In 2024, we've experienced the loss of several luminaries in the world of entertainment. These beloved figures—actors, comedians, musicians, singers, and coaches—have touched our lives with their talent, passion, and dedication. They've left an indelible mark on our hearts and shaped the world of entertainment in ways that will continue to inspire and influence generations to come.
Among the incredible actors who bid farewell this year, we mourn the loss of a true chameleon who effortlessly.
In 2008, a group of actors and artists in Vancouver created the Babz Chula Lifeline for Artists Society, which helped raise funds for Chula's cancer treatment.
She became a popular actress in Canada starting with her role in the Canadian film My American Cousin. She won acclaim for her community spirit, continuing to act in independent Canadian films while also acting in Hollywood films.[4]
Was a United Press International, Washington, DC, reporter and manager of Radio News Division, 1945-60, aviation editor, 1960-66; air safety lecturer and consultant, beginning 1966.
Received numerous honors of his work throughout his career: Trans-World Airlines, seven awards, 1958-65, for aviation news reporting, Strebig-Dobben Memorial Award, 1960; special citations from Sherman Fairchild Foundation, 1963, Flight Safety Foundation, 1970, and Airline Pilots Association, 1970; Aviation/Space Writers Association, James Trebig Memorial Award, 1964, special citation, 1967, award in fiction, 1966, for The Left Seat, and in nonfiction, 1969, for Loud and Clear.
Collected commercial airline models (owns more than four hundred) and material on aviation research.
Member of the Society of Air Safety Investigators and the Aviation/Space Writers Association
Brother Rod Serling hired him as a consultant for the airplane sequences in the episode "The Odyssey of Flight 33" of his hit TV-show "The Twilight Zone."
"Something's Alive on the Titanic" and "The President's Plane Is Missing" are fantasy novels set in real life high-profile backdrops.
Was a reporter for the Washington Redskins. Travelled with the team and roomed with quarterback Eddie Lebaron.
Chandler began his professional motocross career with the Maico factory racing team in 1979.[2] He was nicknamed Magoo by his father at an early age, and the name stuck.[2] By 1982 he had earned a place in the American Honda factory racing team and claimed the biggest victory of his career when he won the U.S. 500cc Motocross Grand Prix.[2] In 1982 he also won both races in the Motocross des Nations as well as the Trophee des Nations, becoming the first rider to win both motos of both events in the same year.[2]
Kawasaki had signed Chandler to race in the 1986 World Championships, but in December of 1985 he suffered a paralyzing crash in the Paris Supercross.
After the accident, Chandler went through a tough period. Within the span of a few years after the accident, he went through a divorce and then suffered even further when both his parents died within a few years of one another.
Spurred on by support from friends and his newfound faith, Chandler worked his way back to a full and busy life. He began to promote mountain-bike races and got involved with DARE, a drug-awareness program geared towards school children. Chandler also started coordinating children's hospital visits by top motorcycle racers through his International Riders Helping People organization.
"In the long run the accident has left me a richer and fuller person," Chandler said. "Had it not been for that I would just be another guy walking around. Now I have an interesting and compelling story to tell to the kids."
Robert "Kinji" Shibuya, who was one of pro wrestling's biggest stars of the 60s and early 70s in California, passed away this past Monday at his home in Hayward, CA, at the age of 88.
Shibuya was a San Francisco wrestling institution, headlining the Cow Palace on numerous occasions, both as a single as well as with tag team partners Mitsu Arakawa and Masa Saito. Shibuya & Arakawa were best known for matches against Nick Bockwinkel & Wilbur Snyder and Ray Stevens & Don Manoukian during the heyday of San Francisco wrestling when the Cow Palace was the hottest wrestling arena in the United States.
He also dabbled in acting, and was well known after his retirement in the late 70s for raising koi fish.
Robert Shibuya played the stereotypical Japanese heel role, but he was actually from Utah, and was a college football star in the 40s at the University of Hawaii.
During the mid-60s, when he held the United States heavyweight championship, he was generally considered one of the top ten stars in the industry.
