The actress Farrah Fawcett has died in California after a two and a half year battle with cancer. She was 62.

Earlier this morning, Barbara Walters told "Good Morning America" that Fawcett received last rites and her friends and family were saying their goodbyes.

The death was expected, with many months of build-up and rumors about her deteriorating health. In May, NBC aired a documentary chronicling her cancer battle. Tonight ABC will air a 20/20 special edition titled "Farrah's Love," which includes an interview with Fawcett's long-time companion Ryan O'Neal.

As a child of the Eighties, I clearly remember Fawcett's role as the sexy blonde bombshell Jill Munroe in the syndicated detective series, "Charlie's Angels." While she only remained on the series for a year with guest appearances throughout the next few seasons, it is clear that even in death she will be remembered for this role. And who, of course, can ever forget her image as the pin-up girl in a red bathing suit on poster's that hung in teenage boys' rooms across America.

And way before Jennifer Anniston's "Rachel" haircut of the 1990s, Fawcett inspired millions of woman to style their hair.

Years after her role on "Angels," Fawcett made a surprising comeback, playing a battered woman on the NBC made-for-TV movie, "The Burning Bed." She continued to play vulnerable woman, capitalizing on her success in this niche.

She had been the headlines recently for her battle with cancer and in the last few years was tabloid fodder. Who can forget her on-again-off-again relationship with O'Neal, her son Redmond's troubles with drugs, and her incoherent appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman" in 1997?

But when I think of Fawcett, the blonde curls and sexy red bathing suit poster will still come to mind.

Below is a Farrah Fawcett interview that I found on You Tube.

Good morning, readers, and welcome to summer.

Dorothy Waggoner worked for better inspections and enforcement of nursing home regulations in Milwaukee most of her life. When she opened a bed and breakfast in the small town of Menomonee Falls, Wis., suspicious residents "thought we were going to run a brothel," she said.

The puns are almost irresistible for this obit of Raymond Flood, a clock doctor who didn't let his time slip away.

One of the first black police officers allowed to join the Miami police force, Lury Franklin Bowen, has died, but not before telling the stories of how segregation in the Deep South worked on the police force.

We do a lot of obits of former FBI agents here in Washington, but we haven't done this one, of James W. Bookhout, who interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald just after he assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Here's a related one: Preston McGraw, the UPI newsman who covered the assassination and aftermath, volunteered to be one of Oswald's pallbearers.

We imagine the regulars at the Baltimore Farmers Market are moved to tears this season because the Onion King, William E. Martin Sr., has died. And with that, we leave you to tend to your own garden until tomorrow.

Scanning some of the British papers this morning, I noticed several interesting obituaries for World War II veterans, and I remembered writing a story a few years ago about how we're losing more than a thousand WWII vets a day. The numbers are mounting, of course.

Their deaths are also a reminder that they have stories worth remembering. Here, for example, are three from today's London Telegraph:

Wing Commander Ken Mackenzie, 92 when he died earlier this month, was chasing a German Messerschmitt that had just bombed London. Although Mackenzie had run out of ammunition after shooting down two enemy planes, he was determined not to let the Messerschmitt escape as it turned for France. He rammed it with his starboard wing, which sent the German plane spiraling into the sea.

He once escaped from a German POW camp by feigning madness and developing a severe stammer for the purpose. For the rest of his Royal Air Force career, he was known as Mad Mac.

"Mackenzie, who never lost the stammer he cultivated as a POW, was an irascible character and always led from the front," the Telegraph reported. "It was his habit to fly every morning before the routine meteorological briefing for all the other pilots."

Lt. Commander Max Shean, 90, was an X-craft diver on a secret, 51-foot, four-man submarine. He had volunteered for hazardous duty without knowing what hazardous duty meant. He soon found out that as an X-craft diver, he had to learn how to get in and out of his mini-sub underwater through a small wet-and-dry chamber, shutting himself off from the rest of the crew before flooding the compartment and opening an external hatch. He won 68 awards for bravery while diving in enemy harbors both in Europe and the Pacific.

Here's my favorite: Major Philip James, 84, served with the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners and then in Waziristan, "where he learned to build bridges and took part in annual tentpegging competitions against Pathan tribesmen."

After the war he became headmaster of a traditional British prep school, where "he was ready for any crisis, whether it meant opening a locked tuck box or using his dowsing skills to clear blockages in drains."

He was known for allowing misbehaving students the opportunity to redeem themselves before meting out punishment. "On one occasion," the Telegraph reported, "he impressed parents he was showing round the school by calmly telling two almost-naked boys, whom they encountered playing a game of strip table tennis, to get dressed again. The visitors immediately decided it was the place for their son."

He was familiar with youthful high jinks, having indulged in a few himself. "On one occasion he bombarded another regiment's officers' mess with flaming polo balls, which earned him a dressing-down."

"The Major," as he was always known, also taught his boys the correct way to eat peas with a fork.

Hortensia Bussi, the widow of Chilean President Salvador Allende who helped lead opposition to the military dictatorship that ousted her socialist husband in a bloody 1973 coup, died Thursday. She was 94.

Helen Boosalis, the first female president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, died in Lincoln, Neb. earlier this week.

Admiral Sardarilal Nanda, commander of the Indian Navy who led it to victory in the 1971 India-Pakistan War, died last month. But the anecdotes are too good to let pass: When the US Seventh Fleet entered the Indian Ocean and threatened to intervene in the war, Nanda told Prime Minister Indira Gandhi: "Madam, I have given instructions to my captains to treat them as friends, and to invite them over for a drink - as the US Navy do not have a bar on board. You should not worry on any account."

It's not just about the great ones. Art Briggs, who swept sidewalks in Delta, Colo. for many years, died at the age of 70.

Nic Fiore, the maitre'd of ski at Yosemite National Park's Badger Pass ski area, died Tuesday at 88. While teaching skiing in the winter, he worked summers in the park's hotels, including serving as maitre d'hotel of the Ahwahnee and managing the Glacier Point Lodge and the Wawona Hotel. He also managed Yosemite's five High Sierra camps in the wilderness back country.

Tomoji Tanabe, the world's oldest man, has died at the age of 113. Japanese people have among the world's longest life expectancies--nearly 86 years for women and 79 years for men--which is often attributed to the country's healthy diet rich in fish and rice. The number of Japanese living past 100 has more than doubled in the last six years, reaching a record high of 36,000 people in 2008. The country's centenarian ranks are dominated by women, who make up 86 percent of the total.

Edith "Jackie" Ronne grew up "scrubbing the steps" of her Baltimore home, her daughter said, and knew one thing -- she wanted a life different from what she saw. She spent a couple of years at a college in Ohio, then moved to Washington, living with her aunt and uncle in Chevy Chase while going to George Washington University.

Fast forward a few years, and she's married to a man 20 years her senior, a veteran polar explorer who's talked her into accompanying him and his expedition to Antarctica. Her life story and obituary is in the Washington Post today. Here's a terrific documentary about her in two parts that Skeeter and Tracy Jarvis produced, with some funding from the Maryland Committee for the Humanities.

Part 1:

Part 2: