Passage: Ed Koch and Patty Andrews
(CBS News) It happened this week . . . the stilling of two remarkable voices.
Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters, died Wednesday in Los Angeles.
LaVerne, Patty and Maxene Andrews were a largely self-taught singing trio that hit it big with the 1937 song, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen."
They went on to perform with the biggest bands of the Big Band era, with hits such as "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B."
The sisters also brought their voices to the movies, including "Hollywood Canteen" in 1944, and 1947's "Road to Rio," with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.
Though sibling rivalries and changing popular tastes took their toll on the trio, the songs they left us form an indelible record of their time.
LaVerne Andrews died in 1967 . . . Maxene in 1995.
Patty Andrews was 94.
Patty Andrews of The Andrews Sisters dead at 94
It's hard to imagine the sidewalks of New York without the insistent voice of former Mayor Ed Koch, who died early Friday of heart failure at the age of 88.
Born poor in the Bronx, Koch worked his way through college and law school, and up through New York City politics, winning his first term as mayor in 1977 in the wake of the city's fiscal crisis.
As mayor, he worked hard to balance the books and to clean up that once-proud crossroads, Times Square.
"People were no longer coming down to Times Square," he said. "You had X-rated video houses. You had thieves. Families wouldn't come down there anymore."
Our Rita Braver talked to Ed Koch just last year:
Braver: "You really didn't like criticism, when people said something demeaning of New York."
Koch: "I mean, I said, New York City and myself , we're not punching bags. You hit us, we hit you back!"
Koch's no-holds-barred style won him a lot of supporters, not to mention two more terms as mayor.
But his handling of race relations and the AIDS crisis won him detractors as well, and when he sought a fourth term in 1989, the voters let him know they'd had enough.
"They threw me out," he said, "but people would say to me, 'Oh, Mayor, you must run again.' And I would say, no. The people threw me out and now the people must be punished!"
Former New York Mayor Ed Koch dead at 88
In the years since his defeat, Koch kept busy writing books, radio commentaries, and even movie reviews.
And ever the showman, Ed Koch died on the very day that a new documentary on his life by Neil Barsky premiered in New York.
Somewhere, one suspects, Ed Koch is going over the weekend box office receipts, and asking: "How'm I doin'?"