There are times when the last thing you expect to happen actually happens. This is one of those mornings.
I’ve just woken up to this news, and I’ve managed to stop sitting in stunned silence long enough to write a bit…but I find I really can’t say anything constructive at this moment.
He IS Superman…there is absolutely no other person who will ever capture the role in the way he did. He was my first childhood hero, a man who caused my imagination to explode…and now he’s gone. He was one of the most gentle men in Hollywood, and his willpower and resilience were nothing short of extraordinary. A Superman off screen as well as on screen.
I thought he’d live forever, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that, in a sense, he WILL live forever. His movie legacy and his tireless activism for spinal cord research will keep him in our memory for years to come. In my mind, he’ll always be the tall, square-jawed, blue-eyed archetype of a hero. Everyone else is just a pale imitation.
The world will be a different place without him. Goodbye Chris…you’ve earned your rest.
Christopher Reeve dead at 52
Last Updated Mon, 11 Oct 2004 07:38:44 EDT
NEW YORK - Actor Christopher Reeve, who flew across the silver screen as Superman then became a leading advocate for spinal cord research after a paralyzing riding accident in 1995, has died of heart failure.
He was 52.
Reeve had been getting treatment at an upstate New York hospital for a pressure wound, a common complication for people living with paralysis. Over the past week, the wound had become severely infected, and infection spread through his blood system.
On Saturday, Reeve fell into a coma after going into cardiac arrest. He died at his New York home late Sunday, said his publicist Wesley Combs.
The six-foot-four Reeve became paralyzed from the neck down nine years ago after being thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Virginia. After months of therapy, he was able to breathe on his own.
He became an advocate for people living with paralysis, lobbying the U.S. Congress for better insurance protection and pushing for stem-cell research.
In 1998, he returned to directing and acting in the television production Rear Window, a modern update of the Hitchcock thriller about a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a neighbour has been murdered. He won the Screen Actors Guild award for best actor in a television movie or mini-series.
He never gave in to his injury. Through a special exercise regimen, he slowly retained some sensation and was even able to move his index finger.
Courtesy of the CBC website.
