad, man. It's a bad deal."

​
 
Country music hitmaker Carl Smith dies at 82

FRANKLIN, Tenn. – Carl Smith, a country music hitmaker of the 1950s and 1960s known for his dynamic voice and good looks, has died. He was 82.

Williamson Memorial Funeral Home says Smith died Saturday at his Tennessee home.

Smith had 41 chart singles during the 1950s, including the hits "Are You Teasing Me," "Back Up Buddy," and "Hey Joe!"

He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2003.

Smith was a member of the Grand Ole Opry but left in 1956 to try his hand at acting. He appeared in two westerns, "The Badge of Marshal Brennan" and "Buffalo Gun."

From 1964 to 1969, he hosted 190 episodes of "Carl Smith's Country Music Hall" on Canadian television.

Smith, the father of country artist Carlene Carter, married fellow singer Goldie Hill in 1957. She died in 2005.
 
'Spenser' novelist Robert Parker dies at age 77

BOSTON – Robert B. Parker, the blunt and beloved crime novelist who helped revive the hard-boiled genre and branded a tough guy of his own through his "Spenser" series, has died. He was 77.

An ambulance was sent to Parker's home in Cambridge on Monday morning for reports of a sudden death, said Alexa Manocchio, spokeswoman for the Cambridge police department. The death was of natural causes and was not considered suspicious, Manocchio said.

A publicist for Parker's publisher, Penguin Group (USA), confirmed the death but had no further details.

Prolific to the end, Parker wrote more than 50 novels, including 37 featuring about Boston private eye Spenser. The character's first name was a mystery and his last name emphatically spelled with an "s" in the middle, not a "c." He was the basis for the 1980s TV series "Spenser: For Hire," starring Robert Urich.

A native of Springfield, Mass., Parker openly worshipped Raymond Chandler and other classic crime writers and helped bring back their cool, clipped style in such early "Spenser" novels as "The Godwulf Manuscript" and "God Save the Child." Within a few years, in "Looking for Rachel Wallace" and "Early Autumn," he was acclaimed as a master in his own right.

"Hard-boiled detective fiction was essentially dead in the early '70s. It was considered almost a museum thing," said Ace Atkins, author of "Devil's Garden," Wicked City" and several other novels. "When Parker brought out Spenser, it reinvigorated the genre. For me and countless others, we owe for him and reinventing Chandler's work and bringing it to the modern age. I wouldn't have a job now without Robert Parker."

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Singer Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright's mother, dead

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle, who enjoyed a long, successful musical partnership with her sister and was the mother of musicians Rufus and Martha Wainwright, has died at the age of 63, her sister said on Tuesday.

McGarrigle had been suffering from clear cell sarcoma, a rare kind of cancer. She died on Monday.

"Sadly our sweet Kate had to leave us last night. She departed in a haze of song and love surrounded by family and good friends. She is irreplaceable and we are broken-hearted. Till we meet again dear sister," Anna McGarrigle wrote on the sisters' website Kate & Anna McGarrigle

The pair broke into the limelight with their song "Heart Like a Wheel", which U.S. singer Linda Ronstadt turned into a major hit in 1974. It featured on their first album, "Kate and Anne McGarrigle", which was released in 1975 and chosen as best album of the year by music magazine Melody Maker.

The sisters -- born near Montreal in French-speaking Quebec -- recorded a total of 10 albums, some of them in French. They were known for their inventive style and intricate vocal harmonies when they sang together.
McGarrigle was married to U.S. singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, with whom she had Rufus and Martha. The pair later divorced.
 
Since there were two listed above I will just put this one here.

'Love Story' author Erich Segal dies aged 72

LONDON – Erich Segal, the Ivy League professor who attained mainstream fame and made millions sob as writer of the novel and movie "Love Story," has died of a heart attack, his daughter said Tuesday. He was 72.

