The Daily Goodbye

Good morning everyone.

Former president Guillermo Endara, who led Panama to democracy after the U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega, died Monday. He was 73.

Maybe you didn't know that Milwaukee, that stalwart blue-collar city in the middle of the U.S., had a Socialist mayor for a dozen years. His wife, Agnes Zeidler, just died. She managed her husband's electoral campaigns, was a peace activist and Census Bureau worker.

People have a way of thinking of John F. Kennedy as forever young, but his contemporaries, such as his pal Paul Fay, was 91 when he died last week.

Speaking of people in their nineties,
Darwin Renner, who designed the Navy's first working submarine-hunting device which not so coincidentally kept the company that would be Texas Instruments afloat, died two weeks ago at the age of 98.

If you enjoy the style of old obits, the Kings County Record in New Brunswick, Canada dug up a few from their files. They have a bit more attention to the circumstances of death than is now fashionable, but they do give the sense of a person.