Departures: Pro football legend dead at 86

Mike Ditka

A football Hall of Fame coach who commanded one of the most dominant championship teams in NFL history, Ditka died Oct. 9. He was 86. Before coaching in the league, Ditka transformed football as a player. He was one of the first tight ends deployed for catching passes rather than blocking. He earned five consecutive Pro Bowl selections as a player for the Bears. Later in his playing career, he won a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys. After retiring in 1972, Ditka joined famed coach Tom Landry’s Cowboys coaching staff. By 1982, Ditka earned a head coaching position in Chicago. He led the 1985 Bears to a 15-1 record and a lopsided victory in Super Bowl XX.

Jim Bakker

A televangelist who built an audience of millions before resigning in disgrace and serving time in prison, Bakker died Oct. 5. He was 86. Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, got their start working for Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club in the 1960s. The couple eventually formed their own show, The PTL Club, and enticed millions of viewers in the 1970s and ’80s with a prosperity gospel. Bakker’s career derailed in 1987 when it was revealed he paid a young secretary hush money to conceal rape allegations. The next year, he faced federal charges for illegally using ministry money to fund his lavish lifestyle. He served five years in prison for fraud. After prison, he resumed broadcasting, hawking survivalist gear while prophesying about the end times.

Dennis Hastert

An Illinois high school wrestling coach whose second act as a politician saw him rise to the top spot in the House of Representatives before his career crumbled amid a sex scandal, Hastert died Oct. 3. He was 84. Hastert first won election to Congress in 1986. When Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker of the House in 1998, Hastert maneuvered among the Republican majority to win the post. As speaker, Hastert initiated a rule that bore his name: No legislation could come for a vote unless it could win a majority of the majority party. In 2016, years after resigning from Congress, he confessed to sexually abusing boys in the wrestling program he coached before he entered politics. Hastert served 13 months in prison.

Bob Pettit

A pioneering basketball big man who became one of the sport’s first shining lights, Pettit died Sept. 23. He was 93. After initially failing to make his high school team, Pettit honed his skills on a makeshift hoop at his Baton Rouge, La., home, eventually making the team and earning an offer to play at LSU. The Milwaukee Hawks drafted Pettit in 1954, the year before the team moved to St. Louis. The 6-foot-9 power forward won the league’s inaugural MVP award in 1956 by becoming a dominant scorer and rebounder. When he retired in 1965, he’d become an NBA champion and the league’s first player to reach 20,000 points. Pettit was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970.

Annie Dillard

An author and writer whose 1974 naturalist reflection made her a literary sensation in her 20s, Dillard died Sept. 15. She was 81. The daughter of a Pennsylvania oil executive, Dillard turned her meditations about Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains into a critically acclaimed nonfiction title, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Earning comparisons to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, the book won Dillard a Pulitzer Prize and became so popular it required eight printings in its first two years. She later published a memoir, An American Childhood, and a collection of essays titled The Writing Life. Dillard wrote often about religion, dismissing some of the dogmas of her childhood faith but affirming in 2020 that she still considered herself a Christian.