Our Daily Dead

Dang! We TOLD you strange things were afoot and the next thing we know a WEEK disappears! Egad.

Okay, sit up straight and pay attention. We are going to do our ODDly level best to keep you abreast of recent departures with no tit-for-tat required on your part. And where better to start than with Robert Brooks, chairman of the Hooters Restaurant chain. Natural causes the coronor says did catch up with Mr. Brooks. A curious note in one article had that “Brooks, 69, was found dead Sunday by his wife and a neighbor after he failed to show up at their usual Sunday breakfast, Coroner Robert Edge said.” Um, where were the wife and neighbor before breakfast?

One of the Second World War’s top flying aces, Wing Commander Robert Carl ‘Moose’ Fumerton, died at Muskoka Landing in Huntsville last Monday at age 93. Between 1941 and 1944, Wing Commander Moose shot down 14 enemy planes, damaging one other aircraft. He was shot down twice and survived due to his own skillful flying ability.

Dave Walter, an author and Montana Historical Society research historian, died Wednesday night after suffering a heart attack earlier in the week. He was 63. Mr. Walter was well-known for his Speaking Ill Of The Dead: Jerks In Montana History book and recently published the sequel Still Speaking Ill of the Dead: More Jerks in Montana History.

And finally the big finish. In fact let us go out with a bang and bring you Dr. Nicholas Bartha and his solution to the division of property during a divorce. Somehow this reminds us of old westerns and pledging to die with one’s boots on.

(P.S. Oh yea, “Mickey Spillane” died too just in case you were off-planet last week.)

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Robert Brooks, Hooters, Wing Commander Moose, Dave Walter, Montana Historical Society

The theme song of today’s ODDly Departed, Red (Aaron Chwatt) Buttons, could not be more appropriate for current circumstances. Israel and Hezbullah are lighting things up big time (although Israel, if it decides to do so, can definitely really light things up mega big time); the world’s largest collector of Daffy Duck comic books, who can enrich uranium, but can’t feed his people, barely makes 5’6’’ in 4” heels and a pompadour that might harbor small birds, and claims to shoot 35 under par golf (has he been playing with former President Clinton?), is burning a hole in the duodenum of George Bush; it’s business as usual in India—home of the original murder-suicide bomber; and, now you have the Dems saying they are going to take back at least one house of Congress by running on a platform of fiscal responsibility. Strange things are happening indeed. We ODDones are going back to bed and pull the covers over our head. You can read about Red Buttons here. He was a pretty cool guy who made (some of) our parents laugh. He finally got dinner.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Red (Aaron Chwatt) Buttons, Israel, Hezbullah, Daffy Duck

Dead is David Bright, 49, underseas explorer of the Titanic, ironclad Monitor, and the Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria sank in 200 feet of water off the coast of Nantucket (rhymes with….er….”bucket” 50 years ago. Bright had been exploring the wreck of the Italian luxury liner. When he surfaced, he experienced a cardiac arrest and died. Bends are suspected, but autopsy is scheduled.

We ODDfellows have just finished T.R.Pearson>’s first non-fiction book, “Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting.” Pearson, whose latest novel, “Glad News of the Natural World” we ODDones enthusiastically ODDly recommend, usually writes of the mythical North Carolina town of Neely; however, his latest book is a hard by turn into a real life character, Will Willis, who solo rafted (a dog, a parrot, and a cunningly carnivorous cat don’t count) across the Atlantic and Pacific. Willis ate strange concoctions of starches, aspirin, and the occasional unlucky fish. He drank sea water, planned poorly, made up sea ditties, treated intermittent strangulated hernias by hauling himself up the main mast of his raft by the feet, and (amazingly, we think) maintainted his sanity. In the course of one crossing, he gutted out a perforated ulcer. How did he eventually die? Read the book.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: David Bright, Titanic, Monitor, Andrea Doria, T.R.Pearson, William Willis