Duy Quang 1951 to three weeks ago Wednesday
Indulge my Eurocentrism and let me call Quang the Jackie Jackson of Vietnam. The “eldest sibling in Vietnam’s most enduring singing family,” he’s kept fans in Vietnam and beyond enthralled with his velvet voice. He leaves behind this enthrallment (in which you are about to join):
Reuben Pannor 1922 to three weeks ago Saturday
Pannor’s work changes the lives of over 100,000 children every year. In 1978, this LA social worker published “The Adoption Triangle.” Convinced that “people have an intrinsic right to know their ancestry,” the book argued convincingly for open adoptions–where the adopted children have some contact with their birth family. He leaves behind a sea change–open adoptions were unheard in the 1970s and now make up 90% of adoptions in the US today.
Sacramento Kings 1985 to Wednesday
The latest incarnation of the 1945-born Rochester Royals will be no more at the end of the 2012-2013 NBA season. Barring further developments, this franchise and its one NBA championship pennant (topping the 1951 New York Knickerbockers in seven games) will bring basketball back to Seattle’s Key Arena next October. The Kings leave behind five seasons of C-Webb-led genuinely-exciting basketball sandwiched between two decades of mediocrity. The Kings also leave behind the disappointment of the good folks at Sleep Train who bought five years of naming rights for the Kings’s soon-to-be former Sacramento arena last October.
J. Blaine Hudson 1949 to Saturday
Hudson occupied the the dean’s office at the University of Louisville twice. In 1969 he was protesting a lack of minority faculty, administrators, course subjects, scholarships and services. He answered his own demand, becoming the dean of U of L’s College of Arts and Sciences four decades later. He leaves behind a Pan-African Studies department that leads the South in studies of crime and justice in Black communities and the earnest and widespread admiration from the many lives he touched in the Louisville community.
(h/t Helen Deines)
Fr. James Reuter, S.J. 1916 to last Monday
At 7, James Reuter decided to be a Jesuit. He fulfilled his dream at 18. At 22, he went as a missionary to bring God to the Philippines. He quickly realized he got that backwards–falling in love with Filipino culture and Filipino people, the Philippines brought God to him. He became one of their own. At 80 he was voted an honorary Filipino by Congress. At 95 he became Chief Commander in the Philippine Legion of Honor. How does a kid from Jersey end up a national hero of the Philippines? How ‘bout a key role in deposing Dictator Ferdinand Marcos. A media expert, Reuter foiled the government’s attempt to keep Archbishop Jaime Sin off the airwaves, enabling the beloved prelate to mobilize 2 million people to protest Marcos. Three days later, Marcos was gone and not a shot had been fired. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but radio’s got ’em both beat. Reuter leaves behind Sin’s famous broadcast that brought down Marcos in peace:
