Given recent instances of white supremacy, it's easy to believe that the Civil War isn't "really over." But 2020 saw the deaths of the the last surviving recipient of a pension from the war, and the last surviving widow of a veteran of the war -- not the same person.
Irene Triplett had collected a pension from the State of North Carolina since the death of her veteran father in 1938. She died at age 90 on May 31. Helen Viola Jackson married Union veteran James Bolin in 1936, when he was 93 and she was 17, and was widowed in 1939, but refused her pension from the State of Missouri after being threatened by Bolin's daughters from her previous marriage. She died at age 101 on December 16, 2020.
* December 1, 1952: Vittorio Orlando, 92, Prime Minister of Italy, last of the Big Four leaders at the Paris Peace Conference of January 18 to June 28, 1919. 33 years. President Woodrow Wilson died in 1924, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France in 1929, and Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain in 1945.
* March 8, 1953: Charles Wallace Warden, 99, the last surviving British soldier of the Anglo-Zulu War, which ended on July 4, 1879. 74 years.
* December 2, 1961: Laura Bullion, a.k.a. the Thorny Rose, 95, the last survivor of the Wild Bunch, the Wild West gang led by Robert L. Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, which broke up when Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, fled America for Bolivia in 1901. 60 years.
The official story has it that Butch and Sundance were killed by the Bolivian Army in 1908. There is evidence, although hardly conclusive, that both men lived a bit longer than that. But there is, as yet, no evidence that they, or any other member of the gang, outlived Laura Bullion.
* March 10, 1962: John Henry Turpin, 85, the last survivor of the sinking of the USS Maine, in Havana, Cuba, February 15, 1898. 64 years.
* September 20, 1964: Jennings J. Dunlap, 84, the last survivor of "The Wreck of the Old 97," a Southern Railway mail train derailment that killed 11 people near Danville, Virginia on September 27, 1903. 61 years. The wreck inspired a folk song, and its melody inspired another, "M.T.A." (a.k.a. "Charlie on the... ").
* September 7, 1970: Donald B. MacMillan, 95, last survivor of the team that has gotten the official credit for being the 1st to reach the North Pole, commanded by Robert Peary, April 6, 1909. 61 years.
* September 23, 1972: Peter Mills, 111, who appears to have been the last surviving person to have been legally enslaved in America, after the 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. 107 years. Born in Maryland, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he became a sewer worker and an amateur baseball player. And he didn't die of old age, either: He was hit by a car.
* December 24, 1985: Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, 81, the last known descendant of Abraham Lincoln, who died on April 15, 1865. 120 years. It still beats the last living descendant of George Washington, because Washington had no known children. Beckwith was a great-grandson of Honest Abe, his mother being Jessie Harlan Lincoln, whose mother was Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe's son.
* August 17, 1987: Rudolf Hess, 93, the last surviving major Nazi official, after V-E Day, May 8, 1945. 43 years.
* May 9, 1989: Kenneth A. Roberts, 76, the last of the 5 Congressmen wounded in the U.S. Capitol shooting incident, March 1, 1954. 35 years. He was a Democrat from Alabama, and served from 1951 to 1965.
* July 3, 1989: Verde Clark Graff, 97, the last survivor of the Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago, December 30, 1903. 86 years.
* June 11, 1990: Vaso Cubrilovic, 93, the last surviving conspirator in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, sparking World War I, June 28, 1914. 76 years.
* July 2, 1992: Charles F. Brannan, 88, the last surviving member of the Cabinet of President Harry S Truman, which left office on January 20, 1953. 39 years. He was Secretary of Agriculture in the 2nd term.
* September 10, 1992: Nathan Cook, 106, the last surviving veteran of the Boxer Rebellion, which ended on September 7, 1901. 91 years. He was also the last surviving veteran of the Philippine Campaign, which ended on July 2, 1902. 90 years.
* March 16, 1993: Ralph Fults, 82, the last survivor of the Barrow Gang, whose reign of robbery ended when Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed by a posse outside Gibsland, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934. 59 years.
* April 12, 1993: George F. Ives, 111, the last known veteran of the Boer War, which ended on May 31, 1902. 91 years.
* August 29, 1993: Jones Morgan, 110, the last surviving veteran of the Spanish-American War, April 21 to August 13, 1898. 95 years.
