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Two thirds of the trifecta with Danny Gans....
Impressionist, Vegas headliner Fred Travalena dies
Mon Jun 29, 5:55 am ET
LOS ANGELES – Impressionist Fred Travalena, a headliner in Vegas showrooms and a regular on late-night talk shows with his takes on presidents, crooners and screen stars, has died in Los Angeles. He was 66.
Publicist Roger Neal says Travalena died Sunday at his home in the Encino area after a recurrence of the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that first surfaced in 2002.
Travalena was known for the sheer volume of celebrities he imitated, leading to the nicknames "The Man of a Thousand Voices" and "Mr. Everybody."
His act included presidents from Kennedy to Obama, musicians from Frank Sinatra to Bruce Springsteen and actors from Marlon Brando to Tom Cruise.
The Bronx native started his career in Las Vegas in 1971.
Two pitchmen die. If I were Dick Clark I'd be verrrrrry careful.
Remembering John Templeton
John Marks Templeton, 95, a billionaire
investor who had a life-long fascination
with science and religion, died in Nassau,
Bahamas on July 8, 2008 of pneumonia.
John Templeton was a wonderful
mentor who both inspired and illuminated
my investment career. He also influenced
me in the realm of time management,
something very important in business. For
Templeton, time was always a thing to be
treated as a gift. To me, this is one of his
greatest legacies in a rush-rush world. Each
client quite rightfully makes claim on a
money manager’s time. When you were
with Templeton, however, you always had
a sense that he had more things to do than
time to do it, but you also felt that when
you were with him, his time was yours.
Templeton was very conscious of respecting
other people’s time, and when he traveled
around the world, to ensure that he
was prompt, he always set his watch 10
minutes fast. We call this “Templeton
time”. He used his time effectively, but his
life was centered on helping others through
understanding of sound money management
principles. Meetings with him always
began at the designated hour and always
ended on schedule. Even in my many telephone
calls to him, I was told exactly how
much time I had.
His desire to use his time effectively
found its logical expression in mutual
funds – a means for “every man” to stake a
claim in the markets as a way to help families
of many income levels to achieve
wealth and security. Later, he realized that
there was a strong place for closed-end
funds as well, especially in the emerging
markets of the world. His top performing
emerging markets fund, the Templeton
Emerging Markets Fund managed by Dr.
Mark Mobius, is the best example, but
there are others with exceptional records.
Mutual funds have a disadvantage in
these volatile markets because, if a shareholder
wants out, the fund’s management
must redeem his shares at net asset value
by the end of the day. Closed-end fund
investors have the advantage of time to
carefully monitor their investments,
choose limit orders and have the protection
of the discount.
John Templeton started his career on
Wall Street in 1937 while in his early 20s
and went on to create the Templeton family
of mutual funds, which grew so well that
he could commit much of his fortune to
scientific and religious causes. His philanthropies
included the $1 million Templeton
Prize for Progress in Religion established
in 1972, which annually recognizes one
individual for “progress toward research or
discoveries about spiritual realities”. He
told me once that he placed the emphasis
on “progress”.
During a career that included directorships
at banks, businesses and insurance
companies as well as educating investors,
Templeton also maintained a long association
with the Presbyterian Church. Raised
with a sense of entrepreneurship, he was
the son of an enterprising country lawyer
and a religious mother. After Yale and
establishing his investment business in
New York, he became a trustee of
Princeton’s Theological Seminary for 42
years and served as its chair for 12 years.
People connected with this seminary have
told me that the endowment he helped raise
has made the seminary one of the
wealthiest in the U.S.
Sir John Templeton, a naturalized
British subject, was knighted by Queen
Elizabeth in 1987 for his philanthropic
work through the John Templeton
Foundation. Founded in 1972, the
Foundation worked on the “Big Questions”
of science, religion and human purpose.
