Word: avuncularly
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DIED. "BUFFALO BOB" SMITH, 80, revered TV icon and host of the medium's first smash hit, The Howdy Doody Show; in North Carolina. Starting in 1947, the avuncular would-be cowboy (along with his famous marionette) cheerfully presided over Doodyville U.S.A.--home to such goofy characters as Clarabell the Clown and Flubadub. Howdy Doody ran for 13 years, partly a result of Smith's respect for his fans ("You can't kid a kid"). Among the show's contributions to the pop lexicon: the "Peanut Gallery" (his studio audience) and--sorry, Bart Simpson fans--"Cowabunga...
After Jerry Garcia, the bearded, avuncular guitarist for the Grateful Dead, died of a heart attack while in a drug-rehab facility in 1995, one of the band's two drummers, Mickey Hart, gradually withdrew from life. He stopped going out as much, and he wouldn't play Grateful Dead music at all; he couldn't even listen to it. "I didn't play it in the house for about a year and a half," Hart says, remembering. "Oh man, are you kidding? I would cry. It was just too painful. Jerry was my best friend and the heart...
...sadistically strict math teacher or when describing the ghost of the narrator's little sister. Another ghost story, related by the narrator's aunt by way of Henry James' Turn of the Screw, gains spookiness in the retelling. And the sex talk kindly given the narrator by an avuncular priest, which leads the boy to conclude that "love is in Latin, lust isn't," is uproarious...
DIED. LEO BUSCAGLIA, 74, avuncular, affectionate professor and author of numerous books on the permutations of love and self-acceptance; of a heart attack; near Lake Tahoe, Nev. Relentlessly upbeat, Buscaglia taught at U.S.C. for nearly 20 years, including a course in 1969 called Love 1A. He became known as Dr. Hug because of his habit of embracing the thousands of fans worldwide who turned out in droves to hear his encouraging aphorisms and elevated four of his books to the best-seller list at one time...
MARCH 6 The avuncular friend turns nasty to the press after a judge reportedly admonishes him for talking too much in public: "I want some goddam privacy. Get back, all of you. Get away from...