WELCOME	Lead Zeppelin

MEMORIAL PAGE TWO

Red Skelton	John Denver	Sonny Bono	Carl Perkins
Grandpa Jones	Carl Wilson	Henny Youngman	Tammy Wynette
Barry Goldwater	Roy Rogers	Buffalo Bob Smith	Tammy Wynette
Gene Autry	King Hussein	Dusty Springfield	Stanley Kubrick
Joe DiMaggio

A TRIBUTE TO

Tammy Wynette

The Queen of Country Music

BORN 5 May 1942	DIED 6 April 1998

Tammy Wynette, the First Lady of Country Music, dies at 55

Tammy Wynette, age 55, died Monday while napping on her couch at her Nashville home.
Her spokeswoman, Evelyn Shriver, said it was believed she died of a blood clot.
Wynette is survived by her her husband, four daughters, Gwen, Jackie, Tina and Georgette, a step-daughter Georgie, a stepson Richie, and several grandchildren. She rose from poverty in the Alabama cotton fields to become the first woman in country music to sell more than a million copies, for her 1968 hit `` Stand By Your Man.''

Wynette and the sentiments expressed in her best-known hit song were scornfully cited by Hillary Rodham Clinton in a CBS ''60 Minutes'' television interview before the 1992 U.S. presidential elections. The future first lady said she was not defending her husband from adultery accusations because she was ``some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.'' After outraged protests from country music fans and from Wynette herself, Mrs. Clinton telephoned the country singer to apologize.

``The First Lady of Country Music'' won three Country Music Association (CMA) awards for top female vocalist and two Grammy awards for pop music in her fight for recognition in a tough industry.
In January 1996 she received the Award of Merit from the American Music Awards.
She once said her only regret in her remarkable career was not winning the CMA Entertainer of the Year award.
Wynette recorded her first single in 1966, and within three years, won her first Grammy.
Her biggest hits, in addition to ``Stand By Your Man,'' were ''Two-Story House,'' ``D-I-V-O-R-C-E,'' and ``I Don't Wanna Play House.''
In all she recorded more than 50 albums and sold more than 30 million records.
Born Virginia Wynette Pugh on May 5, 1942, in Red Bay, Alabama, she was working in cotton fields on her grandfather's farm by age 7.
At 17 she married her first husband, Euple Byrd, an itinerant construction worker, and lived in an abandoned log house with no plumbing or electricity and cardboard ''insulation'' on the cabin walls.
After the birth of her third child, Wynette divorced Byrd and moved to Birmingham to become a beautician. She began singing on an early morning TV show and making trips to Nashville to knock on doors along the city's famed Music Row.
She moved to Nashville with her children, where she once told a reporter, ``We lived on cornbread, milk and pinto beans.''
Although ``Stand By Your Man'' also was the title of Wynette's best-selling 1979 autobiography, the singer's life was marked by four failed marriages.
Much of the publicity spotlighted her troubled marriage, her third, to country superstar George Jones, with whom she recorded some of her biggest hits, such as ``Golden Ring.''
After their divorce, Wynette went solo, although she recorded ``Two Story House'' with her ex-husband in 1980. She and Jones were reunited on an album titled ``One'' in 1995 and did concert tours together in recent years.
Wynette suffered from chronic ill health and had surgery on her bile duct in 1992. Shriver said Wynette had been in good health recently and had been performing in concerts.
In March the singer won a privacy dispute with the Star and National Enquirer tabloids in a federal court case that resulted in an out-of court settlement. The terms were never disclosed.
She had accused the tabloids of stealing or paying for her hospital records and exaggerating her bad health when she was treated at a hospital in Pittsburgh. She charged invasion of privacy.
Speaking of her own failed marriages, Wynette once said: ``I was never raised to marry and divorce. A lot of it was because I wanted to be a singer and my husbands wanted something different.''
Other low points were bankruptcy problems, a spate of mysterious fires at her mansion and a brief, still unsolved kidnapping from a Nashville shopping center in the 1970s.
Wynette married her fifth husband, her manager George Richey, in 1978.
Her 1992 ``Justified and Ancient'' single with Britain's dance-pop act, the KLF, was an international hit and reached the Top 10 on U.S. charts.
In October 1993 she joined Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn in ''Honky Tonk Angels'' -- an album featuring the three country legends.

