Near and Far: Those Who Left Us in 2014

Every year we commemorate and remember. It’s our human nature, especially at newspapers, to take stock, to look back and to remember the lives and presences we lost during the course of the year.

The losses add up in different ways in different years. In our world in Washington, where local news is national news and vice versa, some losses loom larger than others, and they seem to be both anticipating and evaluating history.

That was certainly the case in the passing of Marion Barry and his long goodbye recently, and in the loss of the stylish and classy, fearless Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who reigned over a history-making national, international and local newspaper at its zenith, even as the digital age began to whittle away at the important role of newspapers and anticipated its decline.

Barry’s death was still a shock. He had the kind of personal charisma and size, and a potent place in the city’s political and electoral history that was outsized, so that his death seemed sudden, implausible. After all, he was a four-term, media-dubbed and self-proclaimed “mayor for life” of the District of Columbia. His efforts to open the city’s job markets and government to include more African Americans radically changed the city. He was scandal-steeped, to be sure, and he was an often divisive figure in the city’s cultural, economic and racial divide. If his political fiefdom had shrunk to “East of the River” in his later years on the council, it remained a citywide phenomena in the public imagination—black and white– for better or worse.

Barry was of a generation, which had held sway since the beginning of home rule. His death signaled the end of something—the District Council is gaining some brand new members, and the new mayor Muriel Bowser is of a different generation.

Bradlee’s death marked the end of something, too—the beginning of the end of the critical importance of newspapers—major and minor—in how Americans get their news and digest it. While the Washington Post and the New York Times still maintain a posture of seriousness and importance, they are thinning like an old man’s hair, and, especially in the Post’s case, which was bought by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, geared toward younger audiences and readers. Social media, bloggers, Twitter and the huge, very full spaces of the Internet, make a hashtag of confusion in how information is digested and rob newspapers of their capacity to deliver news that hasn’t already been broken.

Bradlee presided over a newspaper that toppled a presidency, braved government reprisal over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. With Bradlee, charismatic and profane, Wasp and buccaneer, the paper also gained a lot of Style (Section) flash and dash.

Barry’s passing shared the news here with the arrival of a kind of permanent demonstration in Washington, the presence on a daily basis of young activists—black and white—protesting and demanding action in the wake of three police killings of three black men by police. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland have sparked the kind of disruptive but peaceful protest for social and government action that a young man named Marion Barry once led as a civil rights activist in the South. They seem today not only like portents of future change but echoes of the past.

Death is personal to all of us—to those left behind, to ourselves who are chroniclers, it leaves behind not only loss but larger meanings or personal memories to define. Here at the Georgetowner we lost friends who meant more than stories to us—the recent death of Michele Conley, the founder of Living in Pink, who lost her last battle with cancer, and Georgia Shallcross, a friend, writer and supporter of our newspaper for years. Food and restaurant writer Walter Nicholls, beloved by many, succumbed to cancer. We—and our village—also lost Suzi Gookin, a sparkling social writer for our publication, and an outspoken citizen of our town. And we mourned the loss of Richard McCooey, talented restaurant owner and designer, and raconteur.

Over the course of time, one finds oneself writing many stories, meeting many people, and remembering the meetings. The Washington theater community lost two of its gifted actors—the redoubtable, graceful Tana Hicken who had the gift of being unforgettable in her roles, and in her life and Tom Quinn, ex-Marine, boxer and coach, Wall Streeter, Irishman, New Yorker and finally Georgetowner. He became a memorable actor late in life, a performer of red-faced intensity at local theaters like Arena, Studio and Woolly Mammoth and in films, including “The Pelican File.”

There is a whole category of death as indiscriminate robber of life which results in flowers by the side of the road, balloons in a field, and the shock of sudden violence—the torments of horrible storms, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, two Malaysian Airlines crash with a loss more than 400 persons, one downed by a missile over Ukraine, another lost without a trace over the Indian Ocean (supposedly). There were school shootings, mass shootings, the thousands of victims of Ebola in Western Africa, the gruesome victims of Isis, and the thousands dead in the Syrian civil wars.

Closer to home, we will miss the kind presence of St. John’s Episcopal Church’s secretary Kimberly Durham Bates, a bright and beautiful presence in her Adams Morgan and Lanier Heights neighborhood, who leaves behind two children Naomi and Theo Bates.

