Life in the Garden

Matters of Life and Death

obituaries

A Hui Kaua Kevin Curran

Our deepest sympathies to the Curran family on the loss of Kevin.

Curran, 42, of Ozark, Mo., died Saturday after the rental car he was driving plunged 140 feet off a West Maui cliff into the ocean while on his honeymoon. He would have been 43 today.

The couple married May 5 in Eureka Springs, Ark., and arrived on Maui on May 13.

Maui police reported that on Saturday, May 19th, Curran was driving a 2006 Ford Mustang southbound on Honoapiilani Highway in West Maui when the car ran off the road during a left turn and landed in the ocean 140 feet below.

Survivors include his wife Jill, two daughters, age 13 and 16; parents; two brothers; two sisters; and several nieces and nephews.

Heartbreaking story in the Star Bulletin

Honoring Thomas and Section 60

Our hearts go out to the mother in Southern California who lost her son last month in a motorcycle accident. He died doing what he loved.

Remember Thomas, her only son. Here’s his My Space page courtesy of his mom.

Then we read about Section 60 at Arlington in the Washington Post. Login may be needed.

In Section 60, death remains too fresh to be separated from life.

You see it in the 17 cigars pushed into the grass near one headstone, signs that a combat unit stopped by. Here in Section 60 are the graves of 336 men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan — almost one in 10 of the dead. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have produced the highest percentage of burials at Arlington National Cemetery from any war. For the duration of this war, there have been few photographs of coffins returning home.

In May 2005, Beth Belle’s son, Nicholas Kirven, was the first to be buried in a brand-new row of graves. Two years later, five rows extend from his headstone.

Section 60 is the one place to get a sense of the immensity of the nation’s loss.

Today’s tip: If you’ve never been to Arlington National Cemetery– GO!

Teddy Badley- That Cat Played a Bad Tamborine

CBS newsman Ed Bradley was a big fan of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, KATC-TV reports. On Friday, the Jazz Fest honored his memory and his two decades of support with an opening day jazz funeral procession, complete with two brass bands. Bradley, who died in November, had wanted to be remembered at the festival with a “second line” parade, so called because watchers often fall in to form a second line of paraders. “He put it in his will. He wanted a second line and a New Orleans brass band and Quint Davis to put it all together,” said his widow, Patricia Blanchet.

Davis, the festival producer, unveiled two portraits of Bradley painted on large pieces of wood _ one a larger-than-life picture of his face, the other showing Bradley in a golf cart that he used to drive to get from stage to stage at the festival. The portraits will be part of the festival’s annual “ancestors” exhibit, likenesses of people important to the festival and it’s musical legacy. His voice breaking, an emotional Davis said: “We are happy to be sad and say, `You will always be here at Jazz Fest.'”

Davis introduced singer Jimmy Buffett as the person who first brought Bradley to the festival in the 1980s, and the first to pull him up on stage and hand him a tambourine. “Bless you Father for bringing us a really bad tambourine player but a great friend,” Buffett said Friday. Buffett took credit for giving Bradley the nickname “Teddy Badly.”

About 45 of Bradley’s friends participating in the parade wore small green pins with the name “Teddy” printed on them.

Bradley’s admirers began posting suggestions that he be honored with a jazz funeral on the festival Web site’s message boards soon after his death. Someone signing in as “chicagomike” wrote, “I make a motion to request a Ed Bradley Funeral Parade at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Other fans followed up with stories of meeting Bradley at music clubs around New Orleans and of seeing him on stage at the Jazz Fest. “Breambob” wrote of admiring Bradley’s bravery reporting from Vietnam in the ’70s, and telling him so when Bradley stepped up next to him at a New Orleans bar in the early ’90s. “I offered to buy him a drink and told him that story. He insisted on buying me one. Kind, generous, wise and extremely talented. And he truly loved New Orleans,” Breambob wrote.

In a CBS interview the day after Bradley’s death, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis told Steve Kroft of 60 minutes that Bradley loved sharing a stage with musicians. “He would be up on the stage, you know; he wanted to be playing with cats. So he’d get him a tambourine,” Marsalis told Kroft.

Goodbye Little Sweetie

Asia’s richest woman, Nina Wang, the famously frugal Hong Kong tycoon who died last week, is to get a hugely lavish, no-expense-spared send-off April 18, reports Agence France Presse. Wang’s family is spending millions of dollars on flowers for the funeral of the late head of the Chinechem property business.

Wang, known in Asia as “Little Sweetie”, died April 3 aged 69, had a 4.2 billion dollar fortune, was famous for wearing discounted clothes and dining out at fast-food restaurants. She built up the Chinachem Group into one of the city’s largest private companies after inheriting it from her husband Teddy Wang, who disappeared in 1990, believed kidnapped.

Nina, who famously sported mini-skirts and pig-tails well into her 60s, died leaving no heirs and never publicly named a beneficiary. Her lawyer Jonathan Midgely is reported to have said she left her fortune to just one person, but would not reveal the identity of this person until at least after her funeral. She will be cremated and buried in a Catholic ceremony.

Wang, ranked by Forbes Magazine as Asia’s 35th richest person, had no children but is survived by at least one brother and reportedly other siblings.

Lawyer Wong Tak-sing said under Hong Kong law Nina Wang’s brothers and sisters could apply to inherit her fortune if she did not have a will. Wang’s nieces or nephews could share the wealth as well if their parents had died.

Wang successfully battled her father-in-law for a multi-billion dollar estate left by her late husband Teddy Wang, a property tycoon who vanished more than a decade ago.

Central to the marathon probate case was a handwritten will that Wang said was penned and signed by Teddy in March 1990, a month before he was kidnapped and never seen again. Some reports at the time said Teddy was gagged and bound and thrown out to sea from a Chinese “sampan” boat.

Teddy was also kidnapped in 1983 when his car was hijacked, and only released — left in an iron box at the side of a road — after Nina paid an $11 million ransom.