Ted (Edward) Kennedy … The Liberal Lion of the Senate has Died at the Age of 77

Ted Kennedy, the US Senator from Massachusetts has died over night after succumbing to brain cancer home in Hyannis Port, Mass at the age of 77. Kennedy had battled brain cancer for more than a year after being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008. The nine term Massachusetts Senator has passed away.

The man known as the “liberal lion of the Senate” had fought a more than year-long battle with brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to.

“We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever,” the Kennedy family said in a statement. “He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it.”

I think we all knew that there was not too much time left for Ted Kennedy when he could not attend the funeral of the recently passed Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

The Kennedy family has released a statement.

Being a history buff, in retrospect it is hard to believe they are all gone

Read more

Truly Special: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Founder of the Special Olympics is Dead at the Age of 88

This Kennedy truly was “Special” and it had nothing to do with politics. A real winner in life in so many respects has passed.

“Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the Founder of Special Olympics and the sister of the late JFK has passed away at the age of 88. She had been hospitalized since last week in critical condition. Sadly, one of the true champions of special needs and the mentally disabled has died. With family members at her side at the Cape Cod hospital in Barnstable, Massachusetts, Eunice Kennedy Shriver passed away.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver is survived by two siblings, her husband, Robert Sargent Shriver Jr., five children, including NBC reporter and California first lady Maria Shriver, and 19 grandchildren. The is also survived by the millions of Special Olympians that have taken part in Special Olympics and the present 3.1 million people with mental disabilities who participate in 228 programs in 170 countries.  

Rest in Peace and Thank you!

“I love to be with my special friends, and I like to learn from them and their persistence, and their guts, and their courage,” Shriver said of her work with athletes with disabilities. “This is the future.”

Listen to some inspirational words from Eunice Kennedy Shriver,

There was no greater champion for those with disabilities. Shriver was inspired by her older sister, Rosemary Kennedy, who was mentally handicapped when she helped form and was the spirit behind the Special Olympics.

In her book about Special Olympics, “Hearts of Gold,” author Sheila Dinn writes: “In the summer of 1962, 100 young people with mental retardation came to Mrs. Shriver’s camp to run, swim, play soccer, and ride horses. They enjoyed the camp and loved the sports they learned, and by the end of the summer they were ‘faster and stronger’ than ever before. The doctors and experts had been wrong!”

The first Special Olympics took place in 1968. In a comment from that first event Eunice Kennedy Shriver said the following, “Special Olympics teaches that all human beings are created equal, in the sense that each has the capacity and a hunger for moral excellence, for courage, for friendship and for love.” Some thing that many of us need to remember.

“If I (had) never met Rosemary, never known anything about handicapped children, how would I have ever found out? Because nobody accepted them anyplace,” she told National Public Radio in 2007

Statement from Special Olympics:

“We are tremendously grateful for the extreme outpouring of support and prayer from the public as we honor our beloved founder,” Special Olympics President and Chief Operation Officer Brady Lum said Tuesday in a statement.

“Today we celebrate the life of a woman who had the vision to create our movement. It is an enormous loss, but I know we can rest assured that her legacy will live on through her family, friends, and the millions of people around the world who she touched and transformed.”
 

80′s & 90′s Teen Movie Writer, Producer and Director John Hughs Dead at the Age of 59

John Hughes, Mr Teen Movie, dead at the age of 59. Rest in Peace John Hughes.

We’re gonna bring this party up to a nice respectable level. Don’t worry, we’re not gonna hurt anyone. We’re not even gonna touch ‘em. We’re just gonna make ‘em cry a little, just by lookin’ at ‘em.

If it was a teen movie in the 1980’s and 1990’s, most likely it was either written, produced, directed or all of the above by John Hughes. Hughes was the king of teen movies. Sadly, John Hughes died this morning of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan, NY. Hughes dead at the age of 59. The man who mastered teen angst has passed away. May you rest in peace and thank you for so many entertaining movies.

A native of Lansing, Mich., who later moved to suburban Chicago and set much of his work there, Hughes rose from ad writer to comedy writer to silver screen champ with his affectionate and idealized portraits of teens, whether the romantic and sexual insecurity of “Sixteen Candles,” or the J.D. Salinger-esque rebellion against conformity in “The Breakfast Club.”

