Shirley Temple Dies at 85

Today we mourn a major loss - film icon Shirley Temple has died at the age of 85.

Temple, who had recently been placed in hospice care, died Monday night of natural causes, surrounded by family and caregivers.

"We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black," says a statement released by Temple's family.

Most people recognize the curly-topped little girl who danced and sang her way into hearts and film history in classics like "Now and Forever," and "The Littlest Rebel."

With American spirits wounded by the Great Depression, Temple's innocence and appeal prompted President Franklin Roosevelt to announce, "As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right."

Temple became a symbol of America at a young age. Foreign dignitaries sent her gifts, such as a miniature Rolls-Royce from the Middle East, to curry favor with the States, and the success of her films, even in a time of poverty, helped saved the nearly bankrupt Fox Studios. When she grew older, President Nixon appointed her a U.S. delgate to the United Nations, and she later served as an ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia and as the State Department's chief of protocol.

As a little girl she was kept sheltered from her own fame by family and the studio. "If I lost my innocence, it would show in my eyes," Temple recalled an executive telling her.

Temple met her second husband, Charles Black, a few months after her divorce from actor John Agar. Black had never seen any of her movies, and he proposed 13 days after they met. Black died in his home of bone marrow disease in 2005, and family members say that Temple had been lonely ever since.

Temple was also one of the first public figures to dicuss her mastectomy in 1972, a formerly taboo topic.

"It is my fercent hope that women will not be afraid to go to doctors for diagnosis when they have unusual symptoms," she stressed.

Shirley Temple made a major impact on America in many ways, though we remember her best for her pert dimples and carefree optimism. She will be missed.