Based outside Philadelphia and now
managed by his son, John (“Jack”)
Templeton, a retired pediatric surgeon, the
Foundation supports academic research in
fields such as theoretical physics, cosmology,
evolutionary biology, cognitive
science and social sciences as they relate to
love, forgiveness, creativity, purpose and
the nature of religious belief. With an
endowment of about $1.5 billion, some
$70 million is given away annually.
“How little we know, how eager to
learn” is its motto. Templeton found that
the more he gave away, the more he had.
He told me once that he double-tithed
(20%) to his church.
John Templeton also established
Templeton College at Oxford in 1983
because he wanted to advance management
studies, revitalize the British
economy and, most of all, to help people
around the world escape from poverty,
famine and disease.
As a pioneer in both financial investment
and philanthropy, Sir John Templeton
spent a lifetime educating investors and
encouraging open-mindedness. He wrote:
“If I hadn’t sought new paths, I would have
been unable to attain so many goals.”
Whenever you were with this remarkable
man, you felt like you were the most
important person in the world to him. He
had, indeed, a rare amount of humility in a
world of greed.
I first met John Templeton in New
York, sitting quietly in his room at the
University Club, with the lights off, probably
at prayer. When he saw me, he asked if
I knew the “Parable of the Talents”. When
he explained to me that God has given to
each of us a particular talent, he immediately
made me feel good about my life and
where it was going. My newsletter was
struggling at the time, but within a decade
I purchased an investment advisory firm in
California and expanded my life’s work in
a new direction which has since flourished
as I became an investment advisor specializing
in closed-end funds.
Afterwards, I kept up with Sir John by
telephone and later by visits. I saw him in
Richmond once, when he came up from
Nassau to hear his son Jack give a lecture
at the Medical College of Virginia on
“conjoined twins” and their separation by
surgery.
I also visited Sir John several times at
his home and office at Lyford Cay, Nassau
to interview him for The Scott Letter and to
learn more about his philanthropic activities.
My last visit was in 2001, accompanied
by my wife and 87-year-old mother.
Sir John, then a widower, had lost his first
wife, Judith, the mother of his three children,
in a motorbike accident in Bermuda.
His second wife, Irene, had died in the late
1990s in Florida. Although he declined my
mother’s invitation to dinner, we later saw
him on the beach. I treasure the photo of
them together, arm in arm.
On a more personal note, prior to the
last time I traveled to London in 1995, I
telephoned Sir John to ask who I could see
at the Anglican Diocese. He first suggested
that I go to Lambeth Palace, the official
residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I doubted I could see the Archbishop as
easily as Sir John could, so he gave me the
name of the Dean of Westminster Abby,
whom I contacted. The Dean led me on a
private tour of this 5th century abby to see
the “Templeton Windows” for which Sir
John had raised the money to restore, in
typical Templeton fashion.
Templeton’s investment principles
influenced me and millions of other
investors. One investment rule that he
established was to “buy at the time of
maximum pessimism”, such as what we
are witnessing now. Due to his strong interest
in educating investors, he developed
rules and principles, publishing them in his
many books, now available from
Templeton Foundation Press.
Templeton provided advice on how to
invest worldwide when Americans rarely
considered foreign investing. When he
wanted to devote more time to his
Foundation, he sold his Templeton Funds
to the Franklin Group of Funds in 1992 for
a reported $913 million. He kept active in
his work until about three years ago and
died quietly, ready for the next life. He
left a legacy that will be long remembered.
For more information about this remarkable man,
see the biography, Global Investing: The
Templeton Way as told to Norman
Berryessa and Eric Kirzner, and his 1981
book, The Humble Approach: Scientists
Discover God. In his book, Templeton
asks, “Can science expand our understanding
of the Divine?” This and other books
can be found at http://www.templeton
foundation.org.
Memorial services for Sir John
Templeton will be held at Princeton
University Chapel on November 21, 2008
at 2 p.m.
http://www.cefadvisors.com/ScottLetter/2008/2008-07-08.pdf
His son Luke! not to mention the Mrs...
Gonna be tough on his dad, for sure.
Sitting here staring at his books that I just finished reading AGAIN last week...
