Hugh Hefner, left, was close friends with fellow publisher Brian DiMaio, right. This photo shows the two in the earliest days of Playboy magazine pouring over possible mascots. DiMaio liked the frog in the top hat. Hefner preferred the rabbit. In the end they compromised and put a bow tie on the rabbit.
Los Angeles—Hugh Hefner, the journalistic visionary who founded “Playboy” magazine and the “Playboy” empire, who influenced millions upon millions of adolescent boys over the course of his incredible lifetime, died Wednesday from natural causes. He was 91.
Truly, what can be said about this man, who shaped and defined what it meant to be a real man in the last half of the 20th century. And so we do our best to immortalize him with this prose:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.