LINK:First Lady of Country Music remembered

A TRIBUTE TO

Barry Goldwater

A Geat American

BORN 1 January 1909	DIED 29 May 1998

Barry Goldwater dies at age 89

Barry Goldwater, whose failed conservative crusade for the presidency in 1964 changed the political landscape, died Friday -- with friend and foe alike hailing him as an American original. His campaign was the first I actually participated in as a youth. I had encouraged my parents to vote for him because I knew he would loose so big, Goldwater, was a lier but had Democratic backing, would do what Goldwater wanted, but take credit for it. Years later it made me feel so good when my mother told me I had been right and she wished her and Dad had voted for him.

The former longtime Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate died at his home of natural causes, two years after suffering a stroke.

President Clinton ordered flags on U.S. government buildings flown at half-staff next Wednesday -- the day of Goldwater's funeral.

Goldwater was 89 years old and known for blunt, conservative views that once frightened the political establishment but later earned him respect as an elder statesman of American politics.

His right-wing campaign for the presidency ultimately wrestled control of the Republican Party from its eastern establishment and inspired Ronald Reagan to enter national politics.

``Ronald Reagan said many times he would not be president without Barry Goldwater,'' Arizona Sen. John McCain said in remembering the man whose Senate seat he now holds.

A family spokeswoman quoted Goldwater's widow Susan as saying after his death, ``He is soaring through the skies -- what a pilot he has been,'' a reference in part to his years as an Air Force pilot.

His funeral will be held Wednesday on the campus of Arizona State University in nearby Tempe.

Clinton called the man with whom he often disagreed, ``truly an American original.

``I never knew anybody quite like him. As all of you know, we were of different parties and also of different philosophies but in the last several years he was uncommonly kind to me and to Hillary. ... he was a great patriot and a truly fine human being,'' he added.

Former president George Bush said he and his wife, Barbara, ''are deeply saddened to learn of the death of our dear friend. ... We will always remember him for his devotion to principle, his love of country, his love of family and his steadfast support of the Bush family.''

Former first lady Nancy Reagan said, ``Ronnie and I are deeply saddened ... Barry was a man of tremendous grit and conviction. He was a forward thinker who initiated a crusade that launched a revolution. It wasn't fashionable to be conservative back then but Barry was willing to defy conventional wisdom and inspire us as the conscience of the conservative movement. ... He was ahead of his time.''

Although conservative to the end, especially in opposition to government intervention in people's lives, some of his views might not find a home in today's Republican Party.

He supported abortion rights and the rights of homosexuals to serve in the military and criticized right-wing social causes like prayer in the schools and calls for bans on abortion.

``In 1964 he was regarded as the leader of the lunatic right but if he was nominated today as president there would be a right-wing walkout because of his views on abortion,'' said Lars-Erik Nelson, New York Daily News Washington columnist.

``Barry Goldwater envisioned an America where equal rights and liberty extend to all people. ... Many of today's right-wing politicians, who mistakenly call themselves conservatives, can learn a lot about true conservatism by studying him,'' said Human Rights Campaign executive director Elizabeth Birch.

Goldwater was the Republican standard-bearer in 1964, running on a slogan of ``In your hearts, you know he's right.'' He went on to a lopsided defeat at the hands of President Lyndon Johnson, who painted him as an extremist. Goldwater won only six states but his ideas later triumphed with the election of Reagan in 1980.

While Goldwater was the dean of American conservatives and a key figure in the reshaping of his party, he also was the man who convinced Richard Nixon to quit the White House. He headed a congressional delegation that visited Nixon and told him that he would be impeached if he stayed on in office.

Nixon felt that if Goldwater had turned against him, he did not have a chance to remain in office.

A master of the blunt retort, Goldwater spoke his mind with Western-movie hero frankness. His most famous remark might have cost him any frail hope he had of winning the White House.