Yeah, I know. Pretty sad.
HOLY SHIT!!!
Ghost Of Barbaro Appears To Teach Nation True Meaning Of Barbaro Day
LOUISVILLE, KY—Exactly one year to the day after Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was tragically taken from us before his time, an apparition of the beloved racehorse appeared in the morning sky to teach Americans from all walks of life about the true meaning of Barbaro Day.
Barbaro, assuming the spirit form of the healthy young colt America fell in love with before a severely broken right leg derailed his career and threatened his very life, manifested himself in the heavens during a Churchill Downs memorial ceremony in his honor. Across the nation, people reported seeing the thoroughbred's benevolent countenance appear among the clouds—his large liquid eyes looking solemn yet hopeful, his auburn mane swaying in the breeze, and his ethereal face suffused with a heavenly inner light that cast a gentle warmth over the masses.
"My dear friends, it is I, Barbaro," the firmament-spanning equine proclaimed in his trademark deep, wavering baritone. "I come to you on this, the first Barbaro Day, to remind you that despite what you may see on television and in department stores, this day is not about big parades, or fancy toys, or getting your picture taken next to a mall Barbaro. Nor is it about draping wreaths and garland over the neck of your loved ones, sipping mint juleps at office Barbaro Day parties, or even about winning horse races."
"No," Barbaro continued, shaking his head and softly nickering. "No, Barbaro Day is about triumph over great adversity. Courage in the face of great uncertainty. Daring the impossible, despite having your fetlock and pastern joints fused together to stabilize your right hind leg. But most of all, Barbaro Day is about love."
"May you love one another as you have loved me," Barbaro added. "Then—and only then—can every day truly be Barbaro Day."
The awestruck populace listened in rapt attention to the words of the great horse's spirit as he urged the people to remove their metaphorical blinders and open their eyes to the world around them; to never put too much weight on their sesamoid and long pastern bones; and to remember that Barbaro Day is not just the day that Barbaro died, but the day that human beings learned to put their differences aside and treat one another as they would want a 1,200-pound racehorse to be treated.
As Barbaro spoke, the crowd remained reverently silent save for the sounds of soft weeping and the occasional shout of "We love you, Barbaro!"
"Nothing pleases old Barbaro more than seeing a man help an elderly woman cross the street, or a family get together to laugh and be merry and eat a big bale of hay, or a child who is told repeatedly that he cannot win the Kentucky Derby but who works hard and believes in himself and does it anyway," Barbaro said. "That is the true spirit of Barbaro Day."
Reaction among those assembled was a mixture of shock and sudden total enlightenment, with many unable to put into words the great joy they had just experienced. To the disconsolate few who had previously refused to believe that the horse was truly dead, Barbaro explained that with life ultimately comes death, and that true immortality could only be achieved through one's actions during life.
Barbaro also assured them that he had taken his place among the great kings and poets in the heavens, and that his legs and hooves were perfectly healthy up there.
"What a fool I was, trying to use Barbaro Day for my own personal profit," said West Grove, PA resident Maria Brewster, who has been selling miniature plush Barbaro dolls at local craft fairs for the past month. "I am going to return all my Barbaro Day gifts and donate that money to either the homeless or that charity that is looking for a cure for laminitis of the left hoof."
Many others claim that they received visits from Barbaro's ghost the night before.
"Barbaro floated in through my window and told me that I was a good girl and that I could be anything I wanted to be when I grow up," said Kimberly Drexel, 12. "Then I asked him if he was real, but he just tucked me in with his hoof, told me to go back to sleep, winked at me, and disappeared. But this morning when I woke up, the window was open and there were horse hairs all over my bed. It was really him!"
Although the leader of the free world refused to reveal whether he had been personally visited by Barbaro, when President Bush emerged from the White House early Wednesday morning, the lines of age once etched onto his face had seemingly disappeared. Bush then unveiled an innovative small-business-incentive-based economic stimulus package and a universal health-care plan, which he credited to "my big friend in the sky."
