BEA ARTHUR "When I saw the episode of Maude that dramatized her choice to have an abortion, I recall thinking, 'Wow. I can't believe they're showing this on prime time TV.' I wonder if young women today can understand how much of a big deal that was, or how tenuous the right to a legal abortion remains." —Jennifer Tedeschi, Santa Fe, NM

DAVID CARRADINE "I'm forever indebted to Kung Fu's Shaolin Master and David Carradine as Kane for the appellation 'Grasshopper.' I doubt there's another term as superlatively and supportively patronizing." —Jake Lewis, Chicago, IL

MARILYN CHAMBERS "There's a wonderful symmetry to the fact that Marilyn Chambers embodied the cleanest and dirtiest elements of my youth. Was there anyone more squeaky clean than the Ivory Snow mom? But oh, what that girl did in Behind the Green Door. I had to use a fake I.D. to get in to see it- my very first porno flick." —G. Talmadge, Portland, OR

WALTER CRONKITE "Of course we all remember Cronkite delivering the news that JFK had died, but I think that his coming out against the war in Vietnam was one of the most memorable and gutsy things I've witnessed a person with that sort of popular power do." —Leslie Goldblum, Fairfield, CT

ROBERT CULP "Simply put, Robert Culp on I Spy was the epitome of cool." —Peter Britten, Los Angeles, CA

JIMMY DEAN "My mom always had a huge crush on Jimmy Dean, and as a Southerner, his selling sausage only made him that much more attractive to her." —Sheila Kiser, Honaker, VA

FARRAH FAWCETT "I went for a haircut during the height of Fawcett's Charlie's Angels popularity, and without direction from me, the stylist tried to replicate Farrah's 'do' with my impossibly straight tresses. I literally wept at the results, and asked the woman to give me a short Pixie cut to remove the evidence. Farrah may have been a fine person, but forgiveness for that haircut is still in the works." —Julie Mihaly, Brooklyn, NY

JOHN FORSYTHE "I adored John Forsythe on Bachelor Father. I think the phrase 'suave and debonair' was invented for Forsythe as Bentley Gregg. I know it's not particularly generous of me, but that twerp of a niece of his on the show didn't deserve him." —Kelly Foster, Hershey, PA

HENRY GIBSON "Wasn't he the one on Laugh-In who held that feather flower and recited really bad poems?" —Alisha Frank, Atlanta, GA

PETER GRAVES "Nobody can play a pedophyle pilot as well as Peter Graves did in 'Airplane'- or let smoke from self-destructing tapes blow up in his face without flinching either. I hope they play the Mission Impossible theme song at his memorial. Amazing Grace just wouldn't cut it..." —John Sills, Millbrook, NY

DON HEWITT "The fact that the 60 Minutes stopwatch is still ticking 40 years after it was first clicked on is proof of Don Hewitt's genius. The show may not have the following or level of trust that it did earlier on, but I still pay more attention to what they report than I do most TV news programs." —Michael Costello, Boston, MA

DENNIS HOPPER "From Easy Rider to Apocalypse Now, Hopper embodied the dysfunction of the characters he played with spot-on brilliance." —Jim Rosen, St. Louis, MO

MICHAEL JACKSON "I got up and danced in the middle of our living room floor when the Jackson 5 sang 'I Want You Back' on [The] Ed Sullivan [Show]. It's still one of the greatest dance tunes of all time. But it's hard to believe that the sweet little kid who belted out those fabulous 'ah boop boop boop boo's is the same person who died this year. It's amazing what the combination of money and isolation can do, isn't it?" —Annabeth Leonard, Nashville, TN

TED KENNEDY "Poor Teddy Kennedy. He accomplished more politically, and helped more Americans than both of his more famous brothers put together. But his behavior at Chappaquiddick was about as reprehensible and filled with a sense of rich-boy entitlement as it gets. He paid dearly for that night, but not as much as Mary Jo Kopechne." —Joan Conway, Minneapolis, MN

ART LINKLETTER "I always wanted to be one of the kids on Kids Say the Darndest Things. I fear my estimation of my preadolescent wit was highly overrated, but I knew I could crack Art up if I'd had a chance. Never meant to be..." —Lou Jennings, Phoenix, AZ

JIM MARSHALL "Jim could be a real prick, but his pushiness was part of what made him a good photographer- especially when it came to dealing with performers and the world of rock 'n' roll. He had the balls to swear at Barbra Streisand when she tried to control what he was doing on a shoot. You gotta give the man props for that..." —Lee Fischer, San Francisco, CA

