Tag: Obituary

Saying Good-Bye To A Friend

Her name is Jasmine, better known as Jazz, and we became fast friends after Katrina….she lost her home and was living hand to mouth on the street.  I was working on some homes that had been hit by the storm trying to get them ready for occupation.  On my morning break I was eating some peanut butter crackers and Jazz came up and sat down beside me and we shared the crackers.

I had to return to work and she went on her way.  The next day I returned to the house and there she was as if waiting for me to return and again on my breaks we shared my food.

A couple of days after we met I had to leave and she bid me farewell.

Fate intervened and I had to go on a call to the same area as Jazz…..the woman said that she had called the city of come get Jazz for she was being a nuisance…….was then that I decided and after I got off work I went to her put her in the backseat and came home.

She was there during the two major traumas in my life…..a smashed right leg and then later when toes were removed….each time she made sure that I did not sit around feeling sorry for myself……she would remind me that I was still alive and needed to get off my ass and move around.

That was 13 years ago and we have been best friends all that time….but like me she got old and had to make the hard decision as to keep her close in pain and suffering or let her go peacefully with dignity….I chose the latter.

It was a heart wrenching decision…..but the right one to have made.

She was my friend, my love, my heart….she will be missed everyday until I join her and we will see each other again…if only in spirit.

(When you are cool the sun is always shining)

Good-bye my friend…..until we meet again.

May you Rest In Peace.

Good-bye Barbara

FLOTUS 41 has died!

Sad news indeed…..Barbara Bush has passed away at 92…..

Barbara Bush didn’t hesitate to tell people that her trademark pearl necklaces were fake. Americans liked that everything else about the snowy-haired first lady was real. The wife of the nation’s 41st president and mother of the 43rd brought a plainspoken, grandmotherly style to buttoned-down Washington, displaying an utter lack of vanity about her white hair and wrinkles. “What you see with me is what you get. I’m not running for president—George Bush is,” she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband, then vice president, was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Bush died Tuesday, the AP reports, citing a statement from family spokesman Jim McGrath. She was 92.

The Bushes, who were married on Jan. 6, 1945, had the longest marriage of any presidential couple in American history. And Mrs. Bush was one of only two first ladies who had a child who was elected president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams. “I had the best job in America,” Bush wrote in a 1994 memoir describing her time in the White House. “Every single day was interesting, rewarding, and sometimes just plain fun.” The publisher’s daughter and oilman’s wife could be caustic in private, but her public image was that of self-sacrificing, supportive spouse who referred to her husband as her “hero.” In addition to a follow-up memoir, Bush wrote two other books; she had six children, one of whom died of leukemia at age 3. Click for more on her remarkable life.

A lovely lady…..may she rest in peace.

Stephen Hawking–R.I.P.

Sad news Stephen Hawking has died at age 76……

One of the world’s greatest scientific minds has now left this dimension. British cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76, some 55 years after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and given two years to live. Family members say Hawking died peacefully early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England, the BBC reports. “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” children Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement, per Sky. “He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love’. We will miss him forever.”

Hawking, born in 1942, was known for his groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe. Books like best-seller A Brief History of Time made him what the AP calls “one of science’s biggest celebrities since Albert Einstein,” appearing on shows including The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Signs of his illness—also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease—appeared during his first year of graduate school. He lost what remained of his voice in 1985. “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years,” he told the Guardian in a 2010 interview. “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”

He will be missed……..

A Flyer Comes Home!

Another fallen hero returns home……

An airman whose plane was shot down during World War II is finally coming home.

Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. John Canty, who served with the 555th Bombardment Squadron, 386th Bombardment Group, 9th Bomber Command, was accounted for on Jan. 22, the Air Force announced.

Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. John H. Canty, a gunner and engineer, was killed 16 days after D-Day when his B-26 Marauder was shot down just east of Caen, France. His body has been recovered by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. (Courtsey photo)

Canty was one of eight crew members aboard a B-26 Maurader on a nighttime bombing mission on June 22, 1944.

They left from Easton Lodge-Essex, England, toward targets near Caen, France, and were shot down between the French villages of Baron-sur-Odon and Gavrus. The villages were in German-held territory at the time, so U.S. forces were unable to make a detailed search for the crew, and all eight members were marked as killed.

