On this day 6 February death of – Rubén Darío – Gustav Klimt – Marianne von Werefkin – Vince Guaraldi – Jimmy Van Heusen – Danny Thomas – Arthur Ashe – James Merrill – Frankie Laine

Posted on 29 FebamFri, 06 Feb 2026 00:03:00 -06002026-02-06T00:03:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Rubén_DaríoOn this day in 1916, “The Prince of Castillian Letters”, poet Rubén Darío died aged 49, in León, Nicaragua.  Born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento on 18 January 1867 in Metapa, today known as Ciudad Darío, Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Darío initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo (modernism) that flourished at the end of the 19th century.  Darío has had a great and lasting influence on 20th-century Spanish literature and journalism.  He has been praised as the undisputed father of the modernismo literary movement.


The Final Footprint –  Dario’s funeral lasted several days, and he was entombed in Catedral de la Asuncíon de María de León on 13 February 1916, at the base of the statue of Saint Paul near the chancel under a lion made of marble by the sculptor Jorge Navas Cordonero.

gustavklimtOn this day in 1918, painter Gustav Klimt died in Vienna at the age of 55, having suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to the influenza epidemic of that year.  Born 14 July 1862 in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary.  Klimt was a symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement.  His primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism.  In addition, he painted landscapes.  Early in his artistic career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner.  His work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic.  He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his “golden phase,” many of which include gold leaf. 

The Final Footprint – Klimt was interred at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna.

Gallery

A section of the Beethoven Frieze, at Secession Building, Vienna (1902) 

Judith II (1909) 

Golden phase and critical success

The Kiss 1907–08, oil on canvas, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna 

 Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), which sold for a record $135 million in 2006, Neue Galerie, New York 

 The Sunflower, c. 1906 

 Decorative patterns were often used by Gustav Klimt in his paintings. Die Umarmung (“The Embrace”) – detail from the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. 

    • Der Blinde (The Blind Man) 1896, Leopold Museum

    • Stiller Weiher (Egelsee bei Golling, Salzburg) (Tranquil Pond) 1899, Leopold Museum

    • Philosophie 1899–1907. Destroyed 1945

    • Medicine (detail) 1899–1907. Destroyed 1945

    • Jurisprudence 1899–1907. Destroyed 1945

    • Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1901. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

    • Portrait of Hermine Gallia, 1904. National Gallery, London

    • The Three Ages of Woman, 1905, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome

    • Portrait of Fritza Riedler 1906

    • Danaë, 1907. Private Collection, Vienna

    • Hope II, 1907–08, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

    • Mäda Gertrude Primavesi, 1912, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

    • Avenue in Schloss Kammer Park, 1912, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

  • Girlfriends or Two Women Friends, 1916–17, (Galerie Welz, Salzburg, later destroyed)

Drawings

    • Two Female Nudes Standing, ca. 1900, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

    • Girl Seated in a Chair, 1904, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

  • Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung (Masturbation), 1916

 Rosebushes under the Trees

Oberösterreichisches Bauernhaus

Klimt – Sonja Knips 

Gustav Klimt – Beech Grove I 

#RIP #OTD in 1938 artist, whose work is celebrated as a central part of German Expressionism, Marianne von Werefkin died in Ascona, Switzerland aged 77. Cimitero di Ascona

On this day in 1976, United States Army Veteran, Grammy award winning jazz musician and songwriter, Vince Guaraldi died of a heart attack at the age of 47 at the Red Cottage Inn in Menlo Park, California.  Born Vincent Anthony Dellaglio on 17 July 1928 in San Francisco’s North Beach area.  Noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip.  Guaraldi went on to compose scores for seventeen Peanuts television specials, including the Christmas special, plus the feature film A Boy Named Charlie Brown. 

The Final Footprint – Guaraldi is interred in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California.  Another notable final footprint at Holy Cross; Joe DiMaggio.

On this day in 1990, composer Jimmy Van Heusen died in Rancho Mirage, California, from complications following a stroke, at the age of 77. Born Edward Chester Babcock on January 26, 1913 in Syracuse, New York. He wrote songs for films, television and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song.

Studying at Cazenovia Seminary and Syracuse University, he became friends with Jerry Arlen, the younger brother of Harold Arlen. With the elder Arlen’s help, Van Heusen wrote songs for the Cotton Clubrevue, including “Harlem Hospitality”.

He then became a staff pianist for some of the Tin Pan Alley publishers, and wrote “It’s the Dreamer in Me” (1938) with lyrics by Jimmy Dorsey.

Collaborating with lyricist Eddie DeLange, on songs such as “Heaven Can Wait”, “So Help Me”, and “Darn That Dream”, his work became more prolific, writing over 60 songs in 1940 alone. It was in 1940 that he teamed up with the lyricist Johnny Burke.

Burke and Van Heusen moved to Hollywood and wrote for stage musicals and films throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Swinging on a Star” (1944). Their songs were also featured in many Bing Crosby films including some of the Road films and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949).

Van Heusen then teamed up with lyricist Sammy Cahn. Their three Academy Awards for Best Song were won for “All the Way” (1957) from The Joker Is Wild, “High Hopes” (1959) from A Hole in the Head, and “Call Me Irresponsible” (1963) from Papa’s Delicate Condition. Their songs were also featured in Ocean’s Eleven (1960), which included Dean Martin’s version of “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” and in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), in which Frank Sinatra sang the Oscar-nominated “My Kind of Town.”

Cahn and Van Heusen also wrote “Love and Marriage” (1955), “To Love and Be Loved”, “Come Fly with Me”, “Only the Lonely”, and “Come Dance with Me” with many of their compositions being the title songs for Frank Sinatra’s albums of the late 1950s.

Van Heusen wrote the music for five Broadway musicals: Swingin’ the Dream (1939); Nellie Bly (1946), Carnival in Flanders (1953), Skyscraper (1965), and Walking Happy (1966). While Van Heusen did not achieve nearly the success on Broadway that he did in Hollywood, at least two songs from Van Heusen musicals can legitimately be considered standards: “Darn That Dream” from Swingin’ the Dream; “Here’s That Rainy Day” from Carnival in Flanders. He became an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971.

Van Heusen married for the first time in 1969, at age 56, to Bobbe Brock, originally one of the Brox Sisters and widow of the late producer Bill Perlberg

The Final Footprint

Van Heusen is buried near the Sinatra family in Desert Memorial Park, in Cathedral City, California. His grave marker reads Swinging on a Star.

On this day in 1991, nightclub comedian, singer, actor, producer, and philanthropist Danny Thomas died of heart failure at age 79, in Los Angeles, California. Born Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912 in Deerfield, Michigan. His career spanned five decades. He created and starred in one of the most successful and long-running situation comedies in the history of American network television. In addition to guest roles on many of the comedy, talk, and musical variety programs of his time, his legacy includes a lifelong dedication to fundraising for charity.

Thomas’s long career began in films in 1947, playing opposite child actress Margaret O’Brien in The Unfinished Dance (1947) and Big City (1948). He then starred in the long-running television sitcom Make Room for Daddy (also known as The Danny Thomas Show) (1953–1964), in which he played the lead role of Danny Williams. He was also the founder of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is the father of Marlo Thomas, Terre Thomas, and Tony Thomas.

Thomas was a struggling young comic when he met Rose Marie Mantell (born Rose Marie Cassaniti), who had a singing career with her own radio show in Detroit, Michigan, and who was the daughter of Marie “Mary” Cassaniti (1896–1972), a drummer and percussionist for “Marie’s Merry Music Makers”. They were married on January 15, 1936.

Two days previously he had celebrated St. Jude Hospital’s 29th anniversary and filmed a commercial, which aired posthumously.

