52 McGs (USED)

The New York Times received countless letters over the years from readers moved to tears or laughter by a McG. Eschewing traditionally famous subjects, Thomas favored unsung heroes, eccentrics, and underachievers including: Edward Lowe, the inventor of Kitty Litter ("Cat Owners Best Friend"); Angelo Zuccotti, the bouncer at El Morocco ("Artist of the Velvet Rope"); and Kay Halle, a glamorous Cleveland department store heiress who received sixty-four marriage proposals ("An Intimate of Century's Giants"). In one of his classic obituaries, Thomas described Anton Rosenberg as a "storied sometime artist and occasional musician who embodied the Greenwich Village hipster ideal of 1950s cool to such a laid-back degree and with such determined detachment that he never amounted to much of anything." Thomas also eulogizes a variety of colorful local heroes, from pool hustler Minnesota Fats, to Mason Rankin, founder of an AIDS group in Utah, to Sidney Korshak, "a famous fixer for the Chicago mob."

Thomas captured life's ironies and defining moments with elegance and a gift for making a sentence sing He had an uncanny sense of the passion and personality that made each life unique.