2019 Memorial Day
“An excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.” Elbridge Gerry’s contribution to the constitutional debate over a standing army during which Gerry compared a standing army to a standing penis!
You might find a person who is a know-nothing and someone who is a do-nothing. That’s OK, as long as a know-nothing is also a do-nothing. The problem begins when know-nothings reach someplace and start doing something. And they often believe they have cure-alls. Anu Garg
Close Friends and Acquaintances lost since New Year’s
Ken Anderson, close and long-time friend, a very sudden death; supporter of his parish and diocese, companion at many renewal events, and, when the chips were down the last man standing by me at my lowest ebb
Dick Barlow, former UNK colleague from the Math Department
Marilyn Belschner, artist, painter among other things of the two portraits (Mim Worlock and Helen Blackledge) that currently belong to St. Luke’s
Angela Conrad, friend from our Cather circle, fine scholar and teacher, after a long bout with Cancer
Beverly Cooper, long-time supporter of the Cather Foundation and columnist for the Red Cloud Chief, who loved to join with friends Frank and Charlotte White in singing along with John English’s St. Juliana Choir at Cather gatherings.
Larry Fruhling, undergraduate buddy and fraternity brother, one of the Schneider /Peek / Fruhling troika, who introduced me to the folks at the Lincoln Journal Star, his friends in Culbertson-Trenton area and their New Year’s parties, and drove a carload of us home for Thanksgiving break our freshman year so my Nana could greet me in front of the carload of new friends as “Chuckie”; Larry had a distinguished career at the Des Moines Register but late in life poor health robbed him of much of sardonic good humor
Lucile Freeman Gregory, one-time teacher in UNK’s College of Education
Tom Hansen, husband of recent Nebraska State Poet Twyla Hansen
Warren Hoover, former parishioner of St. Stephen’s, GI; he and Lois were just about as sweet and loyal as a couple could be
Ed Kohler II, the Penn State brother most responsible for turning around the fortunes of the Nebraska Chapter of Acacia Fraternity
LuAnn Lowe, dying of cancer after a professional career of preparing the chemicals that saved others from cancer
Randy Shackleton, who often substituted at the organ console in parishes I served
Arnold Sivils, colleague at UNK from the music department
John Toker, former parishioner at St. Luke’s, Kearney, and colleague in the College of Education at KSC, who with his wife Mary Lou started the local Dickens Society
Betty Bauer Whitney, MHS and NU classmate, of a unique and enthusiastic character
Marge Zamzow, a faithful parishioner at St. Stephen’s, who gave piety a good name
Celebrity Passings:
Tim Anderson, called by Ben Nelson the “quiet guardian” of our state’s water
Russell Baker, American writer and columnist
Bernardo Bertolucci has had his last tango in Paris
George Herbert Walker Bush, Navy pilot and later skydiver; married to Barbara, father of a President and two Governors; the last true Conservative in government
Carol Channing, the ‘dolly’ lama of Broadway (97!)
Roy Clark, sorrow in Lindy Hearne’s heart as Roy’s old backup, and a hee-haw in heaven as Roy plunks away with the angel chorus
Tim Conway, great comic and sidekick to Harvey Korman on Carol Burnett
Doris Day, great talent, beautiful voice (always rated on the best lists of female jazz vocalists), and last of the studio stars—I’d have never told my mother what hopes she inspired!
John Dingell, one of our nation’s best and longest serving national legislators
Daryl Dragon—I know, but think of Tenille as a widow
Another Einstein, this one Bob—who wrote much of the Smothers Brothers show
Albert Finney, one of the distinctive actors of our times
Audrey Geisel, another Who who’s moved out of Whoville, about a quarter century after Ted
John Havlicek, Celtics great, gone off to steal another ball in another playoff
Stephen Hillenburg, creator of the outstanding comic show: Sponge Bob Square Pants
Matthew Jones, UNL Professor, Otoe-Missouri Tribe, storyteller
Karl Lagerfeld, by design?
Stan Lee, a real Marvel
Michel Legrand, one of the greatest of the jazz legends: just when the angel chorus is looking for new material!
Penny Marshall, Schlemiel, Schlimazel, now in a league with us all
Peter Mayhew, alas Chewbacca is no longer with us
Willie McCovey, a true Giant
Galt McDermot, without whom it would have been bye bye Age of Aquarius
*Lyra McKee, gun downed in Derry in a new upsurge in Ireland’s sectarian violence
George Mendonsa, the kisser of the famous Eisenstadt Times Square photo from WWII; the kissee (presumably Greta Friedman) died two or three years ago
M. S. Merwin, one of America’s outstanding poets, one of whose poems was read at our son’s wedding
Notre Dame, 1160-2019. Viva Notre Dame.
Mary Oliver, of whom Stephanie Burt said, “’The utmost of ambition,’ Robert Frost once wrote, ‘is to lodge a few poems where they will be hard to get rid of’: not on university syllabi but in the memory of a generation. Few poets achieved that ambition more evidently, or more obviously, than Mary Oliver.” Like Provincetown, we are all the poorer for her passing
Amos Oz, Israeli author and peace activist
I.M. Pei, architect, noted for the famed glass pyramid at the Louvre…Lordy, he was 102!
Luke Perry, actor and celebrity
Frank Robinson, first black manager in the major leagues
Sister Cecylia, no longer the world’s oldest living nun
Sister Wendy, whose love of art led her to TV fame
Clive Swift, What now, Hyacinth?
John Walker, Wesleyan U. philosopher, musician, and long-time friend of Bill Kloefkorn and regular on the Niobrara Canoe Expeditions
Nancy Wilson, platinum pops and jazz singer
Herman Wouk, creator of Captain Queeg and skeptic of warfare
Re: Lyra McKee
Louis MacNeice, Ireland’s ‘quiet’ poet, died in 1963. An admirer of MacNeice’s, and a fellow poet, John Berryman, wrote “Dream Song 267,” also in dedication:
“Can Louis die? Why, then it’s time to join him
again, for another round, the lovely man.”
The Northern Irish poet Michael Longley recalled a visit to MacNiece’s grave a year or so after his death, in the company of Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney. When the poets next gathered, Mahon took from his pocket “In Carrowdore Churchyard.”
It begins:
Your ashes will not stir, even on this high ground,
However the wind tugs, the headstones shake.
This plot is consecrated, for your sake,
To what lies in the future tense. You lie
Past tension now, and spring is coming round
Igniting flowers on the peninsula.
The above taken from “’A Funeral Cry at Noon’: Louis MacNeice’s Carrickfergus Revisited, by Stuart Franklin.
Another blog coming in June sometime between travels.
capeek 