It was a somber week for me as another screen icon that kept me company on Saturday afternoons and many sick days in my youth passed from this realm to a much better place.

Silver screen legend and true stateswoman and diplomat Shirley Temple Black died Monday evening at the age of 85.I grew up in the 1970s in a pre-cable household having only the three Philadelphia channels 3, 6, and 10 as well as the local UHF channels 16, 22 and 28. Depending on the time of year and where Dad had the aerial positioned we occasionally received channels 17 and 29. In those days, I'm sure many of you remember that Saturday afternoon programming as well as late afternoons was replete with old movies.Shirley Temple always had a prominent position in those wonderful movies. She along with the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello are some of my favorite actors from that simpler time.For a year of my life, I was sick from a really bad pair of tonsils and I spent many weekends on the couch watching movies sometimes with my mom and dad and every so often with my Nana and Pop-pop when they came to visit. I remember seeing many of the Shirley Temple movies and one of those outstanding memories is a performance of "Good Ship Lollypop."The movie I remember most though is "Heidi" (1937) in which she played an orphan who goes to live with her grandfather. Early in the film her aunt steals her from her beloved grandfather and takes her to live with her a German family whose sheltered, wheelchair bound daughter to be her companion. Eventually she is happily reunited with her grandfather. Fortunately Temple's "Heidi" is not the version that sticks in the craw of Raiders and Jets fans where one of the most epic comebacks in football was pre-empted by a stupid decision on NBC's part to start the movie on time robbing viewers of the finish of the game.Black was briefly married in 1945 at the age of 17 but her first husband, John Agar Jr., could not handle the limelight so they were soon divorced in 1949. She retired from films at the age of 22 and married Charles Alden Black after a 12-day courtship in 1950. Her marriage to Black lasted for 55 years until he passed away in 2005. After her marriage, Black became a Navy lieutenant commander and she followed him to Washington D.C., where he was assigned to the Pentagon.In the 1960s, she became president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and was attending a conference at Prague, Czechoslovakia when the Soviets invaded. When they returned to San Francisco, she became active in various civic organizations.She entered politics in 1967 when she ran for Congress in San Francisco but lost to Pete McCloskey. She continued to be active as a conservative Republican and in 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed her as part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. In 1974 amid protests she was appointed as ambassador to Ghana and soon proved her worth as a skillful diplomat. She later became the Chief of Protocol for the U.S. under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and later was appointed as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia under President George H.W. Bush. Afterward she served on various boards for many companies, including Walt Disney Company, Del Monte, UNESCO and the National Wildlife Federation.Shirley Temple Black was a remarkable woman and truly an incredible statesperson and she was a national treasure. Her husband remarked in an interview in 1988: "Over 38 years I have participated in her life 24 hours a day through thick and thin, traumatic situations, exultant situations, and I feel she has only one personality. She would be catastrophic for the psychiatric profession. You can wake her up in the middle of the night and she has the same personality everybody knows. What everybody has seen for 60 years is the bedrock."It is truly a rare person among us for which such a statement could be attributed. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black was one of a kind in politics, commerce, public service, diplomacy and film. She should be an inspiration to all of us that the American Dream is possible. From the humble beginnings of a little girl living with her single mother who was determined to make her life better to mixing in the same circles as Presidents and Kings, Shirley Temple Black showed that one does not need to compromise their principles to be successful.She was one of the greats in so many different ways and the world is a slightly sadder place today without her. Rest in peace, dearest Shirley and know you ran the race well and stood out as a beacon of light in a dark world making people better no matter where you were. Well done.We will always love you and adore you.Til next time…