The Memorial Wall

Paul P. Ragonese, a retired Coast Guard mechanical engineer and automobile enthusiast, died Thursday of Parkinson’s disease at Blakehurst, a retirement community in Towson. He was 87.

“Paul was a good engineer and very methodical,” said Edward A. Kaczmarek, a retired engineer and his former supervisor at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay in Anne Arundel County.

“He’d check things seven different ways before he turned in a project and he always brought them in on time, but he took his time because he wanted to get it right,” Mr. Kaczmarek said. “We built and repaired ships, and he was very good at his work.”

“Ever-ready to modify design or materials, Mr. Ragonese was quick to pull out a tape measure or calculator depending on the need at hand,” wrote a niece, Margaret McAdam Ondov, of Lewes, Delaware, in a biographical profile.

After graduating in 1953 from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Mr. Ragonese attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge for a year before leaving school.

From 1953 to 1955, he worked for his father’s company, Square Construction, as a highway surveyor.

“He barely passed his first year at MIT,” Ms. Ondov said in a telephone interview.

After withdrawing from school, he worked from 1957 to 1960 for Bendix-Friez, an instrument plant, in Towson as a lab tech.

In 1960, he returned to surveying for his father’s company for four years. He went back to college at the Johns Hopkins University and graduated in 1967 with honors from the Whiting School of Engineering. In 1969, he earned a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia.

While at Hopkins, he was a member of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society, and joined Mensa.

Projects he was associated with while working for Square Construction included the Mays Chapel reservoir in Baltimore County and the Metro in Washington.

He later worked for the Coast Guard until he retired in 1999. The former longtime resident of the Fox Chapel neighborhood in Timonium served in the Maryland Air National Guard from 1958 to 1964.

“He was a lifelong enthusiast of objects in motion,” his niece wrote. He built a go-cart and a stock car.

“He loved his cars and he even built a hot rod on a Model-A chassis,” Mr. Kaczmarek said. “He also loved driving, so whenever we had to go out on a job, I let him drive.”

He was a member of the Moles, an organization of tunneling executives.

“Uncle Paul was an extremely intelligent and well-read man who had read the [St. John’s College Great Books Reading List],” his niece said. “He could quote from memory Alexander Pope or Charles Bukowski, the poet novelist.”

Ms. Ondov described her uncle as a “Renaissance man.”

“He was so intelligent and always wanted to learn, and was extremely engaged intellectually and socially,” she said.

He met his future wife, Anne Henderson, at a dance and the couple married in 1967.

“He loved ballroom dancing,” his niece said.

Mr. Ragonese’s and his wife’s philanthropic interests included the Johns Hopkins Legacy Society, the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, where in the 1980s he began treatment for glaucoma.

“The Ragoneses have endowed professorships and research funds, expanded resources, clinical care and provided opportunities to educate the next generation of leaders in ophthalmic medicine,” Wilmer director Dr. Peter J. McDonnell told Planning Matters, a Johns Hopkins University and Medicine publication.

“We felt we could do something that would be a benefit to people,” Mr. Ragonese said in the article.

A memorial celebration will be held at 11 a.m. April 6 at the Ruck Towson Funeral Home at 1050 York Road.

In addition to his wife of 57 years, a retired MedStar Union Memorial Hospital registered nurse, and niece, Mr. Ragonese is survived by a nephew, Michael P. McAdam, of Ruxton; another niece, Karoline McAdam Obora,  of Naperville, Illinois; and several grand-nieces and grand-nephews.

Gerald Levin, the visionary executive in the early days of HBO whose career will be forever marred after he orchestrated the merger of Time Warner and AOL, a debacle that destroyed the value of employees’ retirement accounts and culminated in a historic $100 billion write-down, has died. He was 84.

Levin died Wednesday in a hospital, his grandchild Jake Maia Arlow told The New York Times. He had battled Parkinson’s disease since being diagnosed in 2006 and lived most recently in Long Beach, California.

Levin was an attorney who worked for a year in Iran before joining HBO at its inception in 1972 as a programming executive. He was promoted to CEO a year later, and a year after that he convinced parent company Time Inc. to take HBO to cable companies nationwide via satellite technology, earning him the nickname of “resident genius.”

