Jonathan Crombie (1966-2015)

I saw today that Jonathan Crombie died — age 48, brain hemorrhage.

If you don't know his name, maybe you remember him as Gilbert Blythe in the 1980s era mini-series, Anne of Green Gables. That's the story of a redheaded orphan girl (Anne Shirley, played by Megan Follows) raised, reluctantly at first then with great affection, by an elderly brother and sister who had sent off for a boy to help work the farm and wound up with a sweet, mouthy, eccentric know-it-all with an unwitting talent for making the world glad she's in it.

I stumbled across the series one evening when I was in law school and became a devoted fan, reading the Lucy Maud Montgomery books it was based on while lounging at my desk up in the law review office. I guess that made me an oddball, but then I never gave a monkey's rump what anybody thought about anything that I liked.

I loved Anne Shirley, but I identified with Gilbert Blythe, the boy who loved her from near and afar. Seems there was a redhead of my own I loved, mostly from afar in those days. Close up now.

Crombie continued to act, most recently in an episode of The Good Wife, but he'll always be remembered as Gilbert Blythe. Well, he was a good one.

Farewell and Godspeed.