In Memoriam 2012

It occurred to me yesterday, after writing about Jack Klugman, that I failed to note a number of notable deaths this year. This is by no means a complete list but rather a list of famous people whose deaths I noticed that were of some significance to me somehow. They're also people whose deaths I didn't note at the time. We're seeing a particular generation pass--the entertainers of the 1960s and 1970s--and it does make one pause. Feel free to comment or share those who've passed this year that you noticed in particular.

(It occurs to me, as I review this list, that I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid. A lot.)

Ravi Shankar: The second rock concert I ever attended was George Harrison's Dark Horse tour. I was, I think, around 12 or 13 years old, certainly no more than that. Shankar opened for Harrison and, while I didn't really understand his music, I did understand that I was hearing something different and that Shankar was doing something important. That something was introducing world music to the west, something for which I'm quite glad.

Larry Hagman: The heck with Dallas. My brother and I were children of the Space Age, and a big part of that experience was growing up with Major Nelson and his sexy genie Jeannie. The idea that astronauts had anything like normal lives outside of their space capsules, that this was a job someone could actually do, was a new idea to me, even if it was introduced by a ridiculous, sexist sitcom. Still, there it was. We watched "I Dream of Jeannie" faithfully as geek kids with an interest in science and space; it was, weirdly, a show that continued to foster our interest, and Hagman was the astronaut who came home over and over again. (It was also the first show I can remember watching and waiting for the central couple to kiss. And waiting. And waiting.)

Neil Armstrong: The real deal. I remember watching his first steps on the moon on TV in black and white. I remember thinking, even at such a young age, that his words as he stepped into the regolith were clever and appropriate. He helped demonstrate what we were capable of as Americans, as humans.

Phyllis Diller: Though her comedy was never really to my taste, I remember her braying laugh and her crazy looks on everything from The Tonight Show to Hollywood Squares to all the talk shows that aired in my youth. She broke a lot of ground for the women comics who followed her.

Helen Gurly Brown: Editor of Cosmo for something like 30 years, she changed the appearance and content of women's magazines. For better (or worse, depending upon your perspective) she made many of them what they are today--more about what women wanted and how they could have it than about what men thought women ought to be. I can't help but be grateful for her contributions to the women's revolution.

Sherman Hemsley: George Jefferson--another break-out television character who helped to change things in the media. But I thought Hemsley was terrific no matter what he appeared in. One of my favorite episodes of the '80s Twilight Zone starred him and Ron Glass, an 8-minute vignette that still makes me smile. (And you can see it on YouTube.)

Sally Ride: The first American woman in space. We are strong. We are invincible. We are Woman.

Davy Jones: The first band of which I was ever a fan was The Monkees, and Davy Jones the first pop singer I ever had a crush on. It was a baby crush; I was practically a baby. But it was a rite of passage as surely as discovering The Beatles was a few years later. (I was a child of television--of course I discovered The Monkees first; I had no idea they were take-off on this obscure British band. ::grin::)

Robert Hegyes: Juan Epstein on "Welcome Back Kotter." My brother and I watched the show faithfully, and Juan Epstein, the Puerto Rican Jew (who made much more sense to a kid from New York than he probably did to people outside the tri-state area), was my favorite sweathog. Vinnie Barbarino was kind of a moron. Epstein, somehow, had something else, at least for me.

Other people whose passing I noticed but don't bear quite as much weight for me include Ernest Borgnine, Andy Griffith (everyone wanted an Aunt Bea), Richard Dawson (I watched Family Feud from early on), and Dick Clark (between American Bandstand and Rockin' New Year's Eve, he was ever-present).

Phil Gellis

This is what I get for making an In Memoriam post. Immediately after I posted, I went over to Facebook . . . to discover that one of my oldest friends--whom most of my West Coast friends never knew--died yesterday from complications in the wake of open heart surgery. Phil and I went waaay back and had a long, loving, complicated history with each other. For me his death is layered with love and frustration, friendship and regret.

Phil and I met shortly after I graduated from college via setsyoustraight at her birthday party. He was sharp and funny and thoughtful. He was, first and foremost, an actor, singer, and director, huge in the Long Island regional theater community. (You can see him here performing Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango and performing something from his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan. His greatest love was playing Sancho in "Man of LaMancha." It was a role he never grew tired of playing--that and Nicely Nicely from "Guys and Dolls".) He paid the bills by being a travel agent. He loved baseball and theater. And he was a loyal, devoted father. We dated. We broke up. We were, above anything else, good, good friends--for years and years. A lot of the Broadway shows I saw, I saw in Phil's company. We talked about books and games. We talked about travel, politics, friends, relationships. A lot of our friendship over the last twenty years was preserved through cross-country phone calls. I worried about his health from the very first time we met; he'd always had weight challenges and health issues. He'd always insist, despite gout and diabetes, that he was fine, healthy as he could possibly be. He was divorced when I met him, and married again twice over the years--his last wife is a lovely woman and I know she made him very happy.

When I read on Facebook on December 19 that he was going in for open heart surgery, I was both unsurprised and worried. He'd never been a healthy man. And it's not like such things haven't gone bad before. As it turned out, they went bad again, and now Phil is gone.

I'm so grateful to have had his friendship. I'm so grateful to have seen the shows he was in and to have attended shows with him. I'm so sorry for the times I wasn't the best friend I might have been. But most of all, I'm so grateful to have had the time together that we had. The last thing I said to him was in a Facebook post, telling him to take care and do what the doctors told him to do. I know he did. I just regret that there wasn't one last phone call.