My friend Chuck. Hands down. In terms of celebrities, though, I think it’s a tie between John Ritter and Phil Hartman.
I just happen to be reading this thread while listening to Cowboy Mouth’s song “Joe Strummer.”
Weird. :eek:
I don’t do the weepy chick thing. Mostly because I’m not a chick…
But I was deeply saddened by the passing of the former PM of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Now there was a statesman. The last of his breed.
Carl Sagan. Issac Asimov. Both great minds I miss a lot.
Sagan had a way of enjoying life (and understanding it) like nobody else.
Asimov. What a brilliant mind and equal sense of humor.
I mourn both. 
Wow. What a great thing to say Quick. You should have heard the eulogy his son Justin gave him; or maybe you did. Regardless of your political allegiance, I don’t think there was a dry eye in Canada.
Funny how we are so affected by the death of people we don’t know and have never met. John Lennon was a big one for me. Don’t think I cried at the time, but whenever “Imagine” was played on the radio for a while after it was hard to choke back the tears.
How about Johnny Carson? That too was, and still is, emotional.
I wasn’t even born when John Lennon died, and I still mourn his death. Carl Sagan is another such man - someone I wish I’d had a chance to meet (btw, has anyone ever gotten teary-eyed while watching the movie Contact, absed on the awsome book he wrote? At the end when it’s about to go into the credits, and it focuses on the sky and says “For Carl”? I cry like a baby every time).
Personally, though, it’s someone I lost recently, a family friend who was so close he was almost LIKE family. He was only 36 years old when he died about a week and a half before Christmas of '05 in a car accident (he was driving his car to work and someone lost control of their car and killed him). We found out he died because it was in the newspaper - no one called us and told us.
At his funeral they parked his Harley in front of the pulpit. I think he would have liked that. They also showed a video of him talking about his experiences in life, which was something they had to do at his church, which kind of pandered to bikers. I often worry that I’m going to forget what his voice sounded like, and then I remember that there’s videos of him around.
I’ve also lost two very close teachers. I have a memorial tattoo for one of them - he was there for me when my dad wasn’t. Leukemia is a horrible way to go. So is melanoma. I wish they could have had more peaceful deaths, all three of them.
~Tasha
Having read relatively little of Hunter S. Thompson’s work, I was surprised at how much his checkout bothered me. I think the world was a better place with his unique perspective on current events, and I didn’t realize that until it was gone.
Me, too, for Jerry Orbach and Spalding Grey. And John Denver.
I cried when Julia Child died (and I hadn’t read her biography at the point, or I probably would have cried more. What an amazing woman!) Julia was my muse when I was learning to cook. I think I have every one of her cookbooks except the first and last one. I’ll forever kick myself that I had the chance to get her autograph and didn’t.
The pro wrestler Brian Pillman. He was only 32 when he died in 1997 of congestive heart failure, and I had followed his career from the very beginning. I still have his very first WCW televised match on video somewhere. He represented an era in my life, when a couple of my friends would come over every Sunday, we’d have dinner and watch 'rasslin… never as a SPORT, but as a chance to watch well built, good looking men running around half nekkid. We each had our favorite we’d root on, and Brian was mine
I also have the memorial they did for him on tape. And I have not watched wrestling since.
I have been fortunate enough not to have any close friends or acquantances kick the bucket, that I know of.
Peter Jennings death was a big shock to me. He was the only news guy I actually enjoyed watching.
Mervyn Peake. We’ll never know how it was all going to wrap up.
I wish J.K. Rowling would die before the seventh book is finished. Then everyone would know my pain.
As far as celebs go, I cried over Jerry Orbach, Hunter S Thompson and Kirby Puckett. They just seemed like people that the world needed more of.
From a personal perspective, I lost a close friend in January of 2003 to an OD that was “witnessed” partially over a web cam. Being able to read chat logs from his last few moments was overwhelmingly sad.
I found out when the guy I’d just started dating (and have now subsequently married) sent me a link to some blog article about the OD. “Hey, didn’t you know this guy?”
He had no idea that the kid was like a younger brother to me.
The internet notoriety of the OD made it impossible to do anything but be reminded of the loss on a daily basis for what felt like forever.
Holy cow, that was a hard loss. I still miss the hell out of that kid.