* May 15, 1995: Grace Hanagan, 87, the last survivor of the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland, in the St. Lawrence River outside Métis-sur-Mer, Quebec, on May 29, 1914. 81 years.
* May 16, 1995: Harold Schultz, 69, the last survivor of the flag-raisers at the Battle of Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945. 50 years.
* October 8, 1995: John Cairncross, 82, the last survivor of the Cambridge Five, British secret agents who were exposed as also working for the Soviet Union, exposed when Kim Philby's defection was announced on July 30, 1963. 32 years.
The others were exposed years before, but Philby avoided prosecution before finally being revealed. Guy Burgess died within days of Philby's official defection. Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt both died in March 1983, and Philby died in 1988.
* January 22, 1996: Lilly Kempson, 99, the last participant in the Easter Rising, considered the founding of the Republic of Ireland, April 30, 1916. 80 years.
* March 20, 1997: Frank Shomo, 108, the last survivor of the Johnstown Flood in Western Pennsylvania, May 31, 1889. 108 years, as he was an infant at the time.
* February 15, 1998: Martha Gellhorn, 89, the 3rd and last surviving ex-wife of Ernest Hemingway, who died in 1961. 37 years. Pauline Pfeiffer, the 2nd wife, died in 1951. Hadley Richardson, the 1st wife, died in 1979. Mary Welsh, the 4th and last wife, died in 1986.
She was also the only woman in the D-Day invasion: She locked herself in a ship's bathroom, hid there overnight, took pictures and wrote her story.
* March 21, 1998: Albert H. Wolff, 95, the last survivor of Eliot Ness' Department of the Treasury team, known as "The Untouchables." Al Capone was convicted on October 17, 1931, so, 67 years.
* January 24, 2000: Alexander Heron, 105, the last surviving builder of the Panama Canal, which was finished on August 15, 1914. 85 years.
* January 2, 2001: William P. Rogers, 87, the last surviving member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Cabinet, which left office on January 20, 1961. 40 years. He was Attorney General for Ike's 2nd term. He was also Secretary of State for President Richard Nixon's 1st term, but Nixon usually sidestepped him for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, until Rogers quit out of frustration on September 3, 1973.
* February 15, 2001: Rose Freedman, 107, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York, March 25, 1911. 90 years.
* August 21, 2001: Gerard Zinser, 83, the last surviving crewman of John F. Kennedy's PT-109, sunk on August 2, 1943. 58 years.
* April 15, 2002: Byron White, 84, the last surviving Justice of the Supreme Court that decided, in
Reynolds vs. Sims, that legislative districts within a State, for either Congress or the State legislature, had to be roughly equal in size -- a principle then known as "One man, one vote" (now, "One person, one vote"), June 15, 1964. 38 years.
White was also the last surviving Justice of the Supreme Court that decided, in United States v. Nixon, that President Richard M. Nixon had to turn all of the audiotapes recorded in the Oval Office over to the Office of the Special Counsel, investigating the Watergate scandal, August 5, 1974. 28 years. William Rehnquist lived until 2005, 31 years, but, because he was working in the U.S. Department of Justice when the taping system was installed, he correctly recused himself from the decision, and so the vote was unanimous, but 8-0 instead of 9-0.
White had been an All-America football and basketball player at the University of Colorado, and played in the NFL with the Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers before leaving football for the legal profession.
* May 11, 2002: Joseph Bonnano, 97, the last survivor of the men who gave their names to New York organized crime's "Five Families." Their founding dates are all separate, so it's pointless to say how many years it was. Tommy Lucchese died in 1967, Vito Genovese in 1969, Carlo Gambino in 1976, and Joseph Colombo in 1978.
* August 4, 2003: John J. Rhodes, 86, the last surviving person in the Oval Office when Republican leaders of Congress went to see President Richard Nixon and told him that they didn't have the votes to prevent his impeachment and removal from office, and that the only way to avoid it was to resign, August 7, 1974.
Rhodes, of Arizona, was the House Minority Leader. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania was the Senate Minority Leader, and he died in 1994, 3 months after Nixon himself did. Senator Barry Goldwater, like Rhodes from Arizona, and considered the leader of the Republican Party's conservative movement, was also there, to let him know that the hardest core of his support was gone; he died in 1998.
