Two deaths of note, although not related.

A little more than a year since his son’s death, Timothy J. Russert, the father of the late Meet the Press host Tim Russert, has passed away. Tim Russert wrote about his father in the 2004 bestseller Big Russ & Me. The elder Mr. Russert grew up in Buffalo and worked two jobs to support his family, driving a city sanitation truck and a delivery truck for The Buffalo News. He was 85.

The pretty blonde woman who inspired the classic Beatles song “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” has died.

The song was featured on the 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s “Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

John Lennon’s oldest son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate, Lucy O’Donnell when they were at a nursery school in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1966.

Julian said he took the picture home and showed it to his father, explaining: ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.’

When Lennon and Paul McCartney’s song was subsequently released, it caused controversy because of its hallucinogenic theme and supposed reference to the drug LSD. She had become ill with lupus.

Two people that had a large influnce on others.