Gone This Year

We often forget who the year has ushered out. Here is a reminder.

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Howard Zinn, world-renowned historian, teacher, activist, author and playwright, passed away on Jan. 27 of a heart attack while swimming in California, according to his daughter and the AP. He was 87 years old.

Zinn had a kind, friendly personality, was generous with his time, and spoke easily with others. He was also relentlessly unafraid to stand up for what he believed in, and speak the truth – even if doing so could cause him distress in his personal and professional life.

Over the course of his career, Zinn established himself as arguably the most influential historian in the United States. He led Americans to view their past through a more complex and often darker lens, and helped bring attention to social justice and human rights issues around the world, from Boston to Baghdad.

Although he wrote a number of books, it is his seminal text, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ for which he will most likely be remembered.

Robert Byrd, 1917-2010

Robert Byrd, the nation’s longest-serving senator, died this year. The controversial 92-year-old from West Virginia passed away in the early morning of June 28.

In November 2009, Byrd broke the record for congressional service that had been set by Democrat Carl Hayden of Arizona, who served in the House and Senate from 1912 to 1969. He was the Senate’s majority leader for six of those years and was third in the line of succession to the presidency, behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Tony Curtis, 1925-2010

Every New York kid who’s grown up struggling on the hard side of the street has the dream: Someday I’m gonna bust outta here and make it big.

Bernie Schwartz is the kid who did. He grew up to become Tony Curtis, a chiseled Hollywood hunk who lived the good life.

Hollywood legend Tony Curtis became best known for his role in ‘Some Like It Hot’ and for being the father of Jamie Lee Curtis and the ex-husband of ‘Psycho’ star Janet Leigh.

Miep Gies, 1909-2010

Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis and protected the doomed teenager’s diary for history, died at age 100. Gies was among a group of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four and four others for 25 months in a secret annex in Amsterdam during World War II.

She had been a friend of the Frank family and worked for Anne’s father in the building that became their refuge until the Nazis raided the annex and took its inhabitants to concentration camps. The diary was sheltered in a drawer of Gies’ desk – unread – and later turned over to Otto Frank when he returned after the war as the only survivor in his family. He published his daughter’s diary in 1947.

Bob Guccione, 1930-2010

Bob Guccione, who took magazine nudity to a new level — or low — with his hardcore Penthouse magazine, died of cancer at the age of 79.

The one-time New Jersey resident, whose magazine’s explicit nudity served as a raunchier rival to the more high-brow Playboy, was also a painter whose works were featured in museums such as the Nassau County Museum of Art in New York.

Guccione claimed Penthouse earned $4 billion during his reign as publisher, and he was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.