Christopher Reeve, Superman

It's a rude awakening when the wake-up timer on your clock radio turns it on just in time for the announcer to tell you that one of your heroes has died. Christopher Reeve died yesterday, of heart failure.

I wrote an entry about Reeve last year, which expresses much of what I thought of the man and why. What it boils down to is the fact that, despite spending the last decade of his life as the physical antithesis of Superman, he even moreso typified the character of Superman: good-natured, courageous, altruistic, and unwilling to accept defeat. He continued to pursue his Lois Lane (directing and acting) and he never gave up the fight against his Lex Luthor (paralysis... not just his own, but that of any spinal cord injury sufferer).

I wrote earlier: In the first movie, Jor-El (played by Brando) said to his son, "They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." Who knew that he was really talking about Christopher Reeve?