Meg Wynn Owen obit

Meg Wynn Owen obituary

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Actor who starred in the hit TV drama Upstairs Downstairs, and watched Hugh Grant dance in Love Actually 

She was not on the list.

The actor Meg Wynn Owen, who has died aged 82 after suffering from dementia, was at the heart of the action in the TV period drama Upstairs Downstairs when it was at the height of its success. She played Hazel Forrest, the secretary who marries the son of the aristocratic Bellamy household at 165 Eaton Place, Belgravia, London.

 

Owen joined the series for its third run, in 1973, two years after the programme first captivated viewers with its tales of masters and servants above and below stairs in the first three decades of the 20th century. By then, it had built up an audience of up to 300 million in 50 countries.

 

She left at the end of the third series, in 1974, when Hazel died of Spanish flu days before the end of the first world war. Owen was always keen to move on to new pastures and originally had to be persuaded to take the long-running part.

 

Later, in the cinema, she was in one of the most memorable scenes of the 2003 romcom Love Actually. Playing the secretary of Hugh Grant’s prime minister, she discovers him dancing around Downing Street to the Pointer Sisters hit Jump (For My Love).

 

Meg was born in Lancaster, to Margaret (nee Brinnand) and Miles Shuttleworth. Aged 13, she left her family to be brought up in the Yorkshire West Riding village of Hoyland, near Barnsley (now part of South Yorkshire), by Ruth Wynn Owen, an actor and friend of her mother, and Ruth’s husband, Ian Danby, a former reporter on the Yorkshire Post who was working as a sales rep in the coal industry.

 

Your next box set: Upstairs, Downstairs

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Ruth, who had performed on the West End stage, was a drama coach and producer of local plays – the actors Patrick Stewart and Brian Blessed were among her students. From the age of 14, Meg performed in her productions. Then, on graduating from Rada in 1956, taking the professional name Meg Wynn Owen, she gained repertory theatre experience in Swansea, Pitlochry, Birmingham and Sheffield.

She regularly acted in BBC radio plays from 1960 to 2005, including roles as Catherine Linton in Heathcliff (1967), Elizabeth Jane in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1968-69) and the title part in Jane Eyre (1972).

Owen made her first impact on television in The Franchise Affair, a 1962 adaptation of Josephine Tey’s mystery novel about the alleged kidnapping and beating by a mother and daughter of a 15-year-old war orphan, Betty Kane, played by Owen. She was then seen in Sunday-teatime serials, starring as Ann Farrance, also involved in a kidnap drama, in The River Flows East (1962) before playing Annie Ridd in Lorna Doone (1963).

A year later, she took the title role in Esther Waters, based on George Moore’s Victorian novel about a young kitchen maid who becomes pregnant and brings her child up as a single mother. Then came the part of Ruth King, one of the family running a sail-driven barge transport business, in King of the River (1966-67).

After Upstairs Downstairs, Owen remained a prolific character actor on television, with roles such as Anne Shakespeare, the Bard’s wife, in the 1978 series Will Shakespeare, and Elizabeth Harte, mother of Emma, the Yorkshire servant who becomes one of the world’s richest women, in the 1985 American mini-series adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel A Woman of Substance.

Her occasional film parts included the maid Lily Smalls in the 1971 version of Under Milk Wood; Lewis, maid to Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) in Gosford Park (2001); Lady Crawley in Vanity Fair (2004); and housekeepers to the Darcy family in Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Hugh Jackman’s murderous aristocrat in Scoop (2006).

On stage, she played Gwendolen Carr in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties at both the Aldwych and Albery theatres in 1975. She and the cast then performed it in a five-month run on Broadway (1975-76).

Owen was married to William Wright from 1967 to 1987, becoming Margaret Wright, before the marriage ending in divorce. She died in June this year, but the news of her death became public only five months later, when a costume designer friend was jailed for swindling Owen out of her life savings.

 Meg Wynn Owen (Margaret Shuttleworth), actor, born 8 November 1939; died June 2022.

 

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Hershel W. Williams obit

Hershel Williams, last surviving WWII Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 98

Legendary soldier was awarded medal for service at Iwo Jima.

 

 He was not on the list.

Hershel W. "Woody" Williams," the last of fewer than 500 soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II, died on Wednesday. He was 98.

Williams was awarded the distinguished medal for service during the Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945, during which he took out several Japanese machine gun nests.

Born in 1924, Williams was 22 when awarded the medal. Several years ago described receiving it as a "lifesaver," as it "forced me to talk about the experiences that I had, which was a therapy that I didn’t even know I was doing."

The soldier served in the Marines for 20 years subsequent to World War II, eventually working for the remainder of his professional life at the Veterans Administration.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday said Williams would "go down in history" in his home state as "one of the greatest West Virginians who ever lived."

"[W]e salute him for everything he gave to our state and our nation," Justice said.

Williams, the youngest of eleven children, was born in Quiet Dell, Marion County, West Virginia, on October 2, 1923, and raised on a dairy farm in the area. At birth, Williams weighed 3+1⁄2 pounds and was not expected to live. His mother, Lurenna, decided to name him after the doctor who arrived at their farm several days after his birth. By the time he was 11, his father, Lloyd, had died of a heart attack and several of his siblings had died due to a flu pandemic.

Williams worked a series of odd jobs in the area, including as a truck driver for W.S. Harr Construction Company of Fairmont, West Virginia, and as a taxi driver. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was working in Montana as a Civilian Conservation Corps enrollee.