There was never a moment in a Hughes teen movie that one did not sick back in retrospect and remind you of your high school days or a person you knew in school. His movies were entertaining with no graphic sex or violence. The master of the 80’s teen movies saw movie spoof, Not Another Teen Movie” take place where of all places, John Hughes High. Imitation is the greatest form of gratitude. Sadly, the king of the high school comedy is dead.

My personal favorite John Hughes movies of all time:

• 1. Some Kind of Wonderful
• 2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• 3. Weird Science
• 4. Pretty in Pink
• 5. Sixteen Candles

Hughes directed such movies as “Sixteen Candles”, ”The Breakfast Club”, ”Curly Sue”,”She’s Having a Baby”, “Pretty in Pink,” “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” and “Uncle Buc.” From Imdb.com, check out the who’s who of movies that Hughes took part in.

The list is endless. His cast of actors and actresses from his movies were the names of the day that included, Molly Ringwald, Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson, Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, Jon Cryer, James Spader, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, John Cusack, Jennifer Grey, Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara. Any one who can successfully work in Ben Stein into a movie about teens is genius.

John Hughes, Bard of Teen Angst, Dead at 59

Director John Hughes dies at 59

The filmmaker, whom critic Roger Ebert once called “the philosopher of adolescence,” was a major influence on filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow, who told the L.A. Times last year, “Basically, my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words

God bless and rest in peace.

Sad News in Taco Bell Land … Gidget the Taco Bell Chihuahua Dies at 15, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell”

How very sad, Gidget, the famed Taco Bell Chihuahua has passed away at the age of 15. Gidget made her TV debut in September of 1997 in the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” ads. It goes down as one of the greatest marketing tag lines ever in TV commercial history. Gidget goes down in history as one of the most recognizable ad dogs ever.  It is nice to hear that after her promoting days of Taco Bell, Gidget just enjoyed laying around in the sun like a normal dog. Rest in Peace Gidgit.

Rest in Peace Gidget

Karen McElhatton, Gidget’s owner, tells Usmagazine.com the dog was with her trainer, Sue Chipperton, watching television when she began making “strange noises” and suffered a stroke.

Before the dog’s death, “She had a good day and was running around as normal,” McElhatton tells Usmagazine.com. “We’re happy that she was very well off right until the end.”

Other great Taco Bell commercials:

• Godzilla and the Taco Bell Chihuahua
• Taco Bell Chihuahua
   

Walter Cronkite, The Most Trusted Man in America and TV Journalist Icon Dies at the Age of 92

And that’s the way it is … Walter Cronkite, the day the anchor news man died.

Walter Cronkite, an American journalist icon, the anchorman of CBS News, the voice of a generation of new and the one “most trusted man in America” has passed away at the age of 92 in New York. Sadly, Walter Cronkite has passed away after an extended battle with cerebrovascular disease. There will never be and never had been another news anchor like Walter Cronkite.  Rest in Peace.

Tonight, a piece of my childhood died. Before 24–7 cable news, before networks had such a bias agenda, there was Walter Cronkite. He anchored the CBS Evening news for 19 years from 1962 to 1981. In a much less media centric  time and place where one always made it a point to be in front of the TV to tune into the nightly news, Walter Cronkite was far and away the best anchor and the first that ever was. From his Wiki:

In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, recruited by Edward R. Murrow, who had previously tried to hire Cronkite from UP during the war. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C..

On July 7, 1952, the term “anchor” was coined to describe Cronkite’s role at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, which marked the first nationally-televised convention coverage

 CBS: The “most trusted man in America” has passed away

Walter Cronkite, who personified television journalism for more than a generation as anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,” has died. CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. Friday with his family by his side at his home in New York after a long illness. He was 92.

CNN: Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman known as “Uncle Walter” for his easygoing, measured delivery and “the most trusted man in America” for his rectitude and gravitas.

From Little Green Footballs … 40 year ago he was covering the Apollo moon landing. Sadly tonight we are reporting that Walter Cronkite is dead.

 Check out this fantastic old footage of Cronkite’s coverage of the moon landing