The Philadelphia native and University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate was elected a Time board member in 1988 and quickly helped arrange the company’s $14 billion acquisition of Warner Communications, bringing Warner Bros. and Warner Music into the fold.

Levin was named co-CEO of Time Warner along with Steven J. Ross in early 1992, then had the title for himself when Ross died 10 months later from prostate cancer.

Time Warner meandered under Levin’s early tenure, but he impressed Wall Street in 1996 by acquiring Turner Broadcasting System, thus adding CNN, TNT, TCM and Cartoon Network to the conglomerate’s growing list of assets. The merger also returned to Warner Bros. rights to its pre-1950 movies, which Turner had purchased years earlier, and it made media mogul Ted Turner a board member and primary Time Warner shareholder.

In 1997, Levin’s son Jonathan, a 31-year-old high school English teacher in the Bronx, was murdered by a former student who tortured him with a knife until he surrendered the password to his bank ATM card. Friends called the tragedy a “defining moment” for Levin, who already had a reputation for quoting Greek philosophers and the Bible, and he began brainstorming ways to leave an inspiring, world-changing legacy through his leadership of Time Warner.

“Levin presented himself as a scholarly, upright man who just happened to be the CEO of the world’s largest media company. He didn’t just want to be remembered as a CEO who’d improved the bottom line; he aspired to be known for so much more,” Nina Munk wrote in her 2004 book, Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner.

In the late 1990s, Levin figured, correctly, that the Internet would forever alter the way media was delivered and sought a dramatic way in for Time Warner, which had stumbled with its own lackluster digital initiatives like Entertaindom and Full Service Network.

After months of negotiations between Levin and AOL CEO Steve Case, they agreed to merge the two companies, with 55 percent going to AOL’s shareholders and 45 percent going to Time Warner’s. The latter company was far bigger in every metric (annual revenue, for example, was $27 billion vs. $5 billion) except for one: market capitalization, which is the value Wall Street put on each of the company’s shares.

By the time the merger was announced in early 2000, AOL’s 17 million subscribers already were growing impatient with slow, dial-up internet providers, and soon they’d be fleeing in droves for high-speed cable providers like Time Warner Cable, owned then, of course, by Time Warner.

After the merger, Levin pledged that synergies and the internet’s rapid growth would quickly lead to $40 billion in revenue and $11 billion in cash flow for the newly minted AOL Time Warner. However, a bursting stock bubble, falling ad rates and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, devastated the company.

Levin stepped down as CEO of AOL Time Warner in May 2002, replaced by Richard Parsons, and that year the company reported a $100 billion loss, the largest in the history of corporate America. A year later, Parsons removed AOL from the company name.

At its nadir, which didn’t come until several years after Levin’s departure, shares of the company known again as Time Warner had lost 92 percent of their value, and Levin went on CNBC in 2010 to apologize to shareholders, in particular employees who lost their jobs or saw the value of their retirement accounts plummet.

“I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently … I have obviously been reflecting on that,” he told CNBC anchor Joe Kernen. “I’m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused.

More recently, Levin had been encouraging media moguls — and CEOs in general — to push for social change and not worry about offending Wall Street, and a couple of issues he was passionate about before his death were holistic health care and gun control. He referred to himself as “a dedicated, religious vegan” in a June 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“How can you justify an assault rifle as being a valid Second Amendment instrument? Let’s hear from some of the people that lead our companies what they believe,” Levin said during that interview, which occurred two weeks after Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. “Every time there is a murder or a mass killing, it brings back my own family’s experience, and each time I hope that we are going to do something.”

In 2004, Levin married his third wife, Dr. Laurie Ann Levin, a former producer, agent and wife of producer Jack Rapke, and he had been helping her run Moonview Sanctuary, a posh, holistic healing institute she founded in 1998 in Santa Monica. He also backed StartUp Health, which invests in next-generation health initiatives, and he brought Case in as an investor as well.

