List of icons lost this year keeps worsening

Gazette staff and wires

Ziggy played guitar and so did Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner, Merle Haggard and Prince.

Buckwheat Zydeco's accordion fell silent, as did Keith Emerson's keyboard and Phife Dawg's rhymes.

For some, 2016 will be known as the year the music died, a seemingly never-ending remix of the day the music died on Feb. 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. 'The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Mason City.

But this, too, was the year the film broke, the cable went out and the game was called.

For some of the icons lost in 2016, there were Iowa connections.

Jerome Silberman emerged from the University of Iowa as a 1955 graduate to become a favorite of Mel Brooks. Silberman - later known as Gene Wilder - died at age 83.

Both golfing legend Arnold Palmer and broadcaster Joe Garagiola played Finkbine Golf Course during the Amana VIP, albeit seven years apart. Both died this year - Palmer at 87 and Garagiola at 90.

Writer James Alan McPherson, a longtime faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He died in Iowa City at 72.

With so many notables dying in the first part of the year - David Bowie, Nancy Reagan, George Martin and Garry Shandling among them - it seemed as if this year had broken some sort of morbid record.

So much so that the BBC looked into it. The network measured the number of obituaries appearing across TV, radio and the internet from 2012 to 2016 that it had pre-written - one measure of obituaries considered especially notable. It found that while there was a surge from Jan. 1 to March 31, it didn't last.

'The last six months of this year were broadly in line with the previous last six months of the previous four or five years,” said BBC obituaries editor Nick Serpell.

Will 2017 fare better for our icons and their audiences? You've got to have faith.

Among the notable deaths of 2016:

Actress Carrie Fisher

Musician George Michael

Novelist Richard Adams

Socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor

Sportscaster Craig Sager

Actor Alan Thicke

Astronaut John Glenn

Musician Greg Lake

Actor Ron Glass

Dictator Fidel Castro

Actress Florence Henderson

Musician Sharon Jones

News anchor Gwen Ifill

Musician Leon Russell

Musician Leonard Cohen

Attorney General Janet Reno

Activist Tom Hayden

Actor Thomas Mikal Ford

Israeli President Shimon Peres

Golfing legend Arnold Palmer

Actor Bill Nunn

Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández

Musician Stanley Dural Jr., known as Buckwheat Zydeco

Novelist W.P. Kinsella

Playwright Edward Albee

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly

Actor Gene Wilder

Musician Juan Gabriel

TV host John McLaughlin

Actor Steven Hill

Writer James Alan McPherson

Sitcom creator Garry Marshall

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel

Basketball coach Pat Summitt

Actor Anton Yelchin

Hockey legend Gordie Howe

Boxing champion Muhammad Ali

Actor Alan Young

CBS correspondent Morley Safer

Musician Prince

Actress Doris Roberts

Musician Merle Haggard

Architect Zaha Hadid

Actress Patty Duke

Novelist and poet Jim Harrison

Comedian Garry Shandling

Actor Ken Howard

Broadcaster Joe Garagiola

Musician Phife Dawg

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Musician Keith Emerson

Beatles' producer George Martin

First lady Nancy Reagan

Novelist Pat Conroy

Actor George Kennedy

Author Harper Lee

United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

X Games athlete Dave Mirra

Musician Maurice White

Musician Paul Kantner

Actor Abe Vigoda

Musician Glenn Frey

Actor Dan Haggerty

Actor Alan Rickman

Musician David Bowie

Actor Pat Harrington

U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers

Information from the Washington Post, CNN and the BBC was used in this report.