Roger Ebert

From Philosopedia

Roger Joseph Ebert (18 June 1942 - )

Ebert, a journalist, film critic and screenwriter, is the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

The grandson of German immigrants, whose mother had a Dutch and Irish lineage, Ebert is the son of electrician Walter H. Ebert and Annabel Ebert.

Ebert was born in Urbana, Illinois, graduating for Urbana High School in 1960. He earned his B. S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1964. He has pursued graduate study at the University of Chicago and also the University of Cape Town.

In 1967 he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times.

In 1993, he married Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert (a trial attorney from 1989-1993). He has a stepdaughter (Sonia) and a stepson (Jay). Early in 2002, he was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer and has undergone numerous surgeries. Since 2010 he has a had a live-in nurse to assist him. On 17 April 2009, he wrote in his journal of his move from childhood Catholicism to an interest in secular humanism, Unitarianism, and the views of liberal Friends.

In 2011 his Life Itself, A Memoir was published.

As for death, Ebert who suffers from painful cancer, has written:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled "Go Gently into That Good Night." I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. . . . I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime.