A New Year and Forgotten Pasts

Glen Campbell in his prime

Last week my post was about New Year's Eve Resolutions for the coming year.  However, a part of the Old Year tradition is also remembering those who passed away during the closing year.  Among them are movie and television stars that have not been active in several years but who have not only fans who remember them in their prime but also young fans who have seen their performances on channels that show old movies and television shows.  Jerry Lewis may be familiar from his MS telethons as well as from his old movies.  Mary Tyler Moore's two popular series--The Dick Vandyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show--have continued to win younger viewers.  Glen Campbell won new fans with the courage shown during his final tour as he faced Alzheimer's disease.  Sometimes he forgot the once familiar words, but he could still play his guitar like a master.  James Bond fans would surely remember Roger Moore's portrayal of Bond from 1973 to 1985.  All of these entertainers passed away in 2017.

Eugene Cernon

Less widely known but no less important are those like Isabelle Papin, the child neurologist who devoted her professional life to autistic children, and Julius Youngner, who helped develop the polio vaccine.  The last man alive to have walked on the moon, Eugene Cernan, left us this year, as did Robert Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," which used a father-son trip as a means to explore life's great questions.  The character of Dick Tracy became more famous than his creator, Dick Locher.  We lost all of these people in 2017.

We memorialize celebrities and notable people, and yet, how quickly their names are forgotten by most of us.  A few give their names to posterity, like Houdini and Darwin.  Some literary giants endure, like Shakespeare or  Lord Byron, or children's book author of the Oz series, L. Frank Baum.  For most, however, "fame is fleeting."

(c) Lyn Fenwick graphite on paper

So every year on New Year's Eve when television programs memoralize important people that died during the year, I pause to note their passing and wish them farewell.  I shed a few tears, especially if their performances or achievements touched my life in some way.

This blog has often been used to remind those who follow it of moments in history, once important places that have disappeared, and people who played significant roles in the past for which neither they nor their achievements are remembered.  In the more than six years since beginning this blog, I have seen many familiar sites in the old community where Isaac Werner claimed his homestead disappear--houses collapse, barns torn down, businesses close, and elderly people that I interviewed about their memories of earlier years pass away.  This blog has preserved pictures of some of those things and stories that were shared with me.  I hope that 2018 is the year that "Prairie Bachelor, The Story of a Homesteader and the Populist Movement" can be published to share the important but largely forgotten stories of these people, places, and events.