Günter F. Wendt died on May 3, 2010 at his home in Merritt Island, Florida following congestive heart failure and a stroke.[2]
Wendt is a recipient of NASA's Letter of Appreciation award, the Silver Snoopy award[3] and several Group Achievement awards. He received a NASA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
In NASA documentary films, Wendt appears as the bespectacled, thin man in a bow-tie and white cap and coat, usually standing near the hatch, clipboard in hand; or bending over seated crew members, pulling their safety harnesses snug for launch.
(August 28, 1923 – May 3, 2010)
A native of Berlin, Germany, Wendt studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and served aboard Luftwaffe (air force) night fighters as a flight engineer during World War II. While there, he spent a four-year apprenticeship learning aircraft building.[1]
Immediately after the war there were few job opportunities for engineers in Germany, so Wendt decided to emigrate to the United States in 1949 and join his divorced father in St. Louis, Missouri. McDonnell Aircraft was interested in hiring Wendt as an engineer, but could not hire a German citizen since the company was working on U.S. Navy contracts. He found a job as a truck mechanic (though he had never worked on trucks) and within one year became shop supervisor. He obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1955 and was immediately hired by McDonnell.[1]
As a McDonnell engineer, Wendt supervised spacecraft launch pad preparations at Cape Canaveral during the Mercury and Gemini manned space programs beginning with the flight of Ham the chimpanzee in 1961. He came to be regarded as a welcomed good luck figure to the astronauts; always the last reassuring earth-bound face the crew members saw, kidding with them and wishing them a successful flight as he directed completion of the complex pad close-out procedures just prior to launch.
Wendt's was the final word for the launch tower white room team responsible for loading and securing the crewmen, ensuring that spacecraft instrumentation, switches and controls were correct for launch, and securing the hatch. Nobody touched anything without his permission.
"There is no reason to say I am narrow-minded. Just do it my way and you will have no problem at all." – Wendt[1]
Once a stubborn engineer intended to personally make a spacecraft change, with or without Wendt's permission. Wendt called security to have him removed.
"The [security] guy comes up on the elevator and he says [to the engineer], 'You like me to put handcuffs on you, or are you going to go by yourself?' The engineer dropped his jaw, but he left. Maybe this system is wrong, but I have had pretty good success with it. If I don't do a good job, I get out. I can't compromise." – Wendt[1]
Astronaut Pete Conrad, known for his sense of humor, once said of Wendt:
"It's easy to get along with Guenter. All you have to do is agree with him."[1]
Mercury astronaut John Glenn fondly nicknamed Wendt "der Führer of der Launch Pad" (from his German-accented English) for his efficient, disciplined, yet good-humored pad crew leadership. His strict approach to configuration control of the equipment and commitment to safety was welcomed by the astronauts, and earned him their respect.[1][2] Before Glenn's Mercury flight, Wendt tried to reassure Glenn's wife:
"Annie, we cannot guarantee you safe return of John. This would be lying. Nobody can guarantee you this – there is too much machinery involved. The one thing I can guarantee you is that when the spacecraft leaves it is in the best possible condition for a launch. If anything should happen to the spacecraft, I would like to be able to come and tell you about the accident and look you straight in the eye and say, 'We did the best we could.' My conscience then is clear and there is where my guideline is."[1]
In January of 1967, Wendt, still with McDonnell (soon to become McDonnell Douglas), was supervising the test range in Titusville, Florida. Since NASA changed contractors for the Apollo program to North American Aviation (soon to become North American Rockwell), he was not involved with the Apollo 1 spacecraft, in which a cabin fire caused the deaths of Gus Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger Chaffee. After the accident, several people expressed to him the wish that he had been there, as if he might have caught the fatal problem in time to prevent the tragedy. But Wendt himself did not presume to believe this:
"...maybe it was meant for me not to be there because I would have taken it very hard."[1]
Grissom's backup and replacement on the Apollo 7 flight, Mercury and Gemini veteran Wally Schirra insisted on having Wendt back in charge of the pad crew for his flight, and convinced chief astronaut Deke Slayton to get North American to hire him. Schirra personally convinced North American's vice-president and general manager for launch operations, Bastian "Buz" Hello, to change Wendt's shift from midnight to daytime so he could be pad leader for Apollo 7.[1]
During the Apollo 7 liftoff, crew member Donn Eisele said to the ground, "I vonder vere Guenter Vendt?" (The German language sometimes pronounces the letter w as a v.)[1]
Crew members of the other Apollo missions shared an equally high regard for Wendt, and he stayed on with the Pad Leader title through the Skylab and ASTP missions.