Levin also was a senior adviser to Oasis TV, which has been trying to establish itself as a provider of TV content for the spa crowd.

Levin went public about suffering from Parkinson’s disease shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, in part because Williams was depressed and thought he was in the early stages of the same disease. (An autopsy later revealed that the comedian actually had suffered from Lewy body dementia, not Parkinson’s).

“I was trained not to show my emotions. You couldn’t tell by looking at me what I was thinking because I was an ace negotiator. I mean, life was a poker game. What a terrible thing. So I don’t let Parkinson’s dominate my life,” he told THR.

“I’d love to open a treatment center that treats everybody in the world. Not just for addiction or depression or mental health issues or Alzheimer’s. Everybody needs help.”

Levin was previously married to Carol Needelman and Barbara Riley. Survivors include his children, Anna, Laura, Leon and Michael, and seven grandchildren.

Former boxer Arthur Serwano, aka the Jesus Kid, died March 5, and in California after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2020. Serwano, a former UNLA soldier, won the IBF USBA junior middleweight title in 1989, retained it thrice and vied for other titles, and did aviation mechanics. 

Australian writer-director Michael Jenkins, known for provocative Australian teen drama Heartbreak High, died March 4 following a 2020 diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. He was 77.

His management confirmed his death through his partner Amanda Robson. His friend, Ian Barry, wrote in a tribute that Jenkins passed away with Robson and close family by his side.

The statement from Jenkins’ management said that his “contributions to the entertainment industry and his legacy as a film-maker and storyteller will be well remembered.”

Known for a gritty and frenetic style of directing, Jenkins was behind some of Australia‘s most notable TV series, with his internationally-popular 1990s high school drama Heartbreak High was rebooted for Netflix in 2022. He had initially co-created the series, which helped launch the career of The Mentalist actor Simon Baker, with Ben Gannon for Network Ten in 1994.

He was also behind Blue Murder, the Australian series often held up as one of the country’s best-ever crime dramas. Jenkins directed the two-part miniseries for the ABC in 1995 and then came out of retirement as producer on the 2017 reprisal, Blue Murder: Killer Cop, which was from Endemol Shine Australia.

Jenkins began his career as a reporter before moving into production at Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC. After a decade as a director, he worked on controversial ABC police corruption drama Scales of Justice in 1983 and then directed Australian musical feature Rebel, which starred Matt Dillon, Debra Byrne and Brown Brown.

He subsequently worked on numerous TV drama series until his career really kicked off with 1993 film The Heartbreak Kid, from which Heartbreak High was spun-off a year later.

Heartbreak High followed a group of Australian teenagers at the multi-cultural Hartley High in the suburbs of Sydney. The show was so popular in the UK that when Network Ten axed it in 1996, BBC2 took on the funding for another 26 episodes before the ABC commissioned further seasons between 1997 and 1999.

In 2000, Netflix struck a deal with Heartbreak High rights holder Fremantle Australia to remake the show for a modern audience and carry all 210 episodes of the original series. The reboot launched in 2022 and won an International Emmy. It was renewed for a second season, which launches on Netflix in April. Jenkins was a script consultant on the reboot.

Jenkins’ output slowed after Heartbreak High though he made headlines in 2007 when he was named director of an Australian film about a gang rape, which drew criticism from then-New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma. Jenkins responded by saying the film would be “an incredibly sympathetic investigation and exploration of these events,” but it was ultimately scrapped.

Tributes have flooded in for Jenkins, with Screen Producers Australia saying his “contributions to the Australian screen industry were extensive,” adding: “Michael’s legacy will live on through audiences enjoying productions he worked on for generations to come.”

Australian actor Adam Zwar, who has created several television comedies, paid tribute to Jenkins a social media message saying: “RIP Michael Jenkins – writer/director of arguably the greatest Oz TV series ever – Blue Murder… He often talked of making a Ned Kelly film, told through the eyes of Joe Byrne. Would’ve loved to have seen that.”

Tributes have been paid to a former Mansfield landlord who passed away following an eight year battle with Parkinson’s disease.

Esmond Roberts died on March 4, aged 84, in Kings Mill Hospital after being admitted for pneumonia.

