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Another comic great has died. Dom DeLuise passed away at a Los Angeles hospital around 6:00 PM Monday, reports TMZ. A film and TV staple since the mid-1960's, DeLuise was an expert foil for other performers, including Dean Martin, Mel Brooks (in six of his films) and Burt Reynolds, with whom he starred in the "Cannonball Run" flicks. In 1980, he played the lead in "Fatso," a film written and directed by Anne Bancroft, the late wife of Mel Brooks. A noted gourmand, DeLuise authored two books of his Italian recipes, and wrote several children's books. He voiced numerous characters...

<p>From the summit of Everest, the top of the world - to the intricate workings of the human heart. From outer galaxies to the dungeons of Stalin's gulag.</p> <p>Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to stand atop the world's highest mountain. Dr. Michael DeBakey developed treatments for heart disease that prolonged the lives of millions.</p>

Valley Libertarian crusader Marshall W. Fritz dead at 65 By Vanessa Colón / The Fresno Bee11/06/08 22:39:34 Marshall William Fritz, an icon of the Libertarian movement who opposed state-run schools, once ran for Congress and created a widely circulated political quiz, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday in Fresno. Mr. Fritz, 65, a writer and adventurer, began his political life as a liberal in the 1960s but shifted to libertarianism in the 1970s and clung to it to the very end. ... He established Advocates for Self-Government in 1984, now based in Georgia, to promote Libertarian ideals. He also established the...

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other guy to die. The obit says he died because of the strain "of living in this unjust country“. An avid atheist, he studied the bible and religion with more fervor than most Christians. He had strong political opinions and followed Amy Goodman’s radio broadcast “Democracy Now.” Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled. But I expect it’s more what Will Smith said to his...

Father Sir Hugh Barrett-Lennard, 6th Bt, who has died aged 89, was a greatly admired if highly eccentric priest of the London Oratory.Pursuing a busy and eclectic apostolate in Knightsbridge, he was a dedicated parish visitor, so unconcerned about his appearance that he sometimes wore odd shoes; thus attired he would knock firmly on the doors of rich and poor alike.He visited the Household Cavalry, and served as a chaplain to both the local St Thomas More school and the St Christopher cycling club, though his cassock occasionally became tangled in a bicycle wheel and had to be cut free....

Helen Carey Collins, 88, devoted, hardworking motherBy Gayle Ronan Sims Inquirer Staff Writer Helen Carey Collins raised nine children in a 2-bedroom house. Helen Carey Collins' life was marked by hard times, hard work and devotion to her family. She was sent to an orphanage when she was 2, she went to work in a factory when she was 14, and she reared nine children in a two-bedroom rowhouse in Pennsport. And after her children were old enough to take care of themselves, she returned to working in factories. Mrs. Collins, 88, died Sunday of diabetes and hypertension at the...

(Posted Vanity due to copyright restrictions) We have just learned from our local Gannett Newspaper site in Broome County NY that Johnny Hart, creator of "BC" and "Wizard of Id" died in his Ninevah NY home yesterday.

Letterman Regular Larry 'Bud' Melman Dies By LARRY MCSHANE, AP NEW YORK (March 21) - The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late night television shows has died after a long illness. The Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday. He made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: dueting with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe," doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis,...

Roland L. Ruhl, a top forensic engineer and nationally and internationally recognized expert in accident reconstruction who testified in hundreds of Chicago cases, died last week in Oklahoma. Mr. Ruhl had lived in Champaign since 1991. He was 63. He was in Purcell, Okla., at the scene of a high-profile accident he had been hired to investigate when he was fatally struck by the extended mirror of a utility-type vehicle, his family said. "He was one of the leading people in the industry and had done this thousands of times," said his daughter, Laura Ruhl Genson. "It's highly unusual. It's...

Frederic Arthur (Fred) Clark, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident on June 18, 2006. True to Fred's personal style, his final hours were spent joking with medical personnel while he whimpered, cussed, begged for narcotics and bargained with God to look over his wife and kids. He loved his family. His heart beat faster when his wife of 37 years Alice Rennie Clark entered the room and saddened a little when she left. His legacy was...

