June Foray and the End of an Era

As many of you may have heard by now, voice acting legend and friend to animation June Foray died this morning at the impressive age of 99 years old. She was the voice of many characters, including Granny and Witch Hazel of "Looney Tunes" fame, Rocket J. Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on "Rocky and Bullwinkle", Magica DeSpell on "DuckTales", and a myriad of others.

That's not all, though; she was also a true lover of cartoons and animation, championing the addition of the "Best Animated Feature" award in the Oscars, and also helping to establish the Annie Awards specifically for animation. It seems though, what she truly loved was being involved and lending her talents to it. Right to the end, even pushing the century mark, she still worked and lent her voice to the characters she helped bring to life for so many generations. She was certainly old enough to have retired, deserving of it even, but she didn't. She must truly have loved what she did, to have stuck with it right to the end like that.

It's quite amazing when you realize just how long she was around. She started off back in the days of radio, before television was even a thing, then on to theatrical cartoons, then television came along and with it cartoon shows, and finally, some of the last characters she voiced were in video games of all things. Old-timey radio to video games... That's a long way to have come and a lot to have seen. She must've had a singular experience in life, having seen and done so much.

In a lot of ways, her passing marks the end of an era. She was the last living person that had worked on the original Looney Tunes cartoons, and though I'm not sure, I think she may well have been the last of all those who worked in the "Golden Age" of Animation. With her, that time slides solidly into the history books. But the marvelous work she and those folks gave us still live on, defying both history and the ravages of time.

May we all live as long, do as much, and leave behind the kind of legacy that June Foray did.