Country singer Glen Campbell passed away at the age of 81, after a long and public battle with Alzheimers.

I always loved Glen Campbell! Grew up listening to his music!

Dick Gregory, 1932–2017
 

Dick Gregory, 84, Dies; Found Humor in the Civil Rights Struggle
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(Dick Gregory in 2016. He believed that within a well-delivered joke lies power. Credit Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic, via Getty Images)

Dick Gregory, the pioneering black satirist who transformed cool humor into a barbed force for civil rights in the 1960s, then veered from his craft for a life devoted to protest and fasting in the name of assorted social causes, health regimens and conspiracy theories, died Saturday in Washington. He was 84.

Mr. Gregory’s son, Christian Gregory, who announced his death on social media, said more details would be released in the coming days. Mr. Gregory had been admitted to a hospital on Aug. 12, his son said in an earlier Facebook post.

Early in his career Mr. Gregory insisted in interviews that his first order of business onstage was to get laughs, not to change how white America treated Negroes (the accepted word for African-Americans at the time). “Humor can no more find the solution to race problems than it can cure cancer,” he said. Nonetheless, as the civil rights movement was kicking into high gear, whites who caught his club act or listened to his routines on records came away with a deeper feel for the nation’s shameful racial history.

Mr. Gregory was a breakthrough performer in his appeal to whites — a crossover star, in contrast to veteran black comedians like Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley and Slappy White, whose earthy, pungent humor was mainly confined to black clubs on the so-called chitlin circuit.

Though he clearly seethed over the repression of blacks, he resorted to neither scoldings nor lectures when playing big-time rooms like the hungry i in San Francisco or the Village Gate in New York. Rather, he won audiences over with wry observations about the country’s racial chasm.

He would plant himself on a stool, the picture of insouciance in a three-button suit and dark tie, dragging slowly on a cigarette, which he used as a punctuation mark. From that perch he would bid America to look in the mirror, and to laugh at itself.

“Segregation is not all bad,” he would say. “Have you ever heard of a collision where the people in the back of the bus got hurt?” Or: “You know the definition of a Southern moderate? That’s a cat that’ll lynch you from a low tree.” Or: “I heard we’ve got lots of black astronauts. Saving them for the first spaceflight to the sun.”

Some lines became classics, like the one about a restaurant waitress in the segregated South who told him, “We don’t serve colored people here,” to which Mr. Gregory replied: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Just bring me a whole fried chicken.” Lunch-counter sit-ins, central to the early civil rights protests, did not always work out as planned. “I sat in at a lunch counter for nine months,” he said. “When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”

Mr. Gregory was a national sensation in the early 1960s, earning thousands of dollars a week from club dates and from records like “In Living Black and White” and “Dick Gregory Talks Turkey.” He wrote the first of his dozen books. Time magazine, enormously powerful then, ran a profile of him. Jack Paar, that era’s “Tonight Show” host, had him on as a guest — after Mr. Gregory demanded that he be invited to sit for a chat. Until then, black performers did their numbers, then had to leave. Time on Paar’s sofa was a sign of having arrived.

Newspapers in those days routinely put Mr. Gregory on a par with two white performers, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, anointing them a troika of modern satire. Just as routinely, he was later credited with paving the way for a new wave of black comedians who would make it big in the white world, notably two talents of thoroughly different sensibilities: the reflective Bill Cosby and the trenchant Richard Pryor.

It was Mr. Gregory’s conviction that within a well-delivered joke lies power. He learned that lesson growing up in St. Louis, achingly poor and fatherless and often picked on by other children in his neighborhood.

“They were going to laugh anyway, but if I made the jokes they’d laugh with me instead of at me,” he said in a 1964 autobiography, written with Robert Lipsyte. “After a while,” he wrote, “I could say anything I wanted. I got a reputation as a funny man. And then I started to turn the jokes on them.”

He titled that book “nigger,” lowercase N. The word — typically reduced these days to “the N-word” — figured prominently in his routines, even as he shunned the obscenities that casually littered the acts of other comedians.

“I said, let’s pull it out of the closet, let’s lay it out there, let’s deal with it, let’s dissect it,” he said in a 2000 interview with NPR. “It should never be called ‘the N-word.’ ”

In 1962, Mr. Gregory joined a demonstration for black voting rights in Mississippi. That was a beginning. He threw himself into social activism body and soul, viewing it as a higher calling.

Arrests came by the dozens. In a Birmingham, Ala., jail in 1963, he wrote, he endured “the first really good beating I ever had in my life.”

He added: “It was just body pain, though. The Negro has a callus growing on his soul, and it’s getting harder and harder to hurt him there.”

In 1965, he was shot in the leg (the wound was not grave) by a rioter as he tried to be a peacemaker during the Watts riots in Los Angeles.

Increasingly, he skipped club dates to march or to perform at benefits for civil rights groups. Club owners became reluctant to book him: Who knew if he might fly off to Alabama on a moment’s notice? As the ’60s wore on, the college lecture circuit became his principal forum.

“Against the advice of almost everyone, he decided to risk his career for civil rights,” Gerald Nachman wrote in “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s” (2003). Some pillars of the movement, like Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, who died in 1971, believed that Mr. Gregory was more valuable to their cause onstage than in the streets. To which Mr. Gregory replied, “When America goes to war, she don’t send her comedians.”

In 1967, his head now ringed with a full beard and bushy hair — no more the thin mustache of earlier years — he ran for mayor of Chicago, more or less as a stunt. The next year he ran for president on the Freedom and Peace Party ticket, getting by his count 1.5 million write-in votes. The official figure was 47,133.

There seemed few causes he would not embrace. He took to fasting for weeks on end, his once-robust body shrinking at times to 95 pounds. Across the decades he went on dozens of hunger strikes, over issues including the Vietnam War, the failed Equal Rights Amendment, police brutality, South African apartheid, nuclear power, prison reform, drug abuse and American Indian rights.

And he reveled in conspiracy theories, elaborating on them in language that could be enigmatic and circuitous. Hidden hands, Mr. Gregory insisted, were behind everything from a crack cocaine epidemic to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; from the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon to the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. Whom to blame? “Whoever the people are who control the system,” he told The Washington Post in 2000.

His fasting led to a keen interest in nutrition. Working in the 1980s with a Swedish health food company, Mr. Gregory developed a weight-reduction powder called Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet. The partners had a falling-out, and the business swooned.

Still, Mr. Gregory remained a fervent health-food advocate. In late 1999, he learned he had lymphoma but rejected chemotherapy, relying instead on vitamins, herbs and exercise. The cancer went into remission.