George Roche, Captain of Hillsdale Ship by Ron TrowbridgePosted May 16, 2006George Roche, president of Hillsdale College for 28 years, from l971 to l999, died May 5 at age 70. His body had been torn by diabetes most of his life. It is nearly impossible to exaggerate his accomplishments. He made Hillsdale College what it is, even today where the foundation he established remains, with the college presently building upon it. He was the captain of the ship, steering the boat and giving us mates direction. He gave the college the best faculty and the best students it had ever...

I love to read, but I'm not an avid newspaper reader. I learned a long time ago not to believe everything I see in the paper or on TV. But I have noticed lately a lot of fairly young people are mentioned in the obituary column. Some, of course, are quite young, in their 20s or 30s, but there seems to be a very large number in their 40s and 50s, and that's getting too close to home. Perhaps it is just that too many people in my own age group are dying and it re-minds me of my own...

W. Cleon Skousen died Monday, January 9. Skousen was one of the leading anti-Communists of the day. His nephew, Mark Skousen, editor of the just-released Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin (Regnery) and editor of the financial newsletter Forecasts and Strategies, has written this tribute about the man he calls “ a giant in the land.� W. Cleo Skousen: 1913-2006 "There were giants in the earth in those days....the same became might men who were of old, men of renown." (Genesis 6:4)A giant has died! My uncle Cleon, age 92, died of natural causes Jan.9, 2006. He lived a vigorous...

Ian Brunskill, editor GREAT LIVES A century in obituaries 684pp. Times Books. £20. 0 00 720168 0 Neither a memorial address nor a full-scale biography, the obituary notice is an underrated literary genre. To narrate the life, evoke the personality and assess the historical significance of someone who died only a day or so previously is no trivial task. Obituarists have to work quickly. They should avoid causing unnecessary pain to the living, but they must also be candid. They have to hazard an instant judgement, while recognizing that it may be overturned by later revelations. If they make mistakes,...

Lady Mills, the actress, playwright and novelist Mary Hayley Bell, who died on Thursday aged 94, wrote one of the West End’s most successful post-war plays, Duet for Two Hands, and a novel, Whistle Down the Wind, which was turned into a memorable film.Often drawn in her fiction to medical or psychological case histories, Mary Hayley Bell gave up a promising career as an actress in the early 1940s when she married John Mills. She became a dramatist on the ground that she could write where and when she chose to suit her family, whereas acting was bound to keep...

Don Adams, who gained worldwide fame and three Emmy Awards starring as Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, in the classic television comedy GET SMART, died at 8:02 p.m PDT, Sunday, September 25, 2005, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills. He was 82. Although he had been in failing health for more than two years due to bone lymphoma, his death resulted from a sudden lung infection for which he was hospitalized the previous day. Born Donald James Yarmy on April 13, 1923 [correct, despite frequently reported erroneous dates] in New York City to Irish-Hungarian parents, Adams hoped for an engineering career....

LOS ANGELES - Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96. Wiesenthal died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “I think he’ll be remembered as the conscience of the Holocaust. In a way he became the permanent representative of the victims of the Holocaust, determined to bring the perpetrators of the greatest crime to justice,”

I do while perusing the morning Internet is read the military obituaries in the British press, mainly The Daily Telegraph. Invariably, these write-ups mark the passing of a veteran of World War II in the kind of scope and detail, as critic James Bowman has noted, rarely found in an American paper. Sometimes, I feel compelled to save them in a file. Last summer, there was Wing Commander David Penman, 85, one of five Lancaster bombers pilots (out of 12 who started on the mission) to return in 1942 from a daring, low-flying, daylight raid on a German engine plant;...

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, a microbiologist who developed vaccines for mumps, measles, chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases, saving tens of millions of lives, died yesterday at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 85. The cause was cancer, said a son-in-law, Greg Slamowitz. Raised on a farm in Montana, Dr. Hilleman credited much of his success to his boyhood work with chickens, whose eggs form the foundation of so many vaccines. Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr. Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk, Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed...

