Born June 18, 1942 – Passed Away on April 04, 2013
American Film Critic
Website – Biography on Wikipedia
In 1992, Roger Ebert married Chaz Hammelsmith while friends raised quiet eyebrows and colleagues made their usual predictions. Nobody gave them five years. In 2002, cancer arrived and kept coming back. Surgeries took his jaw. Then his voice.
Then his ability to eat or drink anything at all. The man who had spent forty years giving Hollywood his opinion in full, confident sentences lost every tool he had ever used to do it. Chaz didn’t move an inch.
She travelled with him everywhere — to every interview, every screening, every public moment that followed. She read his written notes aloud. She finished his sentences. For seven years she was the voice he no longer had, sitting beside him in every room so the world could still hear what he had to say.
Roger Ebert died on April 4, 2013, and she was holding his hand. She said he looked at her one final time and smiled. A colleague later said Roger always believed Chaz didn’t just complete his sentences. She completed him.
Some people love you when you are at your most impressive. Chaz Ebert loved Roger through every year he had nothing left but what was underneath all of it — and it turned out that was more than enough.