OSCAR MAYER, JR. What can you say about a man who gave us the Wienermobile and 'My bologna has a first name....'? Genius. Pure genius." —Kevin Schmidt, Ann Arbor, MI

PATRICK McGOOHAN "I used to know all the words to the Secret Agent theme. All I remember now is 'they've given you a number, and taken way your name...' Man, I had such a crush on [McGoohan], but what the hell was up with the giant bubbles that were always after him on The Prisoner? Did they ever explain what those things were?" —Kathryn Van Der Pol, Houston, TX

ED McMAHON "I was always amazed when Ed came out with a zinger or two of his own in response to something the audience did or a guest said. He was a pretty good straight man, and Lord knows variations on 'Heeeeeeere's Johnny' will echo through the decades." —Eric Schwartz, San Francisco, CA

ROBERT McNAMARA "In his 1995 memoir former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara confessed that the Vietnam war, of which he was a principle architect, was 'wrong, terribly wrong.' I have to agree with Howell Raines, NYT editorial page editor at the time, who said, 'Surely [McNamara] must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.'" —Christopher Marks, Seattle, WA

CHARLES MOORE "Photographer Charles Moore's coverage of the Civil Rights movement had a profound impact on the social conscience of the time. I'd go so far as to say that his images transcended racial issues to a human one, and that had to have played an enormous part in bringing that collective conscience to action. His book, Powerful Days is evidence of his great talent, and the generous availability he showed toward aspiring young photojournalists makes him a double legend in my book." —Bill Black, Pleasantville, NY

FESS PARKER "Good old Fess— nemesis of every 1950s raccoon and hero to a generation of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone loving kids. As predicted in the chart-topping Ballad of Davy Crocket I expect he's now 'ahead of us all and meetin' the test, and a'follerin' his legend right into the west.'"— Julie Mihaly, Brooklyn, NY

LES PAUL "Every rock group, from basement band to The Beatles, owes their sound to Les Paul who developed the solid body electric guitar. It's no understatement to say that he shaped the music of our generation as much as the people who wrote, sang, or played it." —Ruben Garcia, Los Angeles, CA

MEINHARDT RAABE "Am I warped? One of the perennial highlights of watching The Wizard of Oz on TV year after year was hearing Raabe sing, 'As coroner, I must aver I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.' Never has news of death sounded so funkily good." —Hillary Easton, Manchester, NH

LYNN REDGRAVE "She literally was Georgy in Georgy Girl— slightly dumpy, sloppy and adrift, but with so much life in her and so much to give. That's how good an actress Redgrave was. You totally believed she was that character." —Wendy Robertson, Memphis, TN

SOUPY SALES "Chowing down on a bowl of Campbell's tomato soup with a PB&J sandwich while watching Soupy Sales was the lunchtime ritual of my Detroit childhood. And of course the highlight was when Soupy got it in the kisser with a pie. The whole show, especially White Fang, was about as dopey as it gets, but incredibly sly at the same time. Ah, Soup. You'll be missed." —M. Katz, Silver Spring, MD

J.D. SALINGER "Salinger wrote one novel whose main character became the literary icon of troubled adolescence, inspiring an even more troubled adolescent (Mark David Chapman) to murder one of the greatest icons of our adolescence (John Lennon). When he was 53 he had an affair with a still-adolescent girl, (Joyce Maynard), and chose to live a life of almost adolescently stubborn seclusion for close to 60 years. I wonder if he was capable of distilling that particularly unsettled stage of life so distinctly because he opted, in so many ways, never to leave it himself?" —J. Robinson, Kansas City, MO

MARY TRAVERS "I was totally in love with Mary Travers, and why wouldn't I have been? She was gorgeous, sang like a sexy angel, and believed in the things that mattered most to me and my generation. I still get misty when I hear the Peter, Paul & Mary version of 'Leavin' on a Jet Plane'. Sounds like she's singing just for me..." —Dale McCutcheon, Sandusky, OH

STEWART UDALL "Secretary of the Interior under both JFK and LBJ, Stewart Udall probably did more to protect the environment than any single politician of his time. Let's hope that somewhere out there there's a passenger pigeon tipping a wing to the man who spearheaded the first Endangered Species Preservation Act." —M.J. Ball, Lebanon, VA

JOHN UPDIKE "I found Rabbit Is Rich under my parent's bed when I was home for the holidays and assumed that it was just another of my mom's novels. Little did I know that adulterous and kinky sex lay somewhere around page 200. It was very exciting, but I worried for months that my equally suburban parents might be committing Rabbit-esque lascivious acts with, (ick!), our neighbors. I'm still not sure if it was worth the momentary thrill." —Cheryl White, New York, NY