My favorite part of the Academy Awards every year is the section toward the end where they show clips of every cinema-related person who has died in the last year. That sounds morbid, but it really is moving. It amazes me how many people – famous people – have passed without my even noticing. It is just a few moments of a long show that make me realize how quickly time escapes, that there are thousands of regular people whose lives and decisions and accomplishments affect me every day, people I hardly notice.

Every year, without fail, I seem to come away with two thoughts: 1.) My life matters, and 2.) I’d better hurry.

Along those lines, I’ve decided to post a photo or clip, along with a quote, from a few of the notable people we’ve lost throughout the year. Some are actors, some politicians, some athletes, some not really famous at all. There is no equation or reason for who is chosen, maybe just someone I watched in a film once, or heard my dad talk about, or someone like Farrah Fawcett, who became famous for simply being beautiful, and became inspirational when things got ugly.

***

Ted Kennedy – Feb. 22, 1932 - Aug. 25, 2009

“But we still have not had this institution, the United States Senate, go on record, saying to working families in this country, that they oughta get a raise. Two-hundred-and-forty billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations! Thirty-six billion dollars in tax breaks for small businesses. Increase in productivity – 42 percent over the last 10 years – but do you think there’s any increase in the minimum wage? No.”

 ***

Lester William Polsfuss, (Les Paul) – June 9, 1915 - Aug. 13, 2009

“Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.”

***

John Hughes, Jr. – Feb. 18, 1950 - Aug. 6, 2009

“I like young actors because they’re so unspoiled, not like some of those actors who are about half an hour into their fifteen minutes of fame by the time they get to me.”

 ***

Walter Cronkite, Jr. – Nov. 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009

“I had the naive idea that with a half-hour, we’d have time at the end of the broadcast for a little quirk-of-fate story. One of those one or two paragraph stories that could be happy or sad or sardonic or whatever. I just couldn’t drop that in at the end of the broadcast without sort of punchline at the end. And I searched for one that could be used in any of those circumstances, and used equally well.”

***

Steve McNair – Feb. 14, 1973 - July 4, 2009

“I’ve been fortunate to surround myself with great people, great coaches, great teammates, great family. And when you have that support, you can almost overcome everything in life.”

 ***

Karl Malden – March 22, 1912 - July 1, 2009

“I love every movie I’ve been in, even the bad ones, every TV series, every play, because I love to work. It’s what keeps me going. “

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

***

Farrah Fawcett – Feb. 2, 1947 - June 25, 2009

“Why aren’t you filming this? This is what cancer is.”

 ***

Michael Jackson – Aug. 29, 1958 - June 25, 2009

“Don’t you know I, sit around, with my head hanging down. And I wonder, who’s lovin’ you.”

 ***

Edward McMahon, Jr. – March 6, 1923 - June 23, 2009

 ”Without Tonto, there’d be no Lone Ranger.”

***

Wayman Tisdale – June 9, 1964 - May 15, 2009

“They had to make me play basketball, but you didn’t have to make me play music.”

*** 

Dominick ‘Dom’ DeLuise – Aug. 1, 1933 – May 4, 2009

“Your role is to sit there and trust me.”

  

***

Mark ‘The Bird’ Fidrych – Aug. 14, 1954 - April 13, 2009

“You gotta realize that the game is still gonna go on without you. Because they got someone else right behind you. Whenever you think that you’ve got it made, and that you’re irreplaceable, you’re wrong. You find that out as soon as you’re gone.”

***

Harry Kalas – March 26, 1936 – April 13, 2009

“Could it be? Could it be? It is! Oughta here!