The previous week, the world lost both Diane Ladd & Dick Cheney.
Some of us may know Diane Ladd as Bruce Dern's ex-wife & Laura Dern's mother, but she had her own movie career as well. She was born November 29, 1935 in Laurel, Mississippi. Ladd won a BAFTA, while also nominated for a Golden Globe & an Academy Award, for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She received nominations for both a Golden Globe & an Academy Award for Wild at Heart. Ladd appeared in several movies, including Chinatown, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, 28 Days, Ghosts of Mississippi, & Charming the Hearts of Men. She also had a tendency to pop up on tv shows: Faerie Tale Theater, Father Downling Mysteries, Enlightened, & Chesapeake Shores. There were also a few made-for-tv movies: The Staircase, Christy: Return to Cutter Gap & Christy: Choices of the Heart, & Montana Sky. Ladd passed away on November 3, 2025 from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Dick Cheney was born January 30, 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He had a long & varied political career. He was Assistant to the President & White House deputy chief of staff under Gerald Ford, from December 1974 to November 1975; White House Chief of Staff; & in 1976, he was campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign. In 1978, Cheney was elected as a representative from Wyoming in the US House of Representatives & proceeded to win five re-elections, serving until 1989. He was nominated by George HW Bush for the office of Secretary of Defense, which was then confirmed by a vote of 92 to 0 in the Senate. Cheney served as Secretary of Defense from March 1989 to January 1993. He then served as Vice President under George W Bush from 2001 to 2009. He also passed on November 3, 2025, after experiencing complications from vascular disease & pneumonia. If you are interested in learning more about Cheney, the Quincy Public Library has access to biographies & a couple of documentaries: The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful & Controversial Vice President, Days of Fire: Bush & Cheney in the White House, In My Time: A Personal & Political Memoir, & Vice.