Category: Memoriam
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The Lightning Rod
Rod Grams has passed away after a long battle with cancer. Son of a dairy farmer from Princeton, MN, Grams came up through broadcasting, working his way from small radio stations into the anchorman’s seat at Channel 9 by the mid-eighties. From there, he went into politics – defeating Gerry Sikorski, who was hobbled by…
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If I Were Paranoid…
…I’d look at the deaths of Vince Flynn and now Tom Clancy within a few months of each other… …and connect it with all the other top-secret hanky-panky with the NSA, the IRS and the Justice Department… …and figure there’s a government conspiracy to knock off conservativsm’s few iconic pop-culture figures. Good thing I’m not paranoid,…
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Doubting Thomas
“I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter. Now I wake up and ask myself, ‘Who do I hate today?’” – Helen Thomas The Grand Dame of the Washington Press Corps files her last report. Will they regret giving her so much deference? —— The memoriams to Helen Thomas have thus far ventured…
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What The **** Ya Gonna Do?
I’m less surprised by the fact that James Gandolfini has passed away… …than by the fact that he was only 51. He’d seemed “51” for most of the last 20 years. Sigh.
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Not For Turning
Joe Doakes got to writing before I did this morning: A research chemist turned lawyer who became a elected representative of the people of Finchley, Margaret Thatcher changed the world. As Great Britain’s longest-serving (and only female) Prime Minister, “The Iron Lady” fought Liberalism and championed Conservative policies that won a war, rejuvenated the national…
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RIP Karl Bremer
Karl Bremer passed away from complications of pancreatic cancer yesterday. Bremer, the co-author of “The Madness of Michele Bachmann: A Broad-Minded Survey of a Small-Minded Candidate,” died Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 15, at his house in Stillwater Township, from complications related to pancreatic cancer. He was 60. Bremer was a tenacious muckraker, an award-winning blogger and…
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Inouye
Senator Daniel Inouye died yesterday at age 88. Inouye is one of the few people in American politics that I admired almost equally after I became a conservative as I did when I was still an annoying little liberal.
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The Accidental Commando
Birger Strømsheim passed away over the weekend, at age 101. Birger Edvin Martin Strømsheim was born Oct. 11, 1911, in Alesund, Norway. His parents had a small farm. In addition to his son, survivors include a daughter, Liv Kristen Oygard; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Aase Liv, died in 1997. “Birger who?” Well, if…
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Brubeck
True story – I was watching this video (embedding has been disabled, so you gotta click over) yesterday, probably about 2-3 hours before I heard that Dave Brubeck had passed away at 91. It’s jazz guitar great George Benson playing “Take Five”. I’ve never been a huge jazz fan. Not quite to this level…: …but…
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The Do-It-Yourselfer
It’s a bit of a whack upside the head to see that George Chapple – better known as “Dark Star” – has passed away: Chapple grew up in Ohio and Long Island, NY. He was a Vietnam veteran, and originally came to the Twin Cities with his parents in the 1970s. After dabbling in the…
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RIP MCA
Adam Yauch – “MCA”, of the Beastie Boys” – dead of cancer at 47: Mr. Yauch, who went by the moniker MCA, had been battling cancer since 2009, when a tumor was discovered in his salivary gland. He did not come to the Beastie Boys induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in…
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Sara Tiedeman
Sara Tiedeman has passed away. She and her husband, PR guru Chris Tiedeman, were gravely injured in a collision with a drunk driver last month. Sara’s prognosis was dire from the beginning, according to a source close to the Tiedemans, but we all hoped and prayed that every day she hung on was a day…
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Cowles
Long-time Strib publisher John Cowles passed away over the weekend at 92. Brian Lambert at the MinnPost carries the lengthy list of paeans to Cowles and his regional media legacy, which includes ponying up money to help found the MinnPost. Of course, if you follow politics in Minnesota, Cowles’ legacy is inescapable; he ran the Star Tribune, from…
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Andrew Breitbart – 1969-2012
Andrew Breitbart passed away this morning in Los Angeles. Larry Solov at BigJourno writes: We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior. Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile…
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RIP Mike Colalillo
Minnesota’s last living Medal Of Honor recipient, Mike Colalillo, has passed away. He was awarded the Medal for an action near Untergriesheim, Germany on April 7, 1945 – bare weeks before the end of the war, at a time when the battle in the West alternated unpredictably between Germans eager to surrender to any Western…
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Kirsty MacColl
It was eleven years ago today that Kirsty Maccoll was killed in a boating accident in Mexico. Kirsty who? Hush up and grab a seat.
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RIP Christopher Hitchens
Christopher HItchens, one of the last of a dying breed of intellectual progressives commentators, has passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. “Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last…
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RIP Al Stene
Al Stene – who was thrust into the center of the Crow Wing County voter fraud scandal – has tragically passed away. From a source close to the Stene family: I just got off the phone with Sharon Stene. She said that Al had died yesterday of a heart attack. He had just returned home…
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Jobs
Much of the developed world has been eulogizing Steve Jobs for the past couple of days. The world may not need another obit – especially from a guy who hasn’t worked with any Apple products in 17 years, and owns only one old IPod. But Steve Jobs has had an extremely large impact on my…
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The Conductor
It was a chilly, rainy night in March of 1983. I had a horrible cold – but no matter. I was standing on a riser in a tumbledown little church in Pendelton, Oregon, with 69 or so other college kids. And by this time in the tour, cooped up on buses for day after…
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In Memoriam
I was at my high school reunion last weekend. I had an absolute blast. It was an utterly wonderful time, in just about every possible way. Of course, any gathering of mid-fortysomethings is going to have its share of bad news. Up until last year, we’d lost a total of six classmates out of 251;…
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Remember
Benefit for Joel Rosenberg’s family will be tomorrow night at 7PM at Dreamhaven Books. Dreamhaven is at 2301 East 38th Street in Minneapolis.
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RIP Big Man
Clarence Clemons died on Saturday, of complications from a stroke. It’s impossible to overstate how important Clemons was to Springsteen’s early mystique – and Bruce knew it; on a stage full of scrawny white guys (and, during David Sanscious’ two years on keyboards, one scrawny black guy), Clemons was a 250 pound former lineman; he’d…
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Joel Rosenberg – RIP
I’ve been off the grid for the past couple of days. I was shocked to hear from friends this morning that Joel Rosenberg has died. Joel was accomplished at many things; a science fiction writer with dozens of book credits, he was best known to civil liberties advocates in Minnesota as the beating heart and…
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Memorial Day
It’s Memorial Day today. If you go to the south entrance to Como Park, along Lexington, you can see an unusual statue – an old torpedo on a stand. It’s a memorial to the crew of the USS Swordfish – an American submarine, built in the waning years of the 1930’s, which fought throughout World…