Deaths of 2017: Indiana celebrities and ‘everyday Hoosiers’ we lost

This year, like every year, Indiana lost a number of noteworthy citizens. Among them: musicians, ballplayers, sportswriters, cops, criminals, a poet, a wrestler and a guy who entertained us by taking pies to the face.

Aaron Allan — He became the first Southport Police Department officer to be killed in the line of duty. On July 27, he responded to a car accident in the suburb of Homecroft. He was shot 11 times by the driver of the crashed car, police said, who was charged with murder. Allan was 39. He is survived by a wife and son.

Dijon Anderson — He was a football star at Warren Central High School, soon to start his college career at Southern Illinois University when he was shot and killed on the city’s west side. He was 18. A classmate, Angel Mejia-Alforo, was also killed. The crimes are unsolved. 

Aaron Bailey — His death, on June 29, at the hands of police set off a controversy over the police behavior. About 200 hundred people rallied Downtown, demanding answers. Bailey, 45, was shot and killed after a traffic stop. Two IMPD officers stopped his vehicle about 1:45 a.m. near Burdsal Parkway and East Riverside Drive. About 10 minutes after the stop, Bailey took off in the vehicle, police said. The police gave chase. Bailey crashed. The officers approached his crashed vehicle and opened fire. Bailey was unarmed. His estate is suing the city of Indianapolis, its police department and the two officers who shot him.

John Bansch — A long-time Indianapolis Star sportswriter and editor, the gruff-voiced (but soft-hearted) Bansch was the first Colts beat writer, taking the assignment in 1984. He was known fondly as “the Captain.”  One of his first Colts reports began with this sentence: “Lonnie Kennel appears big enough and quick enough to go alligator hunting with his bare hands.” 

Bansch died March 8 at St. Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital in Indianapolis. He was 81.

Hope Baugh — A librarian by profession, she was also a storyteller and an advocate for the arts. She wrote theater criticism for NUVO and on her blog indytheatrehabit.com. She died Sept. 21 of complications from Evan’s Syndrome at age 56.

Chuckie Bush — He was a vocalist-keyboard player for Manchild, the Indianapolis-based soul-funk band known for launching the career of Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. During the 1970s, the group attracted crowds at East 38th Street nightclubs such as Function Junction. Manchild put out two albums, “Power and Love” and “Feel the Phuff,” before breaking up in 1980. Bush died February 6 in Las Vegas, where he was performing with funk band Cameo at Westgate Resort & Casino. He was 58.

Earl Cornwell — He carried out serious business with a showman’s flare. The city’s foremost liquidator of the estates of Indianapolis’ wealthiest, Cornwell would arrive at a mansion, assess the decedent’s possessions (including in one case the underwear of a well-known doyenne), catalog them, and later, with his folksy patter, get rid of it. “I can’t think of nothing we ain’t sold,” Cornwell told The Indianapolis Star in 2000, “except machine guns.” Cornwell died July 17 at age 92 after suffering a stroke a week earlier.

Hal Fryar — As Harlow Hickenlooper, a goofy character of his own invention, Fryar entertained generations of Indianapolis children on TV where he hosted several shows. His version of “Happy Birthday” was so over-the-top bad it was beloved. But it was his willingness to take a pie in the face that most endeared him to his youthful audience. “Kids just love silliness, particularly in the 4 to 10 age,” Fryar told IndyStar in a 1995 interview.

Fryar died June 24 at age 90.

Mari Evans — The poet and social activist was among the architects of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She first caught the public’s attention in 1970 with the publication of her second collection of poetry, “I Am A Black Woman.” Her poems were realistic and sometimes ironic, but also hopeful, even ecstatic. She ended “Who Can Be Born Black?” with these lines: “Who/ can be born/ black/ and not exult!”

Evans died March 10 at age 97.

Nicky Hayden — Known as “the Kentucky Kid,” Hayden was a champion motorcycle racer who twice had podium finishes at the Red Bull Indianapolis GP, the bike race formerly held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He died May 22, five days after being hit by a car while training on his bicycle in Cesena, Italy. Hayden was 35. 

James Hardy — He was a football star at Indiana University before being drafted into the NFL in 2008. His pro career was short-lived, however, and Hardy later may have suffered with mental illness. In 2014 in Los Angeles police arrested him for causing a disturbance. A judge ruled him not competent to stand trial. Hardy’s body was found June 7 in the Maumee River near Fort Wayne. Hardy was 31

Bobby Heenan — Known first as “Pretty Boy” Bobby Heenan and later as Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, he was pro wrestling’s cleverest villain from the 1960s through the 1980s. He worked as a wrestler and also as a manager of wrestlers. He launched his career in Indianapolis with Dick “The Bruiser” Afflis in 1965, irritating Indianapolis TV audiences and live crowds at the Tyndall Armory, Bush Stadium, Indiana Farmers Coliseum, the Indiana Convention Center and Market Square Arena well into the 1970s. Heenan died Sept. 17 at age 72 of throat cancer.

