Robin was too young for Buffalo Bob [as she mentioned], and I was too old, though my younger sister must have watched it, because I do know most of the characters: Clarabell the Clown, Chief Thunderthud, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, Phineas T. Bluster, Flub-a-Dub, and, of course, Howdy Doody himself.

 Some characters for children last longer, like Frances the badger, in books illustrated by Lillian Hobam, who then wrote and drew the books about Arthur the chimpanzee. She died this year, as did Helen Mayer, the creator of Dumbo, the young flying circus elephant. But more memorable still, to most kids who grew up in the last twenty-five years, are the characters created by Jeffrey Moss, Oscar the Grouch and the Cookie Monster, both from the TV series, Sesame Street. In case you have ever wondered, it was he who wrote the contemporary aria, Rubber Ducky, and I Love Trash, too.

 Other song-writers died, including the original singing cowboy, Gene Autry, who not only sang a lot of hits, but wrote some, too, like "Here Comes Santa Claus." I don’t suppose their names would mean much here, but the people died who wrote the theme songs to Route 66 (Bobby Troup), I Love Lucy (Marco Rizo), and Mighty Mouse (Marshall Barer), as well as the top-40 hits Mockingbird (Charlie Foxx), The Battle of New Orleans (Jimmy Driftwood), and Shake, Rattle, and Roll, often cited as the beginning of rock and roll.

 Country singers Roy Rogers, Boxcar Willie, and of course Gene Autry died, along with rock and rollers Carl Perkins and Dusty Springfield, jazz vocalists Joe Williams and Betty Carter, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and Frank Yankovich, the Polka King.

A part of why I enjoy my file of obituaries are the smaller stories imbedded in the larger ones. For instance, there was this song that someone mailed Gene Autry, and his wife thought it was cute, so having a little extra recording time one session, he recorded it. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is the second-best-selling record of all time.

 I know there are people who wait eagerly each year to hear the list of those in my file marked "other" – the inventors, entrepreneurs, and others who changed the way life is, in some unexpectable but fundamental way. Robin mentioned a couple of them, like Juan Metzger, the man who put fruit into yogurt; or Richard McDonald, who co-founded fast food, and came up with the arches himself.

 Then there was Myron Scott, who invented the Soap Box Derby, all by himself; he named the Corvette automobile, too. And Hazel Bishop, who invented kissable lipstick; later, after leaving the Hazel Bishop company, she lost the right to the public use of her own name. And finally my favorite this year, Irving (Fishbones) Stevens, a one-time hobo from Maine, who invented Irving’s Fly Dope, an insect repellent made from pine tar and other ingredients, which he bottled himself. The newspaper account noted that it was "as effective as it was rank and it remained a staple of campers and fisher[s] during the black-fly season until 1991…." It may not be on the market any more, but for anyone who ever used the stuff, the memory of its odor is eternal.

Karl Prindle invented moisture-proof cellophane in 1926, and soon it was being used to wrap candy, cigarettes, and all sorts of products that one could open with what’s called a zip-tape strip, also invented by Prindle. And talk about changing lives: Jonathan Postel helped create the Internet.

I’ll move on soon, I promise, but shouldn’t we note the death of Johnny Roventini, the bellhop who shouted "Call for Philip Morris" on radio, print, and TV ads, his famous voice the result of a pituitary gland disorder that halted his grown at twelve, before his voice changed; or Shirley Polykoff, the advertising executive responsible for the line, "Does she or doesn’t she" for Clairol, which was the question her future mother-in-law had asked Ms. Polykoff’s fiance, regarding her, in Yiddish.

There were others, like the man who created Wall Drug (Ted Hustead). But I’ll close this section of folks who don’t quite fit into any of my other categories with Mario Zacchini, who provided the year’s pithiest quotation, no doubt included in every obituary of him, as well as in this column by my colleague, John Gibbons:

"With respect for a life well lived, I note the death of Mario Zacchini, the ‘Human Cannonball.’ From the ‘20s into the ‘40s, he thrilled circus crowds worldwide by sliding down the mouths of cannons only to catapult over fairgrounds at speeds up to 100 mph, then landing – usually – in a net hundreds of feet away. Born to a performing family in Italy, the Zacchini Family’s act created such a sensation that it became the grand finale at the Ringling Circus….

"Mario’s career ended after he broke some ribs and his shoulder after being launched over a Ferris wheel at the New York World’s Fair in 1940. Later he went into the carnival hot dog and hamburger business.

