The LuLac Edition #374, Dec. 19th, 2007
PHOTO INDEX: DAREDEVIL EVEL KNIEVAL, PHILADELPHIA RADIO LEGEND HY LIT, FORMER BIG LEAGUER JOE NUXHALL, DICK WILSON, AKA MR. WHIPPLE, FORMER GREEN BAY PACKERS GREAT JIM RINGO, THE LATE STAN SOWA AND NORMAN MAILER.
TRANSITIONS
EVEL KNIEVEL
Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and '70s, has died. He was 69.
Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999 he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted through a blood transfusion after one of many violent spills.
Only days before his death, he and rap artist Kanye West settled a lawsuit over West's use of Knievel's trademarked image in a music video.
Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers in 1968 by vaulting his motorcycle 45 metres over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a bone-breaking crash. From YOU TUBE, the great daredevil.
JIM RINGO
Jim Ringo, a Hall of Fame center who played 15 seasons for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles, died Monday morning after a short illness. He was two days shy of his 76th birthday.
Former Packers teammate Willie Davis said Ringo, who lived in Chesapeake, Va., had been battling Alzheimer's.
"One minute, you're reliving an experience," said Davis, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame with Ringo in 1981. "And the next minute, he'd be asking, 'Who's this?'"
The Packers drafted Ringo out of Syracuse in the seventh round in 1953, and he became one of the league's best centers despite being undersized at just over 200 pounds.
"But what tenacity he had as a center in the NFL," Davis said. "Probably, no one was better."
But Ringo turned his relatively small size into an advantage, leading the way on the power sweep that made the Packers' offense so effective.
"As Vince Lombardi once observed, Jim epitomized the toughness and determination needed to not only play the center position but to become one of the game's most dominant offensive linemen of his era," said Steve Perry, president/executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "On behalf of all of us at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I extend my heartfelt condolences to Jim's family."
Ringo played for Green Bay through 1963, but a contract dispute led Ringo and Lombardi to part ways. According to Packers folklore, Ringo had the audacity to bring an agent with him to negotiate a new contract — and Lombardi traded him to Philadelphia on the spot.
"The story goes that Jim came in with a representative to visit with coach Lombardi about his contract," Packers historian Lee Remmel said. "Vince excused himself, came back, and said 'You now are a member of the Philadelphia Eagles.'"
DICK WILSON
Dick Wilson, a character actor who turned "Please don't squeeze the Charmin" into a national catchphrase as exasperated shopkeeper Mr. Whipple in the TV commercial campaign that ran for more than two decades, has died. He was 91.Wilson died Monday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, announced Procter & Gamble Co., maker of Charmin tissue.From 1964 to 1985, and again in 1999, Wilson portrayed Mr. Whipple in more than 500 commercials for the toilet paper.The first ad was filmed in Flushing, N.Y., a bit of trivia that the former stand-up comedian liked to share in interviews.The commercials typically feature giddy, middle-age women who enter his store and cannot resist squeezing the soft Charmin rolls, despite his protests. Then, when nobody is looking, Whipple can't help himself and hugs a package of the toilet paper.Wilson knew the premise was silly but told the Chicago Tribune in 1985: "What are you going to say about toilet paper? I think we handle it the best way we can."In a statement, Dennis Legault, brand manager for Charmin, called the Mr. Whipple character "one of the most recognizable faces in the history of American advertising."Wilson was so well-known as Mr. Whipple that he ranked as the third-most-recognized American in a 1978 poll, behind former President Richard Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham, Indiana's Fort Wayne News Sentinel reported in 2001. From YOU TUBE, a classic Mr. Whipple commercial.
HY LIT
Hy Lit, 73, one of Philadelphia's pioneer disc jockeys, died yesterday at Paoli Memorial Hospital of what his son termed "bizarre complications" after a knee injury.
Sam Lit said his father fell on Nov. 4 and was admitted to Lankenau Hospital to have the knee drained. What followed, the son said, was a "terrible situation that should have never happened."
Over the next week and a half, the DJ, heavily sedated, was transferred to Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital and, on Thursday, to Paoli Memorial, Sam Lit said.
A spokeswoman for Paoli Memorial last night referred questions to Mr. Lit's family. No cause of death has been announced.
Hy Lit, who lived in Lower Merion, had suffered in recent years from Parkinson's disease, but his son said it hadn't slowed him down. Father and son had started a music Web site, www.hylitradio.com. Mr. Lit had cut audio for the site the day before he went into the hospital.
"Hyski," or "Hyski O'Rooney McVoutie O'Zoot," as he called himself - or Hyman Lit, as he was born in South Philadelphia - came of age with rock-and-roll, in an era when disc jockeys talkedlikethis.