Ernest Childers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for knocking out two German machine-gun nests in Italy in World War II, died on March 17 in Muskogee, Okla. He was 87 and lived Coweta, Okla. The cause was complications of a stroke and a heart attack, said his wife, Yolanda Chadwell Childers. On Sept. 22, 1943, after securing the beaches in Salerno, Second Lt. Childers's unit, the 45th Infantry Division, began an assault on the mountain town of Oliveto Citra. When the division came under heavy machine-gun fire, he rounded up eight soldiers for a mission, despite having slipped...

George H. O'Brien Jr., a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War who was awarded the Medal of Honor for spearheading the capture of an enemy-held hill while wounded by automatic-weapons fire, died on March 11 in Midland, Tex. Mr. O'Brien, who lived in Midland, was 78. The cause was complications of emphysema, his son George said. On the night of Oct. 26, 1952, with the Korean War well into its third year, Chinese Communist troops, backed by artillery, besieged marines holding a fishhook-shaped hill known as the Hook. If the Communists took the hill, the way could have been open...

WHEN A PROMINENT AMERICAN in any field passes on, it's front page news. Some sneer at this and say, "The same thing happens to everyone. Why is it bigger if it happens to a star?" But I think it is bigger. Yes, thousands probably die in the same way at the same time, and each is a sorrow, but the passing of a beloved icon makes us all stop and think and reflect and remember, and gives a country with too little in common a great deal in common, if only briefly. So it is with Johnny Carson. Even in...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Danny Sugerman, longtime manager of the Doors and the principal caretaker of the Los Angeles band's legend, died Wednesday in West Hollywood after a long battle with cancer. He was 50. Sugerman became involved with the Doors as a teenage fan during the group's heyday in the late '60s. He worked as a go-fer for the band, and idolized flamboyant lead singer Jim Morrison. After Morrison's death in Paris in 1971, he became increasingly involved with the surviving members' career and eventually served as their manager. At his death, he was partnered with co-manager Jeff...

With Alger Hiss dead and Gloria Steinem married, liberals were in desperate need of an "intellectual." Woody Allen was a possibility, as were Carter and Clinton, but they were all too cliché. The Left needed someone relatively unknown to the masses -- public opinion isn't good for liberals -- and someone who knew lots and lots of words. (The definitions were essentially irrelevant, but pronunciation was key.) They settled, at long last, on someone just as good as any Soviet apparatchik they could have ever found: Susan Sontag. Recently deceased at the age of 71, Sontag was to liberal elitists...

MIAMI (AP)-Will Eisner, the artist who revolutionized comic books, helped pioneer the graphic novel and taught generations of soldiers how to maintain their equipment with the "Joe Dope" series, has died. He was 87.

Frank Kelly Freas, the Hugo-Award-Winning artist who painted covers for some of the best-loved SF books of all time, died at his home in Los Angeles on Jan. 2, his official Web site reported. He was 82. Freas, who was under hospice care, died in his sleep before dawn in the company of his wife, Laura.

Larry Buchanan, the filmmaker who has died aged 81, specialised in the niche market for what he called "guerrilla filmmaking" - truly dreadful B-movies with such names as Zontar, the Thing from Venus; Curse of the Swamp Creature; Naughty Dallas and Mars Needs Women, a film which reputedly features in every list of the worst movies ever made. But even this last title found a market, and reached its widest audiences in a version dubbed into Yiddish. Buchanan combined the roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and, where appropriate, voice-over narrator. He was unashamed, even proud, of tacky production values,...

Don Miller Stroud DON MILLER STROUD, 82, died Sunday, Dec. 5, 2004 at his home. A native of San Marcos, Texas he lived in Houston for the last 53, years. Don was of the Baptist faith. He was a member of Pearl Harbor Survivors, USS Laws Association, Windsor Village Little League, and was a Veteran of WWII. Survivors include 4 daughters, Shirley Mathews and husband Henry, Donna Van Arsdall and husband Dale, Cindy Whomes and husband Jeff and Mary Thurman, 3 sons, Patrick Stroud, Eddie Stroud and wife Carolyn and Ron Stroud and wife Sandra, 8 grandchildren, Marty, Shannon, April,...

