These are some of the newsmakers who were lost in 2021, but will not soon be forgotten.
As the world spins into a new year, it does so without the help of many of the leaders, entertainers, athletes and thinkers who got humanity this far. These are some of the newsmakers who were lost in 2021, but will not soon be forgotten. A fighter until the end, former Nevada senator Harry Reid died at 82 on Dec.28. The former middleweight boxer was a soft-spoken moderate who opposed abortion rights, championed Obamacare, was hard to read on gun control and played hardball with the casino business in his gambling-oriented state. His prowess as a lawmaker came into focus during the Obama administration, when he set his sights on Wall Street after the 2008 economic collapse. After Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, Reid’s influence waned, and he decided not to seek reelection in 2016. John Madden was football. He won a Super Bowl coaching the Oakland Raiders, and then — BOOM! — he became the voice of the NFL for generations, working as a top analyst for CBS, Fox, ABC and NBC. He also changed the way the game is played — literally — when a video game bearing his name hit shelves in 1988. Several name changes later, “Madden NFL” is the gold standard in sports games — thanks to realism its namesake demanded. The 85-year-old pigskin personality, famously known for traveling the country by bus and train, and never airplane, died unexpectedly Tuesday. Nobel Peace Prize-winning Desmond Tutu finished his work on Earth the day after Christmas at the age of 90. The former archbishop of South Africa — the first Black man to hold that post — was a leader in the fight against apartheid. The son of an educator, Archbishop Tutu himself spent three years teaching high school before taking up theology. He was ordained as a priest in 1960, later achieved a masters degree in theological studies in England, then returned to South Africa to teach that subject. News of Tutu’s death prompted President Biden and former President Barack Obama to release statements of mourning. Obama remembered Tutu as “a mentor, a friend, and a moral compass for me and so many others.” The final chapter of author and journalist Joan Didion’s storied life ended on Dec.23 in her Manhattan apartment due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. “The Year of Magical Thinking” scribe, who penned both the book and the play of that title, was 87. Her screenplays included “A Star is Born” and “The Panic in Needle Park.” She first made a name for herself while writing for, then editing, Vogue magazine. Didion was immediately skeptical about the Central Park Five case that shook New York City in 1989 and wrote about the ensuing criminal trials extensively for the New York Review in 1991. “El Ídolo de México” was released as a 1974 album by Vicente Fernandez, though that also became the multi-Grammy winning singer’s nickname. Before his death on Dec.12, the 81-year-old performer sold more than 50 million albums, making him one of the biggest recording stars to have been born south of the U.S. border. He stopped doing live shows in 2016, when he said in his final concert that if he ever met Donald Trump, he would spit in the then-candidate’s face for his negative rhetoric regarding Mexican immigrants. Few Americans gave more for their country than Bob Dole. The former Senate majority leader, who was also a war hero, member of the House of Representatives and presidential candidate, succumbed to cancer on Dec.5. His death came more than 76 years after a German artillery shell seriously injured, but failed to finish the stubborn Kansan during combat in Italy. Known for being direct, sometimes to a fault, Dole also maintained a dry sense of humor through his 98 years. One of Dole’s more memorable zingers came after his 1980 bid for the Republican party nomination fell woefully short. Dole wisecracked that he slept like a baby after getting blown out in the New Hampshire primary. “Every two hours I woke up and cried,” he joked. Dole finally got his party’s nomination in 1996, but was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton in the general election. He found work as a pitchman in his post-politics life, promoting donuts, debit cards, soft-drinks and Viagra. Dole told the Associated Press that there was one surefire deal-breaker when he was approached with an ad campaign. “If they’re not any fun, I don’t want to do them,” he said. Despite being ahead of his time, fashion designer Virgil Abloh died far too soon following a two-year battle with a rare form of cancer. The artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear was 41. The Chicago-based fashionista channeled pop artists like Andy Warhol in crafting clothing that imitated art. “Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself,” he reportedly said in describing his enthusiastic approach to style. Broadway titan Stephen Sondheim, who died Nov.26 at 91, leaves behind classics including “West Side Story,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Gypsy” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” The many honors bestowed upon the songwriter from the Upper West Side of New York include a 2008 lifetime achievement Tony Award, the 1985 Pulitzer Prize and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. On the Sunday after his death, Broadway stars including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sara Bareilles, Raúl Esparza, Laura Benanti and Josh Groban gathered in Times Square to sing Sondheim’s tune “Sunday,” from the show “Sunday in the Park with George.” That songs lyrics include the line, “As we pass through arrangements of shadows, towards the verticals of trees, forever.” Encore, please. Former secretary of state and four-star general Colin Powell wasn’t just a proud American — he was also a proud New Yorker. Before losing his battle with COVID in October, the 84-year-old former soldier fought bravely in Vietnam, and later led the controversial Iraq war for the George W. Bush administration. “I don’t spend a lot of time looking in rear view mirrors, because you can’t change anything,” he later said of that chapter in his life. Powell, like others in the administration, had been wrongly convinced that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Just a decade earlier, while serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had been lauded for his bluntness in the first Gulf War. “We’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it,” he famously explained of his 1991 plan to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, which they’d invaded. Powell’s journey to Washington, D.C., began with his birth in Harlem and upbringing in the south Bronx. Upon learning of Powell’s death, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said, “Our borough has lost a giant today.” Filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles’ trailblazing life ended a year short of 90 in September in his Manhattan home. A pioneer of the “blaxploitation” genre, the Chicago native struck a nerve with Black and white audiences with 1971′s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” which he wrote, directed, and acted in as well.
