Celebrity Death Thread

[Guise Marino]

I feel like I'm on a high-speed train to an unknown destination.

What worries me is that I feel that I'm going to reach that unknown destination before the Lions reach the Superbowl.

[Newbomb Turk]

don't worry, it is already going to happen

[DanO]

"know 2 people that commtted suicide."
------------------------As do I. When we were kids a friends grandfather parked his truck in some pines and put a shot gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

My cousin, almost a year ago now(April 3rd I think), shot himself in his home. His wife found him when she got home from work. No note no nothing. No one understands why he did it except that he had recently had surgery for colon cancer but he was recovering fine. No one understands it.

GO LIONS "07" !!!!!!!

[Coop]

I can't say I've ever seriously contemplated suicide - but one of the things that has really changed how I think is that now that I have children I am OBLIGATED to be there for them no matter what happens.......

[Newbomb Turk]

Not really, Coop, the next time Millen gets a new 5 year contract I will have my head in the oven, kids or no kids

[YT]

Not really, Coop, the next time Millen gets a new 5 year contract I will have my head in the oven, kids or no kids

Sticking your head in your daughter's E-Z Bake Over doesn't count 8-)

[Sharkbait]

Unless you get too close to that light bulb, it gets really hot.

[Drew]

Not really, Coop, the next time Millen gets a new 5 year contract I will have my head in the oven, kids or no kids

...or if the Lions select Quinn with the #2 overall.

[Panoptes]

Winningest College Football Coach Eddie Robinson, 88, Dies in Louisiana
*Wednesday, April 04, 2007, AP

RUSTON, La. ? Eddie Robinson, who sent more than 200 players to the NFL and won 408 games during a 57-year career, has died.

He was 88.

Super Bowl MVP quarterback Doug Williams, one of Robinson's former players, said the former Grambling State University coach died about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

"For the Grambling family this is a very emotional time," Williams said Wednesday. "But I'm thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today-time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people."

Robinson's was a career that spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement.

His older records were what people remembered: in 57 years, Robinson set the standard for victories, going 408-165-15. John Gagliardi of St. John's, Minn., passed Robinson and has 443 wins.

"The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife," Robinson said.

He had been suffering from Alzheimer's, which was diagnosed shortly after he was forced to retire following the 1997 season, in which he won only three games. His health had been declining for years and he had been in and out of a nursing home during the last year.

Robinson said he tried to coach each player as if he wanted him to marry his daughter.

He began coaching at Grambling State in 1941, when it was still the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, and single-handedly brought the school from obscurity to international popularity.

Grambling first gained national attention in 1949 when Paul "Tank" Younger signed with the Los Angeles Rams and became the first player from an all-black college to enter the NFL. Suddenly, professional scouts learned how to find the little school 65 miles east of Shreveport near the Arkansas border.

Robinson sent over 200 players to the NFL, including seven first-round draft choices and Williams, who succeeded Robinson as Grambling's head coach in 1998. Others went to the Canadian Football League and the now-defunct USFL.

Robinson's pro stars included Willie Davis, James Harris, Ernie Ladd, Buck Buchanan, Sammy White, Cliff McNeil, Willie Brown, Roosevelt Taylor, Charlie Joiner and Willie Williams.

Robinson said he was inspired to become a football coach when a high school team visited the elementary school Robinson attended.

"The other kids wanted to be players, but I wanted to be like that coach," Robinson said. "I liked the way he talked to the team, the way he could make us laugh. I liked the way they all respected him."

Robinson was forced to retire after the 1997 season, after the once perennial powerhouse fell on tough times. His final three years on the sidelines brought consecutive losing seasons for the first time, an NCAA probe of recruiting violations and four players charged with rape.

As pressure mounted for him to step aside, even the governor campaigned to give him one last season so he could try to go out a winner.

But 1997 produced only three wins for the second straight year.

Robinson's teams had only eight losing seasons and won 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and nine national black college championships. His den is packed with trophies, representing virtually every award a coach can win. He was inducted into every hall of fame for which he was eligible, and he received honorary degrees from such prestigious universities as Yale.

In 1968, because of a tiny home stadium on a hard-to-reach campus, Robinson put Grambling's football show on the road, playing in all the nation's biggest stadiums.

That same year, Howard Cosell and Jerry Izenberg produced the documentary, "Grambling College: 100 Yards to Glory," Robinson became vice president of the NAIA, and all three major television networks carried special programming on Grambling football.

A year later, Grambling played before 277,209 paying customers in 11 games, despite the home field that seated just 13,000.