Stephen Byrne (NOTE: MY EMPHASIS BELOW)Stephen James BYRNE Steve, who lived in Edmonds, savored life. He has left us now, in a struggle to find peace, and we will miss him. But we will remember that savoring of life, his love of sailing, biking, cross country skiing, diving, hiking. His love of an incredible mountain vista, how the leaves turned gold in the fall, a great bottle of wine and a wonderful meal with friends, a long ride around Lake Washington or up Washington Pass, completing the STP bike ride for the first time, and the second. He loved his...

Maxime Faget conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft used in Project Mercury, which put the first American astronauts into suborbital flight, then orbital flight, events that paved the way for landing on the moon. After retirement, Faget helped found one of the first private space companies, Space Industries. Maxime Faget, who designed Project Mercury and contributed to every U.S. manned spacecraft Latest News about spacecraft afterwards, died at his home in Houston, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Sunday. Faget, who was 83, died Saturday. The engineer conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft...

Johnny Ramone, member of punk legends ’The Ramones,’ dies at 55 LOS ANGELES (AP) — Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band “The Ramones,” has died. He was 55. Ramone died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, his publicist said. He had battled prostate cancer for five years, and was hospitalized in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Ramone, born John Cummings, was one of the original members of the Ramones, whose hit songs “I Wanna be sedated” and “Blitzkrieg Bop,” among others, earned the band induction into the...

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer April 19, 2002, 4:42 AM EDT OSLO, Norway -- Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer who crossed the Pacific on a balsa log raft to prove his theories of human migration, has died at 87. Heyerdahl, whose book "Kon-Tiki" on the daring 101-day voyage sold millions of copies, stopped taking food, water or medication in early April after being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. He died Thursday night in his sleep at home in Colla Michari, Italy, said his son, Thor Heyerdahl Jr. Heyerdahl had been hospitalized near there in late March when he...

Fay Wray, an actress who appeared in about 100 movies but whose fame is inextricably linked with the hours she spent struggling helplessly screaming in the eight-foot-hand of King Kong, died on Sunday night at her apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She was 96. Rick McKay, a friend, announced her death. The huge success of "King Kong," a beauty-and-the beast film that opened in New York at both Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy in 1933, led to roles for Miss Wray in other 1930's films in which her life or her virtue, or both, were imperiled: "Dr....

Breaking... thats all they said..

Ernst R. G. Eckert ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Ernst R. G. Eckert, a pioneer in the sciences of heat transfer and thermodynamics, died Thursday, his daughter Karin Winter said. He was 99. Eckert was internationally known for his work with the early development of jet engines and later for discovering ways to increase rocket efficiency. Eckert spent seven decades at research and published more than 550 papers and books. He developed the "Eckert Number" - a formula used to calculate high-speed heat transfers. During World War II, he developed methods for cooling overheated jet engines at a research laboratory...

Obituaries in the News The Associated Press Published: Jun 10, 2004 George Bean : TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - George Bean, the workaholic executive who built Tampa International Airport and then ran it for 25 years, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 79. Friends remember him as a chain-smoking, no-nonsense administrator who ran the airport he called "my baby" with an iron fist, issuing edicts banning everything from popcorn sales to curbside parking. Fearing damage to the airport's new carpeting, Bean banned chewing gum. For 30 years, no one did. He also didn't like rental-car shuttle buses or people standing...

Obituaries in the News The Associated Press May 30, 2004 Romano Assante BUTLER, N.J. (AP) - Romano "Ron" Assante, who was in his fourth consecutive term as mayor, died at St. Joseph's Wayne Hospital on Friday. He was 71. Assante died of melanoma, said his daughter, Deanna Polons. The Republican had served as mayor for the past 14 years and was credited with bringing millions of dollars in grant money to the Morris County borough. The money was used to refurbish water and sewer lines and Butler's commercial area. It also built a playground, which the borough council recently named...

Obituaries in the News The Associated Press Published: May 2, 2004 Allen Cohen WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (AP) - Counterculture pioneer Allen Cohen, who helped put Haight-Ashbury on the map as founder of the San Francisco Oracle during the 1960s, died of liver cancer, according to a friend, Lee Houskeeper. He was 64. In 1967, the Oracle announced the "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden Gate Park, an event publicized as the first "be-in" that would feature Beat generation regulars like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Later the same year, Cohen urged young people to come to San Francisco for became...

