We saw a lot of things in 1997. Unprecedented scientific advances. Dramatic political upheaval. Social change. Scandal.

We also saw the many faces of Death, some of which were startlingly new to us. From Princess Diana’s grisly and disgracefully over-publicized death to the tumultous (though not entirely unpredictable) demise of Chris Farley, untimely and often strange celebrity deaths have dominated the headlines.

Gianni Versace gunned down by a serial-killing male prostitute. John Denver killed in an experimental aircraft crash. Michael Hutchence found dead in a hotel room after an autoerotic asphyxiation/suicide fantasy/drug adventure gone awry — really, now, what the hell happened here? Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. perish in an eerie twist of life imitating art.

Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs … well, there’s nothing particularly intriguing about their deaths, but the fact that these guys didn’t buy it decades ago is astonishing.

The weird and the unlikely captured the media’s attention so thoroughly that sensationalism often overshadowed the more conventional deaths of many truly important world figures like Mother Theresa, Carl Sagan and Bozo the Clown.

The year 1997 will go down in the books not as the year of mankind’s triumphant return to Mars, but as the year Michael Kennedy skiied into a tree and died. (Michael Kennedy, as far as I know, is famous only because he was a Kennedy and because he skiied into a tree and died.)

And now, with the new year barely begun, over Kennedy’s still-warm body, a second freak skiing accident has claimed another of America’s cherished B-grade celebrities.

The 1960s TV-star-turned-statesman, Sonny Bono, died last week on the sunny slopes of the Heavenly Ski Resort after an abrupt and fateful encounter with a tree. Yes, friends, it seems truth is stranger than fiction.

But who mourns for Sonny? Where is the ’round-the-clock TV coverage? Where are Elton John and Sean “Puffy” Combs in our hour of despair? Certainly somebody will step forward to release an excruciatingly cheesy hit song in Sonny Bono’s memory, even if it is nothing more than a thinly-disguised or even blatant rehashing of a song which has already been around for over a decade.

In the absence of the media extravaganza he truly deserves, I would like to share my own memories of the late Congressman Bono — my own “Candle in the Wind: 1998,” if you will.

I once took a school trip to Washington, D.C. with my senior class. Left to our own devices for a day on Capital Hill, some of us spent an afternoon in the gallery of the House of Representatives, straining for a glimpse of the illustrious Gentleman from California.

Later, we found our way to Sonny’s office building, where we hoped to chat with one of our elected representatives over the important issues of the day. We were loitering about the hallway when who should happen by but Sonny Bono himself. We think it was Sonny Bono, anyway. He had a moustache.

Caught off guard, I managed to stammer “Hello.” He looked me straight in the eye and said “Excuse me.” We were in his way. I learned an important lesson that day: don’t stand around the hallways of big office buildings — you’re probably in the way.

It seems to me Sonny lived his life like a candle in the wind. I don’t know what that means, but that’s not the point. The point is that one afternoon in our nation’s capital, a man who looked a lot like Sonny Bono took the time to set a young kid from the Midwest straight.

The point, gentle reader, is that the death of a celebrity, while difficult and painful for us all, is not a cause for grief, but a time to celebrate life. Moreover, it’s a great opportunity for aging pop stars who have been in creative vapor lock since the late ’70s to revitalize their ailing careers.

When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, he was widely proclaimed the John Lennon of our generation. While I won’t get into that argument, I will say that Sonny Bono was certainly the John Lennon of his generation.

Actually, in all fairness, John Lennon was the John Lennon of that generation. But if they didn’t already have a John Lennon, it would have been Sonny Bono.

Probably.

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Josh Raulerson is junior in jounalism and mass communication and English from Decorah.