The names and the news of their demise, as you might expect, prompted a range of reactions. Kris Kristofferson (88), Jerry West (86), James Earl Jones (93), they were older folks who’d lived long, productive and public lives. Others were shocking.
Liam Perry? The 31-year-pop star fell to his death from a building? Morgan Spurlock, the Super Size Me filmmaker who took on McDonald’s, felled by cancer at 53? They were so young. And others were infamous - Pete Rose (83) and O.J.
Simpson (76). Still, those were celebrities, athletes and entertainers whose images we’d gotten to know through television. While we may have taken a moment to absorb the news — perhaps you recalled O.
J. 's slow-speed chase in the white Bronco — those deaths were far away. People are also reading.
.. Closer to home, in 2024 we suffered losses, too, with the passing of people who’d made a real difference.
Some — Yvonne Johnson, the first Black mayor of Greensboro — were in the public arena, people who you may have voted for in years past. Others were people you likely never heard of, but who had an impact in the Triad through their lives and their actions. Those are the folks I choose to remember at year’s end.
Here are a few notables. May they rest in peace. Horace Barrett never wanted to be in the spotlight.
Horace Barrett, the last remaining soldier from a decorated WWII unit from the 82nd airborne, pauses for a portrait, while enjoying his birthday cake on his 100th birthday on Dec. 7,.