Closing chapters: the deaths of 2011
From dictators and terrorist murderers to those whose innovation and genius inspired us, this year saw the deaths of some people whose legacies will linger for decades to come
- Published: 25/12/2011 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Spectrum
STEVE JOBS: Steve Jobs died at the age of 56, but he might have lived to 100 with a little more thought. One of the greatest minds in technology decided he could cure cancer with homeopathic medicine - and by the time he realised how dumb that was, the disease had taken hold.
Jobs invented the Apple, the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. But what was amazing about his story was that he made his greatest inventions while he knew he was dying.
In the past 10 years, his inventions (combined with spectacular marketing and a ruthless ego) did not just change technology, they changed the world. Five years ago, there was no such thing as an iPhone. Today, the ''smartphone'' dominates not only the market, but business, education and information exchange. By putting computers in pockets and purses, Jobs essentially began a new technological age. Along the way, he put thousands of songs in our pockets and movies in our hands. Oh, and he also took a failed company, Apple, and made it into what was for a brief period the world's richest firm. Jobs was a giant among inventors, an innovator now gone but never to be forgotten.
What do you do when you find your country's worst enemy is hiding in your friend's country? First, you kill him. At least that was what President Barack Obama did when his intelligence agencies found that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was living in the quiet town of Abbottabad, far from the terrorist battlefields. Bin Laden died from two bullets fired by a US Navy Seal, part of a commando team that secretly infiltrated Pakistan without telling the host nation.
Many Pakistanis had the grace to be embarrassed, after a decade of denials that the Saudi terrorist and 9/11 instigator could be in their country. The last hunt for bin Laden was a risky military move and, indeed, the Seals lost one of their two helicopters during the mission. Bin Laden's body was flown out of Pakistan and buried at sea off of a US navy ship, after a Muslim cleric said the prayers. It was a more dignified end than the terrorist gave to thousands of innocents around the world, the majority of them Muslims. While bin Laden had not actively led al-Qaeda for years, his confirmed death all but ended the influence of the group, which exists more now as a symbol than a real threat.
Adjectives such as troubled, pained, addicted and so on generally go in front of Amy Winehouse's name in media reports. People who appreciate music are more likely to put the descriptives after: ''Amy Winehouse, musical genius,'' for example. Her death at 28 was not a huge surprise, but she was one contralto who had already earned the title of ''diva''. She claimed influence from Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, Busta Rhymes and Mos Def. In truth, she had a unique style and sounds. Winehouse had the ability to mock herself, in songs such as Rehab, but if anyone ever tries to cover or recreate Back to Black it would be a travesty.
Emergency Services in London found her body at her home at 3:54pm on July 23 and paramedics noted that a drug overdose had rendered her ''beyond help''. That could be said of her entire life as a singer. There are few geniuses in the music business. Winehouse left too soon.
In 17 years at the top, Kim Jong-Il took charge of the most brutal dictatorship in Asia, founded by his father, and during his time as dictator saw the rise of mass starvation and nuclear weapons. He died of a heart attack on a train at 69, notable because he was an aviophobe who refused to fly. While he never managed to start a major war like father Kim Il-Sung, the Dear Leader introduced a new type of nuclear-backed instability into all of East Asia. And as his hagiographic official obit states, he kept communism in North Korea while the rest of the world was throwing it off.
North Korea may have had no real friends, but Jong-Il was known by his allies, such as the Pakistani nuclear smuggler Abdul Qadeer Khan and technology customer Iran. Thailand showed him a friendly hand three times and was thrice betrayed by the late Kim. Pyongyang reports say Kim Jong-Un, the late dictator's basketball loving chubby third son will try to fill his father's gigantic girls' sunglasses. That won't be difficult. Pretty well anyone with 1.2 fanatically loyal soldiers can be a pain in the extreme lower back area to neighbours and the world. Diplomatic sources who thought Bashar al-Assad's son and Moammar Gadhafi's son were progressives because of their Western education actually believe Jong-Un might be progressive because he attended school in Berne, where his classmates remember his achievement in skipping class to tend to his pornography collection.
It is difficult to think of a greater human contrast than North Korea's Kim and Vaclav Havel, the Czech intellectual and moral giant who outlasted the little Korean by just days. Kim crushed his people to save communism. Havel crushed communism to save his people _ and he did it without lifting a violent hand. He left behind a legacy of peace and a phrase known around the world: Velvet Revolution.
History will remember Havel as one of the greatest freedom fighters. He never veered from peaceful protest, from the Prague Spring of 1968 _ crushed by Soviet tanks _ to the Wenceslas Square gathering that spelled the end of Moscow rule in 1989. He led a group that at first numbered in the hundreds but eventually grew to an unstoppable, non-violent force of hundreds of thousands. He was a playwright, weakened in body but not in spirit by years in KGB torture dungeons. In 1989, after he led the movement that toppled both the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire, he became president, serving morally for 14 years.
Moammar Gadhafi, the madman of the Libyan desert died of a bullet in the head. He lived just long enough, however, to see his carefully crafted, violently maintained dictatorship crumble. Gadhafi was a pioneer in the asynchronous warfare of the late 20th century, commonly called what it is: terrorism. But the self-styled ''Brotherly Leader'', ''Guide of the Revolution'', etc, was far more than a common, charismatic terrorist. He built the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from a discombobulated kingdom, while pursuing policies that ranged from extremely weird to fantastically strange. He reportedly provided training and money to southern Thais to start the first Pulo separatist revolution _ and gave jobs to 40,000 Thai workers in his oil fields. After his intelligence services were accused of placing bombs aboard two civilian passenger jets _ Pan Am Flight 103 in December, 1988, and a French UTA jet in September, 1989 _ and killed 430 innocent people, Gadhafi became a pariah.
