Andrew, my friend, this is a great idea for a thread.

I thought perhaps there should be a somewhere to post obituaries that are notable, but perhaps not worthy of their own thread. Here's my contribution: Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)He was a celebrated British travel writer and Greek scholar, originally inspired to travel by Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. In the 30's he worked to ferment Greek republicanism and married a Romanian princess. During the war the fought in Crete with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), visiting the occupied island three times. He helped organise the Cretan resistance, leading a daring kidnap of the German general in command of the island, sneaking him out on a boat to Cairo: The kidnap took place in April 1944. With permission from the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Cairo, Paddy and his team of British commandos and Cretan guerrillas stopped Kreipe's car as made its way to HQ in Heraklion. With the general pressed down on the vehicle's floor, Paddy donned his uniform and set off towards a prearranged hiding-place with the captive on board. The German chauffeur had been carried off and killed by the Cretans, much to the displeasure of Paddy, who had wanted to keep the operation bloodless in order to reduce the chance of reprisals.Before reaching safety, they had to pass through several roadblocks and were saved only by Paddy's command of German. The strange company “ Paddy, the general and W Stanley Moss (author of the book Ill Met by Moonlight) slept in caves for a month until it was safe to have Kreipe removed to Egypt. Passing the time one day, Kreipe began to recite some lines from Horace's ode Ad Thalictrum. The Latin syllables caught his captor's ear. As luck would have it, it was one of those I knew by heart. After the general had run out of steam, Paddy carried on through the remaining 40 lines to the end. We got on rather better after that. In 1972, an almost equally unlikely event occurred, when the pair were reunited on a Greek version of This Is Your Life.Leigh Fermor's raid was later the subject the Powell-Pressburger film Ill Met by Moonlight, in which he was played by Dirk Bogarde. When I visited Crete people there are still very fond of him and the courage he showed to help them during the war. One of his travel books on the West Indies is even mentioned in Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die. RIP PLF

I have an entry to add...Maria Gomes ValentimA Brazilian woman ranked by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest person died Tuesday at the age of 114.Maria Gomes Valentim was born in 1896 in Carangola, a city in southeast Brazil, where she lived her whole life. She was just weeks away from celebrating what would have been her 115th birthday.Valentim died of pneumonia, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which keeps track of the world's oldest people.With her passing, Besse Cooper of Monroe, Georgia, regains her title as the world's oldest. She was bested by Valentim in May when officials were able to verify the Brazilian woman's age. Cooper is 114 years and 229 days, according to Guinness World Records.Valentim married Joao Valentim in 1913 and was widowed in 1946. They had one son together, four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren, Guinness World Records said.She credited her long life to a healthy diet, which included coffee, bread, fruit, milk with linseed and an occasional glass of wine.Guinness World Records said Valentim was Brazil's first supercentenarian to get official recognition. A supercentenarian is anyone over the age of 110. There are fewer than 90 such people confirmed living in the world right now.The oldest person to have ever lived, according to Guinness World Records, was Jeanne Louise Calment. She passed away in southern France in 1997 at the age of 122.

I'll tell you what...If you live that long (114 years) slipping away probably feels pretty good when you finally get around to it.

i hope to see death before 80.

Rimbaud III wrote:Thought this was a thread about the demise of one of them post-rocking bands you nerds love so much.I thought the same

Gunnar Fischer:http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/13/local/la-me-gunnar-fischer-20110613Although I bumped the Bergman thread already.

Thought this was a thread about the demise of one of them post-rocking bands you nerds love so much.

crustandcrumb wrote:i hope to see death before 80.See if you still feel that way when you're 76...

Ruth Roberts, ˜Meet the Mets Songwriter, Dies at 84Ruth Roberts, a songwriter best known for her cheerful and durable baseball anthem œMeet the Mets, died on Thursday night at her home in Rye Brook, N.Y. She was 84. Among the many songs written by Ms. Roberts and various collaborators were œFirst Thing Ev ry Morning (and the Last Thing Ev ry Night), written with and recorded by Jimmy Dean, and œMailman, Bring Me No More Blues, originally done by Buddy Holly and recorded by the Beatles in 1969 at a session for their album œLet It Be, although their version was not released until 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/arts/music/ruth-roberts-meet-the-mets-songwriter-dies-at-84.html