Before he departed, Barbaro took a moment to address those fans who stood by him throughout the darkest hours of his life.
"In death, I can say the things I never found a way to say in life, on account of my being a horse then," Barbaro said. "I want to say thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for your kind letters and your prayers. And thank you for making my get-well cards extra-big, as my eyesight just ain't what it used to be."
As Barbaro's ghostly visage faded into the night sky, he wished everyone a happy Barbaro Day, told the nation's children "Don't forget to finish all your oats," and called for an end to the senseless fighting in Iraq.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ghost_of_barbaro_appears_to_teach
Joseph Juran
Business management guru who adapted statistical laws to save time and waste
Joseph Juran, who has died aged 103, will be remembered as the first management guru whose name is best associated with "quality". His distinctive contribution lay in expanding the statistical conception of quality so that it became an essential resource for management. He adapted the 19th-century statistical tool known as the Lorenzo Curve to make it a manufacturing aid to identify clusters of defects in the production process. By integrating it with the 19th-century statistics-based Pareto's "80/20" Law, he eliminated random searching for the majority of defects, not only saving time but reducing waste.
The translation of Pareto's Law that he coined was that 80% of problems occur in only 20% of activities. This Juran/Pareto law of identifying the "vital few" (the 20%) has been applied to many functions of management since Juran gave it application: the most widely accepted formula it has generated is that 80% of results are the consequence of 20% of total activities (for example, a popular interpretation is that 80% of profits come from 20% of customers).
Born in Braila, Romania, Juran arrived in the US when he was eight with his family to join his shoemaker father, Jakob, who had left Romania to find a better life. Juran had to work to contribute to the family income, but still excelled at his studies. In 1924 he graduated in electrical engineering from the university of Minnesota, and joined the progressive Western Electric's Hawthorne plant in Chicago, where he was assigned to the inspection department. He progressed rapidly and became a key member of the unique inspection statistical department.
In 1935 he published his first article on quality and two years later became head of industrial engineering at Western Electric's headquarters in New York. He was now at the centre of the "quality movement" as he worked on national committees with experts from other major organisations. Juran's holistic approach enabled him to merge his own ideas with those of others.
During the second world war, Juran joined the government Lend-Lease programme in Washington and improved performance by cutting red tape and eliminating waste and inefficiency, while redesigning shipping and delivery techniques for the benefit of the allies.
After the war, Juran built up a consulting practice and was a major contributor to the Quality Control Handbook (1951). It was the first book on total quality, and early editions sold more than 300,000 copies. His proposition was that "total quality" as a management philosophy could be applied to all aspects of business. Every gain by the elimination of waste was "gold in the mine".
In 1954, he embarked on a lecture tour of Japan, where his lectures were attended by chief executives of large companies (in America he would have been addressing engineers and production specialists). He showed the Japanese how to implement "quality", and became one of the few foreigners to be awarded Japan's highest civilian decoration, the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure. The Japanese were making quality products well before he appeared, he noted, and added that "quality" was not a new idea - it had been practised by the Babylonians.
He formed the Juran Institute in Wilton, Connecticut, in 1979 to continue his studies on "quality" management, working until his final lecture tour in 1993-94. He wrote 14 books, more than 100 papers, left many lecture notes and was hampered by "the disease of making no error at any cost".
Workers wanted to produce quality to give them job satisfaction, he suggested, and defective work was the result of poor design or poor management, which demoralised the work force.
He rejected the technique of trying to activate quality improvement by quality drives. It could not work because "quality" improvement was a continual process, and a function that added 10% to the manager's workload. "Management drives" in general, he thought, abused workers by creating unnecessary stress.
Always a free thinker, Juran challenged two of the conventions of management. The first was that fear is a disincentive and reduces performance. Juran believed that fear could stimulate people and enhance performance in the short-term. The second convention was that management is a logical, rational and sequential process in which luck plays no part. Juran used his own background to promote the idea that there was such a thing as luck in ordinary life, and consequently in management. As evidence, he noted his own life prospects had he stayed in Romania, compared with the good fortune he enjoyed in the US, after becoming a citizen in 1917.
