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| Oil Painting by me, 1989 |
It's been said repeatedly the past few weeks that the deaths of famous people "come in threes." In truth, fame is relative and death visits the well known and the obscure with equal indiscretion and finality. In the last several years however, there have been three celebrity passings of note which managed to move me to tears. The common denominator stringing them together was the measure of joy they brought me in my formative years.
They were my heroes.
In 2003, I was first saddened to learn of the death of Fred Rogers, whose television show was an absolute fixture of my early childhood. He was 74 and had been suffering from cancer; as such, his passing was not unexpected. Still, I remember the pang I felt knowing that such a kind soul was no longer sharing this world with us. But his gentle wisdom lives on.
