The Daily Goodbye

Good morning. Dr. X, the masked manager at National Wrestling Alliance shows who was also "Dr. Sidney Hack," a chain-smoking alcoholic physician, died Jan.15 in suburban Chicago. Outside the ring, he was known as Edward Chuman.

And this on the same day that we hear of the death of Ida Mae Martinez, wrestler, yodeler and nurse. And did your high school guidance counselor tell you it was possible to put those professions together?

Bill McLaren, the BBC's voice of rugby for nearly 50 years, died Jan. 19 at age 86. He would watch practices and commit every player's name, position and number to memory.

From Down Under comes word that Peter Blizzard, who played a significant role in the development of contemporary Australian sculpture, has died of cancer at Gandarra Hospice in Ballarat. He was 69.

Shirley Kravitt, a painter with promise, packed up her Chicago family in 1959 and moved to Paris. She funded their adventure with sales of her work, mounted a show at the Musee d'Art Moderne and was photographed by Victor Skrebneski. After she died Dec. 31, her son made sure she was buried in her Chanel suit and a hat.

Jesse Davidson, a national champion horse racer who was sent to federal prison for race-fixing and successfully fought for reinstatement, died at his Ellicott City, Md. home Saturday of complications from hernia surgery. He was 69.

I know we are getting a bit long here, but let me squeeze in one more: Lady Mairi Bury, who as a teenager traveled with her parents to pre-World War II Germany and met leaders of the Third Reich. Hitler was "a nondescript person," she thought, and she described Himmler as like "a shopwalker in Harrods."