Remembering The Passed

Remembering Willie McCovey, Mari Hulman George, Roy Hargrove, Whitey Bulger

Willie McCovey was the tall, powerful first baseman for the San Francisco Giants, known for his long home runs and hard line dives. A Hall of Famer who was the National League MVP, he is remembered for making the last out of the 1962 World Series with the winning runs on base when he hit a line drive right at Bobby Richardson. Mari Hulman George was the doyenne of the Indianapolis 500. She gave the opening command “Lady and gentlemen, start your engines.” Roy Hargrove was a prodigy who became a modern jazz trumpet master. Whitey Bulger was the long-time head of Boston’s notorious, while at the same time being an FBI informant.

Remembering Tony Joe White and “Polk Salad Annie”, Dorcas Reilly, George Taliaferro, Dick Modzelewski, Don Sandburg

Tony Joe White was the Southern country artist/songwriter, who was one of the first swamp rock players. His classic tune “Polk Salad Annie” has been covered by everyone from Elvis to Tom Jones to Foo Fighters. Dorcas Reilly was the woman who created the green bean casserole, a staple on American dinner tables for decades. George Taliaferro was a star football player for the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers team of 1945 and the first African-American drafted by the NFL. Dick Modzelewski was the stalwart defensive tackle for the New York Giants and Cleveland Browns, who played in eight NFL championship games. Don Sandburg played Sandy the Tramp on WGN’s popular Bozo’s Circus.

Remembering Dr. Osamu Shimomura

Dr. Osamu Shimomura was awarded one-third of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, for his discovery of the protein responsible for the green glow of the Puget Sound jellyfish. His discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) made it possible to outline structures in the body and brain. This, in turn, helped establish their function and dysfunction in certain disease. Dr. Shimomura was a young student just north of Nagasaki in 1945 and witnessed the horrors of the second atomic bomb

Revealing the Ribosome

Dr. Thomas Steitz was awarded one-third of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Ada Yonath, for his demonstration of the structure and function of the intracellular organelle, the ribosome. His work was especially important in showing where and how certain antibiotics work in the bacterial ribosome, and how bacteria can develop resistance to these antibiotics. His wife, Joan, was a distinguished molecular biologist who was awarded the 2018 Lasker Prize in Medicine.

Remembering Juan Romero, Paul Allen, Earl Bakken

Juan Romero was the busboy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, who cradled Robert Kennedy immediately after Kennedy was shot in the head. The photograph of Romero with the dying Kennedy is one of the most iconic pictures of the 20th Century. Paul Allen was the cofounder, along with Bill Gates, of Microsoft. Allen realized the value of software and operating systems at an early age, and this helped him and Gates to build a financial empire. Earl Bakken was the Minneapolis engineer who designed the first battery-operated pacemaker, which led to his founding Medtronic, one of the world’s largest healthcare equipment companies.

Remembering Jimmy Taylor, Tex Winter, Will Vinton

Jimmy Taylor was the fullback for the Green Bay Packer in the early 1960’s, one of the linchpins of Vince Lombardi’s championship teams. The best professional player ever to come out of LSU, Taylor was an All-Decade fullback in the 1960’s and is generally considered one of the best ever to play the position. Tex Winter was the college and professional basketball coach who devised the “triangle offense”. Working with Phil Jackson, Winter helped the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to multiple NBA championships. Will Vinton was one of the pioneers of Claymation and the creator of the iconic television commercial featuring the California Raisins

Remembering Peggy Sue Gerron, Charles Aznavour, Geoff Emerick

In 1957 Buddy Holly recorded a song about his drummer’s girlfriend, Peggy Sue Gerron. The song became a rock classic and her name was forever immortalized in rock history. Charles Aznavour was the French singer/songwriter who performed and recorded all over the world. He sold over 180 million records in his career. Geoff Emerick became the sound engineer for The Beatles, and he was responsible for some of their most innovative sound effects in the mid 1960’s.

Remembering Dr. Leon Lederman

Leon Lederman was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Melvin Schwartz and jack Steinberger, for his work on the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino. Besides his work as a particle physicist, Dr. Lederman was the director of the Fermi Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois for a decade. He was a lifelong proponent of science education and was instrumental in the creation of a model high school, the Illinois Math and Science Academy.

Remembering Sir Charles Kao

Charles Kao was awarded one-half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication. A native of pre-war China, Dr. Kao worked in England at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratory, where he demonstrated that light could travel virtually unaltered through thin glass fibers, a phenomenon that had been doubted before that. His discovery paved the way for the fiber optic revolution that permitted information transfer across continents and oceans.

Remembering Marty Balin, Tommy McDonald, Mel Elfin, Joe Masteroff

As one of the founding members of The Jefferson Airplane, Marty Balin was a pivotal figure in West Coast rock and roll, specifically the “acid rock” sound of San Francisco in the mid 1960’s. Besides being an important historical figure, he had a distinctive voice and could sing love songs as well as being an excellent songwriter. Tommy McDonald was the Oklahoma Sooner halfback who was turned into a receiver in the pros. He was part of Bud Wilkinson’s legendary Sooner teams of the mid 1950’s, and he was an instrumental part of the Philadelphia Eagles 1960 NFL Championship team. Mel Elfin was the editor at Newsweek who moved to US News and World Report, where he popularized the college ranking edition that has changed the college admissions process. Joe Masteroff was the playwright and librettist responsible for the classic musical Cabaret.