Don Jellison — He was the voice of sports in Hamilton County, a Noblesville Ledger sportswriter for more than 45 years. Jellison later plied his craft at the Noblesville Daily Times and, most recently, the Hamilton County Reporter. Jellison was inducted into both the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame and the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. He was known for not being overly critical. “If you got beat or got beat bad,” said long-time Sheridan High School football coach Larry “Bud” Wright, “he tried to see the brighter spots. He didn’t dwell on a lot of negativity.”

Jellison died Oct. 29 at age 80 after a battling pneumonia and health issues for the past year.

Mingo Jones — One of the last surviving musicians to play in the storied, long-gone jazz clubs of Indiana Avenue, Jones was primarily a bass player but also played trumpet. He performed alongside many of the top names in jazz. It was the Grammy-winning guitarist Wes Montgomery who gave Jones his shot, asking Jones to fill in on bass on a night the scheduled bassist, the acclaimed Leroy Vinnegar, failed to show. “I sat in and played the whole night,” Jones said in a 2011 interview with IndyStar. “Wes asked me back the next night.”

Jones died April 3 at age 88 of throat cancer.

Andre B. Lacy — He was a business leader and a philanthropist, the chairman of Lacy Diversified Industries, a century-old family business, and Butler University’s foremost benefactor. In 2016, Lacy and his wife, Julia, donated $25 million to Butler, which named its business school in his honor. It was the largest gift by an individual or family in Butler’s history. Lacy, a keen and experienced motorcyclist, was killed Nov. 30 in a motorcycle crash in Botswana. He was 78.

Audrey Lupton — She was a teenager who captured the hearts of her classmates and teachers at University High School in Carmel. After being diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare muscle cancer, she naturally had to miss out on some of the usual high school activities. But her friends did some inventive work-arounds: They executed her plan for the senior prank; they arranged a full-on commencement ceremony for her in the hospital. Audrey died July 6. She was 17.

Orville Lynn Majors — He was Indiana’s quietest, most low-key serial killer, a pet shop owner and hospital nurse. While employed at the Vermillion County Hospital in the early and mid-1990s, he was convicted of six murders. But authorities believe he may have killed as many as 70 elderly patients as they convalesced there. Majors died Sept. 24 of natural causes in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City where he was serving a 360-year sentence. He was 56.

Charles Manson — The wild-eyed cult leader, who in his adolescence was a juvenile delinquent in Indianapolis, directed the savage killings of seven people in Los Angeles in 1969, most famously the actress Sharon Tate. He died Nov. 19 while serving multiple life sentences in a California prison at age 83 of natural causes.

Larry McKinney — McKinney was appointed a district court judge for the Southern District of Indiana in July 1987. He became a senior judge in July 2009 and handled a number of high-profile cases, including Kyle Cox’s. Cox is the disgraced Park Tudor School basketball coach who pled guilty to charges of coercion, or enticement for exchanging explicit text messages with a 15-year-old student. McKinney died Sept. 20 at age 73.

H. Roll McLaughlin — He was an early and ardent advocate of preserving historic buildings in Indianapolis and throughout Indiana. He helped found Indiana Landmarks and, as president of the architectural firm James Associates Inc., he oversaw the restoration of a number of historic buildings in Indianapolis, including the Benjamin Harrison house, Crown Hill Cemetery’s Gothic chapel, and the J.K. Lilly house on the grounds of Newfields. McLaughlin died April 20 at 94.

Dorothy Mengering — She was kindly, unassuming “Dave’s mom,” Dave being David Letterman. But she was game, too. An Indianapolis church secretary, she proved an appealing TV correspondent on her son’s late-night TV show, contributing reports from the Olympic games and making other cameos. She died April 11 at her home in Carmel. She was 95.

Ron Meyer  — He was a career football coach who led the Colts in their early days in Indianapolis. The team was 0-13 when he was hired late in 1986. They won their last three games of the season and the next year reached the playoffs. Meyer was fired Oct. 1, 1991, after an 0-5 start. Meyer died Dec. 5 at age 76.

Erin Moran — Known widely as the child actor who played kid sister Joanie on the ’70s sitcom “Happy Days,” Moran fell into obscurity as an adult. She suffered hardship. She and her husband, Steve Fleischmann, lost their home to foreclosure in 2010. In 2011, the couple moved to Indiana to live with Fleischmann’s sick mother, according to ABC News. Moran was living in a mobile home in Harrison County when she died of cancer April 22, at age 56.

Jim Nabors — Nationally, Nabors was best known as comedic rube Gomer Pyle on the 1960s TV sitcoms “The Andy Griffith Show” and its spinoff, “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” But in Indianapolis he was taken seriously, even revered for his renditions of the song “(Back Home Again in) Indiana,” which he performed over the public address system before the start of the Indy 500 nearly every year from 1972 until 2014. Nabors died Nov. 30 at his home in Hawaii at age 87 after a long illness.

