So true, I am middle aged now, and it pains me to lose cherished school friends. True, not everyone lives to see their golden years. Look at Heather O Rourke, she was only 12. It would-be cool if someone did a biopic on Lucille.

I don't recall ever having heard of Lucille Ricken, though many, many times, throughout recent years, have looked through cast credits for old films I've just watched of the 1910s, '20, or '30s, simply to learn a bit (some of the biographical basics) about some cast members I liked, only to discover that more than a few of them wound up dying very or quite young - in several instances within just a year or two or three after whenever the movie was made that I had just viewed.

Often, back then, something like influenza or tuberculosis or a burst appendix would kill a person, who had the person been of our modern times they no doubt would be able to be saved via effective medications, procedures, or/and surgery, possibly would need some extent of a hospitalization or perhaps nursing home recuperation, but then would, in time, recover, and live on for many more years.

Butterfly, from things you've commented about your age in other threads recently, I realize you and I aren't too far apart in age, and that I'm the older, by a bit, of we two. I was my late parents' youngest child (of originally six, now down to three), they had me when they were in their mid 40s, they were born during the mid 1910s, and their parents were all born during the 1882-1896 span of years. My maternal grandparents were both born during the early 1890s, and both of them died young, ages 40 and 44, during the 1930s. One of them died from pneumonia, the other from pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. In our modern times, each no doubt would have effectively been able to be treated for and would have survived such conditions.

I was born in 67, yes my parents were in their 40's. My brothers were in their teens when I was born. True, back then any illness could have killed a person. Thank goodness for modern medicine. Sadly many young parents today refuse to vaccinate their kids, due to misinformation, and foolish paranoia.