His activism came at a price, however. For one thing, the cascade of cash that he had once enjoyed turned into a trickle. His family paid, too.

Mr. Gregory moved to Chicago to build a comedy career in the late 1950s. There he met Lillian Smith, a secretary at the University of Chicago, and they were married in 1959. They had 11 children, one of whom, Richard Jr., died in infancy.

In 1973, when cash was still rolling in, they bought a 400-acre farm near Plymouth, Mass. (Why Plymouth? “I think the white folks is coming back, and I’m going to get a handful of Indians and stop ’em there this time,” Mr. Gregory said.) But by the early 1990s, the strapped Gregorys had lost the farm and moved into an apartment in Plymouth.

Over more than five decades of marriage, Lillian Gregory said, she understood her husband’s need — some called it an obsession — to wander off on behalf of this or that cause, typically earning nothing except attention, and sometimes not even that. But Christian Gregory, a chiropractor in Washington, said to The Washington Post in 2000: “He told his 10 children that the movement came before the family. It was a hard pill to swallow.”

Father absenteeism was a familiar phenomenon for the man born Richard Claxton Gregory in St. Louis on Oct. 12, 1932. He was the second of six children. His father, Presley, disappeared after the birth of each child, and finally left for good. The Gregory children were reared by their mother, Lucille, who scraped by on welfare and a meager income as a maid.

“Kids didn’t eat off the floor,” Mr. Gregory said of their Depression-era poverty. “When I was a kid, you dropped something off the table, it never reached the floor.”

Information about Mr. Gregory’s survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Gregory graduated from Sumner High School in St. Louis, then attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill. At both schools he was a track star and enjoyed local fame.

Not that the acclaim was free of complications. In 1961, by then a national figure, he received the key to the city from the mayor of St. Louis. Yet in his hometown he was denied a room at a leading hotel. “They gave me the key to the city,” Mr. Gregory said, “and then they changed all the locks.”

He left college in 1954 and joined the Army, where he was able to work on comedy routines while attached to Special Services. He then returned to college, only to give it up again without graduating.

In 1956 he headed to Chicago, where he worked in small-time clubs at night and at odd jobs by day. He even tried running a club of his own, but that venture failed.

In one part-time job Mr. Gregory sorted mail in a post office. His pattern, he later said, was to toss letters destined for Mississippi into a slot marked “overseas.” That job did not last long.

His real break came in January 1961, when he was asked to fill in for the comedian Irwin Corey, who had canceled a gig at the flagship Playboy Club in Chicago. On the big night, club managers had misgivings; the house was packed with businessmen from the Deep South. No matter, Mr. Gregory said. He insisted on performing.

“I understand there are a great many Southerners in the room tonight,” he began his act. “I know the South very well. I spent 20 years there one night.” He so won over the crowd that Playboy’s Hugh Hefner signed him for three more weeks, then extended the contract.

Despite having sworn off nightclubs in 1973, saying he could no longer work in places where liquor was served, Mr. Gregory returned to them on occasion in later years, a thin presence wreathed in white hair and beard. Though his best days were well behind him, his approach never seemed to waver from principles that he set for himself when starting out. He put it this way in his autobiography:

“I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second. I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man.”

Mel Watkins contributed reporting.

Jerry Lewis
 

Jerry Lewis, the comedian and filmmaker who was adored by many, disdained by others, but unquestionably a defining figure of American entertainment in the 20th century, died on Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas. He was 91.

Mr. Lewis knew success in movies, on television, in nightclubs, on the Broadway stage and in the university lecture hall. His career had its ups and downs, but when it was at its zenith there were few stars any bigger. And he got there remarkably quickly.

Barely out of his teens, he shot to fame shortly after World War II with a nightclub act in which the rakish, imperturbable Dean Martin crooned and the skinny, hyperactive Mr. Lewis capered around the stage, a dangerously volatile id to Mr. Martin’s supremely relaxed ego.

After his break with Mr. Martin in 1956, Mr. Lewis went on to a successful solo career, eventually writing, producing and directing many of his own films.

As a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Mr. Lewis raised vast sums for charity; as a filmmaker of great personal force and technical skill, he made many contributions to the industry, including the invention in 1960 of a device — the video assist, which allowed directors to review their work immediately on the set — still in common use.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/m...html?smtyp=cur

Rest in peace, Jerry Lewis my old friend... it feels like he was, since I've seen him on TV my whole life... it's so unreal... I will remember him fondly...

Jay Thomas
 

Jay Thomas, was an American actor, comedian, and radio talk show host. His notable television work includes his co-starring role as Remo DaVinci on Mork & Mindy (1979–81), the recurring role of Eddie LeBec on Cheers (1987–89), the lead character Jack Stein on Love & War (1992–95), and a repeat guest role as Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991 for portraying Gold.

In 1997, he starred in the television film Killing Mr. Griffin, based on the novel of the same name. In film, he co-starred in Mr Holland's Opus and portrayed The Easter Bunny in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3. He was also an annual guest on The Late Show with David Letterman during the Christmas season, where he told a story about how he met Clayton Moore, who portrayed the self-titled character on The Lone Ranger.Beginning in 2005, he hosted The Jay Thomas Show on Sirius Satellite Radio, and was on every Friday afternoon on Howard 101.

Walter Becker- co founder of Steely Dan
 

Walter Becker, the guitarist and songwriter who made suavely subversive pop hits out of slippery jazz harmonies and verbal enigmas in Steely Dan, his partnership with Donald Fagen, died on Sunday. He was 67.

His death was announced on his official website, which gave no other details. He lived in Maui, Hawaii.

Kate Millett
 

Kate Millett, the activist, artist and educator whose best-selling "Sexual Politics" was a landmark of cultural criticism and a manifesto for the modern feminist movement, has died. She was 82.

"Sexual Politics" was published in 1970, in the midst of feminism's so-called "second wave," when Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Millett and others built upon the achievements of the suffragettes from a half-century earlier and challenged assumptions about women in virtually every aspect of society. Millett's book was among the most talked-about works of its time and remains a founding text for cultural and gender studies programs.

Millett chronicled millennia of legal, political and cultural exclusion and diminishment, whether the "penis envy" theory of Sigmund Freud or the portrayals of women as disrupters of paradise in the Bible and Greek mythology. She labeled traditional marriage an artifact of patriarchy and concluded with chapters condemning the misogyny of authors Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, but also expressing faith in the redemptive power of women's liberation.

While countless women were radicalized by her book, Millett would have bittersweet feelings about "Sexual Politics," which later fell out of print and remained so for years. She was unhappy with its "mandarin mid-Atlantic" prose and overwhelmed by her sudden transformation from graduate student and artist to a feminist celebrity whose image appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Amused at first by her fame, she was worn down by a "ruin of interviews, articles, attacks."