Accepting the Republican nomination for president after an ugly convention in San Francisco in which opponents such as Nelson Rockefeller were booed into silence, Goldwater declared: ``Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice! Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.''

That remark, which he remained proud of decades later, frightened the nation. Former President Dwight Eisenhower demanded that Goldwater show up in his hotel room the next morning to explain it, others said it destroyed his chances. It was a true statement. It is sad so few understood it.

A TRIBUTE TO

Roy Rogers

The Singing Cowboy

BORN 5 November 1911	DIED 6 July 1998

Roy Rogers dies at 86

LOS ANGELES, July 7 - Roy Rogers, who galloped his way into the hearts of millions of Americans during a legendary movie, TV and radio career, died peacefully Monday of congestive heart failure at his Apple Valley home. The all-American cowboy was 86.

A cowboy hat and rope rests on a director's chair at Roy Rogers' museum, a spot his family says he loved to visit often.

The “King of the Cowboys” was surrounded by family members, including his wife and entertainment partner, Dale Evans, said film critic Leonard Maltin, who was asked by the entertainer’s family to announce the death.
Rogers’ death did not come as a surprise, Maltin reported, adding that he had been released from the hospital a couple of weeks ago so he could spend his final days at home.
Born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati on Nov. 5, 1911, Rogers launched his entertainment career by forming a singing duo with a cousin after coming to California in 1929 as a migratory fruit picker and truck driver.
He later changed his name to Dick Weston and formed a singing group, The Sons of the Pioneers. They appeared on radio shows in Los Angeles.
Rogers broke into films in bit roles in 1935, at times in support of Gene Autry, and went on to appear in more than 90 films, often with his beloved palomino Trigger.

Roy Rogers sang with his partner and wife Dale Evans at a recent birthday celebration.

Rogers and Evans also became one of the most well-known couples in television history via “The Roy Rogers Show,” which aired from December 1951 until June 1957. Its theme song, the enduring “Happy Trails to You” written by Evans, is ingrained in the minds of millions of Baby Boomers who grew up watching the pair on TV.
They came back to the small screen in September 1962 with a musical variety show, “The Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Show.” But it lasted only until December of that year.
Rogers, who sang well into his 80s, was a highly successful businessman, whose holdings at various times included a TV production company, real estate, a rodeo show, thoroughbred horses and a restaurant chain.
Friends and loved ones remember the Western gentleman
Gene Autry, considered the first singing cowboy, called Rogers a hero.
“Roy Rogers and I worked at Republic Pictures for many years. We have been close friends for half a century. This is a terrible loss for me,” Autry said.
“I had tremendous respect for Roy and considered him a great humanitarian and an outstanding American. He was, and always will be, a true Western hero.”

The star cowboy's son, Roy "Dusty" Rogers appeared somber as he read a family statement Monday.

Rogers also worked with Mel Torme on his 1979 PBS Christmas special, “The Christmas Songs.”
“Roy Rogers was the purest, sweetest cowboy of them all. He was a
melodious singer, an easy and relaxed actor and most importantly, a wonderful human being. It was my great pleasure to work with him and to call him friend. America has lost a national treasure,” Torme said.
Monte Hale co-starred with Rogers in the “Trail of Robin Hood” in 1950. He told reporters, “He loved livin’. He loved life. I hate to see this happen but he’s out there somewhere, I think, on Trigger.”
Like most people his age, President Clinton said he was a fan of the deeply religious Rogers.
“I really appreciate what he stood for, the movies he made and the kind of values they embodied and the good-natured spirit that he exhibited all the way up until his last interviews.”
Gov. Pete Wilson, who was also born in the Midwest, used to look up to Rogers.
“I was very fond of him. He was, first of all, part of my fantasies as a small boy when his screen adventures used to excite me. And I never dreamt then that I would grow up to know him personally, much less that he would be a supporter,” the governor said.
“He was a successful entertainer, he was a highly successful business entrepreneur and he was a very concerned citizen. He cared a lot about the kind of California and the kind of America that his children would live in.
“He was a doer of good deeds, on and off the screen, and an awfully nice guy, fun to be with, and I am sorry that we won’t have him around.”
Funeral arrangements are pending, but a memorial service is set for noon Saturday at a church near Rogers’ home.
Donations in his memory may be made to: the Roy Rogers - Dale Evans Museum 15650 Seneca Road, Victorville, CA USA 92392
Condolences can be emailed to Evans’ family at: kingofthecowboys@royrogers.com.