* August 16, 2003: Thomas J. Brewer, the last surviving juror of the "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, who reached a verdict of "Guilty" on July 21, 1925.
* January 26, 2004: Adella Wotherspoon, 100, the last survivor of the PS General Slocum Fire on the East River in New York, June 15, 1904. Just short of 100 years, as she was another infant survivor.
* November 14, 2004: Maude Conic, 106, the last survivor of the Galveston Hurricane, September 12, 1900. 104 years.
* March 17, 2005: Elma Damrell, 95, the last survivor of the Italian Hall disaster in Calumet, Michigan, December 24, 1913. 91 years.
* September 3, 2005: William Rehnquist, 80, the last surviving Justice of the Supreme Court that decided, in Roe v. Wade, that the States had no right to ban abortions, January 22, 1973. 32 years. The vote was 7-2, and Rehnquist and Byron White were the dissenters.
* December 6, 2005: Gene Bruce, 98, the last survivor of the Honda Point Disaster, when 7 U.S. Navy destroyers ran aground at night near Lompoc, California, September 8, 1923. 82 years.
* September 1, 2006: Nellie Connally, 87, the last surviving person who had been in the car in which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. 53 years. Her husband, Governor John Connally of Texas, died in 1993; JFK's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, died in 1994; and the driver, Secret Service Agent William Greer, died in 1985.
Technically, Secret Service Agent Clint Hill could be considered "the last surviving person who had been in the car," but he wasn't in it when the shots were fired. He died on February 21, 2025, at age 93.
* September 27, 2006: Frank Sublett, 86, the last member of the Golden Thirteen, the 1st African-American U.S. Navy enlisted men who were made officers, March 17, 1944. 62 years.
* December 26, 2006: Gerald Ford, 93, the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, tasked with determining, since there would be no trial as the main suspect had himself been killed, who killed President John F. Kennedy; who killed the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald; and whether there was a conspiracy to kill either. The Commission issued its report on September 24, 1964. 43 years.
Ford, who later served as the 38th President of the United States, insisted to the end, as did all members of the Commission, that Oswald acted alone in killing JFK, and that Jack Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald.
* December 27, 2006: Boris Gudz, 104, the last survivor of the October Revolution, a.k.a. the Bolshevik Revolution, November 7, 1917. 89 years.
* October 2, 2007: Dan Keating, 105, the last surviving veteran of the Irish War of Independence, which ended on July 11, 1921. 86 years.
* January 2, 2009: Vasco Bruttomesso, 105, the last surviving veteran of the March On Rome that established Benito Mussolini's Fascist government in Italy, October 29, 1922. 86 years. He later served as Mayor of Carbonate, Italy. To the end, he was unrepentant.
* May 31, 2009: Millvina Dean, 97, the last survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, April 15, 1912. 97 years. Another infant survivor with no memory of the event.
* December 25, 2009: Knut Haugland, 92, the last survivor of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition, which completed its journey on August 7, 1947. 62 years.
* January 11, 2010: Miep Gies, 100, the last survivor of the group who hid the Frank family, including daughter Anne, in "the Secret Annex" in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, before they were arrested on August 4, 1944. 65 years.
* March 30, 2010: Juan Carlos Caballero Vega, 109, the last surviving veteran of the Mexican Revolution, whose official end was on May 21, 1920. 90 years. For 2 years, he was Pancho Villa's driver.
* April 24, 2010: W. Willard Wirtz, 98, the last surviving member of President John F. Kennedy's Cabinet, which left office with his assassination on November 22, 1963. 46 years. Wirtz served JFK and President Lyndon B. Johnson as Secretary of Labor from 1962 to 1969.
* January 11, 2011: Audrey Lawson-Johnston, 95, the last survivor of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, May 7, 1915. 96 years.
* June 27, 2011: Richard Poff, 87, the last living member of Congress who had signed the Southern Manifeso, opposing desegregation, March 12, 1956. 55 years. The last living member who had refused to sign it was Jim Wright, who died on May 16, 2015. 59 years. Wright had served as Speaker of the House from 1987 to 1989.
A Republican from Virginia, by 1970 Dick Poff had softened his opposition enough that President Richard Nixon thought he could be confirmed by the Senate for the U.S. Supreme Court. He turned the appointment down, because he was afraid that the media would look into his background, and reveal that his 12-year-old son was adopted, before he felt the son would be ready to accept this knowledge. He ended up telling his son anyway, and the son accepted it.
