I didn't know they had died!

Cafe Society
1

I didn’t have anything to add to the I didn’t know they were still alive! thread, but I just found out a fact that inspired me to start this reverse thread.

I’ve just been watching an episode of “Roseanne” on TV, and started idly IMDBing some of the cast. I was shocked to learn that Glenn Quinn, the guy who played Mark (Becky’s husband) had died several years ago of a drug overdose!! I sure missed that one, and it’s a bit of a shock, because I kind of grew up with all those characters. Even more surprising is learning that the guy was actually Irish – he had to hide his accent in the course of the show. Who knew!

Anyone else have a story of someone you thought was alive, but just learned has been dead for a while?

2

In his defense he was only 15, but my best friend was excited about the possibility of meeting JRR Tolkein at DragonCon in Atlanta… in 1982. Luckily for him, I was nicer about it than I would’ve been today.

3

Gregory Peck, didn’t seem like that long ago someone told me he had a holiday home in Derry, Northern Ireland. Of course, it wasn’t all that long ago he actually died and not too long after that the person who told me died also…

4

For someone who was my favorite SF author, it came as a complete shock to me c. the year
2000 to find out that Roger Zelazny had died 5 years earlier. Somehow nowhere in my
various internet haunts of the time did I ever find out (and I must have missed the newspaper
obituary, tho given that he wasn’t famous on the Heinlein/Bradbury level I wouldn’t be surprised
to see that it was typically buried on the 2nd-to-last page of the classifieds).

5

I didn’t hear that Mitch Hedberg had died until about a year after his death (which was 29 March, 2005).

6

Our family likes to tease my mom about how, in around 2000, she exclaimed, “Alan Ladd is dead?!?!”

He ODed in 1964.

Now that’s our catchphrase anytime we are surprised by something we really should have known.

7

It was very confusing at the time due to the timing of his death.

8

I only learned via the Straight Dope that former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer was dead. Bummer.

mm

9

If you want to hear him with his actual accent, check out the first season of Angel. He plays Doyle. (the difference is so complete that I didn’t recognize him at all until I was told, so it’s possible you might have even seen him as Doyle already.)

10

From this thread, I didn’t know that Benjamin Orr from the Cars had died.

11

Wow, I didn’t know Mark and Doyle were the same person, nor did I know he was dead until reading this!