People are sure living longer. The year 2023, as with all others, saw the passing of American notables. Many of those that did perish lived longer than anyone could have imagined in, say, 1923.
Jim Brown, the legendary football star, who died in May, was a Manhasset native. A four-sport star at Manhasset High School, Brown was an All-American at Syracuse University before beginning a Hall of Fame career with the Cleveland Browns. He was a three-time MVP for Cleveland, while leading them to an NFL championship in 1964.
A New Yorker who impacted the world scene was Henry Kissinger. One of the world’s most recognizable men, Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Détente with the Soviet Union, the opening to Mainland China, laying the groundwork for the Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Accords were hallmarks of Kissinger’s tireless diplomacy.
Queens County was the setting for the most popular television program of the 1970s. Norman Lear, who died in December, was the creator of All In The Family and its lovable protagonist, Archie Bunker. Lear’s other credits include Maude, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, O’Connor, to liberals, became a pleasant surprise, providing a liberal swing vote on decisions regarding abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights.
Also close to home, we said goodbye—and thanks—to Tony Bennett, an Astoria native and a singer beloved by four generations of Americans; Burt Young, a Port Washington resident and the irresistible “Paulie” of the Rocky franchise; and Burt Bacharach, prolific songwriter and Forest Hills native.
On the literary front, Long Island native Louise Gluck, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away in April. By winning the Nobel, Gluck joined such luminaries as Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neil, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Toni Morrison, and Bob Dylan. The prolific novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of numerous novels, including The Road, which, word-for-word, might be the most intense fiction in American fiction, died in June.
From the world of entertainment, passings included Friends star Matthew Perry, who met an untimely death at 54; Harry Belafonte, who died at age 96; plus Raquel Welch, movie actress and the brunette answer to Marilyn Monroe; and Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of The King.
New York sports fans lost many longtime favorites. Joe Christopher was a member of the 1962 Mets, baseball’s most lovable also-rans. Willis Reed was team captain of the 1969 and 1973 World Champion New York Knickerbockers; Johnny Green also starred.
On the diamond, Joe Pepitone, Brooklyn native and first baseman for the championship Yankees teams of the early 1960s, passed away as did Ron Hodges, longtime backstop for the Mets. Other deaths included Frank Howard, the mighty slugger for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Senators who also briefly managed the Mets, and Tim McCarver, former catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies, known for years as a voice of the Mets.
The year ended with the passing of Rosalynn Carter, the “First Lady from Plains.” Ms. Carter’s husband of 77 years, former President Jimmy Carter, was released from hospice care to attend his wife’s funeral.
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