Ara Parseghian — In his 11 years coaching the Notre Dame football team, Parseghian led the team to national titles in 1966 and 1973. He took over the Fighting Irish in 1964, after a 2-7 season, and immediately went 9-1. His career record at the school was 95-17-4. Parseghian died Aug. 2 in South Bend at age 94.

Greg Perry — He was a writer, artist and civic leader and the designer of the iconic Landmark for Peace Memorial sculpture at King-Kennedy Park on Indianapolis’ near northside. He helped get off the ground two of the city’s most fun events, the Tonic Ball and the Stutz Artists Open House. Perry died on June 3 at age 56.

Patricia Roy — She was a pioneer for girls’ sports, hired by the Indiana High School Athletic Association on Jan. 1, 1972, months before Title IX. The group’s first director of girls athletics met resistance from longtime athletic directors and coaches. Roy persisted, staying on the job 27½ years at the IHSAA, the longest tenure in the IHSAA’s history. Roy died May 23 in Florida, where she lived, after an illness of several months, at the age of 78.

Sister Jane Edward Schilling — She co-founded Martin University in Indianapolis along with Father Boniface Hardin in 1970. She worked at the Indianapolis university until 2012 in a variety of roles, including executive director, academic dean and associate director, vice president of academic affairs, and vice president emeritus and historian. Schilling died Sept. 13 in St. Louis at age 87.

Scott Swingle — With his irreverent wit, Swingle cut a wide swath through the local Twitter world despite his relatively few (871) followers. Politics, beer, the Buffalo Bills, whatever, Swingle, or @ThatDickScott, had a take, and it was generally clever. When Swingle died, May 28 at the age of 36, after suffering a heart attack the day prior, some 50 Twitter accounts posted photos of glasses, cans and bottles filled with various booze. Swingle had been toasted widely. And for a short while, “@ThatDickScott” was trending.

Brody Stephens — Despite being diagnosed with cancer while still a baby, Brody showed uncanny drive and ability in youth basketball, often beating kids older than him. His courageous health battles and winning personality drew widespread attention and sympathy from some of Brody’s idols, including NBA star Steph Curry, who visited with Brody several times. Brody died April 29 of a viral complication from leukemia. He was 8.

Artie Stevens — He was a chef with a big personality who’d overcome a troubled past and was a champion of the paleo diet. He operated the Artie’s Paleo OnTheGo delivery service and Artie’s Cafe. Stevens collapsed while working Nov. 3 and died six days later at age 39 without regaining consciousness.

Joe Tiller — He was Purdue University’s all-time winningest football coach. Tiller took over the Boilermakers in 1997 and coached until 2008. The team had had just one winning season in the previous 13 years. Under Tiller Purdue played in 10 bowl games in 12 seasons. 

Tiller died Sept. 30 of natural causes in Buffalo, Wyoming. He was 74.

Mary Warble — In the 1950s she was among the first restaurateurs in Indianapolis to sell a new type of food, a doughy, hand-held thing called pizza. At a time when restaurant operators tended to be content with one-offs, and when few women owned businesses, Warble opened six more Maria’s Pizza restaurants throughout Indianapolis. Her secret: go heavy on the muenster. Warble died Nov. 7 at age 93. 

Jeff Washburn — He was a longtime former Purdue sports beat writer at the Lafayette Journal & Courier and later The Sports Xchange. He died at age 63 of esophageal cancer on Nov. 29, 19 hours after covering a Purdue basketball game, two days after covering a Colts game and three days after covering a Purdue football game. 

James Waters — He was a deputy chief of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police, having worked in law enforcement in Indianapolis for nearly 30 years. He died July 27 at age 48 following a traffic accident in Indianapolis while off duty.

Chris Wheat — He was the radio executive, the “suit,” who oversaw “Bob & Tom Show” flagship station WFBQ-FM (94.7) from 1984 to 2006. He defended the controversial morning show when it came under attack by a small but outraged organization called Decency in Broadcasting. During Wheat’s tenure, WFBQ, otherwise known as Q95, won 12 Marconi Radio Awards — the National Association of Broadcasters’ top prize. Wheat died Oct. 13 at age 66.

Tommy Wills — Known as “the Man with a Horn,” he was a saxophonist and bandleader who played Indianapolis nightclubs for more than a half century. He played the clubs on Indiana Avenue in the 1940s, and later the Rathskellar and most recently the Jazz Kitchen. He died Oct. 20 in Indianapolis at age 93.

Megan Woodward— She was a widely respected and liked English teacher at Southport High School. She died Sept. 29 of injuries she suffered falling off a car she was helping students decorate for Homecoming. She was 29.

Contact Star writer Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/2CaIzYM

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *