The Crane Pool Forum

David McCullough, the best-selling author and documentary narrator with a gift for exploring America’s past, is dead at 89.
Monday, August 8, 2022 12:17 PM ET

Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (2001). He received National Book Awards for “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal” (1977) and “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family.

He was a wonderful historian.

Wow, that certainly gets headlines above the passing of Roger E. Mosely, T.C. to Tom Selleck's Magnum, P.I., forever bailing out his buddy while forced to drop hints that time and helicopter fuel aren't free.

Mosely, who sadly died from injuries sustained in a car crash earlier in the week, was a regular on TV for a decade or more before landing the role of T.C., but spent his latter years as a track and field coach.

Speaking of TV, the HBO adaptation of McCullough's John Adams bio shouldn't have had his name on it. They took a gross amount of liberty with the story as recorded by McCullough.

Lamont Dozier, of Holland, Dozier, Holland fame -- one of the best songwriting trios of all time!

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- ... um=custom7

Love so many of their songs!

Actor Clu Gulager - 93
Star of many early TV shows, including The Virginian. ( I hope this link is acceptable)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/c ... r-AA10nWjg

Later

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:20 am Lamont Dozier, of Holland, Dozier, Holland fame -- one of the best songwriting trios of all time!

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- ... um=custom7

I'd be hard-pressed to come up with who else might be in the running. Certainly, many great songs have been written by teams of three, but not too many teams of three maintain a decades-long mostly exclusive partnership with one another. I guess Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb who were often credited all together at various points in their career, but at other times, no.

A lot of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry songs are credited as Greenwich/Barry/Spector, but that was probably Spector playing the heavy as often as not, and it wasn't an ongoing thing.

Edgy MD wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:54 pm

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:20 am Lamont Dozier, of Holland, Dozier, Holland fame -- one of the best songwriting trios of all time!

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- ... um=custom7

I'd be hard-pressed to come up with who else might be in the running. Certainly, many great songs have been written by teams of three, but not too many teams of three maintain a decades-long mostly exclusive partnership with one another. I guess Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb who were often credited all together in at various points in their career, but at other times, no.

A lot of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry songs are credited as Greenwich/Barry/Spector, but that was probably Spector playing the heavy as often as not, and it wasn't an ongoing thing.

Good call. I probably should have said "songwriting team." The sure did crank out the hits.

#6 will hang in the rafters for every NBA team in honor of Bill Russell.

Anne Heche - 53
Pronounced dead today after car accident.
OE:
Yahoo reprinting Indiewire story:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ann ... 34054.html

Additional edit: She is brain dead, but is being kept alive while doctors find suitable recipients for her organs. Her family says she wanted to be an organ donor.

Later

Len Dawson, Super Bowl IV MVP, 87.

I read just days ago that Dawson was in care for dementia. I often find that those kind of 'leaked' stories are essentially the family saying that the person is
in their final lap. Not sure if his case was just an age thing or if it was related to his day job of 50+ years ago. Be interesting to see if the family goes the
brain donation route for evidence of CTE.

I had read he was in hospice care, but there was no mention of dementia in that story.
Sad.
RIP

Later

Crickets drummer Jerry Allison was co-writer of "That'll Be the Day," both of them having enjoyed the title line when John Wayne delivered it in The Searchers.

And this'll be the day that Crickets drummer Jerry Allison has died.

Mikhail Gorbachev, 91.

He tore down that wall.
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MFS62 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 4:45 pm He tore down that wall

No he didn't.

Frayed Knot wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 6:09 pm

MFS62 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 4:45 pm He tore down that wall

No he didn't.

Technically, you are right.
But I don't think it would have been allowed to happen without his concurrence.
https://www.britannica.com/story/mr-gor ... lin-speech

I wrote a paper for my Economic Geography class in 1964 (while the wall was still up) titled "The Political and Economic Effects of the Berlin Airlift." The airlift kept the city fed until restrictions were eased. But I never went as far as to say the wall would come down.

Later

If the bar is going to be that he didn't order, as his predecessors would likely have done, the mass shootings of those taking part in wall destruction then, sure.
But that's not really much of a standard to clear.
By that point the East German gov't was losing control of their people and the U.S.S.R. was losing control of E.G. so any decision to NOT act was more out of
lack of power and options rather than of suddenly being on the side of, y'know, freedom.

I know. I was trying to link his death to the memory of the famous Ronald Reagan speech.
I guess my allusion didn't come out the way I hoped it might.
Later

Sad he lived long enough to see all of his accomplishments negated by Putin.

Well, most of Eastern Europe remains nominally free.

Not sure I remember that commercial, kinda fun. Thanks.

Love it!

The days of Gorby and Ronnie seem so boring and bland by today's standards.