These are some deaths I forgot to note here on this blog.
The most notable in my world was the April 16 death of former Florida governor and U.S. senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham, who was 87 years old. I always liked the guy. He was a half brother to Phillip Graham, who was publisher of the Washington Post.
Daniel Robert Graham was born Nov. 9, 1936, in Coral Gables where his father, Ernest "Cap" Graham, had moved from South Dakota and established a large dairy operation. Young Bob milked cows, built fences and scooped manure as a teenager. One of his half-brothers, Phillip Graham, was publisher of The Washington Post and Newsweek until he committed suicide in 1963, just a year after Bob Graham's graduation from Harvard Law.
In 1966 he was elected to the Florida Legislature, where he focused largely on education and health care issues.
But Graham got off to a shaky start as Florida's chief executive, and was dubbed "Gov. Jello" for some early indecisiveness. He shook that label through his handling of several serious crises.
As governor, he also signed numerous death warrants, founded the Save the Manatee Club with entertainer Jimmy Buffett and led efforts to establish several environmental programs.
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Actor and documentary maker Terry Carter, 95, died April 23.
Snip:
Born John Everett DeCoste in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 16, 1928, to parents of Dominican, Argentine and African American descent, Carter would go on to become the first Black TV news anchor for Boston’s WBZ-TV Eyewitness News, where he also became their first opening night drama and movie critic. He was also one of the first Black regulars on the 1956 TV sitcom series “The Phil Silvers Show,” in which he played Private Sugarman.
Carter’s other credits include the 1970 TV movie “Company of Killers,” in which he starred alongside Van Johnson and Ray Milland, and the 1974 film “Foxy Brown” with Pam Grier.
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Marla Adams, 85, actress known for her roles on soap operas, died on April 26.
Snip:
Following appearances on stage and screen, including a 1958 production of "The Visit" on Broadway and the 1961 Natalie Wood drama "Splendor in the Grass," Adams became a fixture on daytime TV with roles on "General Hospital" and "The Secret Storm."
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Mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears, 68, died on March 14 at his home in Massachusetts.
Breashears shot Everest during 1996 climbing season, and witnessed the deadly blizzard that killed eight climbers and was later chronicled by author Jon Krakauer in the Outside feature and best-selling book Into Thin Air. Breashears helped with the rescue and recovery of climbers after the incident, and his experience led to another Everest film, the 2008 Frontline documentary Storm Over Everest. The film included interviews with survivors, video from the 1996 expedition, and recreated scenes of the storm and rescue efforts.
Speaking to Frontline, Breashears said he felt it was necessary to retell the story via film and not just words to try and help viewers understand the tragedy. “For me, to see and hear direct testimony from a person who has overcome such adversity, has survived such a difficult and stressful event, is very powerful,” he said. “There is something so much more poignant about seeing a person’s face and looking into their eyes and hearing their voice than just reading about them on a written page.”
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I remember seeing that film when it came out.
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Filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, 87, died on April 12. In addition to her career, she was married to the famed film director, Francis Ford Coppola.
Born in Los Angeles, California, she was raised in Huntington Beach by her mother, Delphine (nee Lougheed); her father, Clifford Neil, a political cartoonist for the Los Angeles Examiner, died when Eleanor was 10. She was educated at Huntington Beach high school, and graduated from UCLA in 1959 with a degree in applied design, going on to do freelance work at architectural installations.
Eleanor and Francis met in Ireland in 1962 on the set of the Roger Corman-produced horror film Dementia 13, which Francis directed; Eleanor was the assistant art director. They married a year later and had three children: Gian-Carlo, who died in a speedboat accident in 1986 at the age of 22; and Roman and Sofia, who both became film-makers.
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Quilt and visual artist Faith Ringgold, 93, died on April 12:
Faith Ringgold was born in 1930 in Harlem, New York City. She had asthma and spent a lot of time at home making art as a child. She eventually went to art school.
Ringgold learned to quilt from her family. Her mother, Willi Posey Jones, made dresses; she worked with her daughter to create Ringgold's first story quilt.
...Adrienne Childs is an art historian and curator. She says Ringgold influenced a generation of artists.
"Faith Ringgold opened the door for younger artists — for artists after her, Black artists in particular — to carry their message through these alternative kinds of media," Childs said.
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Venezuelan supercententarian Juan Vicente Perez Mora, 114, died April 2, just weeks before his 115th birthday. He had been the world's oldest living man.
Snip:
At the time he credited his longevity to "working hard, resting on holidays, going to bed early, drinking a glass of aguardiente every day, loving God, and always carrying him in his heart." Faith was central to his life and he prayed at least twice daily, he told Guinness World Records, "He wants to be remembered as a hard-working man, faithful to his wife and his religion. "
Pérez was born on May 27, 1909, in Venezuela to Euquitio Pérez and Edelmira Mora and was living in Táchira state when he died. Governor Freddy Bernal said on X, "with deep sadness and pain we say goodbye to this archetype of Tachirense man, humble, hardworking, peaceful, enthusiastic about family and tradition."
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Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, was 84 when he died on Leap Day, February 29. He died in Palm Beach, Florida, after having suffered from a fall.
Leader of the Progressive Conservative party from 1983 to 1993, Mulroney served almost a decade as prime minister after he was first elected in 1984 after snagging the largest majority in Canadian history with 211 of 282 seats.
The win would mark Canada’s first Conservative majority government in 26 years. His government was reelected in 1988. Mulroney entered the job with widespread support, but he left with the lowest approval rating in Canadian history. His Progressive Conservative party suffered a devastating defeat just after he left office. But in the years after the loss, prime ministers sought his advice.
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Actor Ron Harper, 91, known mostly for television work such as Planet of the Apes and Land of the Lost, died on May 6:
The late actor, who was born Robert Ronald Harper, grew up in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. He attended Princeton University and, instead of taking up a fellowship to study law at Harvard, decided to learn acting under theater director and actor Lee Strasberg. He later became Paul Newman’s understudy in the Broadway play “Sweet Bird of Youth” in 1959.
Harper opened up about his decision to pursue acting over the law in 1966.
“I kept saying to myself, ‘Should you waste your good education being an actor?’ And that little voice within me kept saying things like, ‘What do you want to take that fellowship to Harvard Law for? Be an actor. Starving is fun … And like the fool that any actor has to be, I listened to that dumb little voice,” Harper said at the time.
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Filmmaker Joe Camp, known for his series of films about Benji the dog, the original being Higgins, died on March 15.
But Camp had a childhood dream of making movies. He grew up on Disney films. “Walt Disney really was his idol,” said his son Brandon, himself a director. “Lady and the Tramp was one of his favorite movies, and he began to wonder why there had never been a live-action version of Lady and the Tramp, and specifically what he meant was a film in which the dog was truly the protagonist, not just a helper, or some sort of hero that went from one place to the next and pulled someone out of a well.”
Studying the family’s Yorkshire terrier, Benji, one night, Camp fleshed out his idea.
“I watched him react to whatever I was doing, to sounds outside,” Camp said in 1987. “And I realized that dogs do talk. They talk with their eyes.”
Joseph Shelton Camp Jr. was born April 20, 1939, in St. Louis. He grew up in Memphis with hopes of studying filmmaking at UCLA, but his parents persuaded him to enroll at the University of Mississippi for at least two years. He tried to transfer, but his grades weren’t high enough. He settled on a major in advertising.
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