Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics History Roundtable The Passing Parade: Obituaries: 2015

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, the former president of the University of Notre Dame who stood up to both the White House and the Vatican as he transformed Catholic higher education in America and raised a powerful moral voice in national affairs, died late Thursday in South Bend, Ind. He was 97.

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

Malcolm Boyd (June 8, 1923 – February 27, 2015) was an American Episcopal priest and author. He was active in the civil rights movement as one of the Freedom Riders in 1961 and as a minister. Boyd reached people with his book of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? (1965), which became a bestseller.[1] In 2005 it was published in a 40th-anniversary edition. Boyd also was active in the anti-war movement.

In 1977 Boyd "came out", revealing that he was homosexual and becoming a spokesman for gay rights. In 2013 he served as a poet/writer in residence at St. Paul Cathedral in Los Angeles.

Minnie Minoso, the hugely popular All-Star outfielder from Cuba who became the major league’s first black player out of Latin America and a treasured figure in the history of the Chicago White Sox, died on Sunday in Chicago. His true age was never entirely clear, but by an account in his autobiography, he would have been 89 when he died.

M. Stanton Evans, arguably the funniest serious man in America for much of his 80 years on the planet, died Tuesday after a long bout with pancreatic cancer.

For most of his life, as Mr. Evans watched fellow conservatives come and go, he lamented — always with humor, not bitterness — their tendency to catch “Potomac fever” as soon as they come to power.

“When our people get to the point where they can do us some good, they stop being our people,” he said, uttering what became known as “Evans‘ Law of Politics.”