Six Celebrities that Lost Their Lives to Diabetes

Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, a disease that sees the blood glucose level in an individual affected. The results are often very serious if the illness is not kept under control, as blindness, loss of lower extremities through amputation, kidney disease, and heart failure can be precipitated by diabetes. Celebrities such as singers Johnny Cash and Ella Fitzgerald fell victim to diabetes, as did one half of the greatest dance team in Hollywood history, a pair of Hall of Fame football coaches, another great country singing star, a rugged looking Westerns' actor, and a man who had to get up every morning because it was "time to make the donuts."

Ginger Rogers made a total of seventy-three movies in her fifty years in show business, ten of them teamed with the elegant Fred Astaire as his dancing partner in musicals. Fred and Ginger became a sensation, and Astaire would later say that of all his partners, Rogers was the only one who never thought that she couldn't pull off the difficult choreography as they rehearsed. Rogers made nine films with Astaire in the 1930s and then won an Academy Award in 1940's "Kitty Foyle", so she wasn't simply a one-dimensional actress. She teamed with Fred one more time, in the 1949 film "The Barkleys of Broadway." Ginger Rogers passed on in 1995, of congestive heart failure brought about by her diabetes. She was 83 at the time of her death.

John McKay was as witty as he was innovative as a football coach. He became the head coach at Southern California in 1960 and won four college national titles there before leaving after the 1975 season to become the Tampa Bay Bucs coach. His son said he realized a week into the job he had made a mistake; the Bucs were terrible and would lose 26 straight games under McKay. Once he was asked about his team's execution, and his reply was, "I'm all for it!" McKay died from diabetes on June 10th, 2001 at 77. Hank Stram led the Dallas Texans to the AFL title in 1962 and then when the Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs, he won Super Bowl IV with the club over the Vikings in 1970. Stram developed Hall of Famers like Lenny Dawson and Bobby Bell, and came up with ideas like the moving pocket to protect the quarterback and the triple stack defense. Stram coached the Chiefs until he moved on to the New Orleans Saints, where ironically his team lost to McKay's Bucs, a win which broke the Tampa Bay record losing skein. Stram was fired after two years with the moribund Saints, going into broadcasting, where he enjoyed a long run on radio as an analyst for NFL Monday Night Football. Stram died on the Fourth of July, 2005, from diabetes at the age of 82 in Covington, Louisiana.

Waylon Jennings taught himself how to play the guitar, and he became a bass player for Buddy Holly. Jennings gave up his seat on the plane that crashed and killed Holly and other musicians in 1959, when he was only seventeen. Not taking a liking to how Nashville tried to control country artists, Jennings eventually united with Willie Nelson to form what came to be known as an "outlaw movement" in country. He and Willie had their biggest hit together with 1978's "Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", and then Jennings came up with the theme song for the "Dukes of Hazzard" series, even becoming the narrator for the seven years the show was on the air. He later teamed with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Nelson to form "The Highwaymen" and he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Jennings diabetic condition cost him his left foot in December of 2001 and took his life less than two months later at 64 years of age.

Rory Calhoun made his name in many Westerns after being discovered by another actor, Alan Ladd, while he was riding a horse in the Hollywood Hills in 1943! Calhoun was the star of the CBS series "The Texan" and then did guest appearances on countless television shows during the 1960s and 1970s. Calhoun was a handsome Irishman named Francis Timothy Durgin at the time before his agent convinced him to change his name. Diabetes took Calhoun at 76 in 1999. Few people could ever tell you what Michael Vale was famous for, unless you reminded them that he had made over a thousand commercials for Dunkin Donuts as Fred the Baker, the man who crawled out of bed in the wee hours to make his donuts. Also the face of Breakstone cottage cheese as "Sam Breakstone", Vale was a veteran of Broadway, films, and television. He left us in 2005 on Christmas Eve, another celebrity that lost his life to diabetes.