"Soon it grew tedious, an indignity," she wrote in the memoir "Flying," published in 1974.

She was dubbed by Time "the Mao Tse-tung of Women's Liberation," and rebutted by Mailer in his book "The Prisoner of Sex," in which he mocked her as "the Battling Annie of some new prudery." Meanwhile, she faced taunts from some feminists for saying she was bisexual (she was married at the time), but not gay. During an appearance by Millett at Columbia, an activist stood up and yelled, "Are you a lesbian? Say it. Are you?"

"Five hundred people looking at me. Are you a Lesbian?" Millett wrote. "Everything pauses, faces look up in terrible silence. I hear them not breathe. That word in public, the word I waited half a lifetime to hear. Finally I am accused. 'Say it. Say you are a Lesbian!'

"Yes, I said. Yes. Because I know what she means. The line goes, inflexible as a fascist edict, that bisexuality is a cop-out. Yes I said yes I am a lesbian. It was the last strength I had."

Millett's books after "Sexual Politics" were far more personal and self-consciously literary, whether "Flying" or "Sita," a memoir about her sexuality in which she wrote of a female lover who committed suicide; or "The Loony Bin Trip," an account of her struggles with manic depression and time spent in psychiatric wards.

"There is no denying the misery and stress of life," she wrote. "The swarms of fears, the blocks to confidence, the crises of decision and choice."

The daughter of Irish Catholics, Millett was born in St. Paul, Minn., and was long haunted by her father, an alcoholic who beat his children and left his family when Millett was 14. She attended parochial schools as a child and studied English literature at the University of Minnesota and St Hilda's College, Oxford, from which she graduated with honors.

For a couple of years, Millett lived in Japan, where she met her husband and fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura (they divorced in 1985). They moved to Manhattan in 1963, and Millett embraced the political and artistic passions of the city. She joined the National Organization for Women and began attracting a following for her sculpture, which appeared in Life magazine and has been exhibited worldwide. Through her own Women's Liberation Cinema production company, she directed the acclaimed feminist documentary "Three Lives." She also founded the Women's Art Colony Farm in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Millett taught at several schools, including the University of North Carolina and New York University. In 1968, she was fired from her job as an English lecturer at Barnard College, a decision that stemmed at least in part from her support of student protests against the Vietnam War. The extra free time did allow her to complete "Sexual Politics," which began as her doctoral thesis at Columbia University.

Less known to younger feminists than Steinem or Friedan, she was honored several times late in life. In 2012, she was given the Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the same year was presented a Courage Award for the Arts prize by her longtime friend Yoko Ono. Millett was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2013 and, in her acceptance speech, reflected on her years as an activist.

"The happiness of those times, the joy of participation, the excitement of being part of my own time, of living on the edge, of being so close to events you can almost intuit them. To raise one's voice in protest, just as the protest is expressed in life, in the streets, in relationships and friendships," she said.

"Then, in a moment of public recognition, the face of the individual becomes a woman's face."

R.I.P.

Edie Windsor

Thank you from my wife and I (f)

So grateful. So sad.

Harry Dean Stanton
 

Harry Dean Stanton, the actor known for roles in movies including "Repo Man" and "Cool Hand Luke" as well as for the TV show "Big Love," has died. He was 91.

Born July 24, 1926, in West Irvine, Kentucky, Stanton grew up singing and faced an early decision between music and acting. Acting won, but many years of struggle would pass before Stanton would become a household name.

His first movie roles came in the mid-1950s: an uncredited part in "The Wrong Man" and turns in "Tomahawk Trail" and "The Proud Rebel" as Dean Stanton. He appeared on several TV shows, including "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." He began attracting notice in higher-profile movies such as "Aliens," "Private Benjamin" and "Escape From New York," but it was with 1984's "Paris, Texas" that he rose to star status.

"Paris, Texas" stars Stanton as a wanderer with amnesia who finds and reconnects with his family. Directed by Wim Wenders, the film proved extremely well-received, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA Award for best director. It holds an impressive 100 percent fresh rating on the movie review site RottenTomatoes.com.

After the success of "Paris, Texas," more notable roles followed for Stanton. He starred in the cult classic "Repo Man" and played a hard-to-love father in "Pretty in Pink." He had roles in "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Wild at Heart," "The Green Mile" and dozens more. In 2006, Stanton took a prominent TV role on the HBO drama "Big Love," playing the megalomaniacal leader of a polygamous sect.

Stanton has been honored with the annual Harry Dean Stanton Film Festival in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the subject of the 2013 documentary "Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction."

Penny Chenery (1922 - 2017), owner of Triple Crown champion Secretariat
 

Penny Chenery, who bred and raced 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat as well as realizing her ailing father's dream to win the Kentucky Derby in 1972 with Riva Ridge, has died. She was 95.

In 1973, Secretariat captured the imagination of racing fans worldwide when he became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, sweeping the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. He won the last leg by a whopping 31 lengths in one of the greatest performances in sports history.

The previous year, Riva Ridge won the Derby and Belmont Stakes.

Both colts were inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

Chenery developed a love of horses as a child and learned to ride at age 5. She attributed her affinity for horses to her father, Christopher Chenery, who founded Meadow Stable, a thoroughbred racing and breeding operation, in Caroline County, Virginia.

After graduating from Smith College in 1943, Chenery worked as an assistant for a company that designed landing craft for the Normandy invasion. Before the invasion, she quit her job and at her father's urging, she volunteered for the Red Cross. In 1945, Chenery traveled to France as a Doughnut Girl to help war-weary soldiers transition to ships headed home at the end of World War II.

Chenery returned from Europe in 1946, and at her father's urging, she attended Columbia University's business school, where she was one of 20 women in her class. Six months from graduation, she got engaged to Columbia Law graduate John "Jack" Tweedy. Her father encouraged her to quit and focus on her wedding. The couple married in 1949.

For nearly 20 years, Chenery was content to be a housewife and mother to the couple's four children in the Denver area. She and her husband helped found and raise the initial money for Vail ski resort in the early 1960s.

Her life changed in 1968 when her father's health and mind began failing and her mother died. His Meadow Stable, which had been profitable, began losing money. Her two siblings had planned to sell it when their father could no longer run the operation.

Chenery took over management of the racing stable, with the help of siblings Margaret Carmichael and Hollis Chenery, and her father's business secretary. The operation was losing money and few took her seriously. Chenery commuted monthly from Colorado to Virginia, but after two more years in the red, selling the stable seemed almost inevitable.