  The Final Footprint

He is entombed in a mausoleum on the grounds of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Rose Marie was entombed with him after her death in July 2000

On this day in 1993, U. S. Army veteran, tennis legend and social activist, Arthur Ashe, died in New York City at the age of 49 from AIDS-related pneumonia.  He contracted the HIV virus from blood transfusions during heart bypass surgery.  Born Arthur Robert Ashe. Jr. on 10 July 1943 in Richmond, Virginia.  Ashe attended UCLA and was the first African-American man to win Wimbledon and the U. S. Open.  I enjoyed playing tennis once ago and Ashe has always been one of my favorite players.  I was pulling for him to win that match at Wimbledon.  I used Head tennis rackets because Ashe did.  Ashe was married to Jeanne Moutoussamy.

The Final Footprint – Ashe is interred in the Ashe Private Estate in Woodland Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia.  His grave is marked by a large black granite marker.  The marker features the inscription; Distinguished Athlete, Scholar and Humanitarian, and A HARD ROAD TO GLORY.  After his death, Arthur Ashe’s body lay in state at the governor’s mansion in Virginia.  The last time this was allowed was for Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.  The city of Richmond posthumously honored Ashe’s life with a statue on Monument Avenue, a place traditionally reserved for statues of key figures of the Confederacy.  In 1993, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.  The main stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Park, where the US Open is played, is named Arthur Ashe Stadium in his honor. This is also the home of the annual Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day.  His memoir is entitled Days of Grace. 

#RIP #OTD in 2007 singer (“That’s My Desire”, “That Lucky Old Sun”, “Mule Train”, “Jezebel”, “High Noon”, “Cool Water”, “Rawhide”), songwriter, actor, Frankie Laine died of heart failure at Scripps Mercy Hospital, San Diego, aged 93. Cremated remains scattered over the Pacific

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On this day 5 February deaths of: Banjo Paterson – Thelma Ritter – Marianne Moore – Doug McClure – Kirk Douglas – Christopher Plummer

Posted on 29 FebamThu, 05 Feb 2026 00:09:00 -06002026-02-05T00:09:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Banjo_PattersonOn this day in 1941, Australian bush poet, journalist and author Banjo Paterson died of a heart attack in Sydney, aged 76.  Born Andrew Barton Paterson at the property “Narrambla”, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton.  Paterson wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood.  His more notable poems include “Waltzing Matilda”, “The Man from Snowy River” and “Clancy of the Overflow”.  On 8 April 1903 he married Alice Emily Walker, of Tenterfield Station, in St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, in Tenterfield, New South Wales.

The Final Footprint – Paterson’s grave, along with that of his wife, is in the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, Sydney.

#RIP #OTD in 1969 actress (All About Eve (1950), The Mating Season, With a Song in My Heart, Pickup on South Street, Pillow Talk, Birdman of Alcatraz, Miracle on 34th Street, Rear Window, The Misfits) Thelma Ritter died of a heart attack in Manhattan aged 66. Cremation

#RIP #OTD in 1972 modernist poet, critic, translator, editor, American suffrage movement activist, Marianne Moore died in New York City, aged 84. Cremated remains interred with those of her mother at the family’s burial plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

dougmcclure-211x300On this day in 1995, actor Doug McClure died from lung cancer in Sherman Oaks, California at the age of 59.  Born Douglas Osborne McClure on 11 May 1935 in Glendale, California.  Perhaps best remembered for his role as Trampas on the Western television servies The Virginian which ran from 1962 to 1971.  One of my favorite shows as a kid.  McClure was married five times; Faye Brash (1957 – 1961 divorce), BarBara Luna (1961 – 1963 divorce), Helen Crane (1965 – 1968 divorce), Diane Soldani (1970 – 1979 divorce) and Diane Furnberg (1979 – 1995 his death). 

The Final Footprint – McClure is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.  His grave is marked by a flat granite marker with his picture and the inscription; Loving Husband & Father and Forever In Our Hearts We Miss You.  Other notable Final Footprints at Woodlawn include; Barbara Billingsley, Harvey Korman, Glenn Ford, Bess Myerson, Sally Ride, and Irene Ryan.

On this day in 2020, actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer Kirk Douglas died at his home in Beverly Hills surrounded by family, age 103. Born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).

Douglas became an international star for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other early films include Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling (1951), and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama. He received his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), which also landed him a second Golden Globe nomination.

In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film.

As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received three Academy Award nominations, an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lived with his second wife (of 66 years), Anne Buydens, a producer, until his death.

with wife Anne

Douglas and his first wife, Diana Dill, married on November 2, 1943. They had two sons, Michael and producer Joel Douglas, before divorcing in 1951. Afterwards, in Paris, he met Buydens (born Hannelore Marx; April 23, 1919, Hanover, Germany) while acting on location in Act of Love. She originally fled from Germany to escape Nazism and survived by putting her multilingual skills to work at a film studio, creating translations for subtitles. They married on May 29, 1954. In 2014, they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. They had two sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor who died on July 6, 2004, from an overdose of alcohol and drugs. In 2017, the couple released a book, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood, that revealed intimate letters they shared through the years. Throughout their marriage Douglas had affairs with other women including several Hollywood starlets, though he never hid his infidelities from his wife, who was accepting of them and explained: “as a European, I understood it was unrealistic to expect total fidelity in a marriage.”

The Final Footprint

Douglas’s funeral was held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on February 7, 2020, two days after his death. He was buried in the same plot as his son Eric. Other notable final footprints at Westwood Village include; Ray Bradbury, Sammy Cahn, James Coburn, Rodney Dangerfield, Janet Leigh, Farrah Fawcett, Hugh Hefner, Brian Keith, Don Knotts, Burt Lancaster, Peter Lawford, Peggy Lee, Jack Lemmon, Karl Malden, Dean Martin, Walter Mathau, Marilyn Monroe, Carroll O’Connor, Roy Orbison, George C. Scott, Dorothy Stratten, Natalie Wood and Frank Zappa.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actor (The Sound of Music, Star Trek IV, 12 Monkeys, Inside Man, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Danny Collins, All the Money in the World, Knives Out) Christopher Plummer died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, aged 91. Cremation

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On this day 4 February deaths 0f – Louise Bogan – Karen Carpenter – Liberace – Patricia Highsmith – Betty Friedan – Maria Teresa Horta

Posted on 29 FebamWed, 04 Feb 2026 00:42:00 -06002026-02-04T00:42:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1970 poet (Body of This Death, Dark Summer, The Blue Estuaries, “Medusa”), the first woman appointed as the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress, Louise Bogan died in New York City, aged 72. Cremation

On this day in 1983, drummer, singer and songwriter, Karen Carpenter, died at her parents’s home in Downey, California at the age of 32 from complications related to anorexia nervosa.  Born Karen Anne Carpenter on 2 March 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut.  Along with her brother Richard, they formed the duo The Carpenters.  Best known for their album, 1970’s Close to You, featuring two big hit singles: “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.”  The songwriter Tom Bahler wrote the song “She’s Out of My Life” after she broke up with him.  The song would eventually became a hit single for Michael Jackson.  Carpenter married Thomas James Burris (1980 – 1983 her death). 

The Final Footprint – Carpenter’s funeral service took place on 8 February 1983, at the Downey United Methodist Church.  Dressed in a rose-colored suit, Carpenter lay in an open white casket.  Over 1,000 mourners passed through to say goodbye, among them her friends Dorothy Hamill, Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark, and Dionne Warwick.  Carpenter’s estranged husband Tom attended her funeral, where he took off his wedding ring and placed it inside the casket.  Carpenter was initially entombed in a private crypt in the Ascension Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Compassion, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Cypress, California.  In 2003, Richard had Karen and their parents moved to the Carpenter Family Private Mausoleum at Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California.  Karen’s crypt front features the inscription; A STAR ON EARTH – A STAR IN HEAVEN. Another notable final footprint at Valley Oaks is Artie Shaw.