Francesca Segal said her father died Sunday at his home in London. She said he had suffered from Parkinson's disease _a neurological condition that affects movement — for 25 years. His funeral was held in London on Tuesday, she said.

Segal was a Yale classics professor and screenplay writer when he turned a proposed movie about two college students — preppy Oliver and smart-mouthed Jenny — into a novel. Published in 1970, "Love Story" was a weeper about a young couple who fall in love, marry and discover she is dying of cancer. It was a million seller guaranteed to make readers cry and critics scream.

A much bigger audience caught up with the film version, which starred Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw. Directed by Arthur Hiller, with a plaintive, Henry Mancini-composed theme song that wouldn't quit, "Love Story" gained seven Oscar nominations — including one for Segal for writing the screenplay, as well as for best picture, best director and best actor and actress. It won one Oscar, for best music.

Segal also wrote a sequel, "Oliver's Story," published in 1977, and made into a film, with O'Neal again in the lead male role. Segal would later say that Oliver was based in part on a couple of Harvard undergraduates who later became quite well known: Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones. (He disputed reports that Jenny was based on Gore's future wife, Tipper).

He was adored, and mocked. The famous "Love Story" line — "Love means never having to say you're sorry" — became a national catchphrase, but provided endless fodder for jokes. John Lennon countered that "Love means having to say you're sorry every 15 minutes."

Even O'Neal parodied his earlier role. In the comedy "What's Up Doc?", he responded to the famous line with the riposte, "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

A rabbi's son, born in New York City in 1937, Segal also had a long, distinguished academic career in classics, gaining a doctorate at Harvard and teaching at Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth while writing era-defining screenplays and novels. He worked on surreal popular works like the 1968 screenplay to the animated Beatles film "Yellow Submarine" while also publishing works on Greek tragedy, Latin poetry and ancient athletics.

At his funeral, his daughter Francesca spoke of the knowledge that had been destroyed by Parkinson's disease.

"In (Tom) Stoppard's Arcadia, Thomasina mourns the burning of the library of Alexandria and the losses of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides — all of Aristotle's own library destroyed. And the image has for years made me think of my father, all his erudition and knowledge and wit and puns and stuff consumed in the flames of neurological disease," she said in a eulogy she delivered at his funeral and later e-mailed to the AP.

In the eulogy, she added: "That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last 30 years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was — a blind obsessionality that saw him pursue his teaching, his writing, his running and my mother, with just the same tenacity. He was the most dogged man any of us will ever know."

Segal was an honorary fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University.
He is survived by his wife, Karen James, and daughters Francesca, 29, and Miranda, 20.
 
Taco Bell founder, Glen W. Bell Jr., dies
Published: Jan. 19, 2010 at 8:30 AM

RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif., Jan. 19 (UPI) -- The founder of Taco Bell restaurants, Glen W. Bell Jr., has died at his home in California at age 86, the company's Web site announced.

The announcement was posted Sunday and did not give details of the entrepreneur's death, The New York Times reported.

Bell added tacos to the menu of Bell's Hamburgers and Hot Dogs in 1951, having run the drive-in restaurant since the late 1940s to cater to the car culture of San Bernardino, Calif.

Bell's hamburger joint was only a few miles away from the first McDonald's, the Times said.

At Bell's restaurant, the 19 cent tacos were such a hit, he opened Taco Tia, an all-Mexican restaurant in 1954. With his partner reluctant to expand after three restaurants, Bell opened El Tacos in 1957. After an expansion to four restaurants, Bell struck out on is own with Taco Bell, which opened in 1962.

In 1978, with 868 restaurants, Bell sold the business to PepsiCo for about $125 million -- a sizable return on the original $4,000 it took to open the first Taco Bell in Torrance, Calif.
 
Source EW: 'Survivor: Palau' contestant Jennifer Lyon dies from breast cancer

According to People, Survivor: Palau contestant Jennifer Lyon died in her Oregon home Tuesday night at age 37.