The elder Poff resigned from Congress to accept an appointment to his State's Supreme Court, and rose to become its Senior Justice.
* February 27, 2011: Frank Buckles, 110, the last surviving American veteran of World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918. 93 years. He also served in World War II, and was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines, spending 3 years as a prisoner of war.
* February 4, 2012: Florence Green, formerly Florence Patterson, 110, the last surviving veteran, of any country, of World War I. 94 years.
* March 8, 2013: Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, 90, the last surviving participant in the 20 July Plot, which failed to assassinate Adolf Hitler, at his Wolf's Lair retreat in Rastenburg, Germany -- now Ketrzy, Poland -- July 20, 1944. 69 years.
* September 14, 2013: Jerry Edgerton, 99, the last survivor of the fire aboard the SS Morro Castle, off the coast of Asbury Park, New Jersey, September 8, 1934. 89 years.
* June 4, 2014: Chester Nez, 93, the last survivor of the Navajo Code Talkers, following the end of World War II on V-J Day, August 14, 1945. 69 years. But see 2019.
* July 28, 2014: Theodore Van Kirk, 93, the last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-25 bomber which dropped the 1st atomic bomb in warfare, over Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. 69 years.
* November 24, 2014: Marion Eichholz, 102, the last survivor of the sinking of the SS Eastland in the Chicago River, July 24, 1915. 89 years.
* December 14, 2014: Richard Hottelet, 97, the last survivor of "The Murrow Boys," correspondents that Edward R. Murrow gathered to report on World War II for CBS radio in 1942. 72 years.
* January 11, 2016: Bill Del Monte, the last known survivor of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, April 18, 1906. 109 years.
* February 28, 2016: Delmer Berg, 100, the last surviving veteran of the XV International Brigade, a.k.a. the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, that fought in aid of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, which ended on April 1, 1939. 77 years. As of this post, there are believed to be 9 surviving veterans on the Republican side, and 1 on the Nationalist side.
* May 12, 2016: Susannah Mushatt Jones, the last living American to have been born in the 19th Century, July 6, 1899. Nearly 117 years. Born into a sharecropping family in Alabama, she became a nanny in Harlem.
* December 8, 2016: John Glenn, 95, the last survivor of America's 1st group of chosen astronauts, the Mercury Seven, selected on April 9, 1959. 57 years.
* December 30, 2016: Tommy Wisbey, 86, the last known participant in the Great Train Robbery, at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, England, on August 8, 1963. 63 years.
* April 15, 2017: Emma Morano, 117, the last person known to have been born during the 18th Century, which ended on December 31, 1899 -- not December 31, 1900.
* October 16, 2017: Freeman Bruce Olmstead, 82, the last survivor of the Soviet shootdown of a U.S. Air Force plane over the Barents Sea, July 1, 1960. 57 years. He and John McKone were held by the Soviets for nearly 7 months. Four others were killed in the plane's crash.
* March 8, 2018: Bernhard Heuer, the last surviving crewmember of the battleship Bismarck, sunk by Britain's Royal Navy on May 27, 1941. 77 years.
* May 2, 2018: Mary Hall Daniels, 98, the last survivor of the Rosewood Massacre, in which 6 black people were murdered by white supremacists in Rosewood, Florida, on January 1, 1923. 95 years.
* July 9, 2018: Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington, the last man to serve in the Cabinets of each of these Prime Ministers of Britain: Winston Churchill, who last left the post on April 5, 1955, 63 years; Anthony Eden, on June 9, 1957, 61 years; and Harold Macmillan, on October 18, 1963, 55 years. He also served in the Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher. His grandfather dropped the 2nd R from the family name, but the title kept the 2 R's.
* February 13, 2019: Richard Churchill, 99, the last surviving prisoner from Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland, who took part in what became known as "the Great Escape," March 25, 1944. 75 years. He went to his grave believing that the reason he was spared execution after being captured was a belief among his captors that he was related to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He did nothing to clear up that misunderstanding.
* May 28, 2019: Levi Oakes, 94, the last surviving Native American "code talker" in World War II, which ended on V-Day, August 14, 1945. 74 years. Oakes was a Mohawk. The better-known Navajo code talkers lost the last of their ranks, Chester Nez, on June 4, 2014, at age 93. 69 years.