Always mercurial, he bounced back a bit in the years before his people rebelled, by giving up his nuclear arms after the US invasion of Iraq. But he was nine parts villain to one part shrewd political operator to his last breath.
A rare few sporting heroes are called ''gentlemen'' but golfer Severiano Ballesteros Sota did not just earn the title, he lived it. Known universally as Seve, Ballesteros was, well, known universally. He battled brain cancer for three years before he finally succumbed in May at his family home in Pedrena, Spain. His death at 54 seemed only to validate the cliche that ''only the good die young''. For once, the accolades did not stick in the craw. He really was an icon, he really was the inspiration behind the (now enormously lucrative) European tour, he really was a spectacular golfer. How spectacular was he? See if you can find the video of his shot at the 1979 British Open from the parking lot to 4.5m from the pin. He won 50 times in Europe, won the Masters. But most of all, he inspired people _ to play golf, to be polite, to celebrate life. In 2005, Ballesteros wrote a letter to His Majesty the King, outlining his vision: all of Europe against all of Asia in one magnificent golf tournament in Thailand. The King graciously donated the perpetual, 16kg, solid silver Royal Trophy and the first tournament took place the following year. The annual event awards the only trophy in golf donated by a monarch _ thanks to the vision of Ballesteros.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor died at 79 after a lifetime immersed in the fantasy entertainment world, especially Hollywood. She was a child and teenage actress who managed to keep her wits about her. Born in England, she went to Hollywood early, where she quickly established herself as an excellent actor with the looks to go with it _ especially those violet eyes. She was every girl's heroine in National Velvet, every man's fantasy in Giant and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958. But it was her 1963 role in Cleopatra, and her off-screen, er, adventures with co-star Richard Burton which put her firmly in the public spotlight.
She won two Oscars, but despite her high-profile hijinks, she had a shrewd and sympathetic side. In 1985, while most of the world was still immensely frightened, she established the American Foundation for Aids Research, and until her death helped thousands of victims. She was not well in her later years, spent much time in hospital, and died in March of congestive heart failure.
Taylor was the grown-up child actress who was predictable in her eccentricity and separation from real life. Jane Russell, who died at 89 in February, was the unashamed, unshamable vamp who kept herself in the real world. Born in Bemidji, Minnesota, Russell starred in her first film, The Outlaw, in 1943, and became a popular pin-up girl among US troops during World War II. She never bared it all, but she let it all hang out. She was an unabashed and outspoken Christian, and her three marriages were to a football star, a fellow actor and a real estate broker _ just like a real girl would.
Vang Pao was persecuted in the US, declared a criminal in Laos. But the son of Hmong farmers who became a leader of military men was the face of the ''secret war'' that consumed the attention of his own country, both Vietnams and Thailand _ not to mention the Americans who nurtured Vang Pao and the war equally. The secret war was enormously complicated, but the mission of the Hmong was simple: attack the Vietnamese supply lines known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to cripple the war effort in the South.
His relations with the Americans were never smooth. During the war, many charged that the Hmong _ and Vang Pao's CIA case officers _ were refining and selling heroin. In 1975, the US essentially abandoned most Hmong. Then, in 2007, the US government charged Vang Pao with plotting to overthrow the Lao government. The charges were dropped just before his death. During the Laos war, some 30,000 Thai soldiers served clandestinely in support of the Hmong and US efforts to disrupt Vietnamese supply lines. Just before his death, Vang Pao offered to return to Laos to help broker a full peace with still resentful Hmong _ and the Laos government said if he returned, he would be executed as a war criminal. Although he died in his bed, there is no doubt Vang Pao was a warrior.
OTHER NOTABLE DEATHS IN 2011
Other extraordinary people died in 2011 who could easily be on a Top 10 list of people we really will miss.
Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, MD, the fabulous Brazil captain known as Socrates, was one of the great Brazilian playmakers. He captained Brazil at the 1982 World Cup, where the world learned the meaning of a graceful blind pass. He was self-destructive, and died at 57.
If not for Gil Scott-Heron, who died in May, we would not have rap and its musical spin-offs, notably hip hop. We would not have the phrase ''The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'', one of his signature recordings. It is somewhat ironic that Scott-Heron, whose many utterances were poetic, was actually a poet. But as a performer of a unique musical genre _ ''I am a scientist concerned with the origin of the blues'' _ Scott-Heron combined jazz, blues and soul with the spoken word that set the template for much of today's most popular music.
Joe Frazier, the first man to beat Muhammad Ali in a professional fight, would have been one of the greatest champions ever except for his misfortune in being Ali's contemporary.
Gary Speed, whose football exploits with the suddenly respected Wales national team, were surpassed only by the shock of his sudden Saturday evening suicide.
Jack ''Doctor Death'' Kevorkian was convicted of helping terminal patients to commit suicide, but his real achievement or evil was to publicise the very idea of assisted suicide near the end of death.
Finally, there was Tran Le Xuan _ aka Madame Nhu, aka the Dragon Lady. In Saigon in the early 1960s, as the wife of the secret police chief and sister-in-law of the husband, this beautiful, withering woman enraged almost everyone who came close to her, and ruined the lives of many Vietnamese just because she didn't like them. She died in exile, which happens to hugely divisive figures who can't make up with new governments at home.
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