James Earl Jones–the man who starred as Terrence Mann and the booming voice behind Darth Vader and Mufusa–has passed away at 93.

I first knew from Field of Dreams and The Sandlot well before I really began to know him for his portrayal in Star Wars. After all, how could anyone forget the man that delivered one of the iconic monologues in cinematic history?

Ray, people will come, Ray.

They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack…

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces…

People will come, Ray…

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

While voicing Mufasa in The Lion King, it was James Earl Jones’s voice that told a young Simba to look out at the shadows and never go there. It was his voice who changed cinema history as we know it when he recited the following line to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill): “No, I am your father.”

His feature film debut came while portraying a B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove.

Other appearances include the earlier Jack Ryan movies as CIA Deputy Director Vice Admiral James Greer, King Jaffe Joffer in a pair of Coming to America movies. One of my personal favorites is his appearance in The Sandlot as Mr. Mertle, a retired baseball player and owner of “The Beast” aka Hercules.

He won two Tony Awards (The Great White Hope, Fences) in four nominations. While you can make the argument that he should have received an Oscar nomination for portraying Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, his only Oscar nomination came for The Great White Hope. He won two Emmy Awards in eight nominations, becoming the first actor to ever win two Emmys in a single year. Jones owns a Grammy Award from 1977 for his spoken word album, Great American Documents. He is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor (2002) Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award (2009), The Tony Awards Lifetime Achievement in Theatre (2017), etc. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would award his filmography with their Honorary Oscar in 2011, giving him three competitive awards and one non-competitive award to complete the EGOT.

In retiring from acting, Jones authorized Lucasfilm to use AI in recreating his booming voice to continue portraying Darth Vader. The same character is the reason why he appears in The Big Bang Theory‘s seventh season in “The Convention Conundrum.” Jones guested along with Carrie Fisher. The late actor surprisingly takes a liking to Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and enjoy a night out on the town together. Their evening culminates in ringing Fisher’s door and running away.

James Earl Jones will forever be remembered by family, friends, and fans. Baruch dayan ha-emet.

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