On this day in 1987, pianist, singer and actor, Mr. Showmanship, Liberace died of pneumonia as a result of AIDS at Palm Springs county hospital, age 67. Born Władziu Valentino Liberace on May 16, 1919 in West Allis, Wisconsin. A child prodigy born to parents of Italian and Polish origin, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established concert residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage.

The Final Footprint

A devout Roman Catholic to the end, he had a priest administer the last rites to him the day before his death. His death was initially attributed variously to anemia (due to a diet of watermelon), emphysema, and heart disease. However, the Riverside County coroner performed an autopsy and later stated that “a deliberate attempt” had been made to hide the actual cause of Liberace’s death by his doctors, his manager, and Liberace’s entire immediate family. The post mortem discovered that Liberace had emphysema and coronary artery disease from years of chain smoking, but the real cause was pneumonia due to complications from AIDS.

Liberace’s body is entombed with those of his mother and brother, at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. In 1994, the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated a Golden Palm Star to him. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson, Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy,  Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef, and Paul Walker.

On this day in 1995, novelist and short story writer Patricia Highsmith died from lung cancer at Carita hospital in Locarno, Switzerland, at the age of 74. Born Mary Patricia Plangman on January 19, 1921 in Ft. Worth, Texas. Perhaps best known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed “the poet of apprehension” by novelist Graham Greene.

Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted numerous times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan,” Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film.

She preferred the company of animals to that of people and stated in a 1991 interview, “I choose to live alone because my imagination functions better when I don’t have to speak with people.” She never married.

The Final Footprint

She was cremated at the cemetery in Bellinzona; a memorial service was conducted in the Chiesa di Tegna in Tegna, Ticino, Switzerland; and her cremains were inurned in its columbarium.

#RIP #OTD in 2006 feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C. on her 85th birthday. Sag Harbor Jewish Cemetery, Sag Harbor, New York

#RIP #OTD in 2025, feminist poet, journalist, activist, one of the Three Marias (Novas Cartas Portuguesas), Maria Teresa Horta died in Lisbon aged 87. Prazeres Cemetery
Estrela, Lisboa Municipality, Lisboa

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On this day February 3 deaths of: Yvette Guilbert – The Day the Music Died (Buddy Holly – The Big Bopper – Ritchie Valens) – Anna May Wong – John Cassavetes – Audrey Meadows – Lana Clarkson – Maria Schneider – Ben Gazzara

Posted on 29 FebamTue, 03 Feb 2026 00:36:00 -06002026-02-03T00:36:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1944 cabaret singer, actress of the Belle Époque, diseuse, innovator of the French chanson, model for portraits by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others, Yvette Guilbert died in Aix-en-Provence, aged 79. Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

The Day the Music Died

On this day, in 1959, singer and songwriter, rock and roll pioneer, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, at the age of 22.  Ritchie Valens, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and the pilot, Roger Peterson, were also killed in the crash.  Holly’s bandmate Waylon Jennings reportedly gave up his seat on the plane, causing Holly to jokingly tell Jennings, “I hope your ol’ bus freezes up!”  Jennings shot back facetiously, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”  It was a statement that would haunt Jennings for decades.  Born Charles Hardin Holley on 7 September 1936 in Lubbock, Texas.  Music critic Bruce Elder described Holly as “the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll.”  Holly apparently inspired contemporary and later musicians, notably The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton.  In my opinion he exerted a profound influence on popular music.  Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly’s song catalogue.  In his 1998 Grammy acceptance speech for his Time out of Mind being named Album of the Year, Dylan said;  “And I just want to say that when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him…and he looked at me.  And I just have some sort of feeling that he was — I don’t know how or why — but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.”  Keith Richards reportedly said that Holly had “an influence on everybody.”  In a 24 August 1978 Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, “I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest.”  Don McLean’s popular 1971 ballad “American Pie” is inspired by Holly and the day of the plane crash.  The American Pie album is dedicated to Holly.  Holly was married to Maria Elena Santiago.  My favorite Holly songs are “That’ll be the Day” and “Not Fade Away”.  Holly co-wrote “That’ll be the Day” with Jerry Allison apparently after watching the movie The Searchers, starring John Wayne.  In the movie Wayne’s character, Ethan Edwards says that line four times; once in response to Jeffrey Hunter’s character Martin Pawley telling Ethan, “I hope you die!”  Ethan responds. “That’ll be the day.”  Holly’s music has certainly not faded away.  Indeed, 3 February 1959; the day the music died.

The Final Footprint –  Holly is interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery in Lubbock.  His grave is marked be a flat granite marker, with the inscription; IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR OWN BUDDY HOLLEY.  A memorial has been created near the crash site, where fans still leave mementos in honor of those who died in the crash.  There is a bronze statue of Holly on Lubbock’s Walk of Fame and a Holly mural on 19th street.  In June 1988, a four-foot tall granite memorial bearing the names of the three entertainers and Peterson was dedicated outside The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, the site of their final performance.  In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless-steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers.  It is located on private farmland, about one quarter mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, approximately eight miles north of Clear Lake.  I have visited the crash sight.  Stood there in the blowin’ cold, thinkin’ about what happened.  Paquette also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians near the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  That memorial was unveiled on 17 July 2003.  Holly’s life story inspired a Hollywood biographical film, The Buddy Holly Story (1978).  Gary Busey received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly.  Paul McCartney produced and hosted a documentary about Holly in 1985, titled The Real Buddy Holly Story.  In 1987, Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba.  Other notable final footprints in Lubbock cemetery include Bobby Layne.

The Big Bopper

The_Big_BopperBorn Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr. on 24 October 1930 in Sabine Pass, Texas.  Perhaps best known for his recording of “Chantilly Lace”, a song he co-wrote with Jerry Foster and Bill Rice. 

The Final Footprint – In January 2007, Richardson’s son Jay requested that his father’s body be exhumed and an autopsy be performed to settle the rumors that a gun was fired or that Richardson initially survived the crash.  The findings indicated there were no signs of foul play and that Richardson died immediately.  After the autopsy, Richardson’s body was re-interred next to his wife in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas.  Jay then allowed the old casket to be put on display at the Texas Musicians Museum.

Ritchie Valens

Born Richard Steven Valenzuela on 13 May 1941 in Pacoima, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles.  Valens is considered rock and roll pioneer and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement.  His recording career lasted only eight months but he had several hits, most notably “La Bamba”, which was originally a Mexican folk song.  Valens transformed the song into one with a rock rhythm and beat, and it became a hit in 1958, making Valens a pioneer of the Spanish-speaking rock and roll movement. 

The Final Footprint – Valens was interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery, Mission Hills, California.  Valens has been the subject of several biopic films, including the 1987 film La Bamba.  Primarily set in 1957-1959, it depicted Valens from age 16 to 17 and introduced Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens.

Roger Peterson

Born Roger Arthur Peterson on 24 May 1937 in Alta, Iowa.  A memorial service for Peterson was held at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Ventura, Iowa on February 5.  A funeral was held the next day at St. Paul Lutheran Church in his hometown of Alta and Peterson was buried in Buena Vista Memorial Cemetery in nearby Storm Lake. Peterson’s parents would later receive condolence letters from the families of Holly and Valens.

