Ethel Funches was six days short of her 48th birthday when she teed off against Althea Gibson in the quarterfinals of the 1961 black women's golf national championship.

Gibson, the tennis champion who had recently traded in her racket for a set of clubs, was famous. Mrs. Funches, who was a cafeteria manager at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, was not. But what Mrs. Funches lacked in renown she made up for with a long drive, an elegant chip shot and a fierce distaste for losing.

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Mrs. Funches died Jan. 6 of cardiovascular disease at a D.C. nursing home. She was 96.

Rest In Peace, Ethel.

At a time when so many people could not spare a dime for a movie ticket, hundreds of thousands of youngsters hovered around big, boxy Depression-era radios in their living rooms, entranced by scripted voices and sound effects that conjured images of adventurous heroes in faraway places.

Those figures included Tarzan, Jack Armstrong, Dick Tracy and the spunky, curly-haired Little Orphan Annie, who in her high-pitched voice exclaimed, “Leapin’ lizards!” at scintillating twists in the serial plot.

In real life, the red-haired Annie was Shirley Bell, a brown-haired girl from the South Side of Chicago, who was the primary radio voice of the character from 1930 to 1940. She got the part, adapted from Harold Gray’s popular comic strip, when she was 10 and, managing to maintain that bubbly preteen voice, played Annie until she was 20.

Shirley Bell Cole died on Jan. 12 at 89, her daughter, Lori Cole, said, adding only that her mother had lived in Arizona.

Rest In Peace, Shirley.

Our family got to experience a once in a lifetime opportunity that was filled with happiness, joy, concern and deep sadness.

On Monday, January 25th, just after 1pm, a gentleman from Columbus, Georgia spotted a possible Ivory Gull on the water at West Point Lake, in Troup County, Georgia. After hearing of his report, several birders were able to get to the lake in time to positively identify the bird before the sun went down.

Being relatively new to birding, I didn’t really understand the significance of this find until later the next evening. As I sat at my desk on Tuesday, I read update after update about the Ivory Gull from several different people, so I decided to see what all the hubbub was about. A few quick searches on the Internet made it clear why everyone and their brother was excited about seeing this bird, and rushing to get a glimpse of it, especially here in Georgia.

Read the rest over on my personal website, 101 Dead Armadillos.

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son, actor Matt Salinger, said in a statement from Salinger's longtime literary representative, Harold Ober Associates, Inc. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in a small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

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In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger's "Dreamcatcher" portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues. Actor Matt Salinger, the author's other child, disputed his sister's book when it came out and labeled it "gothic tales of our supposed childhood."

"He was a caring, fun, and wonderful father to me, and a tremendous grandfather to my boys," he wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Rest In Peace, J.D.

Zelda Rubinstein, the 4-foot-3-inch character actor best known as Tangina, the psychic who tries to calm a family inhabiting a haunted house in the 1982 horror film "Poltergeist," has died. She was 76.

Her agent, Eric Stevens, tells the Los Angeles Times that Rubinstein died Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital. Stevens says she recently suffered a heart attack.

Rest In Peace, Zelda.