By 1971, her colt Riva Ridge swept the juvenile stakes and won 2-year-old of the Year honors. In 1972, Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby, fulfilling her father's dream in the last year of his life. That same year, Secretariat burst onto the scene, so dominating the 2-year-old races that he won Horse of the Year honors.

In 1973, Secretariat became a pop culture icon with his Triple Crown victory, landing on the cover of Time magazine. For the next four decades, Chenery served as a careful steward of the colt's legacy.

Following Secretariat's retirement, Chenery became an ambassador for thoroughbred racing and remained so after the colt's death in 1989.

She served as the first female president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and president of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. She became one of the first women admitted to The Jockey Club and helped found the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Chenery created the Secretariat Vox Populi award annually honoring racing's most popular horse, as well as the Secretariat Foundation, which assists and supports various charities within the racing community.

She received the 2006 Eclipse Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to the thoroughbred industry, and in recent years, she advocated for laminitis research and care advancement as well as efforts to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs in racing.

Chenery was portrayed by actress Diane Lane in the 2010 movie "Secretariat." Chenery had a cameo role as a spectator at the Belmont Stakes.

Sneezy
 

From the CROW clinic:

With heavy hearts, we said goodbye to one of our beloved Animal Ambassadors, Sneezy.

Sneezy first came to us in 2014 after he was hit by a car. He suffered a broken jaw and tail. To prevent infection, his tail was amputated, making him non-releasable. He spent the next few years teaching CROW visitors about the importance of opossums in the environment.

In the recent weeks, as old age began to set in (opossums only live 1-2 years in the wild), arthritis in his hind limbs gradually made it more difficult for Sneezy to walk. His quality of life had declined to the point that veterinarians at CROW had to make the extremely difficult decision to ease his pain.

Sneezy will be greatly missed, but never forgotten.

---------------------------


Was looking forward to meeting this lil guy on my trip down this year. Rest in peace lil buddy.

Jake LaMotta
 

Boxing legend Jake LaMotta, whom Robert De Niro portrayed in the film "Raging Bull," died at the age of 95.

Born July 10, 1921, LaMotta began fighting when he was just a child, made to do so by his father to help support the family – he'd fight other neighborhood children and adult spectators would throw change into the ring. By 19, LaMotta had honed his skills enough to go pro.

LaMotta was an aggressive fighter with a brutal style that earned him the nicknames "The Bronx Bull" and "The Raging Bull." Among his early fights was a legendary series against Sugar Ray Robinson, beginning in 1942. LaMotta lost their first bout but won their second – he was the first ever to defeat Robinson. Robinson would win four subsequent fights with LaMotta.

In 1949, LaMotta defeated world middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan in a title bout. He held that title until Feb. 14, 1951 – and he lost it in his final fight against Robinson. In a fight that went down in history and was nicknamed the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, LaMotta fought hard but took a beating, and he lost after the winner stopped LaMotta in the 13th round. LaMotta would never regain the championship. After that defeat, he moved to light heavyweight, winning some fights but no titles.

After his retirement from boxing, LaMotta owned and managed bars. He also acted and performed stand-up comedy. He had roles in movies including "The Hustler" as well as several guest-star turns on TV's "Car 54, Where Are You?"

LaMotta also wrote several books about his life and career. One of those books was the 1970 memoir, "Raging Bull: My Story." Ten years after its publication, the movie adapted from it, directed by Martin Scorsese, was released to great critical acclaim. Star Robert De Niro trained with LaMotta until LaMotta deemed him skilled enough to fight professionally. The effort won De Niro an Academy Award.

LaMotta is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Hugh Hefner
 

Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant has died.

Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s. His timing was perfect.

RIP..... pick door number 2!...i loved that show!

Tom Petty
 

Tom Petty has died at the age of 66.

The Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers lead singer was removed from life support after tests revealed he had no brain function following a cardiac arrest.

Rock n Roll Hall Of Famer Petty first found fame in the 1970s with his band releasing hits including Breakdown, American Girl, The Waiting, Free Fallin', Stop Draggin' My Heart Around and Listen to Her Heart.

He had success both as part of The Heartbreakers - with whom he worked on and off for 40 years - and as a solo artist.

He also formed part of the 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys alongside Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. Petty continued to work as a popular musician up until his death.

Petty's most recent album, 2014's Hypnotic Eye, was the first Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers to top the charts in the U.S.

The artist had just completed a 40th anniversary 53-date tour with The Heartbreakers, winning good reviews with his final performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on September 22.

Oh no! I loved his music. He was still so young!

rip
 

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Rita Henley Jensen
 

Over and over, Rita Henley Jensen's friends and colleagues describe her as "a force." They call her formidable and extraordinary. Jensen used those strengths to fight her way out of poverty and into an award-winning career in journalism, working all the while to amplify women's voices and advocate for their health and welfare.

Jensen, the founder of Women's eNews and of the Jane Crow Project, died Oct. 18 of breast cancer. She was 70.

Born Jan. 1, 1947 in Columbus, Ohio, Jensen built her success from an unlikely starting point: She was a teen mother with an abusive boyfriend who later became her abusive husband. She remained in that marriage for six years before leaving on the heels of her husband's threats to kill her and their two daughters.

Alone, in her mid-20s and with children to feed, Jensen relied on welfare and a waitressing job and "tried not to eat much myself" in order to save precious pennies, as she recounted in an essay in the book "Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women on Life’s Transitions." Determined to rise out of poverty, she borrowed money and applied for scholarships to attend the Ohio State University, beginning her college education at 25.

Jensen received her bachelor's degree from Ohio State in 1976, then completed a Master's at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.

Jensen's award-winning journalism career began with her first job out of graduate school, working as a general assignment reporter for the Paterson News in Paterson, New Jersey. While at the newspaper for just two years, she won eight awards for her investigative journalism. She moved on to write for the Stamford Advocate, the American Lawyer, and the National Law Journal, as well as freelancing for news outlets including the New York Times, ABA Journal and Ms. Magazine, before creating the organization that became her crowning achievement.

Women's eNews was born from Jensen's desire to fill a hole in traditional media coverage of events and issues. "I was a prize-winning investigative reporter," Jensen told Sheryl McCarthy in a 2011 interview for CUNY's One on One, "but I began to say, 'I have to focus on what's going on with women, because no one else is.'"

Founded by Jensen as a project of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1999, Women's eNews became an independent organization in 2002. Jensen described to McCarthy the Women's eNews approach to news coverage: "We will not endorse a candidate, but we will report the issues from the perspective of women's interests. We had a recent piece about the health plans: Do they really cover the issues most concerned to women? We'll cover the war as it concerns women. The thing that's going around right now about children's health coverage – that also covers pregnant women, but you haven't heard a word of it in other media. So we'll be covering that as that controversy continues."