"’The net is a very small thing up [when you’re up] in the air,’ Mario told a reporter….

"In a wise and classic epitaph, Mario’s obituary quoted him [as often saying], ‘Flying isn’t the hard part. Landing in the net is.’

John concluded, "Often I think of his words. So might we all. Amen and blessed be."

 In the world of religion, we already know of one person who died, my friend Carl Seaburg, minister, hymnist, poet, anthologist, historian, author, humorist, and for many years the director of information at the UUA. Carl was a man both of strong opinions and of great gentleness. The UUA’s Executive Director (Kay Montgomery) wrote that "Carl was, simply, one of the most gracious people I’ve ever known…. And…he was also courageous about offering loving criticism when he thought it appropriate."

 Another UU colleague, Walter Kring, died, another man of many interests. Besides being minister of our big church in Manhattan for years, and then minister here in South Natick, he was a prominent Melville scholar and an accomplished potter.

 There were bigger shots who died: the Catholic rebel Bernard Haring, the Protestant rebel Paul van Buren, not to mention the New Orleans voodoo priest known as Chicken Man. Also on the outer edges of religious thought, the psychologist Shelton Kopp and the mystic Carlos Casteneda both died, and that may not mean much to you, but I was in graduate school in the late ‘60s, oh my goodness, how big a deal they were. How times does move on.

I won’t even try to describe the work of other authors, either, though the list includes novelists like William Gaddis, Iris Murdoch, Allen Drury, and Dorothy West, essayists like Cleveland Amory and Elia Kazin, British poet laureate Ted Hughes, social critic William White, and others.

 Each year I also spend less time recounting sports greats who have died, as I recall a certain glazing over of the eyes of the previous year’s congregation. But one of those greats was one of the people whose deaths evoked the greatest response in the popular media, Joe DiMaggio. I think only King Hussein’s death drew greater notice.

 Reading all the press about them both, I was struck by a common theme, which is odd, since Hussein never hit a homer, nor did DiMaggio rule a country for decades. But they both lived in the public eye, under intense scrutiny, with what seemed to be dignified grace. Writers said "Personally courageous, modest, and unfailingly polite, King Hussein was known for his political tolerance…." (Judith Miller) "In a neighborhood of brutal thugs, he operated with a basic decency." (Thomas Friedman)

 And then one said, "In a country that has idolized and even immortalized its 20th century heroes…, no one more embodied the American dream of fame and fortune or created a more enduring legend than Joe DiMaggio. He became a figure of unequaled romance and integrity in the national mind because of his consistent professionalism on the baseball field, his marriage to … Marilyn Monroe, his devotion to her after her death, and the pride and courtliness with which he carried himself throughout his life." (Joseph Durso)

 Now in fact, Hussein was also something of a playboy, and aspects of DiMaggio’s real life were unsavory at best. But the two of them came close enough to being what Jordanians and Americans wanted and needed, that we let them get away with that, chose not to notice, really, because they were willing to work so hard and so well at seeming to be who we wanted them to be.

 A teammate of DiMaggio’s (Lefty Gomez) said, "He knew what the press and the fans and the kids expected of him, and he was always trying to live up to that image…. He knew he was Joe DiMaggio and what that meant to the country." (Bob Herbert)

 As the singer Paul Simon wrote, "In these days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his silence."

 Now it is said that what lay behind the silence and the privacy was some pretty racy living. Harder to hear, his biographer says DiMaggio hit Monroe. But we honored the silence and privacy in return for the grace and dignity. "He was, at every turn, our idea of the American hero – one man we could look at, who made us feel good." (Newsweek 3/22/99)

 And I think there is another factor still in the esteem that Hussein and DiMaggio were gladly given by their respective grateful countries. Yes, it matters a lot that they were talented and successful at their jobs, and dignified and gracious in the public eye. But another part of the great attention paid to their lives and their deaths is the sense people had that they were basically decent people, whether or not they were.

 That struck me in part because I was aware that in a number of other cases this year, that seemed to be a quality that was celebrated as much as anything else – not that folks were perfect, but that besides their other accomplishments, they seemed to have had good values, they seemed to have been nice people.

 This was certainly the case when the members of the ministers’ study group he created met and set aside time to talk about Carl Seaburg. And the trajectory of Carl’s life and career was anything but smooth, including some time he got in some trouble and was forced to spend outside active ministry. But there was not a one of us, I assume, who did not smile, at least inside, at the pleasure of having known such a good and gentle (and opinionated) soul.