Mr. Lit, got started in the business in 1955, fresh out of the University of Miami.
He flourished in radio alongside such popular Philadelphia DJs of the early rock era as Frank X. Feller, Dean Tyler, Jimmy Bishop, and Joe Niagara.
Mr. Lit's biography credits Georgie Woods, another influential radio personality, with saving him one night during an early appearance, when the mostly African American audience did not believe that the white man at the microphone truly was Hy Lit.
It's said that in the 1960s, Mr. Lit's nighttime show on "Wibbage" (WIBG) drew three-quarters of the listening audience, many under covers defying parents' direct orders to shut off that music and go to bed.
The roster of Mr. Lit's stations - WHAT, WRCV, WIBG, WDAS-FM, WPGR, WSNI and WOGL - reads like a roll call of Philadelphia music. Mr. Lit also had the distinction on Aug. 15, 1990, of launching the oldies format on WCAU (1210).
ROBERT CADE
Dr. J. Robert Cade, the creator of Gatorade, who you probably know as the guy who says "Naturally we called out stuff Gatorade" in the Gatorade commercials died recently. His death was announced by the University of Florida, where he and other researchers created Gatorade in 1965 to help the school’s football players replace carbohydrates and electrolytes lost through sweat while playing in swamp-like heat.
A question from former Gator Coach Dwayne Douglas sparked their research, Cade said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press. He asked, “Doctor, why don’t football players wee-wee after a game.”That question changed our lives,” Cade said.
Cade’s researchers determined a football player could lose up to 18 pounds during the three hours it takes to play a game. They also determined 90 to 95 percent of the weight loss was water. Plasma volume decreased by 7 percent and blood volume about 5 percent. Sodium and chloride were excreted in the sweat.
Using their research, and about $43 in supplies, they concocted a brew for players to drink while playing football.
STAN SOWA
Stan Sowa, the longtime host of WNEP-TV’s Pennsylvania Outdoor Life, died Saturday morning at the age of 67 following a battle with cancer. Those who knew him said his passion for the outdoors was unmatched, and his experience in the field and encyclopedic knowledge made him a trusted source of information.Sowa worked as a land surveyor and volunteered with the Pennsylvania Game Commission for 28 years. He turned his experiences into interesting fodder for local newspaper columns.“Since Stan did all these things with the game commission, as a writer, people trusted him,” PGC District 7 commissioner Jay Delaney said. “Some of my interest in the outdoors came from his writing.”Gary Alt, the former head of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, was a frequent guest on Pennsylvania Outdoor Life. He and Sowa collaborated on several pieces about bears.“He asked the questions that were probably on the minds of the common people who walked the street,” Alt said.Former co-host Mike Stevens said Sowa’s broad appeal was one of his most endearing qualities. He was an everyman who could easily relate to the average outdoorsman, Stevens said.
JOE NUXHALL
Joseph Henry Nuxhall was a left-handed pitcher who played most of his career for the Cincinnati Reds. He held the team's record for career games pitched (484) from 1965 to 1975, and still holds the team mark for lefthanders, though he was long most remembered for having been the youngest player ever to appear in a major league game in the modern era, pitching 2/3 of an inning for the Reds on June 10, 1944 at the age of 15 years, 10 months, and 11 days due to player shortages during World War II. Long known as "The Ol' Lefthander," he compiled a career earned run average of 3.90 and a record of 135-117 during his 16-season career, with all but 5 of his victories being earned with the Reds. After retiring as a player, he became a broadcaster for the Reds from 1967 through 2004. Nuxhall died in 2007 after a long bout with cancer. I was in amazement as a kid when I found out Nuxie pitched at the age of 15. I thought, "there's hope for me" My dad kept on saying "it was the war" but never really explained further. I came of age when Nuxhall's career was winding down but still admired him even though he was pretty much washed up. From YOU TUBE, the life of Joe Nuxhall.
NORMAN MAILER
Norman Mailer, the outspoken author whose prize-winning works made him a towering figure on the American literary stage for more than 50 years, died recently.
Author of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," Mailer was probably the most famous of the generation of writers who came of age after World War II -- he was certainly the most colorful, and most pugnaciously so.
He wrote constantly: novels, screenplays, articles (he was a key figure in the "New Journalism" movement of the 1960s), poems, polemics. He co-founded the Village Voice. He was married six times.
And with his brawny physique and outsize personality, Mailer was never one to shy from a fight, whether physical -- he once stabbed his second wife after a party -- or literary. His fueds were legendary. Here is a classic piece of TV history when Mailer sparred with fellow author Gore Vidal on The Dick Cavett show. From You Tube:
posted by David Yonki @ 8:42 PM
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