August shouldn’t have been different than any other month for my family when it comes to people passing away. But we lost DOLLY and that was huge. Then I started researching who else passed away and sometimes we discover someone has died and you immediately think about where you knew them from.

Other times, you discover someone has died and suddenly a completely unrelated family joke comes full circle. That is what happened when I saw the news about Jaye P. Morgan. Who I wasn’t familiar with until I begin to research them.

Jaye P. Morgan was a singer, actress and television personality whose career stretched all the way back to the 1950s. She had hit songs, appeared on television and became especially memorable to many viewers as one of the celebrity panelists on The Gong Show. Did you know that?

And then I thought about Charlie. Because not long ago, we were playing one of our “What If?” games and asking questions about who different members of our family would be. Here is where the fun part comes in.

Somehow, we got onto The Gong Show. And I said something that still makes me laugh. Charlie should be the Gong Show host. Not a contestant. The host because he rules the show.

I can just picture Charlie standing up there with that microphone and looking at somebody who has been singing, dancing or doing something completely ridiculous. Then I hear Charlie

“Get off my stage!” “Stop singing!” “Stop dancing!” “I don’t want to hear you!”

And I can hear him saying it. That is exactly why finding out that someone connected to The Gong Show had died felt so real. It was one of those moments where you stop and think:

Wait a minute. Didn’t we just talk about this?

Jaye P. Morgan was not simply someone who appeared on The Gong Show. Here is something else I didn’t know. She had already built a long career in music and television before becoming one of the show’s most recognizable personalities. She was known for her outspoken personality and memorable reactions to the performers.

She had started performing as a child in her family’s vaudeville act, went on to become a successful singer in the 1950s and later became a familiar face on television. But for many people, when we hear her name, we think of The Gong Show.

And that’s what makes these stories so much fun for me. I’m not just looking up a person who died. I’m looking at where that person intersects with something in our family. Sometimes it is a song. Sometimes it is a movie. Sometimes it is a television show.

And sometimes it’s a silly conversation about which member of the Cates family would be best at yelling at people to get off the stage. This time it happened to be Charlie on the Gong Show.

Here is something you might not know. Jaye P. Morgan died August 24, 2026, at the age of 94. I never expected a celebrity death story to circle back to one of our “What If?” questions.

But that’s the funny thing about memories. You never know when something you said last week—or last year—will suddenly make sense in a completely different way. So today, I’m remembering Jaye P. Morgan.

And I’m also laughing because somewhere in my imagination, Charlie is still standing on The Gong Show stage, holding the microphone and screaming: “Get off my stage!” And honestly? I think he would have been perfect for the job. What do you think?