He wasn't the smartest guy that ever lived, but he was certainly one of the most nattily dressed.
Unlike most pundits out there, Novak actually had a career as a reporter:
Robert David Sanders Novak, 78, was born and raised in Joliet and his first newspaper jobs were with the Joliet Herald-News and, while a student at the University of Illinois, the Champaign-Urbana Courier. Novak maintained a lifelong tie to the University of Illinois with the school creating the Robert D. Novak chair of Western Civilization and Culture in 2001.
Mrs. Novak said that her husband passed away at 4:30 a.m., returning home after being hospitalized between July 10 and July 24. Novak’s malignant brain tumor was discovered July 27, 2008.
The Sun-Times has reposted an column Novak wrote last September about living with his disease:
The first sign that I was in trouble came on Wednesday, July 23, when my 2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street in downtown Washington while I was on my way to my office.
I did not realize I had hit anyone until a shirt-sleeved young man on a bicycle, whom I incorrectly thought to be a bicycle messenger, jumped in front of my car to block the way. In fact, he was David A. Bono, a partner in the high-end law firm Harkins Cunningham. The bicyclist was shouting at me that I could not just hit people and then drive away. That was the first I knew about the accident. Bono called the police, and a patrolman soon arrived.
After I said I had no idea I had hit anyone until they flagged me down and informed me, Bono told the Washington Post, "I would not believe that."
Fortunately, the investigating officer, P. Garcia, was a policeman who listened and apparently believed me. While Bono and other bystanders were taking on aspects of a mob, shouting "hit-and-run," Garcia issued a right-of-way infraction against me, costing me $50, instead of a hit-and-run violation that would have been a felony. Following Garcia's instructions, I promptly paid the $50 fine at Third District Police Headquarters in Northwest Washington, in cash and in person.
Garcia's justification in believing me was soon confirmed by the diagnosis of my brain cancer, in which I have lost not only left peripheral vision but nearly all my left vision, probably permanently. Several people have asked me whether the person I hit was crossing in front of me on my left. I answer, "I never saw him."
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Former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, 83, of heart failure.
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