Born and bred in Pleasley to Frederick and Margaret Roberts, Esmond was one of 12 children.

He began his working life as at Landers Bread, firstly as a van boy and then onto the bread factory, eventually having his own bread round across the community, always pushing to be bigger and better, selling more than bread and providing an invaluable service for local people in Mansfield.

Diane Hannah, Esmond’s stepdaughter, said: “Never shy of working hard, he spent some time down the coal mine before becoming a milkman for Northern Dairy, Esmond was ambitious and eventually had the biggest round in the area, winning many awards for his service to the industry.”

During the 1980’s he trained and qualified as a financial adviser, and saw clients in the evenings to discuss their investments and mortgages. This was done alongside his milk round and often worked from 4am to 9pm to provide for his family.

Beginning his career as a publican for Mansfield Brewery, alongside his wife Barbara at the Wheatsheaf on Stockwell Gate in 1991, he was licensee for five years and was known for transforming pubs into busy establishments, with high quality beer, great food and a friendly atmosphere.

His pub career spanned over two decades winning awards for Best Landlord and becoming a popular member of the wider Mansfield community.

He went on to win Cellar of the Year many times in Mansfield Woodhouse at the Black Bull, in Sutton at the Sir John Cockle, and then at the Rushley on Nottingham Road from where he eventually retired from the brewery.

Unable to settle into retirement he then went to work as relief publican at Sam Smith Brewery, with Barbara at the Whitegates in Forest Town, and a hotel in Northamptonshire, well into his 70's.

Never one to rest, and despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he then volunteered for the Homeless Support Centre at St Mary's Church, together with his wife and used his spare time to give back to those not as fortunate.

It was reminiscent of his years behind a bar, and he thrived from connecting with people, sharing experiences and stories of his life.

On February 26, Esmond was admitted to Kings Mill Hospital with pneumonia and despite exceptional efforts and relentless care from the team on ward 42, he passed away on March 4, surrounded by his family.

Diane said: “Esmond was always described as a loving husband, a hardworking and progressive man, who had time for everyone, always without judgement and ready to share a cheeky joke.”

He leaves his wife Barbara, two children, Dale and Karen, two stepchildren, ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Peter Conrad, a pioneering medical sociologist who brought attention to the increasing medicalization of society, died in his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, on March 3rd, 2024. He was 78 years old.

He died at home, surrounded by loved ones, listening to Joan Baez. His cause of death was pneumonia after a long experience of Parkinson's.
Peter Conrad, the author of 16 books or monographs and more than 100 articles and chapters, was a dedicated academic at Brandeis University for more than 30 years, where he chaired both the sociology department and the Health: Science, Society, and Policy program.
Peter Franklin Conrad was born on April 12, 1945, in New York City to George Conrad and Gertrude (Rosenthal) Conrad. They were recent Jewish emigres from Germany and Austria, respectively. Conrad always proclaimed that he was a disobedient, distracted student during middle and high school school - one of the sources of his later interest in ADHD - and that he only came alive academically after taking sociology courses at SUNY Buffalo, now the University of Buffalo.

He went on to earn a master's degree from Northeastern University, in part to get a draft deferment from the Vietnam War. As a conscientious objector, he was assigned to do alternative service as an occupational therapy assistant at Boston State Hospital, a historic mental health institution. Witnessing interactions between patients, clinicians and the institution provided him with initial insights that would later lead him to apply sociological tools in examining the medical system's roles in society.

Combining this perspective with sociology's mid-century preoccupation with "deviance", he wrote his PhD dissertation at Boston University, which became his first book, Identifying Hyperactive Children: the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior. Peter began to understand that the diagnosis of hyperkinesis - later called hyperactivity, then ADD, and now called ADHD - "medicalized deviance". It transitioned a perceived "moral failing" into a medical diagnosis. This became a major theme in his research. As the subtitle of one of his most cited books puts it, medicalization transforms from "badness to sickness".
Over his career, he looked at how cultural and social factors in medicalization shape the definitions, perceptions, and experiences of alcoholism, depression, homosexuality, baldness, short boys and tall girls, among other conditions, in addition to ADHD. 

While many tried moralizing medicalization, Peter resisted that impulse. "I'm not trying to say it's good or bad," he'd often say, "I'm saying it's happening and we should understand it." Though his work was deeply analytical and theoretical, he always rejected the title of "theorist", but prided himself on "conceptualization".

Beyond medicalization, Peter studied the experience of epilepsy, worksite wellness programs, medical education, the social meanings of the new genetics, and illness on the internet. Graham Scambler, emeritus professor at University College London, once wrote that, when it comes to medical sociology, "people and things tend to revolve around Peter."

Peter was elected Chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association in 1987 and elected President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1995.

He was a dedicated teacher, mentor, and collaborator, and had tremendous pride in the accomplishments of his graduate and undergraduate students, even long after they became his colleagues.

Beyond sociology, Peter had an enduring interest in green spaces and rural heritage in Massachusetts. He served on the Lincoln Conservation Commission, the board of Codman Community Farm, and the community board of Drumlin Farm, a site of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. He also nurtured this interest in his annual vegetable garden, cultivating multiple potato varieties, giving many opportunities for his younger family members to squash potato bugs.

Peter was an avid traveler taking many journeys with his beloved wife and family. These included two sabbatical years abroad: one in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and the other in London, England. He was also a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and maintained close professional relationships with colleagues there through a twenty-year visiting faculty appointment.

One of the great joys of his later years was reuniting with a lost branch of his maternal lineage through family research that brought multiple branches of that family together in Munich and later in Washington, D.C. Peter spoke what he called "Kitchen German" from his emigre parents and engaging more deeply with his family history was deeply meaningful.

Though born in New York, Peter was a devoted Boston sports fan, particularly of his beloved Celtics, who were a constant comfort in his last years and a joy he shared with many family members and friends. After his diagnosis with Parkinson's in 2014, he also became deeply involved with Rock Steady Boxing at SLS in Lowell to maintain strength, mobility, and community. He was supported during this time by loving caregivers, most notably Annette and Moses Mugwanya, who were with him during the last four years.

He is survived by his wife, Libby Bradshaw, a physician and assistant professor at Tufts Medical School of Lincoln, MA; his daughter Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, an executive in EdTech of Concord, MA; a son, Jared Conrad-Bradshaw, an educational consultant of Istanbul, Turkey; as well as three grandchildren Rafi, Sela, and Avi, and a son-in-law, Drew Magliozzi, and a daughter-in-law, Rita Ender, both of whom he adored. He is also survived by close-in-heart family members across the world, students from multiple generations, dear friends of more than 50 years (including multiple housemates), and a dog he tolerated. He is predeceased by his sister Nina (Conrad) Furgiuele.

Dr. Walter Jackson Stark, a Johns Hopkins eye surgeon and teacher who treated heads of state, Supreme Court justices and sports luminaries, died of Parkinson’s disease complications Feb. 29 at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida. The North Baltimore resident was 81.

A physician who also found time to remove the cataracts on an aged National Aquarium sea turtle, he had six Supreme Court justices as patients, along with O.J. Simpson and Saudi princes.

Bert Jones, who as a Baltimore Colts quarterback was the 1976 MVP said: “Walter examined me in my rookie year. We became great friends and often went goose hunting on the Eastern Shore.”

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Dr. Stark was the son of Walter Jackson Stark Sr., a banker who went on to be administrator of the Dean McGee Eye Institute, and Lucy Anderson Stark. After his mother’s death, he was raised by Mary Lou Moorman.

A 1960 graduate of the old Harding High School, where he was a state champion swimmer, he attended the University of Oklahoma and graduated from its College of Medicine.

He married his high school sweetheart, Polly Allen. They met at the old Split-T, an Oklahoma City restaurant.

He did his residency and fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute and joined the faculty of the Institute in 1973. He was named professor of ophthalmology and director of corneal and cataract services.

“My dad squeezed 10 lifetimes into one. He never left the state of Oklahoma until he was 18 and then he went on to travel and change lives around the world,” said a daughter, Melissa Stark Lilley. “People would come up to us all the time with stories of how he restored their gift of sight.

