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.
He was chief editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times from 1964 to 1993 and had been syndicated to hundreds of newspapers worldwide. Conrad drew numerous cartoons about Richard Nixon's downfall. One cartoon showed Nixon, during his last days as president, nailing himself to a cross.[4]
Another example, the Los Angeles Times refused to run. Just prior to the vote to impeach President Nixon, Conrad drew the president in only a pair of tight fitting underwear, with the caption "The Last Nixon Supporter in Washington."[citation needed] He was also named in Richard Nixon's enemy list in 1973.[5]
Conrad wrote several books and his work is in the permanent exhibition of the United States Library of Congress.
He earned the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1964, 1971 and 1984.[6] Conrad has also won two Overseas Press Club awards (1981 and 1970) and in 1988, the Society of Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) honored him with his seventh Distinguished Service Award for Editorial Cartooning.
Conrad is survived by his wife, Kay King, a former society writer for The Denver Post, two sons, two daughters and one grandchild.
Ashmead was born on July 4, 1932, in Rochester, New York. He later recalled having been a model for a Kodak photo and then seeing an enlargement of his picture blown up to billboard size when visiting Grand Central Terminal and assumed that they did that for all visitors. When he was nine years old he heard a writer speak at a local library and was less fascinated by the author's writing than by the fact that he worked amid the skyscrapers of Manhattan editing books. He attended the University of Rochester and left after two years to serve in the United States Army. After completing his military service, he earned a doctorate in geology from Yale University as part of a program where the cost of his education was covered by an oil company. Though he was expected to work for the company after completing his education, he decided to abandon the field, making what he called the "only bold decision of my life".[1]
(July 4, 1932 – September 3, 2010)
He went to work as an assistant for Doubleday, where his scientific education led him to be given an assignment to work on a book written by Isaac Asimov in which Ashmead identified many errors that he pointed out to the author. Though Asimov was able to show in almost all cases that his writing was correct, he was impressed that anyone would devote so much attention to a manuscript and asked that Ashmead be assigned to edit his books.[1]
Ashmead would place advertisements in newspapers in towns where he was going to visit and would listen to proposals for books. He was receptive to book ideas generated by co-workers, and ended up publishing several books for Kate Morgenroth, a fellow employee at Harper to good reviews. He met business executive Helen Van Slyke at a dinner party and ended up publishing several of her books, which sold in the millions. While visiting London, Ashmead saw a proposal for a book about the Oxford English Dictionary that was going to be rejected by the publisher. Ashmead said "I can make this a bestseller" and worked with the author, Simon Winchester, to create the bestselling book The Professor and the Madman.[1]
Susan Isaacs credited him with the success of her books, saying in addition to "finding what was wrong", Ashmead "also knew what wasn't there." Michael Korda, a novelist who was editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster and whose books were edited by Ashmead, said he had "possibly the most clear and precise idea of what should be a book and how to get at it that I've ever known in an editor" and credited Ashmead with publishing 100 books a year, when many could only produce 20 each year.[1]
After retiring from the editing field, he wrote the 2007 book Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People, published by HarperCollins, featuring such people as Hedda Lettuce and Stan Dupp, as well as a dentist named Dr. Fang and Jaime Cardinal Sin of the Philippines.[2][3]
A resident of Stuyvesant, New York, Ashmead died at age 78 on September 3, 2010, in Columbia County, New York due to pneumonia. His partner, Walter Mathews, had died in 2004.[1]
Schimmel was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Betty and Otto Schimmel, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.[3] He was voted class clown during high school and was in the United States Air Force for one year during the Vietnam War.[4] A resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, his career began when, at the urging of his sister, he performed at a comedy club's open-mic night. A club owner in Los Angeles offered to make him a regular, but when Schimmel moved there he found that the club had burned down.[5] Undaunted, and with some help from Rodney Dangerfield, who invited him to perform on his HBO Young Comedians Special, Schimmel began making a name for himself.[6] He wrote material for In Living Color and for comedians such as Yakov Smirnoff and Jimmie Walker.[7]
Schimmel married his first wife, Vicki, in 1977, and they had four children together. Their son Derek died from cancer at the age of 11.[8] Schimmel later divorced and remarried, having two sons with his second wife, Melissa.
Comedic style
Schimmel cited Lenny Bruce as his all-time comedy hero.[9] Schimmel incorporated any aspect of his personal life into his act, even his cancer and the death of his son. In one signature bit, Schimmel joked about making obscene suggestions to a lady from the Make-a-Wish Foundation.[7] His act was described as raunchy and sexually explicit, which he claimed as the reason he never appeared on network television.[10] He said his inappropriate comments on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Hollywood Squares got him disinvited, though he later returned to O'Brien's program.[11] However, his edgy style made him a hit on The Howard Stern Show.
Personal life
In 1998, Schimmel suffered a heart attack. In June 2000, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. His treatments included chemotherapy and required long stays in the hospital.Schimmel's cancer went into remission, resulting in his decision to return to his wife Vicki, from whom he had been separated.Schimmel reunited with his soon-to-be second wife, Melissa, to whom he had been previously introduced by his daughter, Jessica, which led to the conception of their child.Schimmel divorced Vicki and married Melissa shortly thereafter.[12]
Schimmel was arrested in Calabasas, California on May 2, 2009 as a result of an alleged confrontation between himself and his wife Melissa. The district attorney eventually declined to press charges, citing insufficient evidence.[13] On May 8, 2009, Melissa Schimmel filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.[14]
During an interview on The Howard Stern Show on January 28, 2010, Schimmel announced that he contracted cirrhosis as a result of a hepatitis C infection from a blood transfusion that he received while in the Air Force. His cirrhosis had progressed to the point that he was working to be added to the waiting list for a donated liver.[1]
Death
On August 26, 2010, Schimmel was a passenger in a car driven by his 19-year-old daughter, Aliyah, when the car flipped onto its side before coming to a stop in the shoulder of the freeway.[15] Schimmel was hospitalized in serious condition, while Aliyah was hospitalized in stable condition. Schimmel’s son, also in the car at the time, was not injured.[16]
On September 3, 2010, Schimmel died of his injuries.[17] He is interred at the Paradise Memorial Gardens[18] in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Annie Ellis Turnbull[1] was, at the time of her death, aged &0000000000000111000000111 years, &0000000000000347000000347 days, the oldest person in the United Kingdom since the death of Eunice Bowman on 16 July 2010. Turnbull had been the oldest person in Scotland since the death of Alexina Calvert on 19 September 2008. When asked about the secret of her long life, she said "keeping calm".
(née Walker; 21 September 1898 – 3 September 2010)
Born in Haywood, Lanarkshire, Turnbull moved to Stoneyburn, West Lothian, around 1902. After leaving school at the age of 14 she moved to Edinburgh. She went into service as a table-maid, a job she held for most of her life. She worked in private residences, where she met Rudyard Kipling and Gordon Jackson. She retired aged seventy-six. She lived without hot water until she was 92.
Turnbull moved into the Victoria Manor Care Home prior to her 110th birthday in 2008. She credited her longevity to hard work and a daily glass of sherry.[2][3]
She had 2 daughters, 4 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren.[2] She died on 3 September 2010 at the Victoria Manor care home in Leith,[4] 18 days before what would have been her 112th birthday. Turnbull was the last person living in Scotland who was born in the 19th century and the Victorian Era; Catherine Masters, born in Dundee in 1899, now lives in England.
Katarina Marinič was a Slovenian supercentenarian. She was the oldest ever person from Slovenia.[1][2] Marinič was the 9th of 10 children born to Anton and Marija Gabršček at Deskle, Austria-Hungary. In 1915 the family became refugees and moved elsewhere within Austria's kingdom, but returned to the territory of modern-day Slovenia in 1918. During her time away from her place of origin, Marinič worked in the chocolate factory at Vienna and attended a culinary school in Bruck. In 1929 she married Rudolf Marinič at Smrečje. They had no children. Rudolf died in 1967. Marinič had eight nephews and a centenarian niece living in Italy. She lived in a retirement home in Nova Gorica for the last 13 years of her life.[3][4]
(30 October 1899 – 2 September 2010)
She died on 2 September 2010, aged 110 years, 307 days, taking the title as Slovenia's oldest person.[5]
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Trepp was born on March 4, 1913, in Mainz, Germany.[2] He studied philosophy and philology at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Berlin and in 1935 received his doctorate from the University of Würzburg. He was ordained by the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1936. Trepp recalled having conducted his first seder in 1936 in Oldenburg, when he was a newly ordained rabbi in Nazi Germany, leading the 15 synagogues in the district.[3] He saw that he had a dual role in working "to keep the Jewish community from breaking down, while at the same time give many fellow believers the possibility to emigrate".[2] As Jews were forbidden to attend public schools, Trepp asked the local Nazi officials if he could form a school in a synagogue in Oldenburg to educate Jewish children together with Aryan students, and was given approval for his plan, along with funding for school supplies and desks, as well as rent for the space that was being used as a school.[2]
Imprisonment