On his retirement, at 93, he said that he wanted to continue with his writing to pay back society for a life that had turned out to be so fortunate. For Juran, the 20th century had been "the production century" and the 21st century would be the "quality" century.
Juran is survived by Sadie, his wife of 81 years, three sons and a daughter.
· Joseph Moses Juran, management guru, born 24 December 1904; died February 28 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/03/1
Roy Scheider, Actor in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 75
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By DAVE KEHR
Published: February 11, 2008
Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
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Roy Scheider, right, with Richard Dreyfuss in “Jaws” (1975). Mr. Scheider played the police chief of a resort town menaced by a shark.
Everett Collection
Mr. Scheider played the lead role in Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979).
Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.
Mr. Scheider’s rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.
Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like “Klute” (1971), his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda’s New York call girl; and in William Friedkin’s “French Connection” (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman’s marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.
Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”
His professional debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Romeo and Juliet.” While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in “The Curse of the Living Corpse” (1964), a low-budget horror film by the prolific schlockmeister Del Tenney. “He had to bend his knees to die into a moat full of quicksand up in Connecticut,” recalled Ms. Seimer, a documentary filmmaker. “He loved to demonstrate that.”
In 1977 Mr. Scheider worked with Mr. Friedkin again in “Sorcerer,” a big-budget remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 French thriller, “The Wages of Fear,” about transporting a dangerous load of nitroglycerine in South America.
Offered a leading role in “The Deer Hunter” (1979), Mr. Scheider had to turn it down in order to fulfill his contract with Universal for a sequel to “Jaws.” (The part went to Robert De Niro.)
“Jaws 2” failed to recapture the appeal of the first film, but Mr. Scheider bounced back, accepting the principal role in Bob Fosse’s autobiographical phantasmagoria of 1979, “All That Jazz.” Equipped with Mr. Fosse’s Mephistophelean beard and manic drive, Mr. Scheider’s character, Joe Gideon, gobbled amphetamines in an attempt to stage a new Broadway show while completing the editing of a film (and pursuing a parade of alluring young women) — a monumental act of self-abuse that leads to open-heart surgery. This won Mr. Scheider an Academy Award nomination in the best actor category. (Dustin Hoffman won that year, for “Kramer vs. Kramer.”)
In 1980, Mr. Scheider returned to his first love, the stage, where his performance in a production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” opposite Blythe Danner and Raul Julia earned him the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance. Although he continued to be active in films, notably in Robert Benton’s “Still of the Night” (1982) and John Badham’s action spectacular “Blue Thunder” (1983), he moved from leading men to character roles, including an American spy in Fred Schepisi’s “Russia House” (1990) and a calculating Mafia don in “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993).
One of the most memorable performances of his late career was as the sinister, wisecracking Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” (1991).
Living in Sag Harbor, Mr. Scheider continued to appear in films and lend his voice to documentaries, becoming, Ms. Seimer said, increasingly politically active. With the poet Kathy Engle, he helped to found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, dedicated to creating an innovative, culturally diverse learning environment for local children. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.
Besides his wife, his survivors include three children, Christian Verrier Scheider and Molly Mae Scheider, with Ms. Seimer, and Maximillia Connelly Lord, from an earlier marriage, to Cynthia Bebout; a brother, Glenn Scheider of Summit, N.J.; and two grandchildren.
I can't click that. Who died?
Robin .... am so sad (for you today) .... ALL my love >
"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."
Milton Friedman
(07/31/1912 – 11/16/2006)
US economist
http://www.born-today.com/Today/d11-16.htm
For all sub-penny stock traders:
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/uncert/aversion.htm
The Friedman-Savage utility function is the theory that Milton Friedman and Leonard J. Savage put forth in their 1948 paper [1], which argued that the curvature of an individual's utility function differs based upon the amount of wealth the individual has. This curving utility function would thereby explain why an individual is risk-loving when he has less wealth (e.g., by playing the lottery) and risk-averse when he is wealthier (e.g., by buying insurance).
Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73
LYNCHBURG, Va. - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University. He was 73.
Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive late Tuesday morning and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.
"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."
Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said the evangelist had a heart rhythm abnormality.
Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents.
"Jerry has been a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said Tuesday.
Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.
"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.
The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.
He also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.
Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.
In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: "Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?"
Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.
Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.
In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.
The case was depicted in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt."
With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on "non-moral issues."
Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.
Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Falwell essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized.
In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.
Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.
The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.
"He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry," said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.
In 1987, Falwell took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after Jim Bakker's troubles. Falwell slid fully clothed down a theme park water slide after donors met his fund-raising goal to help rescue the rival ministry. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL's financial problems.
Largely because of the Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals, donations to Falwell's ministry dropped from $135 million in 1986 to less than $100 million the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled.
Liberty University was $73 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, and his "Old Time Gospel Hour" was $16 million in debt.
By the mid-1990s, two local businessmen with long ties to Falwell began overseeing the finances and helped get companies to forgive debts or write them of as losses.
Falwell devoted much of his time keeping his university afloat. He dreamed that Liberty would grow to 50,000 students and be to fundamentalist Christians what Notre Dame is to Roman Catholics and Brigham Young University is to Mormons. He was an avid sports fan who arrived at Liberty basketball games to the cheers of students.
Falwell's father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography. He said his father made a fortune off his businesses — including bootleging during Prohibition.
As a student, Falwell was a star athlete and a prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian's speech after he was caught using counterfeit lunch tickets his senior year.
He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at age 19. He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.
"My heart was burning to serve Christ," he once said in an interview. "I knew nothing would ever be the same again."
Falwell is survived by his wife, Macel, and three children, Jerry, Jonathan and Jeannie.
March 18 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_18
Deaths
978 - King Edward the Martyr of England
1227 - Pope Honorius III (b. 1148)
1314 - Jacques DeMolay, Frankish noble, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar (b.1244)
1583 - King Magnus of Livonia (b. 1540)
1584 - Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (b. 1530)
1675 - Arthur Chichester, 1st Earl of Donegall, Irish soldier (b. 1606)
1689 - John Dixwell, English judge (b. 1607)
1696 - Robert Charnock, English conspirator
1745 - Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1676)
1746 - Anna Leopoldovna, regent of Russia (b. 1718)
1768 - Laurence Sterne, Irish writer (b. 1713)
1781 - Anne Robert Turgot, French statesman (b. 1727)
1823 - Jean-Baptiste Breval, French composer (b. 1753)
1835 - Christian Gunther von Bernstorff, Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomat (b. 1769)
1871 - Augustus De Morgan, Indian-born British mathematician and logician (b. 1806)
1898 - Matilda Joslyn Gage, American suffragist (b. 1826)
1907 - Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist and politician (b. 1827)
1913 - King George I of Greece (b. 1845)
1936 - Eleutherios Venizelos, Former Prime minister of Greece
1939 - Henry Simpson Lunn, English humanitarian and religious leader (b. 1859)
1941 - Henri Cornet, French cyclist (b. 1884)
1947 - William C. Durant, American automobile pioneer (b. 1861)
1962 - Walter W. Bacon, Governor of Delaware (b. 1880)
1963 - Wanda Hawley, American actress (b. 1895)
1964 - Sigfrid Edström, Swedish sports official (b. 1870)
1965 - King Farouk I of Egypt (b. 1920)
1969 - Barbara Bates, American film actress (b. 1925)
1973 - Lauritz Melchior, Danish-born American opera singer (b. 1890)
1975 - Alain Grandbois, Quebec poet (b. 1900)
1977 - Marien Ngouabi, President of the Republic of the Congo (b. 1938)
1978 - Leigh Brackett, American author (b. 1915)
1978 - Peggy Wood, American actress (b. 1892)
1983 - Umberto II of Italy, former Italian king (b. 1904)
1983 - Kenneth E. Boulding, English economist (b. 1910)
1984 - Charlie Lau, American baseball player (b. 1933)
1986 - Bernard Malamud, American writer (b. 1914)
1988 - Billy Butterfield, American jazz trumpet player (b. 1917)
1990 - Robin Harris, American actor and comedian (b. 1953)
1995 - Robin Jacques, illustrator of children's books (b. 1920)
1996 - Odysseus Elytis, Greek poet, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
2001 - John Phillips, American musician (The Mamas and the Papas) (b. 1935)
2002 - R.A. Lafferty, American science fiction writer (b. 1914)
2002 - Gösta Winbergh, Swedish tenor (b. 1943)
2003 - Karl Kling, German race car driver (b. 1910)
2003 - Adam Osborne, British computer pioneer (b. 1939)
2004 - Harrison McCain, Canadian businessman (b. 1927)
2006 - Bill Beutel, American journalist (b. 1930)
2006 - Dan Gibson, musician (b. 1922)
2007 - Bob Woolmer, Pakistani cricket coach (b. 1948)
Incredible:
Top of the list.
