The Daily Goodbye

Good morning.

It's interesting to note the impact of a movie on contemporaneous obits. Take the hit film "Julie and Julia," Nora Ephron's homage to chef Julia Child. I'm thinking that without it, we would have paid a lot less attention to the deaths of Sylvia Schur and Silver Palate cookbook author Sheila Lukins.

Speaking of celebrities, Army Archerd, a chronicler of Hollywood gossip, had died. He broke the story of Rock Hudson's homosexuality, was the first to report in 1991 that Julia Roberts had flaked out on Kiefer Sutherland three days before their wedding, and was first to announce in 1992 that Annette Bening was marrying Warren Beatty, the father of her child.

Fred Mills, a trumpeter with the Canadian Brass Quintet and a Grammy nominee, died Monday night in a car crash in Georgia. He was 74.

Finally, two from us today: a University of Virginia professor who edited the papers of George Washington and a former CIA man who was the senior member of the team that built the Glomar Explorer.