The Always Surprising Mortality of Celebrities
The Always Surprising Mortality of Celebrities
Why do we believe that fame equals immortality?
There was a time when Dikembe Mutombo1 was one of the most fascinating basketball players in the sport.
The Congolese native was 21 when he enrolled at Georgetown University. At 7-foot-2, with arms so long that they scraped the ceiling, Mutombo was a defensive force that snatched rebounds like they were M&Ms and blocked shots like your grouchy aunt swatting at flies. He was another figure in the Syracuse-Georgetown college basketball rivalry that dominated the 1980s and 1990s, back when the Big East Conference ruled the landscape and the first Sunday in March meant the raucous collision of tectonic forces. Syracuse, playing under its bubble of a Dome with its fiery coach Jim Boeheim, against Georgetown, full of chiseled black athletes2 under the tutelage of the towering John Thompson Jr.
During one SU-Georgetown game, Thompson pissed off the refs so badly he got three technical fouls (usually you get ejected after two) called on him.
What a spectacle.
And, in the midst of it all, here I was in Syracuse raised to be a Georgetown fan. It’s a very Paventi story. I’ve mentioned Msgr. Charles Borgognoni in a previous post. He was a presence at birthdays and major holidays. He was also the chaplain of the Syracuse University athletic department. Watch old game footage and you’ll see a round, bald man at the end of the bench wearing black with an orange sweater. That was Father Charles. (Watch this video, and my apologies for not being able to embed it. There’s a bald priest over the reporter’s left shoulder. That’s Father Charles.)
(An aside as to why I was a Georgetown fan: Father Charles was a good sport and would always ask my aunt to buy something for my sister and me at Christmas. My aunt would often pass it off to my parents and my father decided to have a little fun with it. On Christmas Eve, when it was time to open Father Charles’ gift, I pulled out a gray and blue Georgetown University sweatshirt. Father Charles was only somewhat amused. After that, every year, his “gift” to me was something with the Georgetown name or mascot on the front.
And, I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian. In a town full of Syracuse orange, I wore Georgetown gray.)
Back to Mutombo. He had a Hall of Fame career in the NBA followed by years spent as a businessman and humanitarian. In 2022, he announced that he had a brain tumor and in September 2024, at the age of 58, he died.
It stung. A part of my childhood was gone. Sure, I wrote a couple of weeks ago about disenfranchised grief through the lens of BB King and how the death of famous people didn’t really effect me much, but this one caught me by surprise. Mutombo wasn’t a musician or actor, but an athlete. He wasn’t an idol, but someone whose talent I admired. I was a Georgetown fan and felt a sense of loss because he was one of the focal points for the team when I was most interested in that rivalry.
I attended St. Bonaventure University and our most famous basketball player, Bob Lanier, died in 2022. I never saw him play, but I knew the impact he had on the school and sport. It was sad but I wasn’t.
Fred Rogers was part of my childhood as well. We were a big PBS family when I was young and I remember watching a lot of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. But, it was chosen for me. Again, it was sad, but my connection to the show had long passed when he died in 2003.
And, look, I’m not hear crying or lamenting Mutombo’s passing. We had no relationship beyond me watching him on television. I’m not grieving him at all because my fandom was of him as a Georgetown Hoya, not a Denver Nugget, Atlanta Hawk or any of the other teams he played for.
But, it’s one of those instances that reminds me of my age.
I’m 47 years old and I feel every day of it. My shoulder continues to bother me. My back snaps and pops if I don’t get up and move around every 30 minutes or so. I’m pretty sure I need a new prescription for my glasses and my feeble attempt at facial hair is growing in more white than any other color.
And, I’ve reached the age where the pillars of my youth are beginning to fall.
Death is all around us, all of the time. You’ll note that you’re reading a Substack about death and grieving3 that began after a close family member died.
Our mortality isn’t simply measured in what disease or condition our doctor says we have, or whether we’re controlling the factors that could worsen those conditions. Nor is it dictated by the passing of those around us. We look at it, often, through the passage of things and people that were important to us that we have chosen. Over the past few weeks these names have included John Amos, Kris Kristofferson, Gavin Kreel, Maggie Smith and James Earl Jones, among others.
With every time a push notification pops up that someone died, it brings with it a new emotion4, as if we didn’t think they could die. As if celebrity brought with it some super human quality that overruled the laws of nature. Like our idolatry was a serum that would flow through their veins and keep them alive forever. It’s the same will that we impose on our children to not grow older, to preserve each last moment of their youth before age carries them into adulthood.
And, in each of those cases, it doesn’t work.
Matthew Perry presented a curious case while also exposing our own hypocrisy on the matter. The television series Friends aired for 10 years, during which the actor who played Chandler vacillated between 128 and 225 pounds5. Addiction played a command role in Perry’s life. I don’t profess to know anything about addiction and recovery, but in Perry’s case, we all sat there and watched. And we ignored it because he was a celebrity and simply there for our amusement. We bought the book and read TMZ, never once paying attention to the person — the human being — but waiting for the next headline of “Zonked Friends Star Drives Car Through Elementary School.”
Then he died.
There were tributes. Some Friends fans, like my daughter, asked why he tortured himself like that. Most saw just another celeb junkie comes to his ultimate and expected conclusion. And, then we moved on, still not accepting that it would happen again.
So, yeah, I felt bad about Dikembe Mutombo’s death. I wasn’t expecting it and my only thought was that 58 was far too young for someone to die. I didn’t bust out any Georgetown gear to honor him (because I don’t have any) nor did I spend my lunch watching highlights from his career.
Instead, I further accepted that my own mortality is real, that age is the drum that continues to beat, and there’s nothing more we really can but keep on living.
Final Thoughts on Finality
“Mourning the death of a celebrity we’ve admired is just as important as any other death. Grief is grief. Ignoring your feelings of grief won’t make you grieve faster—it can actually do the opposite.”
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
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Stuart Scott would like me to remind you that his name is actually Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo.
FACT: John Thompson Jr. created a program that was unapologetically black. He believed there were too few chances for them to succeed compared to the privilege of white players seeking to play college sports. He took kids like Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning and Allen Iverson out of inner cities and gave them a home at an elite institution. And, to diversify his teams, he recruited Africa widely. The Ringer gave him a fine eulogy.
And thank you for doing so.
I believe, by the way, that indifference is an emotion.
As he wrote in his book, “When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”
This brings back memories! I went to graduate school at SU during those days. One night Ron Seikaly knocked on my door. He was looking for Derrick Coleman. Man, did he have the wrong address. I remember Mutombo. I always hated Georgetown but respected the heck out of the way they played. While SU players were looking for ways to showboat and turn simple lay ups into a flashy dunks, the Hoyas were always unselfish in their teamwork and disciplined. Aggressive on both sides of the court, and unlike SU, they made their damn free throws. Thanks for reminding me how much, underneath the rivalry, I respected guys like Mutombo. Now I miss him too.