Good-bye, Li'l Buddy!

Bob Denver has died.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Bob Denver, the actor best known as the star of TV's "Gilligan's Island" has died. He was 70 years old.

His agent says Denver died Friday in North Carolina, where he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year.

Denver's role as goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s show made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers. He also played Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik pal of TV's Dobie Gillis on `The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

Like most of my generation, the TV tended to replace a lot of the outside world in my childhood consciousness. I wasn't born when the series actually aired, but "Gilligan's Island" reruns were a staple of my after-school time as a kid. We knew the characters as if we had lived on the island with them. Most of us could recite the dialogue along with the show. His death is one more sign that the world is not what it was when we were half as tall as we are now.

According to his IMDB biography,

In contrast to more egotistical TV stars -- especially William Shatner on "Star Trek" (1966) -- Denver often went out of his way to help his fellow castmembers on "Gilligan's Island" (1964). This is included trying to give Dawn Wells an equal share of publicity as Tina Louise and demanding that she and Russell Johnson be given an equal credit in the show's title sequence.

Maybe the bypass was necessitated by a heart too big.

Good-bye, Gilligan.