Departures: Apollo 13 astronaut dies at 97

Jim Lovell

An astronaut who narrowly avoided becoming one of the first men to die in space, James A. Lovell Jr. died at his home in Lake Forest, Ill., on Aug. 7. He was 97. Lovell flew two Gemini missions before being selected for the agency’s Apollo program. In 1968, Lovell and his two Apollo 8 crewmates became the first to leave Earth’s gravity well and orbit the moon. In 1970, Lovell commanded the Apollo 13 mission and would have become the fifth person to walk on the moon. When an oxygen tank exploded en route, the crew found themselves in a struggle for survival. Treating the lunar module as a lifeboat, Lovell, his crewmates, and NASA officials improvised the team’s path back to Earth.

Hulk Hogan

A professional wrestler who body-slammed and leg-dropped his way into global stardom, Hogan died July 24 at the age of 71. Born Terry Bollea, the Florida-reared wrestler competed under various monikers across wrestling circuits before joining Vincent McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation as Hulk Hogan in 1979. Initially taking a bad-guy persona, Hogan quickly became an American face in Cold War storylines of the 1980s. The wrestling may have been fake, but Hogan’s popularity was real: His improvised body slam of Andre the Giant in front of 93,000 fans in WrestleMania III became one of wrestling’s most indelible moments. Hogan was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.

Ozzy Osbourne

A pioneering heavy metal singer who found a second career as an affable—if drug addled—reality TV star, Osbourne died July 22. He was 76. Osbourne co-founded heavy metal group Black Sabbath in 1968 and, throughout the 1970s, employed controversy to generate popularity. Osbourne’s dabbling with the occult through his Prince of Darkness persona drew criticism but also drove millions of record sales. In 2002, the singer traded in his bat-biting act for a spot on reality TV, starring in MTV’s The Osbournes from 2002 until 2005. Slowed by a history of drug abuse and Parkinson’s, his show and subsequent spinoffs projected a softer, less hostile image that won over a new generation of fans.

Edwin Feulner

A former congressional aide who founded an influential conservative think tank and rewrote the rules of Washington, D.C., advocacy, Feulner died July 18. He was 83. Feulner’s career as a political operative was buoyed by stints working for Melvin Laird and Philip Crane—both Republican members of Congress. In 1973, Feulner co-founded the Heritage Foundation as a conservative counterbalance to the Brookings Institution. Feulner would serve as the organization’s president from 1977 until 2013. Under Feulner’s leadership, Heritage adopted new strategies to affect public policymaking, including page limits on policy briefs and release of reports prior to legislation introduction to help shape the debate.

Bill Clay

A representative from St. Louis who used his position in the U.S. House of Representa­tives as a platform to advocate for poor blacks, William L. Clay Sr. died July 16. He was 94. After a stint as a city alderman and civil rights agitator, Clay won a place in the House in a newly formed district in Missouri in 1968. Clay earned notoriety picking fights with Richard Nixon, leading a boycott of the president’s 1971 State of the Union address. Weeks later, Clay became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1993, Clay helped shepherd revisions to the Hatch Act designed to make it easier for government employees to politic for candidates. Clay retired from Congress in 2001.