Robinson had an autographed portrait of Paul "Bear" Bryant, the late Alabama coach, hanging in the conference room where the coaches worked out game plans. Robinson's record eclipsed his old friend's 323-85-17.

"If the Bear were alive, I'd still be chasing him," Robinson said as he entered his last season. "I'm no better than any other coach. But I've heard the best coaches in America and learned from them for close to 60 years."

When he began his career, Robinson had no paid assistants, no groundskeepers, no trainers and little in the way of equipment. He had to line the field himself and fix lunchmeat sandwiches for road trips because the players could not eat in the "white only" restaurants of the South.

He was not bitter, however. "The best way to enjoy life in America is to first be an American, and I don't think you have to be white to do so," Robinson said. "Blacks have had a hard time, but not many Americans haven't."

Robinson said he tried to teach his players about opportunity.

"The framers of this Constitution, now they did some things," Robinson would say. "If you aren't lazy, they fixed it for you. You've got to understand the system. It's just like in football, if you don't understand the system, you haven't got a chance."

Neither of Robinson's parents graduated from high school ? he was the son of a cotton sharecropper and a domestic worker ? and they encouraged him to stay in school and get a college degree. Robinson was a star quarterback at Leland College under Reuben S. Turner, a Baptist preacher who introduced Robinson to the playbook and took him to his first coaching clinic.

After college, Robinson took a job at a feed mill in Baton Rouge, earning 25 cents an hour. He learned through a relative that there was an opening at Grambling.

His first season, Robinson's team went 3-5. His second year Grambling was 9-0, not only unbeaten, but not scored on.

In 1943 and 1944 there was no football at Grambling because of the war. Robinson coached at Grambling High School those years and won a high school championship.

"A daddy pulled my best running backs off our team and said they couldn't play anymore because they had to pick cotton," Robinson said. "So I got all the boys on the team, we packed up and went out there to pick the cotton, then went on to win the championship."

The same year Robinson started coaching at Grambling, he married his high school sweetheart, Doris, whom he courted for eight years.

Robinson and his wife, Doris, had two children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

*RIP Mr. Robinson.

[Newbomb Turk]

STINGLEY DEAD AT 55

Former Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley, who was paralyzed due to a preseason hit from Raiders safety Jack Tatum, has died more than 28 years after become a quadriplegic.

Stingley passed early Thursday morning after being found unconscious in his apartment.

Said Stingley in 2004 regarding his struggle to come to grips with his injury: "It took me a while to exorcise all the demons. All I had to do was come out of the house or travel around the country. Everybody I came in contact with let me know there was more of a purpose for me in life than looking at it negatively. So I decided to look at it in a positive way."

Tatum has had serious health problems over the past couple of years. He lost one leg to diabetes and the other leg to an arterial blockage.

Stingley rebuffed efforts at a public reconciliation with Tatum, including an attempt by HBO to bring them together for a piece commemorating the 25th anniversary of the incident.

"I couldn't let three minutes on the air cheapen the story," Stingley said. "I went through a lot. If they want to bring closure, then there should be some real healing in it. Something in the area of a spiritual reconciliation."

[dwt1]

I totally have a fear of death which gets stronger as I age. Aging is such a trip.

it's better than not aging!!!

[Daytona John]

Like the 85 year old man sitting next to me in the cardiologists office said to me; "Nobody said it was going to be easy getting old".

A very profound statement!

But it sure beats the alternative of a dirt nap.

[Panoptes]

Death does not scare me, I'm ready to go today if that's how its going to go down.

People always say, "Life is too short!". My perspective has changed alot in a short amount of time.

If you live a life that you enjoy everyday (or nearly everyday), travel well, eat well and get laid when you need it, "Life is very long!".

For me, I just hope that my death does not hurt.

[Daytona John]

Death does not scare me, I'm ready to go today if that's how its going to go down.

People always say, "Life is too short!". My perspective has changed alot in a short amount of time.

If you live a life that you enjoy everyday (or nearly everyday), travel well, eat well and get laid when you need it, "Life is very long!".

For me, I just hope that my death does not hurt.

Gonz: I have always lived my life that way. Am currently lacking only the last item on the list.

"For me, I just hope that my death does not hurt."

In your case it might. I got a sneaking suspicion that your cause of death will be from two footballs being jammed up your kister (one from the Lions and one from Kansas City).

[THE STEE]

I watched my mother die of cancer, she always just said "life happens, you just have to find little things that will make it all worth while." I don't fear death but I do respect it-- its gonna happen sooner or later so why dwell on something you cannot control, but enjoy the little things and make others around you enjoy it just as much...........