Women's eNews has been widely honored with awards including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Reporting. It was among the 100 Best Websites for Women named by Forbes in 2013, and About.com readers named it their "Favorite Women's Rights Blog or Website" in 2012.

While serving as editor in chief at Women's eNews, Jensen began a years-long investigative project focusing on maternal mortality rates among African American women. Those rates, she found, are substantially higher than they are for white women: Across the U.S., African-American women are three to four times more likely to die due to pregnancy and childbirth-related complications than white women. In some states, they’re as much as 14 times more likely to die of those causes than women of other races. It's a statistic that has improved for women of other races in the past 100 years, but not for African American women.

Digging into the causes and repercussions of this phenomenon became a passion project for Jensen, and in 2016, she left Women's eNews, retaining editor in chief emerita status, to work full time on what became the Jane Crow Project. A book, "Jane Crow: Why the Mothers Are Dying," was in progress at the time of Jensen's death.

Of Jensen's work with the Jane Crow Project, Jensen-Vargas noted, "Her groundbreaking journalism can be indirectly attributed to the saving of African American lives by bringing the attention of the high mortality rates of African American moms and babies in the U.S. to the attention of the U.N. and the New York Task Force, which has resulted in the establishment of a department in New York City specially appointed to resolve that issue."

Jensen received many awards and honors for her work, including being named by the New York Daily News in 2004 as one of the "100 Women Who Shape Our City." In 2016, the Women's Economic Forum included Jensen among their Women of the Decade awards as an "Iconic Thought Leader of the Decade in Media." Her other honors include the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni award, the Alicia Patterson fellowship and the Lloyd P. Burns Public Service prize.

As Jensen's career advanced, she never forgot the days when she struggled in an abusive marriage and then as a single mother. The experience led her to be an advocate for women, speaking frankly about her background – her bios always mentioned that she was a domestic abuse survivor – and pointing out injustices against women. In a 1995 article for Ms. Magazine, she said that her work only began with reporting the facts about women. It continued with fierce advocacy: "I think we have to raise hell any way we can."

Jensen's longtime friend and colleague, Susy Schultz, president of Public Narrative and founding president of the Association for Women Journalists – Chicago, spoke to Legacy.com about how Jensen's impulse to raise hell made her a powerful force for women. "At times, people thought that Rita was difficult, but she was passionate, and she wanted to change the world. Really, difficult women often change the world."

Robert Guillaume
 

Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, best known as the title character in the TV sitcom “Benson,” died Tuesday. He was 89.

Guillaume often played acerbic, dry-witted, but ultimately lovable characters like the butler Benson Du Bois, which he created on the 1977 series “Soap,” before his character was spun off in 1979. Guillaume won Emmys both for “Soap” (as supporting actor) and “Benson” (as lead actor).

He was also known as the the voice of Rafiki in “The Lion King,” for which he also won a Grammy for a spoken word recording.

“Benson” ran on ABC for seven years until 1986. The butler slowly evolved to become a government official, deflecting early complaints by critics like the Washington Post’s Tom Shales that his character was a “male Mammy.” The show brought Guillaume an Emmy in 1985 for lead actor in a comedy.

In the late ’90s he took on the role of Isaac Jaffe, executive producer of a cable sports show on the ABC sitcom “Sports Night,” and continued to perform even after being felled by a stroke.

But Guillaume also possessed a powerful, mellifluous voice, which he used most notably to play the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” onstage.

After suffering through a period of unemployment during the ’70s, he was cast in an all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls” as Nathan Detroit, which debuted on Broadway in 1977 and secured him a Tony nomination. He also guested during this period on sitcoms such as “All in the Family,” “Good Times,” “Sanford and Son” and “The Jeffersons,” which led to the supporting role of Benson in “Soap.”

After leaving “Benson” behind, he starred in TV movie “John Grin’s Christmas,” a black retelling of “A Christmas Carol” that was Guillaume’s directorial debut. He tried another sitcom in 1989, “The Robert Guillaume Show,” playing a marriage counselor. The series lasted four months before ABC pulled the plug.

He returned to singing in 1990 in the Los Angeles production of “Phantom of the Opera” and on Broadway in the lead role of “Cyrano — The Musical” for four months beginning in November 1993. He also performed regularly in concert.

He was featured in films such as “Meteor Man,” “First Kid” and “Spy Hard.” On television he appeared in the HBO family series “Happily Ever After” and TV movies and miniseries including “Children of the Dust,” “Run for the Dream” and “Pandora’s Clock.”

Guillaume returned to series television in 1998 on “Sports Night” as the fictitious sports program’s producer. A year later he suffered a stroke and was waylaid for a few months. When he returned his illness was worked into the storyline of the series until the series ended its run on ABC the following year.

During the 2000s Guillaume made a few guest appearances on TV shows, including on “8 Simple Rules” in 2003 and “CSI” in 2008, but he focused more heavily on voicework for straight-to-video animated children’s films and videogames.

He appeared in Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” in 2003, and then made more frequent bigscreen appearances later in the decade, appearing in the Christian film “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry” in 2008; in the thriller “Columbus Circle,” starring Selma Blair, in 2010; and in the small musical dramedy “Satin” in 2011.

Robert Peter Williams was born in St. Louis, Mo., changing his name only after he decided on a career in acting. After completing his schooling he joined the Army in 1945 and was discharged 15 months later. He took on a number of menial jobs while studying nights at St. Louis U. He originally intended to study business but became interested in singing and transferred to Washington U. to study voice and theater.

His performance at the 1957 Aspen Music Festival led to an apprenticeship at the Karamu Performing Arts Theater in Cleveland, where he appeared in operas and musical comedies.

After moving to New York, he made his Broadway debut in a 1960 revival of “Finian’s Rainbow” and found regular employment in the chorus of shows like “Fly, Blackbird,” “Golden Boy” and “Porgy and Bess.” In 1972 he took on the title role in the musical “Purlie” and also appeared in the revue “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.”

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/robe...on-1202598171/

Fats Domino
 

Fats Domino, the early rock 'n' roll superstar who sang enduring songs including "Blueberry Hill," died Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, according to multiple news sources. He was 89.

"Blueberry Hill" was Domino's biggest hit, occupying the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues Chart for 11 weeks in 1956. But the New Orleans native recorded several other well-known songs before and after "Blueberry Hill" sealed his fame, along the way profoundly influencing the development of rock 'n' roll with his rolling piano and suggestive lyrics.

