Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, died yesterday at her home in Detroit. She was 92 years old.

Her death was confirmed by Dennis W. Archer, the former mayor of Detroit.

For her act of defiance, Mrs. Parks was arrested, convicted of violating the segregation laws and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. In response, blacks in Montgomery boycotted the buses for nearly 13 months while mounting a successful Supreme Court challenge to the Jim Crow law that enforced their second-class status on the public bus system.

The events that began on that bus in the winter of 1955 captivated the nation and transformed a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. into a major civil rights leader. It was Dr. King, the new pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, who was drafted to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization formed to direct the nascent civil rights struggle.

“Mrs. Parks’s arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest,” Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, “Stride Toward Freedom. “The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices.”

Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950’s Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for people far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation.

That moment on the Cleveland Avenue bus also turned a very private woman into a reluctant symbol and torchbearer in the quest for racial equality and of a movement that became increasingly organized and sophisticated in making demands and getting results.

“She sat down in order that we might stand up,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday in an interview from South Africa. “Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors for our long journey to freedom.”

Even in the last years of her life, the frail Mrs. Parks made appearances at events and commemorations, saying little but lending the considerable strength of her presence. In recent years, she suffered from dementia, according to medical records released during a lawsuit over the use of her name by the hip-hop group OutKast.

Over the years myth tended to obscure the truth about Mrs. Parks. One legend had it that she was a cleaning woman with bad feet who was too tired to drag herself to the rear of the bus. Another had it that she was a “plant” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The truth, as she later explained, was that she was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to the byzantine rules, some codified as law and others passed on as tradition, that reinforced the position of blacks as something less than full human beings.
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

“No” and “You may do that”.

Are you going to stand up? - “No”.

I will have you arrested if you don’t - “You may do that”.

No long orations, no cryptic messages, no playing to the audience. Just a simple answer to an unjust question and the defusing acknowledgement of the consequences of her actions. The speeches, the marches, the hopes and tears, and the dreams all would follow.

Contrary to what many thought - that she was overly tired that evening from a long day at work - Rosa Parks has said she was no more tired than after any other day of work. “No,” she said, “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

She was arrested that evening of course and you already know the story from there onward, including that a Montgomery newcomer - one Rev. Martin Luther King - was asked to run the planned bus boycott. The planned one day boycott stretched out to 381 days and nearly bankrupted Montgomery’s public transit system.

But Parks never thought herself a saint. In a 1995 interview with the Washington Post, she said she was “just a person who wanted to be seated on the bus…”

“I want everyone to remember me as a person who wanted to be free.”

LA Times
Michael Ward, who unearthed maps and aerial photographs that were crucial to the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953 and who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary as the expedition’s doctor, has died. He was 80.

Ward, who was controversial among some mountaineers for giving science as much credit for the feat as the men who reached the top of the world, died Oct. 7 in Lurgashall, England.

Ward contended the conquest was a victory for science because doctors had figured out how to cope with the physiological effects of high altitude that had doomed earlier attempts to scale Mt. Everest, the 29,035-foot peak in the Himalayas on the border of Nepal and Tibet.

While scouring the Royal Geographical Society archives in London in 1951, Ward came across aerial photographs taken on clandestine flights over Mt. Everest. They “showed a perfectly good route up the mountain” from the Nepalese south side, Ward recalled in 2003.

He also uncovered a forgotten map of the mountain’s south side from the 1930s.

The discoveries were important because foreigners had little knowledge of the south side after being kept out of Nepal until 1949.

The expeditions in the 1920s and ’30s had scaled the Tibetan side of Everest.

When Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, descended from summit, Ward was waiting at the 22,000-foot-high camp to examine the mountaineer.
Camp six;: An account of the 1933 Mount Everest expedition,

LA Times
Mildred Shay, a 1930s Hollywood actress whose social life brimmed with tales of thwarted casting-couch seductions and affairs with famous men, making her a frequent subject of the gossip columns, has died. She was 94.

Shay, who appeared in more than 30 films, died Oct. 15 while visiting her daughter in Glendale. A resident of London, she had recently suffered a stroke.

The 5-foot-2 Shay was nicknamed “Hollywood’s Pocket Venus” by columnist Walter Winchell.

She was said to have fought off the advances of actors Errol Flynn and Johnny Weissmuller. Filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille reportedly took her to his Paradise ranch in Little Tujunga Canyon and fed her oysters with pearls still attached. An affair with Victor Mature made headlines.

Every time she turned around, she said, “there was someone propositioning me.” The names included studio boss Louis B. Mayer and producer Lewis J. Selznick.

At 19, she told her father, a lawyer for the studios, that she wanted to be in the movies. Within weeks, she had a screen test at MGM opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

She made her screen debut in “The Age of Consent” (1932). Mostly small roles followed, including portraying a slave girl tied to a chariot in “Roman Scandals” (1933). Shay dubbed the voice of Greta Garbo in “Grand Hotel” (1932), which won an Oscar for best picture.

After a 25-year break, Shay revived her career in the 1970s by appearing on British television shows and taking small parts in movies, including dancing a tango with Rudolf Nureyev in “Valentino” (1977).

