The great people who lost the world in 2018

Singer Smokey Robinson honoured his childhood friend Aretha Franklin, who died this year after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Aretha Franklin had 18 Grammy awards and sold 75 million records. Family, celebrities and political leaders, including former US President Bill Clinton, were among those attending her funeral.

She was living with courage, not without fear, but overcoming her fears”, he said.

Movie fans said goodbye to the 1970s actor Burt Reynolds, movie fans with superheroes, Stan Lee, who died at the age of 95.

This is for you, Stan Lee. You will live forever in our hearts! ” said a copycat of Spiderman..

The world also lost British physicist and author Stephen Hawkings. He died at 76 in his Cambridge home.

“Stephen Hawking was a great personality all over the world. He had the wonderful ability to communicate with people”, Thomas Vanning of the Ancande House, “Christie” said.

The fashion industry bid farewell to American stylist Kate Spade and the French, Hoobert de Givenchy, as a fan of his best-known clothing, dressed by stars such as Audrey Hebpburn and Jayqueline Kennedy Onassis. Spade committed suicide.

Evangelical personality Billy Graham also died this year at the age of 99. Graham, who had preached in front of millions of people worldwide, was considered one of the most popular spiritual voices of the 20th century.

I ask you today: Do you love God? Do you love him with all your heart? With all my heart?

In South Africa, thousands gathered at a stadium with a capacity of 400,000 to remember the anti-apartid icon Winnie Mandela, who died at the age of 81.

Africa also lost one of its most beloved figures: former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a peace Nobelist who was praised as “a leading force for good”.

Astronaut Alan Bean, who had walked on the moon, died at the age of 86. He went to the moon almost 50 years ago, is a member of the Apollo 12.

“M) It looked as if I had won the lottery, even better than that”, he said.

This same year, even a member of the American political dynasty was separated from life. The family, and friends, including four former US presidents and President Donald Trump, gathered at the National Cathedral to honour the 41st American President George Herbert Walker Bush.

“A great and noble man, the best father who may have a son or a daughter and in our pain, let's put our lips on the gas when we think the father is with Robin and hand with his mother again”, said his son, former President George W. Bush.

Former President Bush was buried in Texas near his wife, Barbara, who died this year and their daughter, Robin, who had died of leukemia at the age of three. /voa