A Sad Farewell to Singer/Actress Olivia Newton-John

Star of Beloved  Film ‘Grease’ Dies at Age73, Following Long, Brave Battle With Cancer

A Brief One by Doug Draper

Posted August 9^th, 2022 on Niagara At Large

Olivia Newton-John

My wife Mary and I were visiting an antique store in Fort Erie just this past weekend and there, in a bin of old record album covers, was one of Olivia Newton-John from way back in the 1970s when she was scoring hit after hit on the Billboard charts.

“She sure was pretty,” I said to my wife as we looked at that album cover.

No kidding! To just about every young guy I knew growing up at the time- even if we weren’t a big fan of her music – she was breathtakingly beautiful, drop-dead cute and a perfect model of the kind of girl you could only dream of living next door.

And no kidding again,  I was listening to bands like The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, and other artists like Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and my favourite female singer, Linda Ronstadt at the time, and I went through the 1970s and 80s never once buying an Olivia Newton-John record. Not even one, and I was buying a lot of records.

I didn’t come to appreciate Olivia Newton-John as a singer until years later when our millennial age daughter Sarah discovered her, probably through watching reruns of Grease, and I finally went out and got her a copy of Newton-John’s greatest hits.

By then, she had been diagnosed with cancer and was facing it with a courage I am not sure I could muster up against that dreaded disease, and she was inspiring others to do the same. She was also a passionate advocate for animals which, in my view, put her on higher ground as a human being.

So a very sad farewell to Olivia Newton-John.

Here is a video you can watch of her singing one of her biggest hits, ‘’Hopelessly Devoted to You’. You can watch it by clicking on the screen below –

A Quick P.S.- I am getting to a point where I am almost afraid to mention another notable person’s name. I can no longer count  how many times I have done that, only to turn on CBC Radio a day or two later, as I did in this case, and find out that they died. What’s with that?

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