Done too soon

It's Monday, everyone, so hope you're able to make it a good week.

2020 has been such a challenging year for most everyone, with a worldwide pandemic that is still claiming far too many victims and a bitterly contested presidential campaign.

The news came over the weekend that Jeopardy host Alex Trebek passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.  Trebek was 80 years old, and had been diagnosed over a year ago with this disease.  My wife and I had recently rediscovered Jeopardy via a streaming service, as they had many episodes of this thinking-person game show in their archives.

That got me thinking about other well-known people we've lost in the past year.  One of the most prominent was the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who died at the age of 87 in October. She was a pioneer in the practice of law and as a judge and later a Justice, and certainly left her mark on the judicial establishment.

Just before the news of Alex Trebek's death, we learned that the original James Bond and Academy Award winner Sean Connery had died at the age of 90.  Connery was oh-so-smooth as he defined the Bond role in multiple pictures and even came back for one more (produced by someone other than the "official" Bond production team) in the 80s.  He won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "The Untouchables" and was in the third Indiana Jones movie (playing Indy's dad, though he was only a few years older than star Harrison Ford) and a lot of other films in the late 80s through the 90s, but had been enjoying a relatively quiet retirement.

Perhaps on the other end of the spectrum was the death of actor Chadwick Boseman from colon cancer at 43 earlier this year.  He had quite a run over a couple of years, playing not only Marvel's iconic Black Panther character, but also starring as Jackie Robinson and James Brown.  Talented actor who will be missed.

Carl Reiner was a comedic genius who left us at 97.  I followed Mr. Reiner over the last couple of years of his life via Twitter and was continually amazed at his vitality and enthusiasm for so many things.  And we said farewell to character actor Wilford Brimley, best known for playing crusty old curmudgeons far older than he was at the time, in films like "The Natural" and "Cocoon."

In sports, the tragic death of former Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant stunned the world.  In this same year we also said goodbye to baseball greats Joe Morgan, best known as Little Joe of the Big Red Machine-era Cincinnati Reds, as well as Cardinal greats Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, and Yankee pitching legend Whitey Ford.

I was not a great fan of the band Van Halen, but was always in awe of guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who was extremely gifted and certainly left us too soon at 65.  The music industry also saw the loss of Helen Reddy, best known for "I Am Woman" and a host of other pop hits in the 70s, and her contemporary Mac Davis, probably most notably the singer of "Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me."  

As with any list of this type, there are more and more and more people who should be noted and remembered for their accomplishments.  

I'm reaching the age now where more people who've been prominent for most of my life will be leaving this earth, and that certainly makes me sad.