Three gems.
Croce
Morrison
Hendrix
Carl Sagan.
Anne Frank
Mahatma Gandhi
Johann Sebastian Bach
King Henry VIII - Just to see how many more wives he would of had.
Alexander the Great
Harold (the king who died at Hastings)
McKinley. Because of Roosevelt we got Wilson and progressivism, the 16th Amendment, the Fed, etc.
Babe Ruth, Andrew Brietbart and Franklin Roosevelt
Andy Kaufman,
Phil Hartman,
Gilda Radner
Zachary Taylor, 12th President of the United States. Died at 65 years of age. He was a Southerner, ho abhorred slavery and didn't want to see it spread. He died in his second year in office. Without Fillmore and then Buchanan as Presidents following him, the Union might have survived.
Theodore Roosevelt. 26th President of the United States. Was only 60 at his death. He was seriously thinking of running in 1920. I think had he done so, he would have kept the country strong, both militarily and economically. Maybe we could have got four terms out of him rather than his socialist cousin, Franklin.
Just a few of my favorites, who should have lived longer: GEN Robert E. Lee, LTG George Patton, Jr, President Thomas Jefferson, MAJ Audie Murphy & Patsy Cline.
Yours, TMN78247
Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Lee. Elliott Smith.
Karen Carpenter
You know, you never see people put on this list “Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan”...
In the TV sitcoms department, my choices would have to be Selma Diamond (Night Court) and Jack Soo (Barney Miller).
Not wanting to take anything away from later Night Court stars like Markie Post and Marsha Warfield and that Barney Miller was that very decent show all of it’s years of being made, but the eras of those shows that featured Jack and Selma were that much better and in some cases so sidesplitting funny (particularly Barney Miller episodes featuring Soo).
Many of the names on this list were already old, (Washington, Reagan, etc) so adding more years to their lives wouldn’t have much mattered.
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee were three who could have been productive.
Any three servicemen who died since 9/11. They would be important to a couple generation of their families.
Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy
I felt the world was less magical when they passed.
Mark Bolan
Leslie Nielsen
Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.
For non-politicians, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, and the Israelis killed in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
My Mom (age 44)
My little sister(age 26)
Thurman Munson
And everyone else who chose Buddy Holly-— I love you.
Who was Rod Sterling?
1. JOHN F KENNEDY (Whose tragic murder gave the nation LBJ/Vietnam/Unnatural Dem Congressional Majorities in 1964 and the resulting catastrophic ‘Great Society’ and Third-World-open-door immigration bills), and
2. THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Because he was a shoo-in for the 1920 GOP nomination and another term as president).
I could come up with more names, but these two were obvious. The reason for the order is that another term of TR would not have changed the nation’s future much for the better (in fact, it may have been significantly worse that the Harding/Coolidge presidency as Coolidge is one of our most underrated presidents).
JFK’s murder was a real tragedy for the nation. Weak as he had been in dealing with Cuba and the Russians, he was unlikely to have dragged us into Vietnam (he listened to Gen Douglas MacArthur’s repeated advice to stay the He** out of a land war in Asia in their several meetings and quoted it to his cabinet members often), plus he was the last national Democrat who truly understood, appreciated and approved of Capitalism.
Even his slow movement on the liberal icon of the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ is, I would argue, a positive thing in our review of history, as slower pace of social change is always - ALWAYS - less disruptive to a nation that a pell-mell rush forward ...