The Memorial Wall

David was born on December 9, 1942 and passed away on September 26, 2016. David was a resident of La Verne, CA.

Jean Shepard was a trailblazer for women in country music, who rose to fame in the 1950s with her honky-tonk style and frank lyrics. She was a member of the Grand Ole Opry for 60 years and a Country Music Hall of Fame inductee. But behind her success and popularity, she also faced personal tragedies and health challenges that eventually led to her death in 2016.

Jean Shepard was born Ollie Imogene Shepard on November 21, 1933, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. She grew up in a poor sharecropper’s family that moved to California during the Great Depression. She developed a passion for country music at an early age, listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and forming an all-female band called the Melody Ranch Girls. She was discovered by Hank Thompson, who helped her sign with Capitol Records in 1952.

Shepard’s breakthrough came in 1953, when she recorded a duet with Ferlin Husky called “A Dear John Letter”. The song was a half-spoken letter from a woman to her soldier husband, telling him that she had found another love. The song resonated with the audiences during the Korean War and became a huge hit, reaching number one on the country charts and number four on the pop charts. It was also the first post-World War II record by a female country artist to sell more than a million copies.

Shepard followed up with more hits, such as “A Satisfied Mind”, “Beautiful Lies”, and “Second Fiddle (To an Old Guitar)”. She also joined the cast of the Ozark Jubilee television show and the Grand Ole Opry in 1955. She was one of the few female stars on the Opry at the time, along with Kitty Wells and Minnie Pearl.

In 1960, Shepard married fellow Opry star Hawkshaw Hawkins, who was known for his good looks and rich baritone voice. They had a son, Don Robin, in 1961, and were expecting another one in 1963. However, their happiness was cut short when Hawkins died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963, along with Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Randy Hughes. Shepard was eight months pregnant at the time and gave birth to Harold Franklin Hawkins II on April 1.

Shepard was devastated by the loss of her husband, but she returned to work soon after giving birth. She continued to record and perform, releasing more singles and albums throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She also remarried in 1968, to musician Benny Birchfield, with whom she had two more sons, Corey and Jesse.

In later years, Shepard developed Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder that affects the nervous system and causes tremors, stiffness, and difficulty with movement and balance. According to DrMirkin.com, Parkinson’s disease can also affect the heart and cause irregular heartbeats, low blood pressure, and heart failure.

Shepard struggled with her condition for several years, but she did not let it stop her from performing. She remained active on the Opry stage until 2015, when she announced her retirement after celebrating her 60th anniversary as a member. She was also honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2011, becoming one of only three female solo artists to be inducted at that time.

Shepard died on September 25, 2016, at the age of 82. According to Wikipedia, she died of Parkinson’s disease at her home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. She was survived by her husband Benny Birchfield and her five children.

Jean Shepard was a pioneer for women in country music, who sang about love and life from a woman’s perspective. She influenced many other female artists who followed her footsteps, such as Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Reba McEntire, and Miranda Lambert. She was also admired for her honesty and courage in facing her personal challenges and health issues.

Shepard once said: “I’ve always tried to be honest with my fans. I think they deserve that.” She also said: “I don’t want people feeling sorry for me because I have Parkinson’s disease. I’m not going to let it get me down.”

Lieutenant Colonel George H. Skip Shutt Jr., USMC, died peacefully in his home in Huntington Beach, CA on Friday, September 2, 2016. He was 89 years old.

Skip was born October 25, 1926, in New Bedford, MA, but spent his childhood and early teen years in Granby, Quebec, Canada. He worked in his father's fabric mills, ran wild in the woods shooting arrows at his friends, played hockey and built model airplanes.  He learned to fly at the age of 12 and between the ages of 14 to 17, he was a member of the Canadian Air Cadets.

He was able to combine his love of flying and country by joining the RCAF at age 17 in 1943.  He served in World War II, arriving in Sussex, England in December 1944.  He flew the Hawker Tempest, a heavy-duty fighter.  When the war ended, he stayed in Germany flying with an Occupation Air Force before returning home one month after his 19th birthday in November 1945.

While attending Lafayette University in Pennsylvania, Skip joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. He was then accepted into the Halloway Midshipmen Plan where he received two years of arduous flight training while serving with the Fleet. Skip was offered a commission in the Marine Corps in 1953, becoming the first Marine Aviator in five years. Semper Fi! He completed his B.A. in English and received his M.A. in English from Georgetown University.

He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1953-1971, with four tours of duty - 2 in Korea and 2 in Vietnam. He became a Lieutenant Colonel in 1966. During his distinguished military career, he received numerous awards, among them, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry.  When asked what his greatest accomplishment was in life, he replied simply, "Surviving!"

Following his retirement from the USMC in 1971, he continued to follow his passion for flying. He was a flight instructor at John Wayne Airport, Chief Pilot for Community Psychiatric Centers and flew charters for Bill Hutt Aviation. While at Hutt Aviation, he flew Dr. Billy Graham, Placido Domingo, Tom Hanks, Tony Curtis, Helen Reddy, Gene Hackman, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner. He retired from flying at age 70.