 Probably everyone has heard a minister, priest, rabbi, or imam – and for most of you, that’s probably been me – make the point that when family and friends recall the life of one just died, while they may speak admiringly of the person’s professional triumphs and devotion, that will rarely match their admiration for the person’s character and small, persistent acts of caring and regard.

 Well, that same fact kept showing up in this year’s obituaries, too. If you read about Gene Autry, you can’t but be impressed by all the hit songs he sung or wrote, all the movies he starred in, all the smart business moves he made with his money. But you also get the sense that this was a basically decent fellow, one you would probably like as much as those who worked with him.

 And that’s even more true of his former rival as top cowboy star, Roy Rogers, born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati, an American hero to rank up there with Joe DiMaggio. When Life magazine asked boys just after World war II whom they most wanted to emulate, the threesome tied at the top were Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Roy Rogers.

 As a writer observed, "In midcentury America…, the redoubtable Mr. Rogers was the ‘King of the Cowboys,’ his wife and co-star Dale Evans was ‘Queen of the West’ and Trigger, Mr. Roger’s wonder horse, ‘the Smartest Horse in the Movies.’

 "Following their exploits on the Double-R-Bar Ranch, along with those of Buttermilk, Miss Evans’ buckskin horse, and Bullet, their German shepherd, was an essential rite of growing up." (Richard Severo) By the way, I have heard people speak the same way of Howdy Doody, and if you’re of another certain age, Hopalong Cassidy could have played that role. (And does anyone but me remember either Big John and Sparky or – and some of you must – Froggy the Gremlin? Let’s talk.)

While Foggy the Gremlin had no values any higher than Claribell’s (being heir on Howdy Doody to Froggy’s throne as the monarch of madness, in the tradition of Harpo Marx), Roy Rogers did have values. I quote: "A practitioner of minimal violence, he much preferred to shoot the pistol out of a gunslinger’s hand than actually harm the man, his vileness notwithstanding." (Richard Severo) And he and Dale Evans, his wife and co-star, never kissed on screen.

But to get more serious, Dale and Roy did raise their blended family; added a child of their own creation, three adopted children, and a foster child; and endured through the tragic deaths of three of their children. Until a biographer arrives to do his or her worst, Rogers seems to have been not unlike his screen personae: "a low-key, well-intentioned, dependable good guy. He never bragged or postured. Always protective of the weak and brave, he was kind to animals, God-fearing and slow to anger." (Richard Severo)

Hmmmm. It is a description close enough to the bones of this kid of the ‘50s to make me wonder if I shouldn’t reassess my understanding of human moral development. It may well be that Roy Rogers is a part of who I am, along with my parents and teachers and Froggy the Gremlin. I am curious how you weigh the place in your development that cultural icons played, Carole Lombard or Albert Einstein, Audie Murphy or Eleanor Roosevelt, Lena Horne or Dwight David Eisenhower, Gordie Howe or Carol King, Martina Navratalova or Oscar the Grouch, Boy George or Darla.

At least I like Roy Rogers’ values, though we are of different faiths.

I have a serious section with which to close, dealing with values again, but first for those who count on hearing the news from me, let me note that among entertainers, Robin and I have already mentioned Shari Lewis, Senor Wences, Richard Kiley, Flip Wilson, Buffalo Bob Smith, and the cowboy actors Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Lest they slip away without your noticing, other actors of either sex ("actress" having become for the moment passé) whom we might cite are Kirk Alyn, the first movie Superman; Anthony Newley; Peggy Cass; Susan Strasberg; Irene Harvey; E. G. Marshall; Roddy McDowell; Maureen O’Sullivan; and, of course, the immortal Huntz Hall.

 Three important film directors died: Stanley Kubrick, Arika Kurosawa, and Alan Pakula, as did the movie critic Gene Siskel, the unique dancer Peg Leg Bates, the TV announcer Ed Herlihy, the burlesque star Lili St. Cyr, the comedian Corbett Monica, and the film writer Garson Kanin. Roy Forrest died, who by odd and passing quirk became the country’s first TV personality in 1939, when there were fewer than a thousand sets. So did the actor Robert Young, who found success on television as the star of "Father Knows Best" and "Marcus Welby, M.D." And perhaps most significantly, at least to those who care about American dance, the choreographer Jerome Robbins died, too.

Robbins’ death drew much press attention, about as much as the deaths this year of two Supreme Court justices, Harry Blackmun, a conservative who moved quickly to the left, forever to be remembered most as the author of Roe v. Wade; and the persistently civil and centrist Lewis Powell.

Other folks in the political and judicial world who died included ‘60s black power advocate Stokeley Carmichael; Henry Hampton, whose award-winning documentary recorded the civil rights struggle; congress folk Mo Udall, Floyd Haskell, Al Gore Sr., Lawton Childs, presidential advisor Clark Clifford, and former LA mayor Tom Bradley, and even couple Republicans, Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and our own former governor, Frank Sargent. When Sargent won re-election, I was working at Boston City Hall for his opponent, Mayor Kevin White, but I have to say, maybe no decision in the last thirty years has influenced our area more significantly, and for the good, than Sargent’s closing down plans for the inner belt and the interstate through Roxbury.

But I want to close with a handful of heroes and a one-time great American villain, Alabama governor, presidential candidate, and bigot supreme, George Wallace, whose 1963 inaugural address as governor pledged, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He died this year, having attempted in his latter years to moderate the image he created with racist antics like blocking the first two black students at the University of Alabama.

In 1979, he apologized to civil-rights leader John Lewis. After Wallace’s death, Lewis wrote, "George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his efforts to redeem his soul and in so doing to mend the fabric of society." (Newsweek, 9/28/99)

Still, few had done more to rend than fabric than he. "During the Wallace years, at least 10 people were died in racially motivated killings in Alabama. Governor Wallace and his flamboyantly inept and drug-addled public safety director … responded mainly by disrupting the Federal investigations into crimes like the bombing that killed four little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963." (Howell Raines)

The younger among us, who may think of such virulence as ancient history, need to know that it was as recently as 1972 that Wallace finished second in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin, then first in Michigan and Florida. But the day before, he was shot and partially paralyzed by a young deranged man, a drifter who had earlier stalked candidate Nixon. Though Wallace won the Maryland primary, anyway, his threat as a presidential candidate was over. But the impact of his hate-mongering on our national life was profound and lasting.

I mention him to cite in closing three heroes of justice from that earlier, ugly era, who fought against the likes of Wallace and his kind. There were many more, most of them black, poor, nearly powerless, brave and determined women and men whose obituaries do not make the national press. These three were southern whites, but unlike Wallace, they used what power they had on the side of justice and progress. All died this year.

Honor be to Dan Duke, who as a young prosecutor in Georgia in the early ‘40s successfully prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members for flogging a black man to death, and then angrily confronted the governor who had indicated he would grant the men clemency and forced him to back down.

As an Assistant State Attorney General in 1946, he successfully fought to revoke the Klan’s charter, and successfully campaigned against an anti-black, anti-Jewish Klan offshoot with Nazi connections. During this time, in the face of threats, he sometimes spent nights in jail, changing cells during the night for protection. He went on to become a judge.

Honor be to Judge John Minor Wisdom, "the New Orleans legal scholar who wrote opinion after opinion that desegregated courtrooms throughout the Deep South and put blacks on juries, in the voting booth, in state legislatures and in integrated classrooms….

"His wide-ranging judicial opinions over more than four decades kept public schools open in Louisiana when officials tried to close them rather than integrate, ordered Florida to desegregate even its reformatories and told sports authorities to desegregate the boxing ring." (Jack Bass)

It was that weird: there was a Louisiana law forbidding boxing matches between blacks and whites. There was a southern tradition to tell every candidate’s so-called race on the ballot. Wisdom voted against that, lost, but the Supreme Court upheld his position.

Like two of the other three judges, together known as "the Four," who did so much to overcome segregation, Wisdom was a life-long Republican, as Duke was, too. It was Wallace who was a Democrat. But there are Democratic heroes, too. Honor be to Carl Elliott, a congressional representative "from rural Alabama who sacrificed his political career to the principles of social justice."

The obituary goes on, "Shunning racial demagogy, he often found himself casting crucial votes on social legislation to advance Federal initiatives in education, health and civil right. But as the forces of segregation and states’ rights, spearheaded by Gov. George Wallace, came to dominate Alabama politics, they drove him from office in 1964 after eight terms in the House." (Wolfgang Saxon) He died as he was born, in poverty.

Honor be to everyone who bears the cost of trying to make the world more just. Or more kind. Or more beautiful or fun. Honor be, and thanks, and in their going, farewell.
 
 
 
 

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