1950's "The Fat Man" was one of his early tracks, the first rock 'n' roll song to sell 1 million copies. "Ain't That a Shame," a rocker that Domino performed in the 1956 movie "Shake, Rattle and Rock!," enjoyed moderate chart success before it was eclipsed by Pat Boone's watered-down cover version. "I'm Walkin'" was another R&B chart-topper in 1957, which Ricky Nelson covered that same year.

Born Antoine Domino Jr. Feb. 26, 1928, the son of French Creole parents, Domino grew up around music, watching his father play violin and learning piano from his brother-in-law. He spoke Louisiana Creole French before he learned English and was performing in New Orleans by the time he was 10. He was discovered by bandleader Billy Diamond while still in his teens, playing at a backyard barbecue. Domino joined Diamond's band and got his first taste of musical success.

After an impressive string of singles in the 1950s, Domino continued to chart modestly in the 1960s, releasing songs including "Red Sails in the Sunset" and a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna," a tribute that must have been satisfying to a band that was influenced by the rock pioneer and even reportedly wrote that song in Domino's style. "Ain't That a Shame" was the first song John Lennon learned to play on the guitar, and both Lennon and Paul McCartney covered Domino songs in their solo careers.

Domino was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its 1986 inaugural group. Despite his legendary status, by the 1980s he was living by choice in a working-class neighborhood of New Orleans, opting to stay in the city that was home rather than touring extensively.

When 2005's Hurricane Katrina hit Domino's neighborhood hard, he chose to stay in the city with his ailing wife. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued Domino several days after Katrina's landfall. He stated that his family "lost everything" in the disaster, and they lived in nearby Harvey, Louisiana, while their home was gutted and rehabbed. The work was helped by proceeds from a tribute album to Domino, "Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino," featuring covers of his songs by musicians including McCartney, Willie Nelson and Elton John.

Domino won a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1987, and he was honored with the National Medal of Arts, which President Bill Clinton presented to him in 1998. Domino was No. 25 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004. He was a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame and the Delta Music Hall of Fame.

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Double checked this one. Family confirmed.

Ann Wedgeworth
 

Actress Ann Wedgeworth, who gained fame on film and Broadway before taking on the role of a flirty divorcee on "Three's Company," has died at age 83.

Wedgeworth landed her first Broadway role in the 1958 comedy "Make a Million" and continued to take on stage roles for decades. She won the 1978 Tony award for best featured actress in a play for her performance in Neil Simon's "Chapter Two."

She acted in soaps The Edge of Night and Another World, and also found success in Hollywood with roles alongside Gene Hackman in the 1973 film "Scarecrow" and Robert De Niro in "Bang the Drum Slowly" the same year.

But she's perhaps best known for her brief tenure on the TV sitcom "Three's Comedy," where she played Lana Shields, an older woman with her eyes set on her young neighbor Jack, played by John Ritter.

Wedgeworth continued to tally TV and film credits for decades, including a starring role on the CBS series "Evening Shade" with Burt Reynolds from 1990 to 1994.

Della Reese
 

Della Reese, the actress and gospel-influenced singer who in middle age found her greatest fame as Tess, the wise angel in the long-running television drama "Touched by an Angel," has died at age 86.

Reese's co-star on the series, Roma Downey, said in a statement that the actress died peacefully Sunday evening in her home in the Los Angeles area. No further details were included.

Before "Touched by an Angel" debuted in 1994, Reese was mainly known as a singer, although she had costarred on "Chico and the Man," ''Charlie and Company" and "The Royal Family" and hosted her own talk show, "Della."

"Touched by an Angel" was a gamble for CBS from the start. The story of an apprentice angel (Roma Downey) and her supervisor (Reese) being sent to Earth to solve people's problems appeared to have little chance in a TV world dominated by sitcoms and police dramas.

The first season brought mediocre ratings, but slowly the show's audience grew until it became one of television's highest rated dramas. It lasted until 2003.

When Mahalia Jackson, known as The Queen of Gospel Music, came to Detroit, she needed a singer to replace a member of her troupe. She turned to Reese, who was only 13.

Jackson was so impressed by the teenager's voice that she enlisted her for a summer tour, and Reese went on to tour with her for five summers. In later years she would remark that she would never forget what she learned from the legendary gospel singer, including "how to communicate with people through song."

Earle Hyman
 

Earle Hyman, a veteran actor of stage and screen who was widely known for playing Russell Huxtable on "The Cosby Show," has died. He was 91.

He made his Broadway stage debut as a teenager in 1943 in Run, Little Chillun, and later joined the American Negro Theater. The following year, Hyman began a two-year run playing the role of Rudolf on Broadway in Anna Lucasta, starring Hilda Simms in the title role. He was a member of the American Shakespeare Theatre beginning with its first season in 1955, and played the role of Othello in the 1957 season.

In December 1958 he came to London to play the leading role in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, by Errol John, at the Royal Court.

In 1959 he again appeared in the West End, this time in the first London production of A Raisin In the Sun alongside Kim Hamilton. The show ran at the Adelphi Theatre and was directed again by Lloyd Richards. A life member of The Actors Studio,[ Hyman appeared throughout his career in productions in both the United States and Norway, where he also owned property. In 1965, won a Theatre World Award and in 1988, he was awarded the St Olav's medal for his work in Norwegian theater.

In addition to his stage work, Hyman appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968), Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979), and voiced Panthro on the animated television series ThunderCats (1985–1990). He played two roles (at different times) on television's The Edge of Night.

One of his most well known roles, that of Russell Huxtable in The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. He played the father of lead character Cliff Huxtable, played by actor Bill Cosby, despite only being 11 years older than Cosby.

Terry Glenn
 

Former NFL receiver Terry Glenn, who caught Tom Brady’s first touchdown pass with the New England Patriots in 2001, died Monday following a one-vehicle rollover traffic accident near Dallas . He was 43.

Glenn won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top college receiver in 1995, piling up 1,411 yards and 17 touchdowns in his only year as a starter for Ohio State to set the stage for a pro career. Glenn played 12 seasons in the NFL, from 1996 to 2007, including six with the Patriots, five with the Dallas Cowboys and another year in Green Bay. He finished his career with 8,823 yards receiving and 44 touchdowns.

The Patriots drafted Glenn seventh overall in 1996 when Bill Parcells was coach, and Glenn set an NFL rookie record with 90 catches for a team that reached the Super Bowl, losing to the Packers.

Brady’s first touchdown pass was a 21-yarder to Glenn in a 29-26 overtime win over San Diego the year that Brady took over for an injured Drew Bledsoe and led the Patriots to their first Super Bowl title.

Jana Novotna, Wimbledon champion, dies of cancer at 49
 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/20/tennis...don/index.html

Jana Novotna, who cried at the 1997 Wimbledon final and finally won it in 1998, died of cancer in the Czech Republic at 49.

