More People Of Interest

Mary E. Lee passed away in January of 2008. I just noticed her obituary in my pile of “Interesting Obituaries.” There were two more, as well.

“Surviving,” it says here, “are her son, Robert E. Lee and his wife, Scarlett O’Hara.” It says nothing at all about nephews or cousins named Rhett Butler. I might note the late Ms. Lee seems to be dressed like a right proper Southerner, even if she never lived any further south than the Market Street Bridge, near where I reside.

Zigmund (Ziggy) Zelinsky passed away just last year. When he was 56, he had a heart attack and his therapist advised him to start a walking program. Ziggy, so his family notes, gradually increased his walking around the block to several miles a day. Then he started jogging and completed several 5K and 10K races.

When he was 64, he entered and finished the grueling 26.2-mile Los Angeles Marathon and carried the Olympic Torch prior to the Olympic summer games in 1992.

Anne Bullitt had one of those small-print obits in the NY Times; her father was a big deal in the Roosevelt administration, ambassador to both the Soviet Union and France. She traveled with him throughout all his travels and foreign assignments in the 1930’s. “During one of her visits to Hyde Park when she was 12, Roosevelt, expecting a delegation of local politicians, told her to hide behind the sofa in his study so that she could hear their conversation.”