Sometimes celebrity ages just surprise me. When she was in the midst of her Olympic glory, I was 9. In my 9-year-old mind, Mary Lou Retton was a grown up, might as well have been 30 years older than I was. So in the ensuing 40 years, I just assumed she was by now well into her senior citizenship.
Nope, only seven years older than me. 
And 8 years older than me. I had a similar thought to yours when I read that.
Charles Francis (Chuck) Feeney, founder of a duty-free store empire and the James Bond of Philanthropy who gave away practically his entire $8 billion fortune while still alive, dead at 92.
I’m sure this will be as much of a shock to other Aus/NZ death poolers as it was to me.
Comedian Cal Wilson has died at 53 after a short illness.
That’s the way to do it. Good guy.
So shocked to hear of this. Cal Wilson was already a favourite of mine when she was starting out back in NZ, we were the same age, then came to Australia at around the same time, and she interacted with me on social media a few times too. I even got to make her laugh. A tragic loss to antipodean comedy.
I (older than her) had exactly the opposite thought, that she was still in her 40’s, the eternal kid still doing triple flips and such. How da fyuck is she fifty-fucking-five?!?
Meanhoo I have top athletes that I recall watching when they were in their prime hitting 80+ and constantly shuffling off the mortal coil every year. Jack Nicklaus is 83 and can barely swing a club anymore.
What I want to know is how is it that she’s uninsured? How does that happen?
Some insurance plans max out or put limits on types of treatment. And insurance companies have people whose job it is to figure out how to not pay for stuff (forcing hospitals to have staff whose sole job is to fight to get insurance companies to pay out).
Retton just started appearing on some kind of commercials (daytime TV, my curse!) and I thought “Holy Shit! She does not look well.”
Now I know.
Have a link to one of these commercials?
Are you perhaps not an American? It’s not uncommon here.
Many people are insured through their employer. Paying a medical insurance policy for yourself is really expensive. A person in their fifties in reasonably good health might choose a relatively low-cost policy that doesn’t cover more expensive treatments. Or choose not to have medical insurance and hope they don’t need medical care.
Still, you would think that a celebrity, even a past one, would have money for insurance.
Some people are rich and famous. Some are rich and unknown. Some are poor and famous. The last one is the worst thing to be.
You don’t have to go far to find washed up actors who are still recognized who haven’t worked for years. It’s a hard transition and many don’t have other marketable skills. I don’t know MLR’s life but I know she hasn’t done much in the public spotlight. She couldn’t translate her fame into much of a career past the few years after the Olympics. It doesn’t surprise me that she wouldn’t have money. She performed in an era where you couldn’t make any money until you left the sport and then you had a short shelf life. At least now top Olympic athletes can earn money during their career.
In trying to find out what she had been doing lately work-wise, I looked at her wikipedia page and found this disheartening tidbit (bolding mine).
When the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 was introduced to the 115th Congress, she and other members of USA Gymnastics met with the bill sponsor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, with the aim of convincing her to drop the bill.
I…don’t think she looks too bad there at all.
Is that, like, irony?
Seemed fine to me too. Maybe a bit more Holly Hunter-esque than I was expecting.