Yesterday, 43 years ago, in an unspecified part of Canada, a young Rick May took his first breath. Having actually served in the US Military stationed in Japan, coordinating USO shows in Tokyo, he is best known for voicing Peppy Hare and Andross in Nintendo's Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64, various campaign characters in Age of Empires II, and most notably, Jane "Soldier" Doe in Valve's hit game Team Fortress 2. He suffered a stroke in February 2020, admitted to a nursing home for rehabilitation. On April 8, 2020, he reportedly died from complications from COVID-19 at Swedish Medical Center (now Swedish Health Services) in Seattle. On May 1, 2020, Valve updated their game with a tribute to Rick May for voicing the Soldier. For the entire month of May, the title screen only shows Soldier and plays "Saluting the Fallen", a rendition of "Taps", and added a statue of him on various maps, playing a random voice line when approached. Most notably, the map, Granary, was updated to have heads of all the classes with a Soldier's helmet stoked on a fence near a silo outside the map's bounds. This is because the animated short, Meet the Soldier, takes place on this map, where the RED Soldier gives a lecture to these heads on war. Every anniversary of this Screamin' Eagle's death, many players chose to only play Soldier to commemorate his work, usually equipping any shotgun and repeatedly taunting in front of the statue, for the taunt is a 21-gun salute. While, in the recent summer update, we received a new voice actor for his lines in the Versus Saxton Hale game mode, every Team Fortress 2 player knows our true Screamin' Eagle is only voiced by Rick May. (yes, I didn't put a lot of effort into this, I only remembered it was his birthday closer to the end of the day. Better than nothing.)