Jim Nabors
 

Jim Nabors, the actor known best for playing Gomer Pyle on "The Andy Griffith Show" and its spinoff, "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," has died at the age of 87.

His husband told the Associated Press he died at his Hawaii home.

Gomer Pyle was never intended to be a recurring character, let alone carry his own show. The role was going to be a one-off, popping up in a single episode of season three of "The Andy Griffith Show." But Nabors, who was discovered by Griffith while doing cabaret theater at a Santa Monica nightclub, played the country-bumpkin gas station attendant so well that he was brought on in a recurring role. When the character's popularity continued to grow, "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." was spun off.

"Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." saw the character leaving Mayberry to join the Marines. It was a perennial ratings leader, making it into the top-10 shows for each of its five seasons. In 1969, after playing Pyle for seven years, Nabors was ready to move on, so he announced his resignation and the show was canceled. But the seven years were enough to typecast Nabors, and the majority of his future roles would be in comedies harking back to his sitcom roots.

Nabors played similar characters in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," "Stroker Ace" and "Cannonball Run II." On the children's show "The Lost Saucer," he played an android trying to find his way home. In 1986, he reprised his Pyle role in the TV movie "Return to Mayberry." Carol Burnett asked him to appear on each season premiere of "The Carol Burnett Show," considering him a good-luck charm.

n addition to acting, Nabors was also a skilled singer who recorded a number of albums and had a hit in Australia with his recording of "The Impossible Dream." In the U.S., Nabors musically associated with "Back Home in Indiana," which he sang at the start of every Indianapolis 500 race from 1972 until 2014.

Born June 12, 1930, in Sylacauga, Alabama, Nabors used his Southern upbringing as he envisioned the country character he performed in his cabaret act that would become Pyle. He was honored by his home state: He was inducted into the Alabama Stage and Screen Hall of Fame, and U.S. Highway 280 was named "Jim Nabors Highway" where it runs through his home county of Talladega County.

On Jan. 29, 2013, Nabors married his longtime partner, Stan Cadwallader, in Seattle. The pair, who lived in Hawaii and had been together for 38 years, married a month after same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington. Nabors was open with friends about his sexual orientation but chose not to go public with it before the couple wed. He commented, "I haven't ever made a public spectacle of it. Well, I've known since I was a child, so, come on. It's not that kind of a thing. I've never made a huge secret of it at all."


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Thanks for the memories Jim.

Rose Marie
 

Rose Marie, an actress, singer and comedian best known for portraying the wisecracking Sally Rogers in the popular 1960s sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” has died. She was 94.

Cast as a glib, man-hunting comedy writer on the show, Marie continued playing the part, in a way, on other stages years after the role ended.

When the series wrapped in 1966, she became a regular on the game show “The Hollywood Squares,” game show, essentially staying in character.

She had been onstage for much of the 20th century after winning a New York City talent contest in the late 1920s. As a 3-year-old, she had belted out “What Can I Say After I Say I’m Sorry?” in a raspy voice mature beyond her years.

She was soon known professionally as Baby Rose Marie and became a sensation on the NBC radio network, which signed her to a seven-year contract. To prove to a doubting public that the singer who sounded like Sophie Tucker actually was a child, the network sent her on a yearlong tour.

She toured in vaudeville, was featured in a handful of movies and — after dropping “Baby” from her name as an adolescent — began headlining nightclubs. She also made her way to Broadway in the early 1950s in “Top Banana,” appearing with Phil Silvers in the musical revue and subsequent film.

In 1960, she was a regular on the short-lived sitcom “My Sister Eileen,” which starred Elaine Stritch, and later that decade was cast in a featured role on the sitcom “The Doris Day Show.”

From 1977 to 1985, she went on the road in “4 Girls 4,” a variety show that also originally featured singers Rosemary Clooney, Barbara McNair and Margaret Whiting.

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Sally Rogers was one of my heroes growing up.

Sue Grafton - Author's Kinsey Millhone series began 35 years ago with "A is for Alibi"
 

Sue Grafton, author of the best-selling "alphabet series" of mystery novels, has died in Santa Barbara. She was 77.

Grafton began her "alphabet series" in 1982 with "A is for Alibi." Her most recent book, "Y is for Yesterday," was published in August.

"Many of you also know that she was adamant that her books would never be turned into movies or TV shows, and in that same vein, she would never allow a ghost writer to write in her name," her daughter wrote. "Because of all of those things, and out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y."

I'm so bummed that Sue Grafton died - especially not quite making it to Z. But I am so happy she has a good family that is honoring her wishes and work. I absolutely hate when someone takes over after a writer's death to finish a book or carry on a series. So thank you to the Grafton family.

Obituaries

Ben Barres, transgender brain researcher and advocate of diversity in science, dies at 63

By Matt Schudel December 30, 2017

Ben Barres, a neurobiologist who made groundbreaking discoveries regarding the structure and function of the brain that may have implications for understanding Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative disorders and who, as a transgender man, became an outspoken opponent of gender bias in science, died Dec. 27 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 63.

His death was announced by Stanford University, where he was a professor of neurobiology in the medical school. The cause was pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Barres was one of the world’s leading researchers on glial cells, which are the most numerous structures in the brain but whose purpose was almost a complete mystery.

“Until Ben grabbed hold of this, there was very little known about what they did in the brain,” Beth Stevens, a Harvard University professor and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient who studied with Dr. Barres, said in an interview. “He made a remarkable number of discoveries and launched many avenues of research. He started a whole new field.”

There are three primary types of glial cells, or glia — microglia, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes — but before Dr. Barres began to look at glia, their functions were poorly understood. Most researchers concentrated on the brain’s neurons, which send electrical impulses.

Trained as a physician, Dr. Barres had an early interest in diseases of the brain. Other scientists had noticed that irregularly shaped glial cells were often found near damaged brain tissue, and Dr. Barres began to study whether the glia affected other structures in the brain.

“He has made one shocking, revolutionary discovery after another,” Martin Raff, a biologist at University College London who once trained Dr. Barres, told Discover magazine in August.

Dr. Barres sought to understand the normal functions of glial cells to understand what happened when things went awry. Among other things, the glia appeared to help neurons form synapse connections to transmit electrical signals throughout the brain. Some glial cells (oligodendrocytes) wrapped around neurons like insulation, making them work more efficiently.

Dr. Barres also discovered that some glial cells — the astrocytes, in particular — could have harmful effects. In what he described as “the most important discovery my lab has ever made,” he showed in a 2017 article published in the journal Nature that the glia could undergo changes or secrete substances that could damage neurons and other cells in the brain.