Hollywood — Robert Pastorelli (search), who played the screwball housepainter Eldin on "Murphy Brown," (search) was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home in what the coroner's office said may have been a drug overdose. He was 49. Coroner's office Lt. Ed Winter (search) said Pastorelli's body was found by his assistant Monday in a bathroom. An autopsy was done, but the cause of death won't be released pending the results of toxicology tests, which could take eight to ten weeks, Lt. Fred Corral said. "It's a possible accidental death," Winter said, adding, "There was drug paraphernalia found." On CBS'...

Newspaper publishes death notice requesting that memorial gifts for the deceased "be made to any organization that seeks the removal of President George Bush from office." Status: True. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003] This was an actual obituary published in The Times-Picayune, New Orleans on 10/2/2003: Word has been received that Gertrude M. Jones, 81, passed away on August 25, 2003, under the loving care of the nursing aides of Heritage Manor of Mandeville, Louisiana. She was a native of Lebanon, KY. She was a retired Vice President of Georgia International Life Insurance Company of Atlanta, GA. Her husband,...

This weekend, I ran into an old classmate of mine from Wentworth Military Academy. We had a great time while it lasted. Although I was shocked to hear that two good friends in school were in a serious car accident which killed one, and paralyzed the other. I've been using google.com for the last three hours and trying to find out some information on the old classmates and their accident. I was wondering if you Freepers with access to Lexis-Nexis or with better experience with research could help me out. Name: Douglas Greenleaf Name: Donald Mosley Attended Wentworth Military Academy...

July 10, 2003 Chaim Engel, 87, a Sobibor Escapee, DiesBy DOUGLAS MARTIN haim Engel, who helped carry out a group escape from a Nazi death camp, driven by the need to kill for revenge and hoping to save himself and his future wife, died on July 4 in New Haven. He was 87. Mr. Engel had a stroke after a car accident and then developed pneumonia, said his daughter, Alida Engel. He lived in Branford, Conn. During World War II, Mr. Engel was a prisoner at Sobibor, a secret death camp in eastern Poland, where 250,000 people, chiefly Jews,...

Yep, she's left us

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Actor Trevor Goddard, who starred in the series "Jag," was found dead Sunday in his North Hollywood home. The coroner said the cause of death may be suicide. Goddard, who was 38, was a native of Perth, Australia. According to the Internet Movie Database, Goddard starred in the recurring role of Lt. Cmdr. Michael "Mic" Brumby in "JAG" from 1998-2001. Among Goddard's film credits were "Mortal Kombat," "Deep Rising" and "Gone in Sixty Seconds." Goddard also has a role in the upcoming Johnny Depp film "Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl."

Santa Barbara, California-AP -- A woman who was the forerunner of today's supermodels is dead. Her stepdaughter says Suzy Parker died at her home in Montecito, California. She was 69. Parker, whose face was one of the most widely-recognized in the 1950's, was known for her full red hair and beautiful bone structure. She was the signature model for Coco Chanel, and was the top earner for her time, making 200 dollars an hour. She made her film debut in 1957, appearing with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face." Her other film credits include "Kiss Them for Me"...

<p>CNN says the obituary mock-ups for Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope and other prominent figures were exposed on its website due to human error. The specific cause of error was discovered and fixed Wednesday.</p> <p>This is what it says on the Wired News headlines page. Honest. Check the link.</p>

APRIL 16--While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network's web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity's sake)....

MARK Twain said "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated", long before CNN was around to hear the quote that is now on the lips of a host of celebrities the network killed off yesterday. CNN inadvertently broadcast a series of pre-prepared obituaries of world figures, who have not departed this mortal coil. The United States network, which prides itself on staying ahead, got too far ahead by announcing on the internet that the Pope, Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Nelson Mandela, Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan had perished in what looked like a celebrity cull. The obituaries were removed...

APRIL 16--While all news organizations prepare obituaries in advance of the deaths of famous individuals, the folks at CNN inadvertently gave the Internet-surfing public a chance to preview how the network's web site would note the demise of Vice President Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, and a few other prominent figures. Until earlier this afternoon, a CNN server housed mock-ups of web pages announcing the yet-to-happen deaths. The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed (though TSG was able to grab a few of the pages for posterity's sake)....