On Kristallnacht, an anti-Semitic pogrom that took place on the night of November 9, 1938 and resulted in the destruction of hundreds of synagogues and the deaths of 91 Jews, Trepp was arrested and placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was held as one of as many as 30,000 Jews who were arrested and held in prison camps by the Nazis.[1] In the wake of Jews being detained and dying, Trepp saw his role as being part of "a very rewarding rabbinate because the Jews needed me".[1] He recalled the inmates being called out in Sachsenhausen at 4:00 in the morning, seeing the guard towers manned with soldiers holding machine guns and being told "You are the dregs of humanity. I don't see why you should live".[1] He told God that he was prepared to die, but was overcome with the feeling that "God was with me. I know God was there. In the concentration camp with me. And it was the worst place for it. That's why it was the best."[1]
Trepp was released from Sachsenhausen after 18 days of incarceration through the intervention of the Joseph Herman Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom—under the condition that he and his wife had two weeks to leave the country.[2]
He went first to England and then to the United States in 1940. He ultimately moved to Northern California, where he led three congregations, including Beth Ami in Santa Rosa, California and Beth El in Berkeley.[1]
After the war
Trepp was a frequent visitor to Mainz, where he was involved in the restoration and revitalization of the Weisenau synagogue. Starting in 1983, Trepp spent 20 years teaching Jewish religion, Jewish mysticism and Talmud to students at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.[4] He was the author of the books The Complete Book of Jewish Observance, A History of the Jewish Experience and Judaism: Development and Life.[5]
Despite his longstanding efforts at fostering Christian-Jewish reconciliation, Trepp expressed concern that in the hands of nationalists and Islamists that "Anti-Semitism has become acceptable again". Speaking to German youth in 1993, he stated that "You bear no guilt for what your grandparents did. But there is responsibility. Germany must become the leading country in the fight against anti-Semitism."[6]
Trepp was the subject of the 2009 German language documentary film Der Letzte Rabbiner by Christian Walther, which was translated into English and shown as The Last Rabbi.[2] A resident of San Francisco, Rabbi Trepp conducted his 74th, and final, Passover Seder there with his extended family in 2010. Trepp died at age 97 on September 2, 2010, in San Francisco.
Morgan White[1] was an American actor died he was , 86.
(July 25, 1924 – September 2, 2010)
Contents
Fans are bidding a warm aloha to the man behind 'Pogo Poge'. If you grew up in the 60's or 70's, you might remember rushing home after school to watch 'Checkers & Pogo' on KGMB.
The actor who played Pogo, Morgan White, is now gone but not forgotten.
White entertained Hawaii's keiki for nearly 15 years as Pogo Poge. He passed away Thursday in Utah, where he retired. But White leaves this world going down in Hawaii's TV history.
It's a show that captured the hearts of kids, and White was in the center of it all.
"Morgan was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. He was really, really nice and he loved kids so his part on 'Checkers & Pogo' was the perfect job for him," said Rob Hearn, who played 'Jake the Janitor', 'John the Clown', and 'Granny Garbonzoon' on the show.
The show was Hawaii's version of 'Romper Room' with kids in the live audience, though Hearn, says it was even better.
"Romper room was for little kids. Checkers & Pogo? Even the grown-ups watched it," said Hearn.
The after school kids program was born in 1967.
You may remember, Friday was 'Pie-Day'.
Another highlight was the chance for kids to snatch as many pennies as they could.
"And some of the kids would come up with some pretty weird ideas of getting the pennies. They'd turn them over and they'd bring it out like this and try to get two hands in there. It was fun watching them," said White in a documentary KGMB produced in 1999 called 'Checkers & Pogo Remembered'.
The documentary, written and directed by Lawrence Pacheco, includes an interview with White after the show's final episode.
"It's a mixed emotion, you know, how do you draw a curtain on 14 years of love and fun?" White said.
Checkers & Pogo ended in 1982 as the longest running and most successful children's show in Hawaii.
"It was a phenomenon, it was an incredible phenomenon. Back at that time there were no video games, there were no 1,000 cable channels," said actor Fred Ball, who played 'Professor Fun'.
Ball says they had no idea Checkers & Pogo was going to be a hit, remembered still, 28 years later.
"Morgan White and all three Checkers do live on and hopefully Professor Fun, we live on in the minds and hearts of the now aging kamaaina's of the entire state of Hawaii," said Ball.
White continued acting after Checkers & Pogo.
He played the Attorney General in several episodes of the original Hawaii Five-0 TV series.
White was 86 years old.
Personal life and Death
After the show ended, White retired to farm in Sevier, Utah. He died in Utah at the age of 86 on September 2, 2010.[2]
Katarina Marinič was a 
