GracieJc8

Turns 78 this year according to imdb.

Must be getting on about mid to late nineties now. Her husband is gone about two years now.

Oscar Niemeyer

Today marks 2 years as a widow, I have to say I never thought the old gal would last even this long.

Elizabeth Taylor- she is obviously not well and besides DL needs a female success.

Captain Beefheart, just a wild guess

Jesse Helms

Happy early Birthday, the big 90 tomorrow!

MSNBC is reporting tonight that Graham is in fair condition at a North Carolina hospital following brain surgery.

I have done numerous searches on the Internet for Betty Ford news in the past few months and I can find nothing about her current status. There's been nothing about her in the last year except her surgery and her being absent from the funeral of her close friend Lady Bird Johnson. I thought after President Ford died that within a year or so she would be featured in a television inter view (e.g. Barbara Walters special) where she would talk about her life with Gerald ford as have other widowed first ladies in the past or make some sort of public appearance at a tribute to the president. However that has not been the case. I suspect through intuition and based upon what DeFrank wrote about in his book that Betty Ford is now in a very frail if not bedridden state. It sounds like the phlebitis and the final decline and death of her husband all hit her at once and between her grief and failing health she is at a very low point. Her 90th birthday will occur on April 8 of this year in a little over two months. I wonder if there will be some sort of birthday gala or party and would she be able to attend. How would something like that be acknowledged? My gut feeling though also tells me that she will probably not last for much longer.

Gordon Hinckley was a definitely a big miss for 2008. He was one of my names on my "potential" death list that I posted late last year. But just maybe we will have some success with Mr. Graham before long.

Suharto

Well her husband did die the day after Christmas last year so maybe her sad holiday memories from last year could do her in before the end of this year. In any event she should remain on deathlist. She will be the next presidential death (president or first lady), I am sure of it. I dont think she will live as long as Lady Bird or her husband did, she would be lucky to live to her 90th birthday at this point. Well it's been a year since Gerald bit the dust and she's made it through. I for one was not so sure that she would live a year without him.

It would be rather ironic if he were to pass away on Christmas Day. The famous evangelist Norman Vincent Peale died in 1993 on x-mas eve.

I have her on my potential 2008 Deathlist.

Never mind, I kept Sarge on and replaced Beverly Cleary with Eunice.

These are 50 names that I have researched. They cover areas of sports, entertainment, exploration, politics, crime,etc. For the most part they are quite elderly and fairly well-known. So I figured I would try them out as a sample deathlist for '08. Tell me what you think. 1. Phyllis A. Whitney, 105 Author 2. Albert Hoffman, 102 LSD Inventor 3. Oscar Niemeyer, 101, Architect 4. Michael DeBakey, 100 Doctor 5. Miep Gies, 99 Holacaust Hero 6. Norman Wisdom, 93 comedian 7. Gordon Hinckley, President of the Mormon Church 8. Billy Graham, 90, evangelist 9. Zsa Zsa Gabor, 91, Zsa Zsa 10. Abigail Van Buren, 90, columnist 11. I.M. Pei, 91, Architect 12. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, 90, Author 13. Betty Ford, 90, clinic owner 14. Walter Cronkite, 92, Journalist 15. Charlton Heston, 85, Actor 16. Ariel Sharon, 80, Ex-Israeli PM 17. Mark Felt, 95, Deep Throat 18. Kirk Douglas, 92, Actor 19. Luise Rainier, 98, Actress 20. Gloria Stuart, 98, Actress 21. David Rockefeller, 93, Buisness Tycoon 22. Milvina Dean, 96, Last Titanic Survivor 23. Phyllis Diller, 91, Comedian 24. Yashuiro Nakasone, 90 EX-Japanese PM 25. Elizabeth Taylor, 76, wife 26. Sargent Shriver, 93, politician 27. Harold Pinter, 78, playwright 28. Ricardo Montalban, 87, actor 29. Louis Farahkan, 76, wacko 30. Michael Foot, 95, tramp 31. Sid Caesar, 86, comedian 32. Fidel Castro, 82, Dictator 33. Ray Bradbury, 88 Author 34. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 87, Special Olympics Founder 35. John Demanjuk, 97, Nazi 36. Yitzak Shamir, 93, Ex-Israeli PM 37. Ronnie Biggs, 79, Ambassador 38. Barbara Billingsley, 92, June Cleaver 39. Eddy Arnold, 90, singer 40. Muhammed Ali, 66, Boxer 41. John Glenn, 87, Astronaut 42. Sir Edmund Hilleary, 91, Explorer 43. Henry Kissinger, 85, Diplomat 44. Annette Funicello, 66, Mouseketeer 45. Mike Wallace, 90, Journalist 46. Margaret Thatcher, 83, Milk Snatcher 47. Nancy Reagan, 87, Former U.S. First Lady 48. Dino DeLaurentis, 90, Producer 49. Mitch Miller, 97, Singer 50. Clive Dunn, 86, Deathlist Favorite

Thanks, I'll put Ariel Sharon in for one of the Ronnie Biggs'.