The Official In Memory of Roy Rogers Page

A TRIBUTE TO

Buffalo Bob Smith

BORN 27 November 1917	DIED 30 July 1998

'Buffalo Bob' Smith, of Howdy Doody Fame, Dies at 80

Bob & Howdy
AP

Smith: 'Live TV is the most difficult thing to do in the world

"Buffalo Bob" Smith, the cowboy-suited host of The Howdy Doody Show who delighted the baby boom generation in the early years of television, died Thursday, 30 July 1998, of cancer. He was 80.
In addition to his wife, Mildred (Millie), of more than 57 years Smith is survived by sons Robin, Ronald, and Christopher and three grandchildren.
He lived in the western North Carolina town of Flat Rock, and died at a hospital in nearby Hendersonville.
When my dad bought our first TV, his was one show I always watched, and his values were ones to be honored. He was an important influence in the lives of many kids when I was young.
I, like millions of other fans, knew the opening routine of the show by heart. Smith would shout out, "What time is it?" and the Peanut Gallery — the kiddie studio audience —, along with me, would respond with glee: "It's Howdy Doody time!"
Even though the TV show went off the air in 1960 after 13 seasons and more than 2,500 shows, Buffalo Bob and the freckle-faced marionette Howdy Doody were more than celebrities to millions of baby boomers across the country.
They became like members of the family to their young fans — and the young at heart. Columnist Bob Greene wrote in 1987 that the show "may have been the most important cultural landmark for my generation."
"I always liked kids," Smith, the father of three sons, said in an interview in 1994. "You can't kid a kid. They know right away if you like them or not."
Among the show's other much-loved characters in the town Doodyville, U.S.A.: Clarabell the Clown, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, Phineas T. Bluster, Dilly Dally, Chief Thunderthud, Trapper John and Flubadub. One of the performers who played Clarabell was Bob Keeshan, later to become TV's Captain Kangaroo.
"No one knows how hard we worked all those years," Smith told People magazine in 1987. "Live TV is the most difficult thing to do in the world. You're on the spot all the time."
Recovering from a 1954 heart attack that sidelined him for months, he actually did some appearances from a specially built studio in the basement of his home.
After his return to the NBC studio in 1955, he told The Associated Press he drove himself out of "a feeling of pride. You're happy that people want you to entertain them." He said the heart attack taught him to "remember your limits."
Smith was never bitter after the show went off the air, saying: "We had a good run. Besides, how many TV shows ever lasted 13 seasons?"
In the 1960s, Smith retreated from his spot in front of the TV camera and went back into radio — this time as an owner. He bought three radio stations and dabbled in real estate.
In 1970, he got a call out of the blue from a student at the University of Pennsylvania, who asked him to bring Howdy Doody to the school and do a show.
"I thought he was putting me on," Smith said.
He wasn't.
College students who had grown up watching Howdy Doody felt right at home back in the Peanut Gallery. Over the next six years, Smith and his famous sidekick made hundreds of appearances across the country.
Smith got his start on the radio and his nickname in his hometown, Buffalo, N.Y.
"I did just about everything you could do on the radio when I was 15," he said. Two years later, singer Kate Smith came to Buffalo.
Smith joined her vaudeville act, playing the piano at times and other times playing master of ceremonies. He was back working successfully in radio when NBC was looking for someone in 1947 to be host of a children's television show.
That was the birth of The Howdy Doody Show.
Despite his efforts to keep a low profile in later years, Smith's trademark "Buffalo Bob" voice always seemed to give him away.
"I walk into a supermarket and nobody recognizes me," he said in the 1994 interview. "Then I open my mouth and somebody always says, `That's Buffalo Bob!' "

Howdy & Bob
AP