The reality star, who appeared on the series’ 2005 installment, was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer soon after the show ended and chose a radical bilateral mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy and tamoxifen, a drug used to prevent recurrence of the disease.

Lyon was an ardent breast cancer prevention supporter and hosted many events to raise money for research.
 
Founding member of Chi-Lites dies at 67
January 22, 2010
From the Chicago Sun Times:

Robert “Squirrel” Lester, a founding member of Chicago’s famed R & B group
“The Chi-Lites, has died following a battle with cancer. He was 67.

Mr. Lester once sang with The Chanteurs, a band which included Eugene
Record and Clarence Johnson

The three men later formed the Hi-Lites with Marshall Thompson and Creadel
“Red” Jones. By the mid-'60s, Johnson left the group, and it changed its
name to the Chi-Lites in a nod to its hometown.

The Chi-Lites scored lasting hits with “Have You Seen Her” and “Oh Girl.”

Funeral arrangements were pending.
 
'Guys and Dolls' actress Jean Simmons dies at 80

SNIP For more Click Link.

LOS ANGELES – Jean Simmons, whose ethereal screen presence and starring roles with Hollywood's top actors made her a mid-century film icon, has died at age 80.

The actress, who sang with Marlon Brando in "Guys and Dolls," costarred with Gregory Peck and played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, died Friday at her home in Santa Monica, her agent Judy Page told the Los Angeles Times. She had lung cancer.

Shortly after her divorce, Simmons married Richard Brooks, who had directed her in "Elmer Gantry" and would again in "The Happy Ending." Their marriage, which produced a daughter, Kate, ended in divorce in 1977.
 
:( I loved her, saw her in may movies when I was a kid. Beautiful and great acting. WOW, 80, that's pretty old. I remember her riveting performance in "Elmer Gantry" amazing. may she RIP~
 
"All My Children" actor James Mitchell dead at 89

LOS ANGELES – James Mitchell, who for nearly three decades played gruff patriarch Palmer Cortland on the ABC soap opera "All My Children," has died, his longtime partner said Sunday night.

Mitchell died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, partner Albert Wolsky said. Mitchell had suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years, complicated by a recent bout of pneumonia.

Mitchell appeared in more than 300 episodes of the popular soap from 1979 until a 40th anniversary episode this month. He was a regular on the show until 2008.

Funeral plans were pending.

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Pernell Roberts, Adam Cartwright on "Bonanza," dead at 81
Pernell Roberts, an original cast member of one of television's classic westerns, "Bonanza," died at his Malibu home Sunday. He was 81.

His death from cancer was confirmed by his wife, Eleanor Criswell.

Roberts was known to fans as the handsome and smart eldest son of the Cartwright clan, Adam. He played the role from its inception in 1959, but tired of the role after six years and left the show to act in films and resume a stage career that had brought him a 1955 Drama Desk Award for best actor in a production of "Macbeth." In 1979, he returned to series television in the popular "Trapper John, M.D.," playing the title character, Dr. John McIntyre, for the show's entire seven seasons.
 
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Author Louis Auchincloss dies at age 92

NEW YORK – Louis Auchincloss, a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction whose dozens of books imparted sober, firsthand knowledge of America's patrician class, has died. He was 92,
The author's grandson, James Auchincloss, said Wednesday that Auchincloss died Tuesday, a week after suffering a stroke.
Louis Auchincloss' wife, Adele, an artist and environmentalist, died in 1991. They had three sons.

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'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" sold a million copies and became an alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass.
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'Poltergeist' actress Zelda Rubinstein dies at 76

LOS ANGELES – Zelda Rubinstein, the 4-foot-3-inch character actor best known as Tangina, the psychic who tries to calm a family inhabiting a haunted house in the 1982 horror film "Poltergeist," has died. She was 76.
Her agent, Eric Stevens, tells the Los Angeles Times that Rubinstein died Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital. Stevens says she recently suffered a heart attack.

For More Info On Each See the Links Provided!!!
 
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