“And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.”
I read a quote a while back that said a person dies two deaths in their life. Once, when they die and again when the last person who remembers them dies. That's always stuck with me. With that in mind, Throwback Thursday will pay homage to those we've lost but not yet forgotten with the hopes of placing a memory in someone anew so they can live on a bit longer. Here's this weeks 5 who are gone, but not forgotten.
1. Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)
Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll.
He reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon.
His memoir A Reporter's Life is poignant, entertaining and humorous storytelling at its best. Highly recommended.
A Reporter's Life By Walter Cronkite2. Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004)
“He was just simply the greatest stand-up comedian there ever was.”
3. Eva Cassidy (1963-1996)
“I cannot listen to her music much. But I do in the autumn. I have to listen to her when I see the falling leaves. But I have to be on my own, and very, very quiet.”
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American singer and guitarist. In 1992, she released her first album, The Other Side. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C. She died of cancer at 33, without a record contract, never having got further in life than temporary jobs and rented flats a bus ride from the house where she grew up.
Two years after her death, her versions of "Fields of Gold" and "Over the Rainbow" were played on BBC Radio. Following the overwhelming response, a camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow", taken at Blues Alley in Washington was also shown on BBC. Shortly afterwards, the compilation album Songbird climbed to the top of the UK Albums Charts, almost three years after its initial release. The chart success in the United Kingdom and Ireland led to increased recognition worldwide. Her posthumously released recordings, including three UK number-one records, have sold more than ten million copies. Her music has also charted top 10 positions in Australia, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.
4. Sue Grafton (1940-2017)
“With every page I wished: Kinsey Millhone, be my friend. Beyond that [she] showed me how a female series heroine could work ... I thought: Yes. Give me more. And let me learn to write fiction that aspires to be as good.”
Sue Grafton was a trailblazing writer of American detective stories. Her 25 novels featuring the private eye Kinsey Millhone, which began with A is for Alibi in 1982 and extended through the alphabet to Y is for Yesterday (2016), established the hard-boiled female detective as a viable alternative to the males who had dominated the genre.
Novelist Jeff Abbott said what I loved most about Grafton's leading lady, “Kinsey was a different kind of character,” he said. “She was modern. She had problems like mine, like living between pay cheques and sometimes spending too much time alone; a rich inner life. A lot of the story was about her life, in addition to the case she was trying to solve.”
This interview is a bit long but I feel it gives real insight into who Sue Grafton was as a person and as an author:
5. River Phoenix (1970-1993)
“He was, without question, the best of that group of actors that came up at that time. Movie stardom is not just acting talent. It’s not just your ability to move an audience. It’s a combination of a lot of things. And he had it. He died so young that it was a real theft. A real robbery.”