These two words describe Skip, "an Officer and a Gentleman".  His life-long interests were classical music, golf, and reading.  Skip personified the advice Polonius gave to his son, Laertes, in Hamlet: "This above all: to thine own self be true."

He is survived by his wife of 35 years, Judith M. Clark, his older sister Dorothy "Dot" Mulrain, of Jacksonville, Florida, and seven children: Heather Keys, Catherine Clark, Patrick Clark, Barry Clark, John-Thomas Clark (Debbie), Mary Foss-Skiftesvik (Frode) and Jessie Lee (David). He also leaves behind five grandchildren: Ryan, Sean, and Marianne Foss-Skiftesvik, and Moses and Joshua Lee.

A Rosary will begin at 10:00 a.m., followed by a traditional Latin Requiem Mass at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 10th, 2016 at St. Maryís by the Sea Catholic Church, 321 10th Street, Huntington Beach, CA 92648. A reception will follow immediately after in St. Mary's Fr. Johnson Hall. Memorial donations may be made in Skip's honor to: Parkinson's Resource Organization, 74-090 El Paseo, Suite 104, Palm Desert, CA 92260.

A special thank you to Coral Tree In-Home Care (coraltreeinhomecare.com) and their dedicated caregivers who took wonderful care of Skip for over two years.

Ann C. Wasserman of West Hills, California, passed away Thursday, June 30, 2016 (24 Sivan 5776), at 100 years, 6 months, and 2 days young. Services will be held Wednesday, July 6, 2016, at 11 am, in the Groman Eden Chapel of Groman Eden Mortuary. Services will be officiated by Rabbi Eli Herscher of Stephen Wise Temple, and will conclude Graveside, in Eden Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Ann's memory to Parkinson's Resource Organization.

Ann is preceded in passing by her brothers, Maurice Shleser and Joseph Shleser, Of Blessed Memories; and her sister, Gertrude Victor, Of Blessed Memory. Ann is survived by her beloved children, Karen (Arnold) Kent, Kevin Wasserman, and Rosalind (Jerry) Joseph; her 7 grandchildren, her 11 great-grandchildren, and 2 great-great grandchildren.

Arrangements under the direction of Groman Eden Mortuary, Mission Hills, CA.

Morris H. Klein of Highland Beach and Albany passed away June 19, 2016. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Hunter, N.Y. He was a graduate of Cornell University and the Albany College of Pharmacy. Serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he took part in the invasions of the islands held by the Japanese in the South Pacific. After returning from the war, he and his brother, Raphael owned and operated indoor and outdoor theatres in the Albany area. He was a member of the Temple Israel in Albany and past commander of the Albany Jewish War Veterans and a comissioner on the New York State Lobbying Commission. He is survived by his widow, Bea; his brother, Raphael; his son, Philip (Roni); daughter Deborah (Gary); and five loving grandchildren, Allison, Juliana and Grant Klein, and Jennifer and Stephanie Goldberger. Services and burial took place in Delray Beach, Fla. 

Paul L. Krentzman, age 81, passed away peacefully from Parkinson's on June 16, 2016, at his Beverly Hills home with his family by his side. Born and raised in Connecticut, Paul graduated Wesleyan University w/honors and UCLA law school. He served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. He was a trial attorney, who helped and represented thousands of injured clients over a lengthy career. Paul was a Beverly Hills Commissioner for 18 years and the 3rd President of Stephen S. Wise Temple. Paul and Sandy, who were married for 55 years, have incredible friendships in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They had countless wonderful gatherings at their home for family and friends.

The genius and brilliance of Paul's quick wit always amazed everyone! He was the consummate wordsmith, perennially funny, intelligent and astute. Bobpop had very devoted grandchildren - Oliver, Akira, Lola and Mia - who loved him and spent time at his side throughout his illness to be near him. Sandy and her three boys, Adam, Greg (et Sophie) and Chad will greatly miss their Dad's guidance and generosity. Sister-in-law Phyllis Cole and brother-in-law Mike Attie spent a lifetime of fun with Paul! He'll be missed by his nephews, nieces and devoted friends.

Private services will be conducted by his niece, Rabbi Leah Loeterman Fein, on June 20, 2016. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Parkinson's Resource Organization at 760-773-5628.

Barbara Fincham Chesapeake – Barbara Ann FINCHAM was born in Rappahannock County, VA, on December 15, 1933. She died in Sahuarita, AZ, on June 11, 2016, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. She was surrounded by her daughters and grandson as she left this world to enter into eternal peace and happiness in heaven. She lived most of her life in the Chesapeake area, and retired from Farm Fresh after 35 years. She will be interred in Norfolk at the family plot beside her two children, Linda and Collis, and Luther Fincham. She is survived by two daughters, Wanda (Steve) and Susan (Mark); four grandchildren, Brian (Kristen), Jeffrey, Stephanie (Mark) and Lindsey; one great granddaughter, Peyton; and one sister, Louise (Bud). 

Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday, June 3, 2016, in a Phoenix-area hospital. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman. The cause was septic shock, a family spokeswoman said.