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu.ejnv1FZX8B2Q5XNyoA?p=%22wanna+know+who+died%3F%22&ei=U...
Wilford "Crazy Ray" Jones dies
03:30 AM CDT on Sunday, March 18, 2007
BY JENNIFER EMILY and JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning News
jemily@dallasnews.com, jsimnacher@dallasnews.com
Wilford "Crazy Ray" Jones, who turned a stint selling seat cushions at the Cotton Bowl into a nationally recognizable role as an unofficial Dallas Cowboys mascot, has died.
Mr. Jones, 76, died Saturday at an Irving hospice. Friends said he suffered from congestive heart failure and had recently had a heart attack.
"Crazy Ray" entertained decades of Cowboys fans and became a Dallas institution in chaps and white boots.
"This whole thing has turned out so much bigger than I ever expected," he told The Dallas Morning News in 1981. "I never want to do anything else."
Neighbors said that although Mr. Jones' recent bad health kept him away from Cowboys games, he remained an avid fan. He'll be buried in one of his costumes.
Although his funeral will be private, the family is planning a public memorial this week. No time or date had been set Saturday.
The Nacogdoches native came to Dallas in 1953 at age 22 to make a living shining shoes. His natural talents soon had him clowning toward his playful calling.
"When I first got here, I was riding a city bus and talking to a lady," Mr. Jones said in 1974. "I had a paper bag and made some sounds. She said, ‘Do you have a dog in there?' I said yes.
"So the driver said, ‘You can't have a dog on the bus.' So I threw the bag out the window.
"They all looked for the dog."
That was one of many stories Mr. Jones had told for decades that his wife, Mattie, retold Saturday when friends and family gathered around him at the hospice, friends said. He died around 11:30 a.m. with loved ones surrounding him.
The Joneses were married for 53 years. Mrs. Jones did not want to speak Saturday about her husband's death.
Although his role with the team was unofficial, he was no less important to fans and the Cowboys themselves.
"Ray was the most dedicated, entertaining and passionate of Cowboys fans," Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Saturday. "He touched thousands of lives and generations of football fans. He will remain an important part of this team's heritage and family for as long as fans go to Cowboys games and feel his spirit."
Twenty years after he spoofed the woman on the city bus, Mr. Jones was known as the Pied Piper of Elm Street. Still holding a day job shining shoes at barber shops along Elm Street, he spent his lunch hours entertaining children with his signature antics: whistling and making balloon animals.
"I'd just whistle, act crazy and sell more than anybody," Mr. Jones once recalled. He also hung out at a magic shop downtown, learning sleight of hand from magicians.
No matter how full Mr. Jones' bag of tricks got over the years, his shrill whistle was his trademark. Its force and volume made many wonder what kind of whistle he was using and how he kept from swallowing it.
"No, it's no whistle. I just tell 'em it's a secret," Mr. Jones said of his technique.