On this day in 1961, actress Anna May Wong died of a heart attack as she slept at home in Santa Monica, at the age of 56. Born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905 in near Chinatown in Los Angeles. Considered to be the first Hong Kong-Chinese American Hollywood movie star, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first movies made in color and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon and had achieved international stardom in 1924. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe in the late 1920s, where she starred in several notable plays and films, among them Piccadilly (1929). She spent the first half of the 1930s traveling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. Wong was featured in films of the early sound era, such as Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express(1932).

In 1935 Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, choosing instead the white actress Luise Rainer to play the leading role. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her family’s ancestral village and studying Chinese culture. In the late 1930s, she starred in several B movies for Paramount Pictures, portraying Chinese and Chinese Americans in a positive light. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, when she devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances.

In 1951, Wong made history with her television show The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, the first ever U.S. television show starring an Asian American series lead. She had been planning to return to film in Flower Drum Song when she died. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical “Dragon Lady” and demure “Butterfly” roles that she was often given. Her life and career were re-evaluated in the years around the centennial of her birth, in three major literary works and film retrospectives.

The Final Footprint

Her cremated remains were interred in her mother’s grave at Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. The headstone is marked with her mother’s Anglicized name on top, the Chinese names of Anna May (on the right), and her sister Mary (on the left) along the sides. Another notable final footprint at Angelus-Rosedale is Hattie McDaniel.

#RIP #OTD in 1989 actor (The Dirty Dozen, Rosemary’s Baby), film director (Faces, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence), screenwriter, John Cassavetes died from complications of cirrhosis of the liver, aged 59. Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles 

#RIP #OTD in 1996 actress (Alice Kramden on The Honeymooners), banker, advisory corporate director, Audrey Meadows died from lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, aged 73. Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California. To the moon Alice!

#RIP #OTD in 2003 actress and fashion model Lana Clarkson was shot and killed inside the home of record producer Phil Spector in Alhambra, California, aged 40. Cremated remains in the Chapel Columbarium, Hollywood Forever

 

And on this day in 2011, actress Maria Schneider died of breast cancer in Paris at age 58. Born Maria-Hélène Schneider on 27 March 1952 in Paris. She starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s film Last Tango in Paris (1972).

Schneider worked in more than 50 films and television productions between 1969 and 2008, including Last Tango in Paris, Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975), opposite Jack Nicholson, René Clément’s Wanted: Babysitter (1975), Daniel Schmid’s Violanta (1976), Nouchka van Brakel’s A Woman Like Eve (1979), Daniel Duval’s Memoirs of a French Whore (1979), Jacques Rivette’s Merry-Go-Round (1981), Predrag Golubović’s Peacetime in Paris(1981), Enki Bilal’s Bunker Palace Hôtel (1989), Marco Bellocchio’s The Conviction (1991), Mehdi Charef’s In the Country of Juliets (1992), Cyril Collard’s Savage Nights (1992), Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre (1996), and Josiane Balasko’s A French Gigolo (2008).

Throughout her career, she was a strong advocate for improving the work conditions of women in film. 

The Final Footprint

Her funeral was held on 10 February 2011 at Church of Saint-Roch, Paris, attended by actors, directors, and producers in French cinema such as Dominique Besnehard, Bertrand Blier, Christine Boisson, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, and Andréa Ferreol, her partner Maria Pia Almadio, half-siblings Fiona and Manuel Gélin, and her uncle Georges Schneider. Delon read a tribute from Brigitte Bardot. Schneider was cremated afterwards at Père Lachaise crematorium, and her ashes were to be scattered at sea at the foot of the Rock of the Virgin in Biarritz, according to her last wishes. 

#RIP #OTD in 2012 actor and director of film, stage, and television (The Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of Sam, Dogville, Paris, je t’aime) Ben Gazzara died of pancreatic cancer at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, aged 81. Cremation 

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On this day 2 February deaths of – Boris Karloff – Natalie Clifford Barney – Donald Pleasence – Gene Kelly – Philip Seymour Hoffman

Posted on 29 FebamMon, 02 Feb 2026 00:51:00 -06002026-02-02T00:51:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Borris_Karloff_stillOn this day in 1969, actor Boris Karloff died from emphysema in King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, Sussex at age 81.  Born William Henry Pratt at 36 Forest Hill Road, Honor Oak, London on 23 November 1887.  Karloff is perhaps best remembered for his roles in horror films and especially for his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939), which resulted in his immense popularity.  His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch, as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966).  He also had a memorable role in the original Scarface (1932).  For his contribution to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Karloff married five times: Grace Harding (1910-1913, divorce), Montana Laurena Williams (1920, divorce), Helene Vivian Soule (1924-1928, divorce), Dorothy Stine (1928-1946, divorce) and Evelyn Hope Helmore (1946-1969, his death). 

The Final Footprint –  Karloff was cremated, following a requested low-key service, at Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance.  A memorial service was held at St Paul’s, Covent Garden (the Actors’ Church), London, where there is also a plaque.

#RIP #OTD in 1972 American playwright, poet (Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes), novelist, salon host who lived as an expatriate in Paris (Aventures de l’Esprit), Natalie Clifford Barney died of heart failure in Paris, aged 95. Passy Cemetery, Paris

#RIP #OTD in 1995 actor (The Great Escape, Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, Halloween, Escape from New York) Donald Pleasence died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, from heart failure following heart valve replacement surgery, aged 75. Cremation

genekellygOn this day in 1996, dancer, Academy Award nominated actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer, Gene Kelly, died at his home in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 83.  Born Eugene Curran Kelly on 23 August 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, style and the likeable characters that he played on screen in movie classics including, Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris.  Kelly graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in Economics and enrolled in law school at Pitt but dropped out later to pursue his career in entertainment.  His Oscar nomination came from his role in Anchors Aweigh, co-starring with Frank Sinatra.  Kelly was married three times Betsy Blair (1941 – 1957 divorce), Jeanne Coyne (1960 – 1973 her death), Patricia Ward (1990 – 1996 his death).

The Final Footprint – Kelly was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary (a Dignity Memorial® provider) and his cremains were given to his family.  He left instructions that there was to be no funeral or memorial service. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman 2011.jpg

Hoffman at the Paris premiere of The Ides of March in October 2011

On this day in 2014, actor, director and producer Philip Seymour Hoffman died from an accidental drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 46. Born July 23, 1967 in Fairport, New York. Perhaps best known for his distinctive supporting and character roles.

Drawn to theater as a teenager, Hoffman studied acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He gained recognition for his supporting work, notably in Boogie Nights (1997), Happiness (1998), Patch Adams (1998), The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), and Along Came Polly (2004). His portrayal of the author Truman Capote in Capote (2005), won multiple accolades including the Academy Award for Best Actor. Hoffman’s profile continued to grow, and he received three more Oscar nominations for his supporting work as a brutally frank CIA officer in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), a priest accused of pedophilia in Doubt (2008), and the charismatic leader of a Scientology-type movement in The Master(2012).

While he mainly worked in independent films, including The Savages (2007) and Synecdoche, New York (2008), Hoffman also appeared in Hollywood blockbusters, such as Twister (1996) and Mission: Impossible III (2006), and in one of his final roles, as Plutarch Heavensbee in the Hunger Games series (2013–15). The feature Jack Goes Boating (2010) marked his debut as a filmmaker. Hoffman was also an accomplished theater actor and director. He joined the off-Broadway LAByrinth Theater Company in 1995, where he directed, produced, and appeared in numerous stage productions. His performances in three Broadway plays – True West in 2000, Long Day’s Journey into Night in 2003, and Death of a Salesman in 2012 – all led to Tony Award nominations.

For the last 14 years of his life, he was in a relationship with costume designer Mimi O’Donnell, whom he had met in 1999 when they were both working on the play In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, which Hoffman directed. They lived in New York City. Hoffman and O’Donnell separated in the fall of 2013, some months before his death.