* March 14, 2019: Ermenia Daley, 105, the last survivor of the Ludlow Massacre, in which striking coal miners were fired upon by the Colorado National Guard, Ludlow, Colorado, April 20, 1914. Almost 105 years.
* March 14, 2019: Birch Bayh, 91, the last surviving former U.S. Senator who had voted on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on June 19 of that year. 55 years. A Democrat from Indiana, he ran for President in 1976. His son Evan Bayh later served Indiana as Governor and Senator.
* September 16, 2019: Sander Vanocur, 91, the last on-screen participant in the 1st televised general-election Presidential debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, at the CBS studio in Chicago, September 26, 1960. Then with NBC News, Vanocur would, like the debate's moderator, Howard K. Smith of CBS, switch to ABC, and that's how I remember both of them.
* November 15, 2019: Werner Doehner, 90, the last surviving passenger of the Hindenburg explosion, at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Manchester, Ocean County, New Jersey, May 6, 1937. 82 years.
* November 23, 2019: Nick Clifford, 98, the last surviving builder of Mount Rushmore, on which construction was stopped on October 31, 1941. 78 years.
* March 2, 2020: Rafael Cancel Miranda, 89, the last survivor among the Puerto Rican nationalists who opened fire in the House of Representatives chamber at the U.S. Capitol on March 1, 1954, 56 years.
* June 17, 2020: Jean Kennedy Smith, 92, the last survivor of the 9 children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, which included 3 U.S. Senators, 1 of which was President and another was his Attorney General. Jean served as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998.
* July 17, 2020: John Lewis, 80, the last surviving speaker at the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. 57 years. He was then the Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1986, he was elected as a U.S. Representative from a district based in Atlanta, and was continually re-elected until his death.
* January 30, 2021: Eugenio Martínez, 98, the last survivor of the team that burglarized the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, June 17, 1972, 47 years. Frank Sturgis died in 1993, Bernard Barker in 2009, Virgilio Gonzalez in 2014, and James McCord in 2017.
* April 9, 2021: Ramsey Clark, 91, the last surviving member of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Cabinet, which left office with him on January 20, 1969. 52 years. He had been Attorney General from November 28, 1966 onward.
* October 3, 2022: Ian Hamilton, 97, the last survivor of the thieves of the Stone of Scone from the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey in London on December 24, 1950. 70 years.
* December 7, 2022: Johnny Johnson, 101, the last surviving participant in Operation Chastise, a.k.a. the Dambusters Raid, also on May 16, 1943. 79 years.
* March 6, 2023: Traute Lafrenz, 103, the last surviving member of the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazis, whose core group was arrested on February 18, 1943. 80 years.
* May 27, 2023: Henry Kissinger, 100, the last surviving member of President Richard Nixon's Cabinet, which left office with him on August 9, 1974. 49 years.
* June 28, 2023: Johana Ruf, 94, the last surviving person who had been in the Führerbunker when Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide, April 30, 1945. 78 years. She was an office assistant, basically a secretary.
* September 2, 2023: John L. Tucker, 105, the last surviving scientist on the Manhattan Project, which produced the 1st atomic bomb, successfully tested near Socorro, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. 78 years.
* August 15, 2024: Galina Brok-Beltsova, 99, the last survivor of the Soviet Air Force's female pilots, whom the Nazis dubbed Nachthexen, the "Night Witches," whose 1st mission was on June 12, 1942. 79 years.
*
Alive as of March 21, 2025:
* There are 2 known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, June 1, 1921, 104 years: Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109; and Viola Fletcher, 110. (My 2021 and 2023 entries were unaware of Mrs. Fletcher.)
* There are 2 survivors of the Dionne Quintuplets, 5 babies born to Elzire and Oliva-Édouard Dionne, outside Ottawa in East Ferris, Ontario, Canada, on May 28, 1934. 91 years. Émilie Marie Jeanne died of a seizure in 1954, at age 20. Marie Reine Alma, known in married life as Marie Houle, died of a blood clot in 1970, at 35. Yvonne Édouilda Marie died in 2001, at 67. Annette Lillianne Marie, now Annette Allard, is still alive. So is Cécile Marie Émilda, now Cécile Langlois. Marie had 2 daughters, Annette 3 sons, and Cécile 3 sons, for a total of 8 grandchildren.