He continued to work at KSC into the early Space Shuttle flights until retiring in 1989.[3]
Wendt later served as a technical consultant for several TV and movie features, and co-authored his 2001 autobiography, The Unbroken Chain, with Russell Still (Apogee Books (ISBN 1-896522-84-X)). He remained a personal friend of many early astronauts.
Wendt has been portrayed in a number of movies and television shows about the US space program, including:
Apollo 13, 1995, played by Endre Hules – While being fit into his space suit, astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) chats with Wendt, playfully mocking and repeating Eisele's pun from Apollo 7: "I vonder vere Guenter Vendt?"
Robert Murray Gordon "Rob" McConnell, OC has died he was 75. McConnell was a Canadianjazzvalve trombonist, composer, arranger, music educator, and recording artist.[1]
(February 14, 1935 – May 1, 2010)
McConnell was born in London, Ontario and took up the valve trombone in high school, and began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later, with fellow Canadian Maynard Ferguson. He also studied music
theory with Gordon Delamont. In 1968 he formed The Boss Brass, a big band that would become his primary performing and recording unit through the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1988, McConnell took a teaching position at the Dick Grove School of Music in California, but gave up his position and returned to Canada a year later. In 1997, McConnell was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and in 1998 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Since that time he has remained active, touring internationally both as a performer and educator, running clinics around the world and performing as both a leader and a guest artist. The newly formed Rob McConnell tentet has been quite successful, producing three major records, The Rob McConnell Tentet (2000), Thank You, Ted (2002), and Music of the Twenties (2003).
McConnell assembled the original Boss Brass from Toronto studio musicians. The instrumentation of the band was originally 16 pieces, consisting of trumpets, trombones, french horns, and a rhythm section, but no saxophones. McConnell introduced a saxophone section in 1970, and expanded the trumpet section to include a fifth trumpet in 1976, bringing the total to 22 members.
Over the years, Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass became one of Canada's most popular jazz ensembles, performing live and recording for Concord Jazz and a variety of other labels. Mel Tormé said, of his first recording session with the Boss Brass in 1987, "Making this record was one of the two or three greatest musical experiences in my long and checkered career."[citation needed] He died on May 1, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, aged 75, from cancer.
Discography
Recordings made by Rob McConnell & the Boss Brass include:
The Boss Brass (1968)
Boss Brass Two (1969)
The Sound of the Boss Brass (1970)
Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass (1971)
Rob McConnell's Boss Brass 4 (1972)
The Best Damn Band In The Land (1974)
The Jazz Album (1976)
Nobody Does It Better (1977)
Big Band Jazz (1978)
Boss Brass Again, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (1978)
Singers Unlimited with Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass (with The Singers Unlimited) (1978)
Dennis Tinerino, Four-Time Mr. Universe, Passes Away at 64
Dennis Tinerino was a legendary bodybuilder who left a lasting impact on the sport. His impressive career included winning the Mr. Universe title four times (1968, 1975, 1980, and 1981), as well as securing the Mr. World title in 1971 and Mr. America in 1978. Tinerino's dedication and hard work in the gym led him to be inducted into the Bodybuilding Hall of Fame.
Beyond his bodybuilding career, Tinerino experienced a life transformation that led him to become a Christian evangelist with a global ministry. His journey from a life of crime, running a large escort service in California, to an international evangelist, is a testament to his determination and the impact of his faith.
Sadly, Dennis Tinerino passed away in 2010 at the age of 64, after an 18-month battle with stomach cancer. His legacy in the world of bodybuilding and his dedication to his faith continue to inspire people worldwide.
Babz Chula has died from cancer she was 64. Chula was an American-born actress, permanent resident in Canada.[2] 
life. He began to promote mountain-bike races and got involved with DARE, a drug-awareness program geared towards school children. Chandler also started coordinating children's hospital visits by top motorcycle racers through his International Riders Helping People organization.
