Farewell Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Others — June Foray 1917-2017

You know; when I was a kid the very first thing I ever wanted to be was a garbage man. hey, it looked like fun riding on the back of that truck, jumping off with all the aplomb of Fred Astaire, grabbing those cans, dumping out the trash then a hearty, "Ho!" to get things moving again.

Well, when I got hip to the smell of being around all that garbage, the second thing I wanted to be was a voice-over actor. I had no idea that the job had a name, all I knew was that I wanted to be the voice behind a cartoon character. My heroes were, of course, Mel Blanc, Daws Butler and my favorite of them all, June Foray.

June got her start doing characters on a thing called The Stan Freberg Show. Freberg was one of the funniest guys who ever lived and Foray did a room full of characters with that amazing voice of hers. I remember being so excited to see the face behind the voice one night on Johnny Carson.

Just to give you a rough idea of the range of her voice, here's a short video featuring just a few of the better known characters she played. I believe Miss Foray was 99 when she passed today. She sure brought a lot of smiles to my face.