Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Cleaning out the Inbox-Non-Sports Passings

It may be the holiday season but sadly the passings never stop in our world, so here are a few notable passings from the non-sports world.

Goodbye to Bob McGrath at the age of 90.

McGrath was an original member of the Sesame Street cast in 1969 and stayed with the show through 2016.

McGrath was the lead tenor for the four-year run of "Sing Along with Mitch" on NBC from 1960-64, which was memorably parodied on the Flintstones at the time as the "Hum Along With Herman" show as the Flintstones were broadcast by ABC and didn't want to publicize a rival network's program.

Goodbye to Stuart Margolin at the age of 82.

Margolin was a major character actor in the seventies and eighties and would later transition into directing.

Margolin shows up in many seventies shows and was one of the ensemble players on "Love American Style" that would do sketches between the two or three segments of the show.

Margolin's biggest role as "Angel" a prison mate of James Garner's "Jim Rockford" on "The Rockford Files" who assisted Rockford on his P.I. cases, for which Margolin would win the Emmy for "Best Supporting Actor" in both 1979 and 1980.

Margolin spoke of having his choice between a regular role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and a previous James Garner show "Nichols" and selecting Nichols mainly because he thought he would have more fun working with Garner, which developed into his role as Angel on Rockford Files years later.

Goodbye to Diane McBain at the age of 81.

McBain was a popular actress in the sixties with a burst of stardom brought by a role in TV's "Surfside 6" and a major role in the film "Parrish", a hit in 1961.

McBain would later appear in four episodes of "Batman" (two two-parters) as a moll of David Wayne's Mad Hatter and in another as the star villain "Pinky Pinkston" in the storyline that crossed over with "The Green Hornet", which starred Van Williams, a co-star of McBain's in "Parrish", as well as a guest star on the "Wild Wild West".

McBain's career slowed in the seventies as she raised her son and did return for occasional roles in eighties television.

Goodbye to Walt Cunningham at the age of 90.

Cunningham was the lunar module pilot for the Apollo Seven mission in 1968, the first Apollo mission following the tragic 1967 fire of Apollo One that cost the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee and is thought of by some as the most important Apollo mission.

Apollo Seven is regarded as such because NASA likely would have ended the Apollo program had Seven been an unsuccessful mission after NASA's widescale cleanup after the Apollo One disaster.

Cunningham would leave NASA in 1971, write a memoir in 1977, and would become involved in various business ventures after leaving the agency.

Cunningham was the final surviving member of his Apollo mission at the time of his passing. 

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