How does Bear Bryant end up in every Alabama fan's conversation? He died.
AHHHH, but I knew him when he was alive. In fact, when he fell in his home in 1979 and spent time in a hospital in Northport, Alabama, I was working there as the chief of security. Some idiot phoned in a death threat and I was suddenly posted as his personal bodyguard. He couldn't move from his hospital bed, so it was no big deal.
My pleasure came from some of the brief conversations I held with him late at night, and in watching him and the head nurse do BATTLE over the fact that he was forbidden to smoke...pure oxygen in use you know. I'll bet that was one of the few arguments he ever lost on that subject!