The Final Footprint

A funeral was held at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan on February 7, 2014. His remains were cremated.

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On this day 1 February deaths of – Mary Shelley – Buster Keaton – Heather O’Rourke – Blaze Foley – Elaine de Kooning – Irish McCalla – Space Shuttle Columbia – Carl Weathers

Posted on 29 FebamSun, 01 Feb 2026 00:21:00 -06002026-02-01T00:21:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

maryRothwellMaryShelley-150x150On this day in 1851, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley died in Chester Square, London, at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour.  Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, on 30 August 1797.  Perhaps best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), she also edited and promoted the works of her husband.  Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.  In 1816, Mary and Percy  famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.  The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence.  In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio.  A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. 

The Final Footprint – According to her daughter-in-law, Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy (her son) and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be “dreadful”, chose to bury her instead at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe.  In order to fulfil Mary’s wishes, Percy and Jane had the coffins of Mary’s parents exhumed and buried with her.  On the first anniversary of Mary’s death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk.  Inside they found locks of her dead children’s hair, a notebook she had shared with her husband, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.

#RIP #OTD in 1966 actor (Sherlock Jr., The General, The Cameraman, The Twilight Zone “Once Upon a Time”), comedian and filmmaker Buster Keaton died of lung cancer, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, California. Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.

#RIP #OTD 1988 child actress (Carol Anne in Poltergeist) Heather O’Rourke died from congenital stenosis of the intestine and septic shock at Children’s Hospital of San Diego, aged 12. Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles

#RIP #OTD in 1989 singer-songwriter (“If I Could Only Fly”, “Clay Pigeons”), poet, and artist, Blaze Foley (Michael Fuller) died from gunshot wounds in Austin aged 39. Live Oak Cemetery, Manchaca, Texas

#RIP #OTD in 1989 Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter, editorial associate for Art News magazine, Elaine de Kooning died of lung cancer in Southampton, New York, aged 70. Green River Cemetery, East Hampton, New York.

#RIP #OTD in 2002, actress (Sheena, Queen of the Jungle), Vargas Girl model, artist, Irish McCalla died of a stroke and complications from her fourth brain tumor in Tucson, Arizona aged 73. Cremation

On this day in 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed during re-entry over Texas killing all seven crew members.  The crew: Commander Rick D. Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon. 

The Final Footprint – A large granite memorial with a bronze plaque was erected at Arlington National Cemetery in memory of the crew.  The memorial is placed near a similar memorial for the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  Other notable Final Footprints at Arlington include; Medgar Evers, JFK, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, RFK, Edward Kennedy, Lee Marvin, Audie Murphy and Malcolm Kilduff, Jr.

#RIP #OTD in 2024 actor (Rocky, Predator, Action Jackson, Happy Gilmore), director, Carl Weathers died at his home in Los Angeles from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease aged 76. Cremation

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On this day 31 January deaths of: Guy Fawkes – A. A. Milne – Moira Shearer – Molly Ivins – Dorothea Tanning – Lizabeth Scott

Posted on 29 JanamSat, 31 Jan 2026 00:54:00 -06002026-01-31T00:54:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1606, member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, Guy Fawkes was hanged, drawn and quartered at the Old Palace Yard at Westminster, aged 35. Body parts distributed to “the four corners of the kingdom”

#RIP #OTD in 1956 author, poet, (Winnie-the-Pooh) A. A. Milne died at his home in Hartfield, Sussex, England aged 74. Cremation. Memorial plaque, Ashdown Forest.

On this day in 2006, Scottish prima ballerina and actress, Moira Shearer, Lady Kennedy, died at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, England at the age of 80.  Born Moira Shearer King on 17 January 1926 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland.

Perhaps best known for her first film role as Victoria Page in the Powell & Pressburger ballet-themed film The Red Shoes, (1948).  She was married to Ludovic Kennedy (1950 – 2006 her death).  They were married in the Chapel Royal in London’s Hampton Court Palace and in their vows did not include the word “obey”.

The Final Fooprint – Shearer is interred in Durisdeer Cemetery, Durisdeer, Scotland.  Her grave is marked with an upright stone marker.  Her inscription includes her name, birth and death years and the following; In memory of a much loved wife, mother, & grandmother.

#RIP #OTD in 2007 newspaper columnist (The Texas Observer, The New York Times, Dallas Times Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram), author, political commentator, and humorist, Molly Ivins died at her Austin, Texas, home in hospice care, aged 62. Cremation

On this day in 2012, painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet Dorothea Tanning died at her Manhattan home at age 101. Born Dorothea Margaret Tanning on August 25, 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois.

After attending Knox College for two years (1928–30), she moved to Chicago in 1930 and then to New York in 1935. There she supported herself as a commercial artist while pursuing her own painting, and discovered Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1936 exhibition, Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism. After an eight-year relationship, she was married briefly to the writer Homer Shannon in 1941. Impressed by her creativity and talent in illustrating fashion advertisements, the art director at Macy’s department store introduced her to the gallery owner Julien Levy, who immediately offered to show her work. Levy later gave Tanning two one-person exhibitions (in 1944 and 1948), and also introduced her to the circle of émigré Surrealists whose work he was showing in his New York gallery, including the German painter Max Ernst.

Tanning first met Ernst at a party in 1942. Later he dropped by her studio to consider her work for an exhibition of work by women artists at The Art of This Century gallery, which was owned by Peggy Guggenheim, Ernst’s wife at the time. As Tanning recounts in her memoirs, he was enchanted by her iconic self-portrait Birthday (see above). The two played chess, fell in love, and embarked on a life together that took them to Sedona in Arizona, and later to France. They lived in New York for several years before moving to Sedona, where they built a house and hosted visits from many friends crossing the country, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Balanchine, and Dylan Thomas. Tanning and Ernst were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in Hollywood. They were married for 30 years.

In 1949, Tanning and Ernst relocated to France, where they divided their time between Paris and Touraine, returning to Sedona for intervals through the early and mid 1950s. They lived in Paris and later Provence until Ernst’s death in 1976 (he had suffered a stroke a year earlier), after which Tanning returned to New York. She continued to create studio art in the 1980s, then turned her attention to her writing and poetry in the 1990s and 2000s, working and publishing until the end of her life. Tanning died on January 31, 2012, at her Manhattan home at age 101.

The Final Footprint

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris. Other notable final footprints at Père Lachaise include: Honoré de Balzac, Georges Bizet, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Maria Callas, Chopin, Colette, Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Max Ernst, Molière, Jim Morrison, Gerard de Nerval, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Marcel Proust, Sully Prudhomme, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Simone Signoret, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Wright.

Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 25 1/2 in./102.2 x 64.8 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. ©The Estate of Dorothea Tanning

Ernst and Tanning

Some Roses and their Phantoms, 1952, oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 40 1/4 in./76.3 x 101.5cm, Tate Modern.

Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (Poppy Hotel, Room 202) 1970-73, mixed media, 133 7/8 x 122 1/8 x 185 in./340 x 310 x 470 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, ©The Estate of Dorothea Tanning

Etched Murmurs, 1984, oil on canvas, 12 2/5 x 8 1/4 in./31.4 x 21cm, Spaightwood Galleries.

#RIP #OTD in 2015 actress and model (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Dead Reckoning, Desert Fury, Too Late for Tears) Lizabeth Scott died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles, aged 92. Cremation

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On this day 30 January deaths of – Betsy Ross – Mahātmā Gandhi – Bloody Sunday – Lightnin’ Hopkins – Coretta Scott King – Marianne Faithfull

Posted on 29 JanamFri, 30 Jan 2026 00:57:00 -06002026-01-30T00:57:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Betsy Ross presenting the first American flag to George Washington by Edward Percy Moran

On this day in 1836, the woman widely credited with making the first American flag, Betsy Ross, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of 84.  Born Elizabeth Griscom on 1 January 1752 in Philadelphia.  Ross married three times; John Ross (1773 – 1775 his death), Joseph Ashburn (1777 – 1782 his death), John Claypoole (1783 – 1817 his death). 