In other words, glial cells might contribute to the degeneration of brain tissue that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, as well as multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), glaucoma and other conditions. Dr. Barres’s work holds promise for other researchers to explore ways to treat or prevent such debilitating illnesses.

“He laid the groundwork for many other scientists,” Stevens said. “He’s really cracked open a whole new phenomenon.”

Dr. Barres began his scientific career when he was known as Barbara Barres. After undergoing hormone treatments and surgery, Dr. Barres became known as Ben Barres in 1997. His experience led him to become a powerful advocate for women and other marginalized people he believed were denied opportunities in a scientific world dominated by men.

I have this perspective,” he told the Associated Press in 2006. “I’ve lived in the shoes of a woman, and I’ve lived in the shoes of a man. It’s caused me to reflect on the barriers women face.”

In 2005, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers attributed the relative dearth of female scientists to the “intrinsic aptitude” of women. The next year, Dr. Barres published a scathing essay in Nature, in which he wrote that the ad feminam statements by Summers and other scholars were “nothing more than blaming the victim.”

“The comments,” he wrote, “about women’s lesser innate abilities are all wrongful and personal attacks on my character and capabilities, as well as on my colleagues’ and students’ abilities and self-esteem. I will certainly not sit around silently and endure them.”

Dr. Barres cited studies showing that boys and girls had comparable test scores in mathematics and science but that the college science departments, tenure committees and grant-awarding panels were overwhelmingly controlled by men.

Two Harvard professors jumped into the fray, with one, political scientist Harvey C. Mansfield, calling Dr. Barres “a political fruitcake” and another, psychologist Steven Pinker, complaining that Dr. Barres had “reduced science to Oprah.”

.“If a famous scientist or the president of a prestigious university is going to pronounce in public that women are likely to be innately inferior,” Dr. Barres wrote in his Nature essay, “would it be too much to ask that they be aware of the relevant data?”

Citing his own experience, Dr. Barres recalled that, after his transition to life as a man, he led a seminar at an academic conference. A colleague overheard another scientist say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”

Dr. Barres wrote that in everyday transactions as well as in academic circles, “people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect” than when he was living as a woman. “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

[‘A towering legacy of goodness’: Ben Barres’s fight for diversity in science]

Dr. Barres was born Sept. 13, 1954, in West Orange, N.J. His father was a salesman.

From the age of about 4, Dr. Barres, who had a fraternal twin sister, preferred boys’ toys and clothing. For Halloween, the young Barbara Barres dressed as a football player or soldier.

“I felt like a boy,” Dr. Barres said on the “Charlie Rose” show in 2015. “The brain has innate circuits that determine our gender identity. And so being transgender is not a choice that I made.”

Dr. Barres had an early interest in science and became the first member of his family to attend college. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he later wrote, “I was the only person in a large class of people of nearly all men to solve a hard math problem, only to be told by the professor that my boyfriend must have solved it for me.”

After graduating from MIT in 1976, he received a medical degree from Dartmouth in 1979. He later enrolled in graduate school at Harvard, working nights as a physician. He received a PhD in neurobiology — his second doctorate — in 1990.

Dr. Barres then studied at University College London before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993.

When Dr. Barres was 41 — and still known as Barbara — he developed breast cancer, a disease his mother died of at about the same age. He underwent a mastectomy.

“I said, ‘While you are there, please take off the other breast,’ ” Dr. Barres said on “Charlie Rose.” “Since this cancer runs in my family, he did agree to remove the other breast.

“And I just can’t tell you how therapeutic that was. I felt so relieved to have those breasts removed.”

Dr. Barres later read an article about a transgender man who had undergone a female-to-male transition.

“I realized for the first time in my life,” he said in 2015, “that there were other people like me and that I might be transgender.”

He began to take testosterone, which led to a deeper voice, a beard and male-pattern baldness. Meanwhile, with the full encouragement of his Stanford colleagues, his scientific work continued without interruption. (Dr. Barres also had prosopagnosia, sometimes called face blindness, which made him unable to recognize faces. He identified people by their voices, hairstyles or other sensory cues.)

In addition to running a laboratory with 15 to 20 researchers, Dr. Barres taught classes in the medical school and became chairman of the neurobiology department. He also developed Stanford’s master of medicine program, combining clinical work and research, and became an informal adviser to female, gay and transgender science students.

Researchers at his laboratory were an unusually diverse group, with women often outnumbering men. His former students now run research labs at Harvard, Duke University, New York University and elsewhere.

“It was the most fun and creatively dynamic environment I’ve ever worked in,” said Stevens, the Harvard scientist who was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Barres’s laboratory from 2004 to 2008. “He created such a tight family. These are not just scientists working at the bench. These are people who are working together and helping each other.”

Dr. Barres had two surviving sisters and a brother.

After learning of his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, Dr. Barres arranged for other scientists to take over his laboratory, wrote recommendation letters and gave interviews about his journey as a woman and later as a man through science.

“I feel like I have a responsibility to speak out,” he said. “Anyone who has changed sex has done probably the hardest thing they can do. It’s freeing, in a way, because it makes me more fearless about other things.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.fe1ee560057e

Jerry Van Dyke
 

Jerry Van Dyke, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke who struggled for decades to achieve his own stardom before clicking as the dim-witted sidekick in television's "Coach," has died. He was 86.

Van Dyke, a native of Danville, Ill., had an affable, goofy appeal, but he spent much of his career toiling in failed sitcoms and in the shadow of his older brother, even playing the star's brother in "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Until "Coach" came along in 1989, Van Dyke was best known to critics as the guy who had starred in one of television's more improbable sitcoms, 1965's "My Mother the Car." Its premise: A small-town lawyer talks to his deceased mother (voiced by actress Ann Sothern), who speaks from the radio of an antique automobile.

In "Coach," he finally made it, playing assistant coach Luther Van Dam, comic foil to Craig T. Nelson's coach Hayden Fox. The two headed up a hapless Minnesota college football team, its follies aired from 1989 to 1997, and Van Dyke was nominated four times for an Emmy.

Over the years, Van Dyke made guest appearances on numerous programs, among them "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," whose star had played his sister-in-law on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

He also appeared on "The Andy Griffith Show," ''Perry Mason" and in such films as "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," ''Palm Springs Weekend," ''Angel in My Pocket" and "McLintock!"

He also passed on a chance to play the title role on "Gilligan's Island" and to replace the departing Don Knotts as the deputy on "The Andy Griffith Show."

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Think I was the only person who liked My Mother The Car. Very creative idea. Thanks for the memories Jerry.