We mourn and note the passing of 54 persons who died homeless in the District of Columbia in 2014. Their names were read aloud Dec. 19 on Homeless Memorial Day, following a candlelight vigil organized by the People for Fairness Coalition at Freedom Plaza.

Here are additional losses from 2014:

Pete Seeger—The giant of folk music, inspiring, redoubtable: “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” singing songs of freedom.

Mike Nichols—Astonishingly versatile stage and film director, adept with Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, directed “The Graduate” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.

Phil Seymour Hoffman—The man of many characters, the movie star as character actor, “Capote”, lost to an overdose.

Maya Angelou—The stirring national poet, who became hugely popular while never losing her cache as inspired Nobel Prize-winning articulator of the yearning for freedom.

Richard Attenborough—The British director with epic visions in “A Bridge Too Far” and “Gandhi,” and not a bad actor, either.

Lauren Bacall—One of the last of the old big movie star, she was Bogey’s baby first, and his best love in “The Big Sleep,” “To Have and Have Not,” “Key Largo.” She knew how to whistle, too, and became late in life a Broadway star.

Thomas Hale Boggs—Otherwise known in D.C. and at his law firm as Tommy, a lobbyist with high-class qualities

James Brady—Suffered grievous wounds in the attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, inspired gun control laws and kept a warm sense of humor.

Sid Caesar—Maybe the funniest and most eccentric of early television comedy, a giant on “Your Show of Shows,” who should have gotten more applause.

Oscar de la Renta—The fashion designer as red-carpet superstar.

Thomas Duncan—The first Ebola victim in the United States.

Phil Everly—As in Phil and Don Everly, the Everly Brothers, the chart-busting rock and roll and country singers who had a string of major hits, including “Wake Up Little Suzy” and “All I Have to Do is Dream.”

Al Feldstein—Founded Mad Magazine, the most unusual comedy and humor magazine ever.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez—Nobel Prize-winning Colombian Novelist and guiding light of magical realism in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” among many great novels.

James Garner—Major Hollywood and All-American star on television “The Rockford Files” and “Maverick” and in films “Sayanora”, “Murphy’s Romance”, “Duel at Diablo and others.

Gerry Goffin—With Carole King, wrote super hits like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Bo Hoskins—British character actor, famous for being a private eye in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Tony Gwyn—One of the best hitters ever, Hall of Famer, San Diego Padre.

Martha Hyer—High-class dame in 1950s films, including “Some Came Running With Frank Sinatra.

Dick Jones—For television western fans of the 1950s, he was “Buffalo Bill, Jr.,” and the Range Rider’s sidekick. He was the voice of “Pinochio.”

Casey Kasem—The big national deejay.

Lorin Maazel—Music director or the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic; founded the Castleteon Festival.

James MacGregor Burns—Political historian of great American eras.

Brittany Maynard—The young woman dying of cancer who chose to end her life in a cause-building public manner.

Tommy Ramone—The last of the Ramones.

Paul Revere—As in Paul Revere and the Raiders, 1960s rock group.

Johnny Rivers—Texan blues guitarist supreme.

Jane Mondale—The wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Maximillian Schell—Oscar winner (for “Julia”) and star “Judgement at Nuremberg” and chronicler of Marlene Dietrich.

Elayne Stritch—Eccentric, magnetic Broadway star.

Eli Wallach—Of Brando’s generation, starred in “Baby Doll” and was the bad guy in “The Magnificent Seven” (You came back. Why?, the dying words).

James Schlesinger—Former defense secretary, exemplary Georgetown citizen and presence.

Ralph Waite—The good father on television to John John Walton and Leroy Jethro Gibbs on “NCIS.”

Shirley Temple—The first super child star in the Depression, ingénue in “Fort Apache” and UN Ambassador.

Ralph Kiner—Detroit Tigers supreme slugger.

Robin Williams–The zaniest, wildest, most profane and faster-than-the-speed-of-laughter creative comic, to suicide.

Joan Rivers — Always in your face, always on your mind, the female comic as outsized performer.

Joe Cocker — Rock and blues singer, best known for his rendition “With a Little Help From My Friends.”