Mr. Jones' secret was a missing front tooth and incredible lip dexterity.
Although Mr. Jones originally sold trinkets at college football and minor-league hockey games, his success skyrocketed with Dallas' professional football franchises. In the early 1960s, he began selling seat cushions at Dallas Texans games at the Cotton Bowl and went on to become the unofficial icon of America's Team, the Dallas Cowboys.
At Cowboys games, Mr. Jones would dance and clown around, sometimes riding a stick horse or scuffling with the opposing team's mascot. As his popularity eclipsed his need to sell souvenirs, the Cowboys asked him not to sell and focus on entertaining the crowd.
At the peak of his fame, Mr. Jones made frequent personal appearances, from routine showings at auto dealerships and shopping centers in Dallas to more exotic performances in Hawaii and Mexico. He even won bit parts in movies and commercials.
But in the late 1980s, Mr. Jones' health began to fail. He was sidelined by a hiatal hernia in September 1989.
In the years that followed, Mr. Jones found himself broke and in increasingly bad health. He had five heart bypass surgeries and a leg amputation. By last August, he was recovering from his fourth stroke. The strokes impaired his speed and the use of his right arm. Glaucoma blinded him.
Cowboy fans began to ask Mr. Jones if he'd retired.
"I tell them, ‘No, I just have some heart problems,'." he said.
A lack of money meant his utilities were turned off, and the Joneses had trouble paying for prescriptions.
Wayne Walker, a neighbor, coordinated efforts to help the Joneses pay bills and renovate their house. Fans donated money and Bedford-based Operation Forever Free - an organization dedicated to helping military members and their families - renovated the Korean War veteran's home with donated time and materials.
Mr. Walker didn't help the Joneses because Crazy Ray was a Dallas icon, he said Saturday.
"It's not because he's Crazy Ray," Mr. Walker said. "It's because he was a neighbor in need."
Off the field, Mr. Jones' personality was just as loving and big-hearted, recalled Richard Davis, who lived across the street from the Joneses. The two met in the mid-1960s while fishing at White Rock Lake. They became instant friends and fishing buddies - more like brothers than friends.
Mr. Jones was always looking to make people smile or better yet get a big belly laugh out of them, Mr. Davis said.
"Sometimes, he might put on ladies' clothes just to get a laugh," said Mr. Davis, grinning at the memory. "That was Crazy Ray."
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jones is survived by two brothers, Paul Jones, 62, and Jerry Jones, 64, both from the Dallas area; a sister, Eugenia Gibson, 78, of Atlanta; and two grandsons, Derrick Jackson, 38, and Darryl Jackson, 35. His daughter, Glenda, preceded him in death in 2000 at age 53.
Staff writer Todd Archer contributed to this report.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Ray
Dallas sports talk radio station. I'm a P1 from day one... lol
http://www.theticket.com/musers.htm
Ahhh.....I didn't scroll all the way down
I sent an email to the guy whose picture is in the iBox let's see if he comes and posts anything. He is starting his own television show in the Dallas area...
http://www.gordonkeith.com/
of course not. The Onion. nothing is serious there. fake-believe news
So sad.
That picture isn't real is it?
Whatsa matter?
You got tired of stalking Peg, so you're stalking me now???
You love us don't you?
Lol, Not another one!
Maybe dead, never see her post much
He's got a lot of boards!
He's in the business?
Ahhh.
I think we are ruining someone's board
I watch it for the political articles and interviews
And the Playboy channel has which of those?
I like Politics, history, and science
I don't know
You seem to be very well rounded
what was the cause of death?
Soo, my portfolio died today..
then again its died a few times. Hmm..does that make it a zombie!?
C-Span, PBS, and Playboy Channel are the only decent things on TV
I think "The Hardline" created the trifecta, not Gordon, for those who know what I am referring to
http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/1999-03-18/balls_full.html
Yes we do.
I rarely watch the regular news shows anymore because the majority of it is fluff.
Cable news is somewhat better although not much
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