Mildred Helen Shay was born Sept. 26, 1911, in Cedarhurst, N.Y., to a New York lawyer and his socialite wife. A year later, her older brother was killed in an accident involving the family’s drunken chauffeur. Shay attributed her propensity to “dance and have fun” to “make up for all that sadness” in her early life.

The English have it today with Michael Ward and Mildred Shay ODDlisted. Michael Ward was the doctor for Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1953 Mt. Everest expedition. Mildred Shay was called a ‘Pocket Venus’ in 1930’s era Hollywood. Mr. Ward died in Lurgashall, England. Ms. Shay found herself at a fair distance from her London residence when she passed away in Glendale, CA.

And speaking of England news of a Dead Parrot bring ODDmemories of England to the fore, except this time around the Dead Parrot story is a touch more nerve wracking.

And in case you missed it Homer Simpson has made the Men of the Decade list. Lance Armstrong is also on that list along with Bob Geldof. Draw your own conclusions.

Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo Sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

LA Times
Shirley Horn, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose richly expressive vocal style made her one of the most popular performers in jazz, died Thursday night in Washington, D.C. She was 71.

Horn died after a lengthy illness, the Verve Music Group, her record label, announced Friday.

Horn lost her right foot to diabetes in 2001 and later much of her right leg. She had also battled breast cancer and arthritis over the last few years.

“We’ve lost the last of the great ones from that generation,” composer Johnny Mandel, who arranged her albums “Here’s to Life” and “You’re My Thrill,” told The Times on Friday. “I think she was the best singer there was.”

Horn brought a richly layered storytelling quality to everything she sang.

“She can swing, but slow songs are her specialty,” Marian McPartland, the pianist and host of the NPR program “Piano Jazz,” told The Times some years ago. “She makes everything count, and has an uncanny use of musical space — she’s not a busy player who has to fill every musical hole. She plays a single chord, and it becomes the basis for a spare, meditative quality. There’s a sensuous, sexy quality to her music too.”

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000046JO/ourdailydeadc-20/002-8775021-2086417?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2

NY Times
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 21 (AP) - Gordon Lee, who as a chubby child actor played Spanky McFarland’s little brother, Porky, in “Little Rascals” comedies, died on Sunday in Minneapolis. He was 71.

Mr. Lee died in a nursing home after battling lung and brain cancer, said Janice McClain, his partner of 13 years.

Mr. Lee played one of the younger members in the “Our Gang” shorts in the 1930’s, appearing in more than 40 of them from 1935 to 1939. The comedies, produced by Hal Roach, became known as “The Little Rascals” when shown on television in the 1950’s.

Among the films Mr. Lee appeared in were “Bored of Education,” which won the Oscar for best one-reel short subject in 1937; “Our Gang Follies of 1936″; “The Awful Tooth”; and “Roamin’ Holiday.”

In an interview in 1998 with The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mr. Lee said he was 2 when his mother sent his picture to the studio executives who were looking for an actor to play McFarland’s brother.

“We were on the next train to L.A., and I had a contract within a few days,” Mr. Lee said. “Fat kid got lucky.”

“My memories are not about making movies,” he said. “We played with our toys, and the adults played with theirs (the cameras).”

He and Billie Thomas (Buckwheat) teamed up against the older boys Spanky and Alfalfa in many of the comedies. The Porky character is credited with originating the catchphrase “O-tay!,” also used by the Buckwheat character and later revived by the comedian Eddie Murphy.

In the interview, Mr. Lee recalled that he had a warm friendship with his black co-star when they were children and praised their interracial relationship on screen, saying, “Buckwheat played an absolute equal part in the Gang.”

Mr. Lee told friends that his career ended when a growth spurt made him thinner.

But evidently it’s not lucky to be 71 today; both departed ones reached the age of four score and 11, and punched out. Gone is Shirley Horn, a remarkable jazz vocalist and superb pianist (before she lost a leg to complications of diabetes). Wonder if she might hook up for a duo with Luther Vandeross
? Also moved on is Gordon Lee who played Spanky’s little fat brother in “The Little Rascals.” Wonder if he’ll reunite with Tommy Bond (“Butch”) whose death we ODDones reported on September 26.

Okay, so here’s an ODDassociation from “the achieves of totally-useless-information-unless-you’re-entered-in-some-sort-of- trivia-bowl
-or-want-to-be-particularly-irritating-at-a-cocktail-party.” Gordon Lee’s “Little Rascal’s” character was named “Porky.” What 1970’s porno flick inspired the notorious shower scene in the amazingly raunchy, and now “classic” movie (now that’s ODD), “Porky’s?”
Bear with us folks, the ODDfellows have a bit of a thermonuclear head cold, and we’re alternating looking into a big white light and hovering above our own body
.

Okay, here’s the answer: Debbie Does Dallas
. Everyone hold up their hands who has seen the movie—you sir, in the back, are you really sure you haven’t seen it? Tell the truth now. We have your video rental records
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No complaints and no regrets
I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets
but I had to learn that all you give is all you get

so give it all you got
~Shirley Lee “Here’s to life.”

Here’s to Kleenex and friendly chemicals.