People you were surprised to find out are dead

For some reason, I was thinking about Robert Palmer the other day (singer from the 80s, had big hits with “Addicted to Love” and “Simply Irresistable” and wondered what he had been up to lately.

Turns out, not too much.

He died in 2003 at the age of 54. I don’t remember hearing about it at the time, and if I did, it obviously didn’t stick.

It got me thinking about what other famous people had passed while I remain blissfully ignorant of it. Rather than look up random people on Wikipedia, I thought I’d see if this has happened to anyone else.

Tupac

Not really on topic, but every time I hear Phil Hartman’s voice on the Simpsons, I’m surprised and taken aback again that he is dead.

What are you talking about? He just played Coachella!

Abe Vigo…

never mind

Uhm…wow, yeah, this. o.o That’s a surprise.

The last similar surprise I can remember is Steve Allen, but rather than almost a decade after the fact, I found out only a year or two after he’d passed.

Yeah, 2003 was a bad year for Power Station fans. Tony Thompson died about 6 weeks later.

When I was in my early teenage years, I thought Christopher Pettiet, who played Jesse James on Young Riders was about the most handsome boy alive. I was surprised and saddened when I decided to look him up on imdb a couple of years ago and learned that he died of a drug overdose in 2000.

If you would have asked me which one is dead, Gilligan or The Professor, I would have probably bet that it was The Professor.
How did I miss Bob Denver dying?

Martin Sheen’s wife

Me!

Falls over*

Sarah Jane from Doctor Who.

The guy from Weezer.

How did you miss that? The entire board went into mourning.

Well, the Sarah Jane fans did. Nobody else counts.

I usually keep up on these things via Celebrity Deathpool and People magazine and such.

But Jerry Reed slipped by me. He died in September 2008 when I was in the hospital and I never heard about it until a few months later when magazines were doing their end-of-the-year tributes to celebrities who had died that year.

Wait, do you have a cite for this? As far as I am aware, she is still alive – or were you referring to a fictional wife?

One I just found out about today (because I hadn’t thought of him in probably 25 years, even though I met him once):

Animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams.

I believe Raskolnikov means **Martin Short’**s wife.

Wow, that is exactly the name I came in here to post!

My nearly 2-year-old son LOVES Jerry Reed and I thought it would be cool to send Mr. Reed a video of my kid going bonkers over “Are you From Dixie?”

Then I learned he was dead, so I guess I won’t be doing that.

He crashed his coconut plane into the side of a mountain.

I avoid Doctor Who threads for spoiler purposes.