The Final Footprint – Ross’s body was first buried at the Quaker burial ground on South 5th Street in Philadelphia.  Twenty years later, her remains were exhumed and reburied in the Mt. Moriah Cemetery in the Cobbs Creek Park section of Philadelphia.  In preparation for the United States Bicentennial, the city ordered the remains of Ross and her third husband, John Claypoole, moved to the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia in 1975; however, workers found no remains under her tombstone.  Bones found elsewhere in the family plot were deemed to be hers and were re-interred in the current grave visited by tourists at the Betsy Ross House.

#RIP #OTD in 1948 Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the campaign for India’s independence, Mahātmā Gandhi; assassinated by gunshots; Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), New Delhi, aged 78. Cremated remains immersed/scattered: Sangam at Allahabad; at the source of the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda; Girgaum Chowpatty. An urn is at the palace of the Aga Khan in Pune and another in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles. The place near Yamuna river where he was cremated is the Rāj Ghāt memorial in New Delhi. All heads of state are brought here to lay garlands in his memory.

Bloody_Sunday_memorialOn this day in 1972, in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, 26 civil-rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army.  Thirteen males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after, while the death of another man four-and-a-half months later was attributed to the injuries he received on that day.  Two protesters were also injured when they were run down by army vehicles.  Five of those wounded were shot in the back.  The incident occurred during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march; the soldiers involved were members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para).  Two investigations have been held by the British government. The Widgery Tribunal, held in the immediate aftermath of the event, largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of blame.  Widgery described the soldiers’ shooting as “bordering on the reckless” but was widely criticised.  The Saville Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 to reinvestigate the events.  Following a 12-year inquiry, Saville’s report was made public on 15 June 2010.  The report found that all of those shot were unarmed, and that the killings were both “unjustified and unjustifiable.”  On the publication of the Saville report the British prime minister, David Cameron, made a formal apology on behalf of the United Kingdom.  The Provisional Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) campaign against the partition of Ireland had begun in the two years prior to Bloody Sunday, but public perceptions of the day boosted the status of, and recruitment into, the organisation.  Bloody Sunday remains among the most significant events in the Troubles of Northern Ireland, chiefly because those who died were shot by the British army rather than paramilitaries, in full view of the public and the press.

The Dead

  • John (Jackie) Duddy. Shot in the chest in the car park of Rossville flats. Four witnesses stated Duddy was unarmed and running away from the paratroopers when he was killed. Three of them saw a soldier take deliberate aim at the youth as he ran. He is the uncle of the Irish boxer John Duddy.
  • Patrick Joseph Doherty. Shot from behind while attempting to crawl to safety in the forecourt of Rossville flats. Doherty was the subject of a series of photographs, taken before and after he died by French journalist Gilles Peress. Despite testimony from “Soldier F” that he had fired at a man holding and firing a pistol, Widgery acknowledged that the photographs showed Doherty was unarmed, and that forensic tests on his hands for gunshot residue proved negative.
  • Bernard McGuigan. Shot in the back of the head when he went to help Patrick Doherty. He had been waving a white handkerchief at the soldiers to indicate his peaceful intentions.
  • Hugh Pius Gilmour. Shot through his right elbow, the bullet then entering his chest as he ran from the paratroopers on Rossville Street. Widgery acknowledged that a photograph taken seconds after Gilmour was hit corroborated witness reports that he was unarmed, and that tests for gunshot residue were negative.
  • Kevin McElhinney. Shot from behind while attempting to crawl to safety at the front entrance of the Rossville Flats. Two witnesses stated McElhinney was unarmed.
  • Michael Gerald Kelly. Shot in the stomach while standing near the rubble barricade in front of Rossville Flats. Widgery accepted that Kelly was unarmed.
  • John Pius Young. Shot in the head while standing at the rubble barricade. Two witnesses stated Young was unarmed.
  • William Noel Nash. Shot in the chest near the barricade. Witnesses stated Nash was unarmed and going to the aid of another when killed.
  • Michael M. McDaid. Shot in the face at the barricade as he was walking away from the paratroopers. The trajectory of the bullet indicated he could have been killed by soldiers positioned on the Derry Walls.
  • James Joseph Wray. Wounded then shot again at close range while lying on the ground. Witnesses who were not called to the Widgery Tribunal stated that Wray was calling out that he could not move his legs before he was shot the second time.
  • Gerald Donaghey. Shot in the stomach while attempting to run to safety between Glenfada Park and Abbey Park. Donaghey was brought to a nearby house by bystanders where he was examined by a doctor. His pockets were turned out in an effort to identify him. A later police photograph of Donaghey’s corpse showed nail bombs in his pockets. Neither those who searched his pockets in the house nor the British army medical officer (Soldier 138) who pronounced him dead shortly afterwards say they saw any bombs. Donaghey had been a member of Fianna Éireann, an IRA-linked Republican youth movement. Paddy Ward, a police informer who gave evidence at the Saville Inquiry, claimed that he had given two nail bombs to Donaghey several hours before he was shot dead.
  • Gerard (James) McKinney. Shot just after Gerald Donaghey. Witnesses stated that McKinney had been running behind Donaghey, and he stopped and held up his arms, shouting “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”, when he saw Donaghey fall. He was then shot in the chest.
  • William Anthony McKinney. Shot from behind as he attempted to aid Gerald McKinney (no relation). He had left cover to try to help Gerald.
  • John Johnston. Shot in the leg and left shoulder on William Street 15 minutes before the rest of the shooting started. Johnston was not on the march, but on his way to visit a friend in Glenfada Park. He died 4½ months later; his death has been attributed to the injuries he received on the day. He was the only one not to die immediately or soon after being shot.

The Final Footprint – A Bloody Sunday memorial was erected in the Bogside.  Paul McCartney (who is of Irish descent) recorded the first song in response only two days after the incident.  The single entitled “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”, expressed his views on the matter.  It was one of a few McCartney solo songs to be banned by the BBC.  The John Lennon album Some Time in New York City features a song entitled “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, inspired by the incident, as well as the song “The Luck of the Irish”, which dealt more with the Irish conflict in general.  Lennon, who was of Irish descent, also spoke at a protest in New York in support of the victims and families of Bloody Sunday.  The incident has been commemorated by Irish band, U2, in their 1983 protest song “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.  Black Sabbath‘s Geezer Butler (also of Irish descent) wrote the lyrics to the Black Sabbath song “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” on the album of the same name in 1973.  Butler stated, “…the Sunday Bloody Sunday thing had just happened in Ireland, when the British troops opened fire on the Irish demonstrators… So I came up with the title ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’, and sort of put it in how the band was feeling at the time, getting away from management, mixed with the state Ireland was in.”

On this day in 1982, country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, and musician Lightnin’ Hopkins died of esophageal cancer in Houston, at the age of 69. Born Samuel John Hopkins on March 15, 1912 in Centerville, Texas. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on October 14, 1960, alongside Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, performing the spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep”. In 1960, he signed with Tradition Records. The recordings which followed included his song “Mojo Hand” in 1960.

In 1968, Hopkins recorded the album Free Form Patterns, backed by the rhythm section of the psychedelic rock band 13th Floor Elevators. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, he released one or sometimes two albums a year and toured, playing at major folk music festivals and at folk clubs and on college campuses in the U.S. and internationally. He toured extensively in the United States and played a six-city tour of Japan in 1978. Hopkins was Houston’s poet-in-residence for 35 years.

