The Absent Friends of 2019

In 2011, the second year of the existence of The Grandstander, I began doing "Absent Friends" postings.  These were write-ups that I did to note the deaths of people who were of interest to me.  Persons of consequence in our culture, or just some people who did some oddball things that made their lives noteworthy, if only to me.  I take the term absent friends from the late, great sportswriter Red Smith, who used it whenever he would write of some distinguished personage in the sports field who was no longer with us.

At times, I was kidded for writing "the obituary blog", but judging from comments that I have received over the years, these Absent Friends posts seem to be the most popular of all the posts that I do.  In all, including the thirty names listed below, I have paid tribute to 324 Absent Friends in this space.  I'm going to keep doing it, too.

Herewith, a final tribute to the Absent Friends of 2019.  If you missed it, or would like to revisit what I wrote of these folks, just type their name into the search box that appears in the upper left hand corner of this screen.

Carol Channing

Tony Mendez

Reggie Young

Bob Friend

Frank Robinson

Joe Gibbon

Stanley Donen

Peter Tork

Roy McHugh

Dan Jenkins

John Mehno

David White

Charles Van Doren

Harding Peterson

Gino Marchetti

Doris Day

Bart Starr

Bill Buckner

Arte Johnson

Sid Ramin

Jim Bouton

Harold Prince

Clifford Branch

Darryl Drake

Robert Freeman

Vera Clemente

Michael J. Pollard

Danny Aiello

Jerry Herman

Sue Lyon

I have no way to quantify this, but my memory tells me that the Absent Friend post that generated the most comments was the one on Doris Day.