Yes, I still say he is definitely better to leave on than Oral Roberts. I say we drop Roberts and make Graham along with Mormon Church President Gordon Hinckley, the "preachers" on the 2008 list.

Tim Johnson obviously turned out not to be a good DL choice. He has recovered sufficiently well enough that he will probably live at least several more years and might even continue his Senate career for at least one more term. If Deathlist needs to pick an American politician for 2008, consider one of these people. 1. Sargent Shriver, b. 1915, 1972 Democratic vice presidential candidate,, former ambassador, Peace Corps Director, and War on Poverty Director who suffers from Alzheimers Disease. 2. Robert McNamara b. 1916, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968, key architect of the Vietnam War escalation and head of the World Bank from 1968-1981. I do not know anything about his current health status though. 3. Robert Byrd, b. 1917, U.S. Senator from West Virginia since 1959, longest serving member of Congress, earliest living senator. As president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Byrd is third in line of succession of the presidency and is increasingly in frail health. 4. Claiborne Pell, b. 1918 Democratic U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1961-1997, founded Pell Grants to help U.S. college students with financial aid. Pell todays suffers from advanced Parkinson's Disease. 5. Jesse Helms, b. 1921, Republican U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1973-2003 and a leading conservative icon of the modern Christian right. He suffers from heart problems and dementia and resides in a nursing home.

Oral Roberts is probably another candidate that should be considered for omission from the 2008 list.

I say get rid of them all. There are much better choices out there. Here are mine. They are listed by name, fame, and age in 2008. 1. Phyllis A. Whitney, age 105, Author 2. Michael DeBakey, age 100, Medicine 3. Miep Gies, age 99, helped save Jews during Holacaust 4. Gordon Hinckley, age 98, president of the Mormon Church 5. Frances Reid, age 94, soap opera actress (Alice Horton on Days of Our Lives for over 42 years) 6. Harry Morgan, 93 actor, (Colonel Potter on MASH) 7. Sargent Shriver, age 93, U.S. politician and father in law of Arnold Schwarzenger, who suffers from Alzheimers Disease. 8. Zsa Zsa Gabor, age 91, actress 9. Ricardo Montalban, age 87 actor 10. Sid Caesar, age 86 comedian

Borgnine is not a good choice for Deathlist. He should not be retained for '08. Maybe Charlton Heston should be reinstated?

A new book has just been written by Thomas DeFrank, a journalist who held several off the record interviews with President Ford in his last years and became close friends with he and Mrs. Ford. The book provides some interesting insight into the health of the Fords the last few years. We learn for the first time officially what President Ford's death was caused by and that is cardiovascular disease and congestive heart failure. But DeFrank also tells the reader that Betty Ford was quite ill herlself in her husband's last months. During the same time that he was getting the pacemaker at the Mayo Clinic, Betty was undergoing surgery for phlebitis or blood clots in her legs at a Colorado hospital not far from where they vacationed. DeFrank writes that when he last visited President Ford in November of 2006, he was confined to a hospital bed in his study and Mrs. Ford was almost as feeble as he was. This explains why she was so weak and frail when shown on television during his funeral ceremonies. And the "undisclosed" surgery that Mrs. Ford had in April of 2007? Well it turns out that she underwent a 6 hour operation to remove more blood clots from her legs. Betty Ford is a few months short of her 90th birthday. She has lost her husband of almost 60 years and undergone two major operations of the same type all three in the past year. She has not been seen in public since then or heard from except for the short statement that was released upon the death of Lady Bird Johnson. All of these things considered, I would advise Deathlist to keep her on for '08, unless she doesn't survive the year. These circumstances sound like a promising candidate. By the way, the book is called "Write It When I'm Gone, Remarkable Off The Record Conversations With Gerald R. Ford".

I have never seen Raging Bull.