I remain amazed about Dick Van Dyke.
On opening of the post, … oh hey, look, it’s Maha…. what a co inky dink!
There can’t be that many people associated with the JFK assassination left, but Marina Oswald is still with us at 84.
Perhaps these three count:
Julie Christie is 85.
Shirley “Partridge” Jones is 91.
Update: Feldman turned 97 this week.
With Squeaky Fromme being mentioned in the news today for not being dead, I thought I would check what other former members of the Manson family are still alive. Turns out a surprising number of them; besides Fromme, there’s Susan Bartell, Bobby Beausoleil, Mary Brunner, Bruce Davis, Sandra Good, Clem Grogan, Patty Krenwinkel, Dianne Lake, Gypsey Share, Ruth Ann Smith, Leslie Van Houten, and Tex Watson. Pretty surprising considering the murders were fifty-six years ago.
Not that surprising, IMO, since they were in their late teens to early twenties back then. Wasn’t Charlie the only one of the “family” over 30 at the time?
Yep. I keep thinking ones going to drop soon.
Dianne Lake was the youngest.
The singing duo Guy & Ralna (of Lawrence Welk Show fame) are still alive at 84 and 83, respectively.
I had to go look up Charles Manson himself to see if he was still alive. (He’s not, died in 2017.) I honestly couldn’t remember.
The older he got, the less people wanted to hear from him. He had a little resurgence of high interest. Did interviews, etc. Eventually, he just kind of lingered in prison and eventually died. He was supposed to get married, apparently?
His crazy stuff was partly him hamming it up for cameras as well. I believe I heard that sometimes in prison, he seemed quite calm and coherent. At least comparitively.
I remember when Tom Snyder interviewed him back around 1981 or 82. I always wondered how much of the “Manson” we saw was an act.
I celebrated when he died. I actually wrote to him back in the late 70s. He wrote back.
Well, what did he say???
It’s a mixed bag. He was kind of crazy. Kind of weird. Kind of just a huge loser. He had bad breaks in life, but a lot of other people didn’t turn out like he did and had the same or similar bad breaks.
Truly. Charles Manson and my own dad were born in small Midwestern cities, a few weeks apart, to single mothers who each resorted to prostitution to survive. Both boys were arrested for theft: Manson for canned food; my dad for blankets. As a result, my dad was shipped off to a pretty straightforward, well-run military school, while Manson landed in a Catholic boy’s home where the priest invited the older boys to rape him on the first day. My dad became a pretty good machinist and draftsman, and loyal if imperfect husband and father. Manson spiraled spectacularly.
He wrote a bunch of gobbledygook that apparently worked on his followers but I couldnt understand it. I’d used my friends address for safety purposes and her mom found out and told me to tell him not to write there anymore.
I did, and he called me a little sneak.
I saved the letter for awhile in case.
Somebody needs to make a sitcom with this cast: John Astin, Peter Bonerz, Todd Bridges, Pam Dawber, Joyce DeWitt, Micky Dolenz, Barbara Eden, Tina Louise, and Michael McKean.