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every year we say goodbye to people we
care about all sorts of people
family and friends neighbors and
co-workers and those famous faces we
only know from the other side of the
screen at legacy.com we pay tribute to
all of them I'm Steven Seagal the senior
editor at legacy and I'm Linnea Crowther
legacy's senior obituary writer every
day were reading and writing the life
stories of those who have died in 2019
legacy published hundreds of breaking
news obituaries join us now as we look
back at the biggest headline stories of
the people who shaped our world who we
said goodbye to over the past year
Kristoff st. John was one of the most
beloved stars of the soap opera world
he played Neil winters on The Young and
the Restless for 28 years from 1991
until his unexpected death from heart
disease in February at the age of 52
over the course of his performance he
became one of the longest-running
african-american characters in
television history
and he won Emmy Awards and n-double-a-cp
Image Awards for his work even soap
opera fans who didn't watch The Young
and the Restless remember Kristoff st.
John as a good TV friend
teen dramas were the bookends to Luke
Perry's acting career Beverly Hills
90210 made him a heartthrob as he played
bad boy Dylan McKay 90s teens debated
who was cuter Dylan or Brandon and they
had strong opinions on whether Dylan
should end up with Brenda or Kelly a new
generation of teens saw areas dad
instead of hunk when he played Archie's
father Fred on the CW's Riverdale
starting in 2017 young or old all his
fans were shocked when Luke Perry died
of a stroke at 52 they called Doris Day
America's Sweetheart she died in May at
the age of 97 after devoting decades to
animal welfare but back in the 50s and
60s she was the most famous pop star in
the country in the movies she played
calamity jane she starred for Hitchcock
and she was the queen of romantic
comedies her singing career started on
big band radio and eventually she won
the best song Oscar for que sera sera
and there was her sitcom the Doris Day
show they kept reinventing it every
season but it was still a hit and it's
Monday night timeslot
let's straight into CBS's next big hit
the Carol Burnett Show Tim Conway was
the first to admit that his goal on the
Carol Burnett Show was to crack up his
co-stars
as much as possible he did it with
physical comedy like when he played a
dentist accidentally stabbing himself in
the leg with novocaine he did it with
silly accents all he had to say was mrs.
whiggins
to make his co-stars crack the audience
did too before he died in May Tim Conway
also made us laugh in wacky Hollywood
films in his goofy Dorf videos and as
barnacle boy on SpongeBob SquarePants
Cameron voice was heartbreakingly young
when he died of epilepsy in July but he
packed more into his 20 years than some
people do in a lifetime one of Disney's
young stars
he led a new generation of fairy tale
characters starring in The Descendants
series as Carlos de Vil not to mention
shows like Jesse
and the gamers guide to pretty much
everything and movies like grown-ups off
screen
Cameron voice was a dedicated activist
fighting to end sexual assault gun
violence and homelessness as well as
raising money for clean water in
developing countries Toni Morrison
didn't just write literature
she changed literature in her novels
like beloved and Song of Solomon she
brought beautiful language and brutal
honesty to the epic stories she wanted
to tell about the black American
experience
she wrote fiction but she wrote it like
a poet and she wrote it like a prophet
the Nobel Prize the Pulitzer the
Presidential Medal of Freedom her honors
go on and on but Toni Morrison's legacy
is in the minds of the millions of
readers who saw the whole world war
clearly after they read her books
ric ocasek who died in September was the
front man for the cars they helped bring
New Wave music into the mainstream in
the late 70s by writing songs that were
super melodic but also edgy and a little
weird like good times roll and just what
I needed
the cars were some of the biggest stars
of MTV at a time when MTV was at its
absolute peak their 1984 video for you
might think won MTV's first ever video
of the Year award watch it sometime if
you want to remember Ric Ocasek in all
his nerdy glory if you've ever listened
to the news on National Public Radio
you've heard Cokie Roberts voice when
she joined NPR in the 70s her reporting
on national politics became the
station's gold standard she was born in
Louisiana first her father and then her
mother were members of Congress so you
could always tell she wasn't just
reading the news Cokie Roberts really
got what the political world was about
and she had a brilliant gift for
explaining it to the rest of us she died
at the age of 75 from complications from
breast cancer when Diane Carroll took
the role that would make her famous TV
had not yet caught up to the real world
when it came to reflecting
african-american lives she played the
title character on Julia and that
character was the first black woman on
TV who was anything other than a maid or
a mammy it was 1968 Julia was a nurse
and it was about time we got a chance to
see a professional black woman on TV
later in her career Carole got to play a
deliciously over-the-top diva on the
nighttime soap dynasty Diahann Carroll
died of breast cancer in act Oh
most people who knew his work didn't
know his real name
but when Caroll Spinney died in December
the age of 85 there was an incredible
outpouring of love for the man who
played Big Bird for almost 50 years
since the public television show Sesame
Street debuted in 1969 Spinney brought a
childlike sense of wonder to be a foot
tall canary who helped kids make sense
of the world as if that wasn't enough he
also played Oscar the Grouch between
these two iconic Muppets Caroll Spinney
helped raise three generations of
American children with kindness
understanding and love so many
remarkable life stories came to an end
in 2019 those first 10 are just the tip
of the iceberg come along with us now as
we celebrate the lives of the artists
athletes world leaders and more whose
deaths this year brought countless fans
to leave memories and condolences at
legacy calm
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