John Garang. My brother Allan began working in Ethiopia as a Peace Corp volunteer in the mid-60’s. He got involved in the Sudanese Civil War and befriended John Garang. Over the years, their paths separated and crossed. Allan joined USAID and went to Mauritania, Guinea, Moscow, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Senegal and Zambia. He began his last post before he retires as the Deputy Director in the Southern Sudan, a new mission and a new chance to build a future with his southern Sudanese firends. John earned his Ph.D in agricultural economics, rose through the ranks and continued to fight for a united Sudan. John was elected as Vice-President of the Sudan in 2005, a first for a southern Sudanese. There was such hope and promise.
A month later, John died in a helicopter crash. What a cruel blow.
I would have said Douglas Adams and Hunter Thompson before Friday, when I lost my friend Cristin. She became part of my group of friends in high school, almost ten years ago. We went out for a while, and years later, we talked about what a good thing it was that we’d stayed friends after breaking up. I’m so glad we had those talks. She died very suddenly when a seizure stopped her heart. She was very kind and patient, and a really true friend. A few of us had always wondered how someone with such a delicate side was going to make it in the world, but in the last few months it looked like that was starting to happen. I got to write her obituary on Tuesday, and now I’m giving her parents advice on starting a scholarship in her memory. I hope they get that up and running as soon as they can. The weekend was almost undescribable, especially the wake, and keeping busy and trying to bring something good out of this is one of the few things that has helped.
Hunter Thompson and Joe Strummer are the two that still get me fairly often. I’ll be listening to music, or thinking about something or other, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I’ll remember: Joe Strummer’s dead. Or Hunter Thompson shot himself. It’s a brand-new shock every time, as though it just this moment happened.
I’ve lost a few acquaintances who had affected me profoundly, but those were never as shocking. Most of them were older and in extremely poor health for a while before they died. One, though he was only 30 and healthy, was a tremendous substance abuser; I wasn’t expecting him to die on that particular day in 2005, but I wasn’t really expecting him to make it to age 40 either.
Frank Zappa
Hunter Thompson
Douglas Adams
Phil Hartman
John Belushi
My list has three gifted geniuses with much more to give, my favorite athlete as a kid and one of my close friends from the Navy. All died well before their time.
- John Lennon
- Thurman Munson
- Jim Henson
- John Belushi
- Dan Linwood {a good friend from my time in the Navy who went from healthy as a horse and strong as an ox to dead from Leukemia at age 25}
Not in the same category as they had a long and good life, but I mourned the passing of Robert Heinlein, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio and Jimmy Doohan quite a bit.
My second favorite author, the great living Yankee and Baseball player before his death and Scotty’s passing affected me as a form of lost childhood.
Jim
Mississippi bluesman, my good friend, photo-tolerant subject, and father figure. The Wiki bio does not do him justice. When I first visited him in MSPI, he was living in a run-down place, no indoor plumbing, 1988. Twas a bit of culture shock, for a white middle class professor’s kid. But, even with that poverty, Rule was brilliant, wise, and amazing, heading a large family of 13 kids, and musically so powerful. He could mesmerize an audience with his songs, yet let everyone feel they were part of a greater family. He welcomed me into his family, and put up with my camera clicking away. I drove him on tour, and spent so many hours talking, walking around strange cities, enjoying his company, his great sense of humour that transcended stupid cultural boundaries with such finesse.
In later years, he was embraced by younger Hip folks, and, more than any other elder blues musician, did rap and collaborations with all kinds of musicians. He was always up for something new, quite flexible, and, in recording, unified all the musicians with his open and generous personality. He was a unifier, a wise man, a Griot , in the true sense. (That cite is a bit of a read, but shorter definitions were lacking)
Rule Burnside taught me how to be decent human being, regardless of dire straights presented in the worst of circumstance. His sweetness and power and generousity is an example to me for life. In his PR, he sometimes is presented as an outlaw characture. Not at all. He is an example of someone who was raised in hard times, whose great self got beyond it, shouted out, and travelled the world because that music was so wonderful, as he was so wonderful.
Yikes, I’m tearing up now. Thanks, RL, for all given; I miss him.
Oddly enough, Princess Diana’s untimely death affected me deeply. I cried the morning I awoke to the news. I’m not one to go mushy over the life or death of celebrities so it was odd to have been affected like that.
John Belushi I loved him for being a clown. Now I am angry at him for having been a fool. He threw it all away.
Fred Astaire The world is less fun without him. He looked good in a hat. Could ‘dance, a little.’
Johnny Cash He was a contemporary of Elvis. We never thought Johnny got too silly.
John Candy and Phil Hartman. I was crushed when I realized there would never be another Candy movie. And that the Simpson’s also would never be the same without Phil.