The Final Footprint

Lightnin’ is interred at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery, Houston (a Dignity Memorial property) Garden of Gethsemane. His epitaph reads:

HERE LIES LIGHTNIN’
WHO STOOD FAMOUS AND TALL
HE DIDN’T HESITATE TO GIVE HIS ALL

On this day in 2006, author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., the “First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement” Coretta Scott King died of respiratory failure due to complications from ovarian cancer at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, at the age of 78. Born on April 27, 1927 in Marion, Alabama. King met her husband while attending graduate school in Boston. They both became increasingly active in the American Civil Rights Movement. She was also a singer, and often incorporated music into her civil rights work.

King played a prominent role in the years after her husband’s assassination in 1968 when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality and became active in the Women’s Movement. King founded the King Center and sought to make his birthday a national holiday. She succeeded when Ronald Reagan signed legislation which established Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on November 2, 1983. She later broadened her scope to include both opposition to apartheid and advocacy for LGBT rights. King became friends with many politicians before and after Martin Luther King’s death, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy. Her telephone conversation with John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election has been credited by historians for mobilizing African-American voters.

The Final Footprint

King’s eight-hour funeral at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia was held on February 7, 2006. Her daughter Bernice delivered her eulogy. U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter attended. The Ford family was absent due to the illness of President Ford (who himself died later that year).

President Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery delivered funeral orations. King was temporarily laid in a mausoleum on the grounds of the King Center until a permanent place next to her husband’s remains could be built. She had expressed to family members and others that she wanted her remains to lie next to her husband’s at the King Center. On November 20, 2006, the new mausoleum containing the bodies of the Kings was unveiled in front of friends and family. The mausoleum is the third resting place of Martin Luther King and the second of Coretta Scott King.

#RIP #OTD in 2025, singer (As Tears Go By, Broken English), actress (I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname, The Girl on a Motorcycle, Hamlet), Marianne Faithfull died in London aged 78. St. Mary the Virgin Churchyard, Aldworth, England

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On this day 29 January deaths of – Bear River Massacre – Edward Lear – Sara Teasdale – H. L. Mencken – Robert Frost – Alan Ladd – Freddie Prinze – Willie Dixon – Lili St. Cyr – Rod McKuen

Posted on 29 JanamThu, 29 Jan 2026 00:39:00 -06002026-01-29T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1863, a detachment of California Volunteers engage the Shoshone at Bear River, Washington Territory, killing hundreds of men women and children.  The site is located near the present-day city of Preston in Franklin County, Idaho.  The death toll was large, but some Shoshone survived.  Chief Sagwitch gathered survivors to keep his community alive.  Sagwitch was shot twice in the hand and tried to escape on horseback, only to have the horse shot out from under him.  He went to the ravine and escaped into the Bear River near a hot spring, where he floated under some brush until nightfall.

Sagwitch’s son, Beshup Timbimboo, was shot seven times but survived and was rescued by family members.  Other members of the band hid in the willow brush of the Bear River, or tried to act as if they were dead.  After the officers concluded the battle was over, they returned with the soldiers to their temporary encampment near Franklin.  Sagwitch and other survivors retrieved the wounded and built a fire to warm the survivors.

Franklin residents opened their homes to wounded soldiers that night.  They brought blankets and hay to the church meetinghouse to protect the other soldiers from the cold.

The California Volunteers suffered 14 soldiers killed and 49 wounded, 7 mortally.

In 1918, Sagwitch’s son Be-shup, Frank Timbimboo Warner, said, “[H]alf of those present got away,” and 156 were killed.  He went on to say that two of his brothers and a sister-in-law “lived”, as well as many who later lived at the Washakie, Utah, settlement, the Fort Hall reservation, in the Wind River country, and elsewhere.

This conflict marked the final significant influence of the Shoshone nation upon Cache Valley and its immediate surroundings.  In addition to opening the northern part of Cache Valley to Mormon settlement, Cache Valley also offered a staging area for additional settlements in southeastern Idaho.

Chief Sagwitch and many members of his band allied with the Mormons.  Many were baptized and joined LDS Church.

#RIP #OTD in 1888 artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet (The Book of Nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat) Edward Lear died of heart failure at his Villa Tennyson, Sanremo, Italy aged 75. Cemetery Foce in Sanremo

#RIP #OTD in 1933 lyric poet (Love Songs, ‘I Shall Not Care’) Sara Teasdale died from overdosing on sleeping pills in New York City, aged 48. Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

H. L. Mencken. (Henry L. Mencken.) Baltimore Sun Staff File Photo by Robert F. Kniesche. 9/20/50 MANDATORY CREDIT: Baltimore Examiner and Washington Examiner OUT ORG XMIT: BAL0909101149453148

On this day in 1956, journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English, the “Sage of Baltimore”, H. L. Mencken, died in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 75.  Born Henry Louis Mencken on 12 September 1880 in Baltimore.  In my opinion, he is one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century.  Mencken notably attacked ignorance, intolerance, frauds, fundamentalist Christianity, marriage, osteopathy and chiropractic.  He once called marriage “the end of hope” although he ultimatley married Sara Powell Haardt (1930 – 1935 her death). 

The Final Footprint – Mencken is interred with his wife in the Mencken Family Estate in Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore.  He wrote a joking epitaph for himself:

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.  This epitaph was not used.

Robert_Frost_NYWTSOn this day in 1963 poet Robert Frost died in Boston from prostrate cancer surgery complications at the age of 88.  Born Robert Lee Frost on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco.  His work was initially published in England before it was published in America.  He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.  His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.  In my opinion, he is one of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century.  Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetical works.  My favorite Frost poems include; “The Witch of Coös,” “Home Burial,” “A Servant to Servants,” “Directive,” “Neither Out Too Far Nor In Too Deep,” “Provide, Provide,” “Acquainted with the Night,” “After Apple Picking,” “Mending Wall,” “The Most of It,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “To Earthward,” “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Spring Pools,” “The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,” “Design,” and “Desert Places.”  Robert_Frost's_Grave

The Final Footprint – He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem, “The Lesson for Today (1942): “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

#RIP #OTD in 1964 actor (This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia, Whispering Smith, Shane) Alan Ladd died at his home in Palm Springs from an accidental overdose of alcohol, a barbiturate, tranquilizers, aged 50. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glenwood California

On this day in 1977, stand-up comedian and actor Freddie Prinze died from a gunshot wound to his head at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 22. Born Frederick Karl Pruetzel on June 22, 1954 in New York City. Prinze was the star of NBC-TV sitcom Chico and the Man from 1974 until his death in 1977.

On October 13, 1975, Prinze married Katherine (Kathy) Elaine (Barber) Cochran, with whom he had one child, son Freddie Prinze Jr.

The Final Footprint

Prinze is entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, near his father, Edward Karl Pruetzel. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson, Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef, and Paul Walker.

Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981.
© Brian McMillen

On this day in 1992, blues musician, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer Willie Dixon died of heart failure in Burbank, California at the age of 76. Born William James Dixon on July 1, 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time.

Dixon’s songs have been recorded by countless musicians in many genres as well as by various ensembles in which he participated. A short list of his most famous compositions includes “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, “Little Red Rooster”, “My Babe”, “Spoonful”, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover”. These songs were written during the peak years of Chess Records, from 1950 to 1965, and were performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Bo Diddley. Dixon was an important link between the blues and rock and roll. Jeff Beck, Cream, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Steppenwolf all featured at least one of his songs on their debut albums. He received a Grammy Award and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The Final Footprint

Dixon was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois. The actor and comedian Cedric the Entertainer portrayed Dixon in Cadillac Records, a 2008 film based on the early history of Chess Records. Other notable final footprints at Burr Oak Cemetery include Emmett Till and Dinah Washington.

