Adored by generations of Red Sox fans, Johnny Pesky was so much a part of Boston baseball that the right-field foul pole at Fenway Park was named for him. Pesky, who played, managed and served as a broadcaster for the Red Sox in a baseball career that lasted more than 60 years, died Monday. He […]
David Rakoff, a humorist whose cynical outlook on life and culture earned him the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor, died Thursday in New York City after a long illness. He was 47. The statement from Doubleday and Anchor Books announcing his death did not give a cause but Rakoff had long written about his […]
Marvin Hamlisch (the award-winning composer of “A Chorus Line” and “The Way We Were”) has died suddenly at the age of 68, prompting warm tributes from Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, former U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan and dozens of stage and screen stars. Hamlisch (the musical force behind “The Sting” and numerous other movies and […]
This practice day was tougher than any other for the Philadelphia Eagles. After all, sadness, shock, and sorrow beyond anyone’s belief hovered over their training camp site on a day when they lost “a part of the family.” Garrett Reid (the troubled 29-year-old son of Eagles coach Andy Reid) was found dead Sunday in a […]
O.J. Murdock (a reserve receiver for the Tennessee Titans) was found in his car on Monday morning with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was taken to a local hospital and died at 10:43 a.m. He was 25. Murdock was found at around 8:30 a.m. outside of Middleton High […]
Sherman Hemsley (the man who brought George Jefferson to vivid life) has died at age 74. The accomplished stage actor achieved his widest fame in a role he raised to comic greatness – George Jefferson, the egotistical, strutting centerpiece of The Jeffersons. Hemsley took a part that could have been clownish and exaggerated — George […]
Space used to be a man’s world. Then came Sally Ride, who blazed a cosmic trail for U.S. women into orbit. With a pitch perfect name out of a pop song refrain, she joined the select club of American space heroes the public knew by heart – Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong and Aldrin. Ride, the first […]
Jessica Ghawi wrote on her blog in June that she had a new-found appreciation for the preciousness of life after surviving the Eaton Centre shooting. Little more than a month later, she would be dead, killed in Colorado by a man wielding a gun, something she had so narrowly avoided in Toronto. Ghawi (24) was […]
A masked gunman has shot dead 14 people and wounded more than 50 others at a Batman film premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in the US – police said. A total of 14 people have been killed and 50 wounded in a mass shooting at a cinema in Denver during a premiere of the […]
Kitty Wells (the “Queen of Country Music” who opened the door to a host of female country music headliners) died on Monday at her home in Nashville of complications from a stroke. She was 92. Among those mourning her passing was Loretta Lynn, whose own rise to popularity came after Wells, who paved the way […]