UPDATE: Cécile died in 2025, leaving Annette as the last survivor.
*
The best source I can find of how many survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor, in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, are still alive after 81 years says there are 16.
* Robert Shumway, 100, the last survivor of the Cocoanut Grove fire that killed 492 people on November 28, 1942, 82 years. He was when a student at a nearby prep school.
* Aliza Melamed Vitis-Shomron, 97, the last surviving participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, May 16, 1943. 80 years.
*
The best source I can find of how many survivors of the D-Day invasion at Aure sur Mer, France on June 6, 1944, are still alive after 81 years says there are fewer than 200.
* I can find no record of how many people who survived the sinking of the SS Andrea Doria, which killed 46 people off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts on July 26, 1956, after 69 years. But there are multiple survivors currently alive, and this website has the names of all who were aboard. In 2023, 8 survivors attended a reunion.
* Seven of the Little Rock Nine, admitted to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division to protect them, on September 25, 1957, after 68 years, are still alive.
Minnijean Brown-Trickey, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Terrence Roberts and Melba Pattillo Beals (born the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor) are 83. Gloria Ray Karlmark and Carlotta Walls LaNier are 82. Jefferson Thomas died in 2010, age 67. Thelma Mothershed-Wair died in 2024, at 83.
* There are 2 survivors of the Greensboro Four, whose sit-in at the lunch counter of a Woolworth's store in North Carolina began the fight against racial segregation of public accommodations that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on February 1, 1960, 59 years: Jibreel Khazan (then using the name Ezell Blair Jr.) is 83, and now-retired Air Force Major General Joseph McNeil is 82. David Richmond died in 1990, Franklin McCain in 2014.
* There are 2 men still alive who had been prisoners at the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, which closed on March 21, 1963, 62 years: Bill Baker, convicted of check fraud; and Robert Schibline, bank robbery. Both men are 91 years old.
* Jim Lovell, about to turn 97, the last surviving crewmember of Apollo 8. Frank Borman died in 2023, William Anders in 2024. Time magazine named them their Persons of the Year for 1968. Given all that happened that year, it might have been a dubious selection. Nevertheless, not counting larger groups (such as the U.S. soldiers of the Korean War in 1950, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956, or "Twenty-five and Under" in 1966), this makes Lovell the earliest surviving recipient of the distinction. (Contrary to what Donald Trump believes, it's not an "award" to be "won.")
(UPDATE: Lovell died on August 7, 2025. This left 1981 honoree Lech Wałęsa as the earliest living Time Person of the Year, not counting 1969's "The Middle Americans" and 1975's "American Women," which got no more specific than that.)
* There are 2 survivors of the Chicago Eight who were indicted on various charges relating to the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, on March 20, 1969. 52 years. Bobby Seale had his case separated from the others, who then became known as the Chicago Seven. Seale is now 86. Lee Weiner is about to turn 84.
Abbie Hoffman committed suicide in 1989. Jerry Rubin died in 1994, from injuries sustained from being hit by a car. David Dellinger died in 2004, essentially of old age. Tom Hayden died of a stroke in 2016. Rennie Davis died of lymphoma on February 2, 2021. John Froines died of complications of Parkinson's disease on July 13, 2022.
* There are 4 living people who walked on the Moon: Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, 95, Apollo 11, July 20, 1969; David Scott, about to turn 93, Apollo 15, July 31, 1971; Charles Duke, 89, Apollo 16, April 21, 1972; and Harrison Schmitt, 897, Apollo 17, December 14, 1972. 46 years.
* Jacques Rose, 78, the last surviving perpetrator of the October Crisis in Quebec, which began on October 5, 1970. 50 years. The Quebec Liberation Front's (FLQ's) last surviving kidnap victim, British diplomat James Cross, died on January 6, 2021, at 99.
* There are 6 surviving members of the House Judiciary Committee that voted on Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon on July 27, 1974, 51 years. 3 are Democrats, all of whom voted "Aye": Charles Rangel of New York (about to turn 95), Edward Mezvinsky of Iowa (88, later convicted in ABSCAM, father-in-law of Chelsea Clinton), and Elizabeth Holtzman of New York (83).