#RIP #OTD in 1999 burlesque dancer, stripper, pin-up model, actress (The Naked and the Dead) Lili St. Cyr (Marie Frances Van Schaack), died in Los Angeles, aged 80. Cremation

#RIP #OTD in 2015 poet, singer-songwriter (English lyrics; “If You Go Away”, “Seasons In the Sun”), composer, Rod McKuen died of respiratory arrest, a result of pneumonia, at a hospital in Beverly Hills aged 81. Westwood Memorial Park, Westwood, California

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Day in History 28 January – Zitkála-Šá – W. B. Yeats – Zora Neale Hurston – Space Shuttle Challenger – Cicely Tyson

Posted on 29 JanamWed, 28 Jan 2026 00:39:00 -06002026-01-28T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1938 Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, political activist, librettist/song writer (The Sun Dance Opera), Zitkala-Ša died in Washington, D.C. aged 61. Arlington National Cemetery with her husband (Anglicized name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)

On this day in 1939, poet W. B. Yeats died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France at the age of 73.  Born William Butlet Yeats in Sandymountt, County Dublin, Ireland 13 June 1865.  In my opinion, one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.  A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms.  Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years.  In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”

In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a 23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish Nationalist.  Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a “paint-stained art student.”.  Gonne had admired Yeat’s poem “The Isle of Statues” and sought out his acquaintance.  Yeats apparently developed an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter.

In later years he admitted, “it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes.”  Yeats’s love initially remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism.  In 1891, he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed marriage, but she rejected him.  He later admitted that from that point “the troubling of my life began”.  Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901.  She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his horror, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride.  There were two main reasons why Yeats was so horrified.  To lose his muse to another made him look silly before the public.  Yeats naturally hated MacBride and continually sought to deride and demean him both in his letters and his poetry.  The second reason Yeats was horrified was linked to the fact of Maud’s conversion to Catholicism, which Yeats despised.  He thought his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding.  His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met in 1894, and parted from in 1897.  Yeats’ friendship with Gonne persisted, and, in Paris, in 1908, they finally consummated their relationship.  “The long years of fidelity rewarded at last” was how another of his lovers described the event.  Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that “the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.”.  The relationship did not develop into a new phase after their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to the poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could not continue as they had been: “I have prayed so hard to have all earthly desire taken from my love for you and dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed and I am praying still that the bodily desire for me may be taken from you too.”  By January 1909, Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex.  Nearly twenty years later, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem “A Man Young and Old”:

My arms are like the twisted thorn 
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there 
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down 
And put all Troy to wreck.

By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir.  John MacBride had been executed by British forces for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and Yeats thought that his widow might remarry.  His final proposal to Gonne took place in mid-1916.  Gonne’s history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride made her a potentially unsuitable wife so it is possible that Yeats’s last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her.  Yeats reportedly proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down.  His thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter.  Iseult Gonne was Maud’s second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old.  She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived in the mausoleum of her dead brother as an attempt to reincarnate his short-lived life, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother’s adopted niece.  At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats.  A few months after the poet’s final approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.

That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear.  Despite warnings from her friends—”George … you can’t. He must be dead”—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October.  Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats’s feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon.  The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael.  Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women and possibly affairs, George herself wrote to her husband “When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were.”

At the age of 69 Yeats was ‘rejuvenated’ after he underwent a vasectomy which at the time was thought to increase hormone production.  For the last five years of his life Yeats found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women.  During this time, Yeats was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin.  As in his earlier life, Yeats found erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and, despite age and ill-health, he remained a prolific writer.  In a letter of 1935, Yeats noted: “I find my present weakness made worse by the strange second puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination.  If I write poetry it will be unlike anything I have done”.

TWBYeatshe Final Footprint – Yeats was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.  He and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was that he be buried quickly in France with a minimum of fuss.  According to George, “His actual words were ‘If I die bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo’.”  In September 1948, Yeats’ body was moved to Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha.  The person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Sean MacBride, Maud’s son, and then Minister of External Affairs.  His epitaph is taken from the last lines of “Under Ben Bulben”, one of his final poems:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
 

zoranealeHurston-Zora-Neale-LOCOn this day in 1960,  folklorist, anthropologist, and author Zora Neale Hurston died at St. Lucie County Welfare Home in St. Lucie, Florida of hypertensive heart disease at the age of 69.  Born in Notasulga, Alabama, on 7 January 1891.  Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is perhaps best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Hurston’s work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.  During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright.  Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms using the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work.  Other popular African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright.  Hurston’s work, which did not engage these political issues, therefore did not fit in with this struggle.  In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government, and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians.  In addition, some critics objected to the representation of African-American dialect in Hurston’s novels, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature.  Her stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences.  Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research.  For example, a character in Jonah’s Gourd Vine expresses herself in this manner:

“Dat’s a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin’ dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah’ll wash yo’ tub uh ‘gator guts and dat quick.”

Those who were critical of Hurston classified her use of dialect as a caricature of African-American culture rooted in a racist tradition.  One particular criticism came from Wright in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God:

… The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is “quaint,” the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the “superior” race.

Perhaps Hurston Hurston should be praised for her skillful use of idiomatic speech.  An article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”, by Alice Walker, published in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, revived interest in Hurston’s work.  Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and former classmate at Howard who would later become a physician, but the marriage ended in 1931.  In 1939 she married Albert Price who was 25 years her junior; this marriage ended after only seven months. 

The Final Footprint – Hurston was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida.  Her remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973, when Walker and literary scholar Charlotte Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried and decided to mark it as hers.

On this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of all seven crew members; Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnick.  That night, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual State of the Union address.  He initially announced that the address would go on as scheduled, but then postponed the State of the Union address and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval Office of the White House.  It was written by Peggy Noonan, and finished with the following statement, which quoted from the poem “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.:

“ We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ ”

Three days later, President Reagan with his wife Nancy traveled to the Johnson Space Center to speak at a memorial service honoring the astronauts where he stated

“ Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. ”

It was attended by 6,000 NASA employees and 4,000 guests, as well as by the families of the crew.  During the ceremony, an Air Force band led the singing of “God Bless America” as NASA T-38 Talon jets flew directly over the scene, in the traditional missing-man formation.  On the day of the accident, I met the woman who would be the mother of one of my daughters, who would be born exactly four years later.

Challenger Memorial on the left, Columbia Memorial on the right, the middle memorial is for service men killed trying to rescue the hostages in Iran

The Final Footprint – The remains of the crew that were identifiable were returned to their families on April 29, 1986. Three of the crew members, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee, and Capt. Michael J. Smith, were buried by their families at Arlington National Cemetery at individual grave sites. Mission Specialist Lt Col Ellison Onizuka was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ronald McNair was buried in Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina. Christa McAuliffe was buried at Calvary Cemetery in her hometown of Concord, New Hampshire. Gregory Jarvis was cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Unidentified crew remains were buried communally at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in Arlington on May 20, 1986.  The plaque on the memorial reads; IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING TRIBUTE TO THE BRAVE CREW OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER 28 JANUARY 1986.  The memorial is near the memorial for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia.  Other notable Final Footprints at Arlington include; the Space Shuttle Columbia, Medgar Evers, JFK, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, RFK, Edward Kennedy, Lee Marvin, Audie Murphy and Malcolm Kilduff, Jr.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actress (Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Help, The Trip to Bountiful) Cicely Tyson died in New York City, aged 96. Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx near the grave of her former husband Miles Davis

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