“He would take us to the Baltimore Colts games and I would go with him to the locker room at halftime when he checked the players’ eyes. He was my introduction to the NFL,” said his daughter, Melissa, an NBC “Sunday Night Football” sideline reporter.

Dr. Stark taught generations of students at Hopkins.

“Walter was medically persistent,” said Dr. John D. Gottsch, a Hopkins professor of ophthalmology and a friend. “He was legendary examining his patients in complex cases. He often made a neurological diagnosis and sent them off to a different clinic for treatment.”

A 1982 Sun article about his surgery on a week-old baby born blind described Dr. Stark as a “tanned, athletic-looking man of ramrod stiff posture.”

Dr. Stark was noted as a medical leader in corneal surgery, corneal transplantation, intraocular lens implantation, and the use of the excimer laser for the rehabilitation of patients with visual disability.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology gave Dr. Stark its lifetime achievement award in 2015, the year he retired.

“We were residents together and spent half the night discussing a case,” said Dr. Allan D. Jensen, a fellow ophthalmologist and friend. “Walter was not shy and was worth all the credit he got. He will go down as a legend at Wilmer.”

Dr. Stark also operated on a sea turtle that was living at the National Aquarium and developed cataracts. He performed another procedure on a poisonous dart frog.

“My father was dedicated to his profession — an eye was an eye,” his daughter said. “He got such a kick out of a tiny frog. Nothing was too small for him.”

His daughter said Dr. Stark enjoyed bicycling down the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he had a vacation home. He also favored Maryland steamed crabs and Grotto’s pizza.

He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Polly Allen Stark, a teacher, antiques dealer and real estate agent; two daughters, Dr. Heather Stark, of Gainesville, Florida, an internist and public health physician, and Melissa Stark Lilley, of Rumson, New Jersey; a son, Walter J. “Jay” Stark III, of Fort Worth, Texas, owner of an ophthalmic device consulting firm; a brother, Jeff Moorman, of Oklahoma City; and two sisters, Penny Replogle and Susan Moorman, also of Oklahoma City; and nine grandchildren.

Richard Lewis, the stand-up comedian who also starred alongside Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died Tuesday night at his Los Angeles home due to a heart attack, Variety has confirmed. He was 76.

Lewis announced last April he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was retiring from stand-up comedy. He most recently appeared in Season 12 of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” currently airing on HBO.

In 2021, Lewis announced he would not appear in Season 11 of “Curb” in order to recover from three surgeries. He surprised viewers by returning to set for one Season 11 episode, telling Variety at the time, “When I walked in and they applauded, I felt like a million bucks. Larry doesn’t like to hug, and he hugged me and told me how happy he was after we shot our scene.”

Lewis, who played a semi-fictionalized version of himself throughout the 24 years of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” was known for his neurotic, self-deprecating style of comedy. After making his screen acting debut in 1979’s “Diary of a Young Comic,” Lewis rose to prominence in the 1980s and ’90s with appearances on “The Tonight Show” and the “Late Show With David Letterman.” He showcased his dark, yet brightly animated persona in his 1985 Showtime comedy special “I’m in Pain,” following it up with the HBO specials “I’m Exhausted” (1988), “I’m Doomed” (1990) and “Richard Lewis: The Magical Misery Tour” (1997).

In 1989, Lewis landed a leading role in the ABC sitcom “Anything but Love,” in which he starred opposite Jamie Lee Curtis as coworkers at a Chicago magazine who fall in love and fail to uphold a strictly professional relationship. The series ran for 56 episodes across four seasons before ending in 1992. Lewis landed other ’90s sitcom roles in the short-lived “Daddy Dearest” starring Don Rickles and “Hiller and Diller” featuring Kevin Nealon.

Lewis’ film roles include the 1993 comedy “Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” the 1995 drama “Leaving Las Vegas” and the 1997 rom-com “Hugo Pool.” In “Drunks” — starring an ensemble including Faye Dunaway, George Martin, Parker Posey, Howard Rollins, Spalding Gray and Dianne Wiest — Lewis played a struggling alcoholic and drug addict.

Throughout his career, the comedian has also been candid about his own battle with drug and alcohol addiction, referencing his recovery and struggles with depression and anxiety in his comedy. Lewis, formerly a user of cocaine and crystal meth, said his decision to get sober was partly inspired by John Candy’s 1994 death.

In 2021, upon returning to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” after various health struggles, Lewis told Variety, “I’ve devoted my life to comedy and my sobriety the last almost 27 years. I’m overwhelmed with joy right now. I never learned how to keep joy in my head for more than a minute, but I’m breaking all records for my life today.”

In a statement shared with Variety by HBO, David said of his longtime co-star and friend, “Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me. He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”

HBO added in a statement, “We are heartbroken to learn that Richard Lewis has passed away. His comedic brilliance, wit and talent were unmatched. Richard will always be a cherished member of the HBO and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ families, our heartfelt condolences go out to his family, friends and all the fans who could count on Richard to brighten their days with laughter.”

Lewis is survived by his wife, Joyce Lapinsky.

Richard H. Truly, former astronaut and NASA administrator, passed away Tuesday, February 27, 2024, at 86. Born November 12, 1937, in Fayette, Mississippi, he attended school in Fayette and Meridian, Mississippi.

Truly graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he attended a Naval ROTC midshipman. In 1959, coinciding with his graduation, he began his career in the U.S. Navy and was commissioned an ensign.

In 1965, Truly became one of the first military astronauts selected to the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in Los Angeles, California, before transferring to NASA in 1969. He served as capsule communicator for all three Skylab missions in 1973, and the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

Between his time as a naval aviator, test pilot, and astronaut, Truly logged over 75,000 hours in military and civilian jet aircraft. He piloted one of the two astronaut crews that flew the 747/space shuttle Enterprise approach and landing test flights in 1977. Then, he was the backup pilot for STS-1, the first orbital test of the shuttle.

His first space flight was in November 1981, as the pilot of space shuttle Columbia. This flight was a major milestone marking the first piloted spacecraft that was REFLOWN in space. Truly’s second flight was from August through September 1983, when he was commander of the space shuttle Challenger, which marked the first night launch and landing in the Space Shuttle Program.

After serving as the first commander of the Naval Space Command in Dahlgren, Virginia, in 1983, Truly returned to NASA in 1986 as the Associate Administrator for Space Flight, the same year as the Challenger accident. He led the rebuilding of the Space Shuttle Program following the tragedy. Under his leadership, Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in September 1988, marking the first Shuttle mission in nearly three years.

Richard went on to serve as NASA’s eighth Administrator from February 1989 to 1992.

He received several honors during his NASA career including two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, two NASA Exceptional Service Medals, and two NASA Space Flight Medals, plus many more accolades throughout the years.

Richard married Colleen Cody Hanner of Milledgeville, Georgia. They had three children together.

A wreath was placed in his honor inside the rotunda of Heroes & Legends featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame® presented by Boeing®.

Ross R. Fanning, 81, of Emmaus, formerly a 50-year resident of Wyckoff, NJ, died Feb. 25, 2024 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease. He was the husband of Nancy A. Fanning. Born in Erie, he was the son of the late Richard and Virginia (Frantz) Fanning. Ross was a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University with a BS in Business Management. He worked in pharmaceutical printing and flexible packaging for many years, retiring as plant manager. He was a member of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, Emmaus and a former member of St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, Wyckoff, NJ, where he was on the RCIA Team, Cornerstone Team, and was a greeter. Ross was a professional musician and member of Local #248. He was a notary republic in NJ, enjoyed ceramics, was an avid bowler, car enthusiast, and enjoyed spending time with family, especially his grandchildren. Ross is survived by his loving wife of 57 years, Nancy; sons, Gregory Fanning and wife Tammy and Kevin Fanning and wife Tiffany; sister-in-law, Virginia Fanning; grandchildren, Cameron, Kyla, Jared, and Emily. He was predeceased by a brother, William Fanning.