3 of them are Republicans. Harold V. Froehlich of Wisconsin (about to turn 913 and William S. Cohen of Maine (84, later a Senator and U.S. Secretary of Defense) voted "Aye." Trent Lott of Mississippi (83, later the Senate Majority Leader) is the last survivor to have voted "No." But all 11 Republicans voting "No" said they would change their minds and vote to impeach after hearing what became known as "The Smoking Gun Tape."
* I had heard that, contrary to his mention in Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "the old cook" was sick, and didn't make the cargo ship's final voyage, sinking in Lake Superior between Wisconsin and Ontario on November 10, 1975. 49 years. And the song does get some of the details of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald wrong.
In this case, no such luck: The cook, Robert Rafferty, was 1 of the 29 victims. But, at 62, he was the 2nd-oldest, behind the ship's Captain, Ernest McSorley, who was 63, and, Cliché Alert, retiring once the ship reached its homeport of Detroit. (Cleveland was where they were delivering the ore, not where they were based.)
* There are 3 surviving members of President Gerald Ford's Cabinet, which left office with him on January 20, 1977, 48 years: Secretary of Agriculture John Knebel (88), Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare F. David Mathews (89), and Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Carla Anderson Hills (91).
* There are 3 survivors from the Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter, which left office with him on January 20, 1981, 44 years: Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal (99), Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall (96), Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare Joe Califano (about to turn 94).
Carter's Administration has proven remarkably durable. Carter himself became the 1st President to live to be 100 years old. His wife Rosalynn lived to be 96, making her the 2nd-longest-lived First Lady. (Bess Truman made it to 98.) They had the longest Presidential marriage ever, 77 years. And Carter's Vice President, Walter Mondale, lived to be 93.
* There are 11 survivors from the Cabinet of President Ronald Reagan, which left office with him on January 20, 1989, 34 years: Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady (95), who had briefly been a U.S. Senator from New Jersey; Secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker III (about to turn 95); Attorney General Edwin Meese (93); Secretary of Agriculture John R. Block (90); Donald Hodel (about to turn 90), who served as both Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Energy; Secretary of Education William J. Bennett (81); Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington (about to turn 86), Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole (88), later Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush and a U.S. Senator, and wife of former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican Presidential nominee Bob Dole; Secretary of Transportation James H. Burnley IV (76); CIA Director William H. Webster (101); U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kenneth Adelman (about to turn 79).
Webster is the only man to have been the Director of both the FBI and the CIA. (UPDATE: He died on August 8, 2025, at 101, leaving 10 survivors of the Reagan Cabinet.)
* There are 2 surviving members of the Keating Five, Senators whose influence unfairly aided corrupt banker Charles Keating in 1989: Dennis DeConcini, Democrat of Arizona, about to turn 88; and Don Riegle, Democrat of Michigan, 87. Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, died in 2000. Keating himself died in 2014. John Glenn, Democrat of Ohio and Mercury 7 astronaut, died in 2016. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, died in 2018. (UPDATE: Riegle died in 2026, leaving DeConcini as the last survivor.)
* There are 11 survivors of the Cabinet of President George H.W. Bush: Secretary of State James A. Baker III (about to turn 95), Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady (95), Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (84, later to be the son's Vice President), Attorney General William Barr (about to turn 74, and later Trump's Attorney General), Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin (85), Secretaries of Labor Elizabeth Dole (88) and Lynn Martin (85), Secretary of Health & Human Services Louis W. Sullivan (91), Secretaries of Transportation Samuel Skinner (about to turn 87) and Andrew Card (78, later George W.'s White House Chief of Staff), and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander (84).
(UPDATE: Dick Cheney died later in 2025, leaving 10 survivors.)
* Most members of the Cabinets since the elder Bush are still alive. From Bill Clinton's Cabinet, Defense's Les Aspin died shortly after resigning due to health reasons in 1995, and Commerce's Ron Brown died in office in 1996. Both Secretaries of State have died: Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. As has Attorney General Janet Reno. (UPDATE: In 2025, Labor's Alexis Herman died.)
From George W. Bush's 's Cabinet, Treasury's Paul O'Neill and Transportation's Norman Mineta have died. (UPDATE: Add Interior's Dirk Kempthorne.)
Ashton Carter, Barack Obama's Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017, has died. The rest of his Cabinet, and all of those of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, are still alive.