Ali, who lived near Phoenix, had had Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years. He was admitted to the hospital on Monday with what Mr. Gunnell said was a respiratory problem.

Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.

But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a patter of inventive doggerel. (“Me! Wheeeeee!”)

Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced — both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ’70s for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his “slave” name, Cassius Clay, to one bestowed by the separatist black sect he joined, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats by the conservative establishment and noble acts of defiance by the liberal opposition.

Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.

In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta.

That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest.

Ali also proved to be a shape-shifter — a public figure who kept reinventing his persona.

As a bubbly teenage gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he parroted America’s Cold War line, lecturing a Soviet reporter about the superiority of the United States. But he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”

“He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,” said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. “He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.”

But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a “race man” yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him “the gorilla,” and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness.

If there was a supertitle to Ali’s operatic life, it was this: “I don’t have to be who you want me to be; I’m free to be who I want.” He made that statement the morning after he won his first heavyweight title. It informed every aspect of his life, including the way he boxed.

The traditionalist fight crowd was appalled by his style; he kept his hands too low, the critics said, and instead of allowing punches to “slip” past his head by bobbing and weaving, he leaned back from them.

Eventually his approach prevailed. Over 21 years, he won 56 fights and lost five. His Ali Shuffle may have been pure showboating, but the “rope-a-dope” — in which he rested on the ring’s ropes and let an opponent punch himself out — was the stratagem that won the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, the fight in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in which he regained his t His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to a sect that emphasized strong families, a subject on which he lectured, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions. A brief first marriage to Sonji Roi ended in divorce after she refused to dress and behave as a proper Nation wife. (She died in 2005.) While married to Belinda Boyd, his second wife, Ali traveled openly with Veronica Porche, whom he later married. That marriage, too, ended in divorce.

Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic as well. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the television interviewer David Frost asked him if he considered Al Qaeda and the Taliban evil. He replied that terrorism was wrong but that he had to “dodge questions like that” because “I have people who love me.” He said he had “businesses around the country” and an image to consider.

As a spokesman for the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to “respect, hope and understanding,” which opened in his hometown, Louisville, in 2005, he was known to interrupt a fund-raising meeting with an ethnic joke. In one he said: “If a black man, a Mexican and a Puerto Rican are sitting in the back of a car, who’s driving? Give up? The po-lice.”

But Ali had generated so much good will by then that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.

“We forgive Muhammad Ali his excesses,” an Ali biographer, Dave Kindred, wrote, “because we see in him the child in us, and if he is foolish or cruel, if he is arrogant, if he is outrageously in love with his reflection, we forgive him because we no more can condemn him than condemn a rainbow for dissolving into the dark. Rainbows are born of thunderstorms, and Muhammad Ali is both.”

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville on Jan. 17, 1942, into a family of strivers that included teachers, musicians, and craftsmen. Some of them traced their ancestry to Henry Clay, the 19th-century representative, senator and secretary of state, and his cousin Cassius Marcellus Clay, a noted abolitionist.

Ali’s mother, Odessa, was a cook and a house cleaner, his father a sign painter and a church muralist who blamed discrimination for his failure to become a recognized artist. Violent and often drunk, Clay Sr. filled the heads of Cassius and his younger brother, Rudolph (later Rahman Ali), with the teachings of the 20th-century black separatist Marcus Garvey and a refrain that would become Ali’s — “I am the greatest.”

Beyond his father’s teachings, Ali traced his racial and political identity to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was believed to have flirted with a white woman on a visit to Mississippi. Clay was about the same age as Till, and the photographs of the brutalized dead youth haunted him, he said.

Cassius started to box at 12, after his new $60 red Schwinn bicycle was stolen off a downtown street. He reported the theft to Joe Martin, a police officer who ran a boxing gym. When Cassius boasted what he would do to the thief when he caught him, Martin suggested that he first learn how to punch properly.

Cassius was quick, dedicated and gifted at publicizing a youth boxing show, “Tomorrow’s Champions,” on local television. He was soon its star.

For all his ambition and willingness to work hard, education — public and segregated — eluded him. The only subjects in which he received satisfactory grades were art and gym, his high school reported years later. Already an amateur boxing champion, he graduated 376th in a class of 391. He was never taught to read properly; years later he confided that he had never read a book, neither the ones on which he collaborated nor even the Quran, although he said he had reread certain passages dozens of times. He memorized his poems and speeches, laboriously printing them out over and over.

From the New York Times

JOHN HORUN, age 87. Beloved husband of Sue (nee Costa); loving father of Lois Antonius (Jack), Roseanne McCamey (of CA), Patti Busony (Ray) and Elaine Gaughan (Ken); cherished grandfather of Lisa, Robyn, Brian, Gary, Wendy, Tiffany, Bridgette, Ken, Adam and Ryan and great grandfather of 14; dear brother of Michael Horun, Rose Sasso, Anne Steech and the late Mary Hungate and Nick Horun. U.S. Army W.W. II Veteran. Mass of Christian Burial, Holy Family Church, (York Rd), Monday, June 26, 2006 at 10 a.m. Interment Holy Cross Cemetery.