Notable Deaths in 2021

Kevin Clark

Kevin Clark (December 3, 1988-May 26, 2021) played drummer Freddy “Spazzy McGee” Jones in the 2003 movie “School of Rock.” It was the Highland Park, Ill.-native’s only film role, which he said he’d landed at age 14 after responding to a local newspaper ad looking for adolescents who can play drums, keyboards and guitar. [Clark is pictured in the film at left, and at right with co-star Jack Black at a “School of Rock” 10th-anniversary reunion.]

After the movie, Clark pursued music as a career, playing in the bands Dreadwolf, Jess Bess and The Intentions, and with singer-songwriter Robbie Gold.

John Warner

Republican Senator John Warner (February 18, 1927-May 25, 2021), of Virginia, served five terms, during which his centrist streak often put him at odds with the more conservative GOP leadership.

As a teenager Warner volunteered for the Navy in World War II, and joined the Marines during the Korean War. He then earned a law degree and clerked at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, before going into private practice. He later served as a federal prosecutor.

A Navy Secretary under President Nixon, Warner helped negotiate a maritime pact with the Soviet Union under President Ford, before running for the Senate in 1978. His high-profile marriage to actress Elizabeth Taylor (he was her sixth husband) burnished his credentials in the public’s eye, but the marriage did not survive his first term; they divorced in 1982 (Taylor citied her “intense loneliness” due to his Senate work).

Warner served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and was a supporter of President George W. Bush’s declaration of war in Iraq, but he also called for the return of troops home, and held hearings into the torture of detainees at U.S.-run facilities. He angered conservatives by supporting gun laws, same-sex marriage, and Roe v. Wade, and by opposing GOP nominee Oliver North’s bid to unseat Virginia’s Democratic Senator Charles Robb (Warner called the Iran-Contra figure unfit for public office).

“I sure risked my political future, that’s for sure,” Warner said in 1994. “But I’d rather the voters of this state remember that I stood on my principle. … That’s the price of leadership.”