Williams received his recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, California. Upon completion, he was sent to the Camp Elliott training center in San Diego, where he joined the tank training battalion on August 21, 1943. The following month he was transferred to the training center's infantry battalion for instruction as a demolition man and in the use of flamethrowers. The training, Williams said, was technical and focused on the flamethrower's design: three tanks, two of which held a mix of diesel fuel and aviation gas, and a third tank that held compressed air. There was little training on the operational use of the weapon. "We had to learn that ourselves", he said.

Williams was assigned to the 32nd Replacement Battalion on October 30, 1943, and left for New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific on December 3 aboard the M.S. Weltey Reden. In January 1944, he joined Company C, 1st Battalion, 21st Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division at Guadalcanal. In July and August 1944, he was attached to Headquarters Company and participated in action against the Japanese during the Battle of Guam. In October, he rejoined Company C.

Jim Pappin obit

Former Chicago Blackhawks player Jim Pappin dead at 82

 

He was not on the list.

Former Hawks' player Jim Pappin dead at 82 originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago.

Former Chicago Blackhawks winger Jim Pappin died at the age of 82. He was born in
Sudbury, Ontario.

The news of his death was shared by another one of his former teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Pappin won the Stanley Cup with the Maple Leafs in 1964 and 1967.

After spending his entire career with Toronto up until that point, Pappin joined the Hawks in the 1968-69 season. He had a solid first campaign where he played 75 games, scored 30 goals and contributed 40 assists. His best season came in 1972-73 where he played 76 games and scored 41 goals alongside 51 assists.

The Hawks also expressed their condolences.

He played seven seasons with the Hawks, tallying 466 games, 216 goals, 228 assists and 444 points. With his 216 goals, Pappin ranks 17th in all-time goal scorers for the Hawks. During his time with Chicago, he never finished a season scoring fewer than 22 goals.

Pappin finished out his NHL career in 1976 with the Cleveland Barons.

He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Black Hawks, California Golden Seals, and Cleveland Barons from 1963 to 1977. He won the Stanley Cup in 1964 and 1967 with the Leafs. Pappin led the league in playoff goals and points in 1967 with four goals and six assists in the Finals, including the Cup-winning goal in Game 6 on May 2, 1967.

After playing for the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League (AHL) in the early 1960s, Pappin played in 767 NHL games between 1963 and 1977, scoring 278 goals and 295 assists for 573 points. The 1972–73 season was his statistical best, when he scored 41 goals and 92 points with Chicago.

Pappin was added to the Toronto Maple Leafs roster during the 1963–64 season. He made his NHL debut for the franchise on November 23, 1963,[8] against the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. He continued to go back and forth between the Leafs and its Rochester affiliate throughout his tenure with the franchise. He won his first Stanley Cup in 1964, and played in his first NHL All-Star Game later that year.

During the 1966–67 season, Pappin led the league in game-winning goals and finished eighth in shooting percentage (15.3) and power-play goals (6). He went on to win his second Stanley Cup championship that same season, scoring the series-winning goal in Game 6. At the time of his death in 2022, it was the Leafs most recent championship-clinching goal. Although his shot was deflected in off the skate of teammate Pete Stemkowski and credit was given to the latter at first, they privately agreed to give Pappin the goal as he was in the running for a contract bonus should he score the most goals in that year's Stanley Cup playoffs. Pappin reportedly accorded Stemkowski with unlimited access to the backyard pool that he constructed with the bonus payment.

Pappin appeared in his second All-Star Game in 1968. He was traded to the Chicago Black Hawks on May 23 that same year in exchange for Pierre Pilote. The move aggrieved Pappin and spurred him to give his 1967 championship ring to his father-in-law.

During his first season with the Black Hawks, Pappin finished fourth in the NHL in game-winning goals (7) and fifth in shooting percentage (17.7). In the 1972–73 season – arguably Pappin's best season as a professional – he recorded career-highs in goals (41), assists (51), and points (92). He finished third in the league in shooting percentage (22.5), sixth in goals, seventh in goals per game (0.54), eighth in points per game (1.21), and tenth in points. He was also named to his third All-Star Game that year. Pappin proceeded to lead the league in games played with 78 the following season, and was again selected to the All-Star Game that year. He played in his fifth and final All-Star Game in 1975 and posted the second-best shooting percentage (23.1) in the NHL that year after Peter McNab.

Pappin was traded to the California Golden Seals on June 1, 1975, in exchange for Joey Johnston. He played his final two seasons for the franchise, which relocated to Cleveland to become the Cleveland Barons in 1976. He played his final NHL game on December 11, 1976, at the age of 37. Three days later, he notified general manager Bill McCreary Sr. of his retirement.

After retiring from professional hockey, Pappin worked as a scout for the Black Hawks. He continued in that capacity until the middle of the 1984–85 season, when he was hired as a replacement head coach of the International Hockey League's Milwaukee Admirals. During his tenure, the team posted a record of 12 wins and 14 losses. He subsequently returned to the Black Hawks as its director of U.S. scouting. He later scouted for the St. Louis Blues and Anaheim Ducks

Aside from hockey, Pappin had a keen interest in harness racing and owned several standardbred horses. He also became a ran a tennis facility in his hometown. In 2007, his lost 1967 Stanley Cup ring was found by treasure hunter Mark DesErmia in the Gulf of Mexico. Pappin eventually struck a deal with the treasure hunter and the ring was returned for a reward.