Canty, from Winsted, Connecticut, is recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in France. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate that he has been accounted for.

Welcome home and may you now rest in peace

On that note I will take my leave and start my weekend with a bang….my doctor says that I may once again have my customary glass of wine with meals……I go in search of a cork screw…..peace out my friends….chuq

Robert Parry–R.I.P.

My closing thought for today……

Another story that I missed because of my hospital stay was the death of journalist Robert Parry…..

Robert Parry, a longtime investigative journalist who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1985 for his Associated Press exclusives about the CIA’s production of an assassination manual for Nicaraguan rebels, has died. He was 68.

Parry died Saturday in hospice care after a series of strokes brought on by undiagnosed pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Diane Duston.

Parry joined the AP in 1974 and went on to work in the Washington bureau, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal as it rocked the Reagan administration. His work on the scandal also brought a George Polk Award in 1984.

After leaving the AP in 1987, Parry worked for Newsweek until 1990 and then became an investigative reporter for the PBS series “Frontline.”

In 1995, frustrated with what he saw as dwindling venues for serious investigative reporting, Parry founded the Consortium for Independent Journalism. Its website, Consortiumnews.com, sought to provide a home for such reporting in the early days of the internet, though it struggled financially and relied on contributions.

Parry was born on June 24, 1949, in Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated from Colby College with a degree in English in 1971. He worked in Massachusetts journalism before joining the AP.

Survivors include his wife, a former Associated Press newswoman; sons Sam Parry and Jeff Parry of Arlington and Nat Parry of Copenhagen, Denmark; daughter Elizabeth Parry of Alexandria, Virginia; and six grandchildren.

(Santa Maria Times)

WE at IST offer his family our heart felt condolences and may he rest in peace.  His voice will be missed.

Closing Thought–29Jan18

Anybody that is an old fart and served in the military will know the name of “Beetle Bailey”….a great cartoon about the Army life of a US Army private……

Sad news the creator of this beloved cartoon has died…..

Comic strip artist Mort Walker, a World War II veteran who satirized the Army and tickled millions of newspaper readers with the antics of the lazy private “Beetle Bailey,” died Saturday. He was 94.

Walker died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, said Greg Walker, his eldest son and a collaborator. His father’s advanced age was the cause of death, he said.

Walker began publishing cartoons at age 11 and was involved with more than a half-dozen comic strips in his career, including “Hi and Lois,” ”Boner’s Ark” and “Sam & Silo.” But he found his greatest success drawing slacker Beetle, his hot-tempered sergeant and the rest of the gang at fictional Camp Swampy for nearly 70 years.

The character that was to become Beetle Bailey made his debut as Spider in Walker’s cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Walker changed Spider’s name and launched “Beetle Bailey” as a college humor strip in 1950.

Addison Morton Walker was born Sept. 3, 1923, in El Dorado, Kansas, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1943 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving in Europe during World II. He was discharged as a first lieutenant, graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia and pursued a career as a cartoonist in New York.

“Beetle Bailey” also featured one of the first African-American characters to be added to a white cast in an established comic strip. (“Peanuts” had added the character of Franklin in 1968.) Lt. Jack Flap debuted in the comic strip’s panels in 1970.

Thanks for the great humor and may he rest in peace……

Death Of A Working Class Hero

I apologize this post was suppose to be posted yesterday but I got all sidetracked with medical stuff…..

37 years ago on this day, 08 December, John Lennon was shot and killed……I have chosen his best work in my opinion as a tribute to the man and the musician…

This one song tells more about society than a wealth of philosophers……

His talent has been sorely missed……chuq

A Well Deserved Homecoming

With little fanfare a US soldier has come home…..

The Korean War has been over for 60+ years and yet not everyone has come home….one more causality of that war has made a much deserved homecoming……

The remains of an Army medic from Massachusetts who was reported missing in action during the Korean War in 1950 are returning home for burial, military officials said Tuesday.

Cpl. Jules Hauterman Jr. is scheduled to be buried in Holyoke on March 31 with full military honors, according to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Hauterman, of Hampden, will be buried in the family plot with his parents and sister, said David Stuntz, whose 94-year-old mother is Hauterman’s cousin.

Hauterman was 19 years old when he was reported missing in action during the fighting withdrawal of the 31st Regimental Combat Team from the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950, military officials said.

More than 1,300 Americans, pursued by the Chinese army, were captured or killed.

Neither the Chinese nor the North Korean armies listed Hauterman as a prisoner, and no returning American POWs reported any information about him, so he was declared dead.

Remains recovered from the reservoir area in 1954 were declared unidentifiable and buried the next year in Hawaii.

Those remains were disinterred last June and were sent to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s lab for analysis.

Dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence matched Hauterman’s records.

The Accounting Agency said 7,757 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.

(yahoo news)

Welcome home soldier….may you Rest in Peace…..

One Last Gong

A sad day for us old farts

Back in the day the country tuned on their TV to watch the Gong Show with Gene-Gene the Dancing Machine and the Unknown Comic and the “sex” that was Jaye P. Morgan…..good times.

The Creator and host of the Gong Show, Chuck Barris, has died at age 87……

Chuck Barris, who tapped into Americans’ hunger to be on television by creating game shows such as “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game” and his showcase for the acutely untalented, “The Gong Show,” died on Tuesday, media outlets reported.

Barris died of natural causes at age 87 in Palisades, New York, Variety.com said, citing his publicist.

Decades before television talent shows such as “American Idol” and “America’s Got Talent” came along, Barris was putting everyday people before the cameras in what was more of a reverse talent show with everyday people who did not mind exposing their vulnerabilities or answering embarrassing questions.

Source: ‘Gong Show’ Host Chuck Barris Dead At 87 | The Huffington Post

Thank you for your genius and your time….you will be missed…..

Bang The Gong One Last Time.

Chuck Barris Rest in Peace……chuq

Asshat “Assie” Award–Jan2017

It is Sunday and I continue my two days away from the headlines and the utter stupidity of the DC two step….

Before I go any further there is some sad news….actor John Hurt has died at age 77…….

The versatile British actor Sir John Hurt, who could move audiences to tears in The Elephant Man, terrify them in Alien, and spoof that very same scene in Spaceballs, has died. He was 77. Hurt, who battled pancreatic cancer, died Friday in London, according to his agent, Charles McDonald. Twice nominated for an Oscar, for playing the tortured John Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and for his role as the heroin addict Max in Midnight Express, Hurt’s career spanned over 50 years. After minor television and film appearances, his breakout came in 1966 as Richard Rich in Fred Zinnemann’s A Man For All Seasons, followed by his portrayal of Caligula in the BBC miniseries I, Claudius in 1976.

(let’s not forget his portrayal of Winston in the movie 1984 with Richard Burton)

Sad day…he will be missed….may he rest in peace.

I let my readers know that I was re-starting my award, the “Asshat” Award, the “assies”…..there will be 11 monthly winners and an annual winner to be announced in late December…..and I will ask my readers to join in the process of picking the annual winner…..

January of 2017 had so much utter ignorance and stupidity with people spouting bullshit and passing it off as truth that it was difficult to pick a winner for the month…..so to re-start the award there will be 2 winners…..

IST monthly Winner of the Asshat Award…….

January 2017

Winner

“I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep’s is inciting people’s worst instincts”  Kellyanne Conway on FOX and friends….

And the co-winner is…….

New White House press secretary Sean Spicer eased off his confrontational approach with reporters at his first official press briefing Monday, following a weekend in which he berated reporters and then took all kinds of flak for his “alternative facts.” Questioned about his honesty Monday, he responded, “Our intention is never to lie to you,”

There you have the winner/s for the month of January 2017…. congrats to them…the award is richly deserved.  An email will be sent to their offices announcing their winning of this much coveted prize….

I believe the reason they won is obvious…if not get a 10 year old to explain it to you.  i am sure that I will hear back from the winners because this batch of morons has zero sense of humor.

If any of my readers has an idea for a winner please pass it on and if used they will be given full credit for the submission.  It is non-partisan so if you see, hear or read something dumb uttered by a Repub or Dem please pass it on to me and we will see how it shakes out….I do not care where it comes from a moron is a moron.

Since I cannot be everywhere all the time I could use your help…..

The award will be announced the last weekend of each month…..keep your eyes open and help this old fart out…..

Enjoy the rest of your day…be safe and be well….chuq