“Charlie’s Angel” Farrah Fawcett died on June 25, 2009, culminating three years of struggle against anal cancer. She was 62.

Her longtime partner Ryan O’Neal and business associate Alana Stewart stood by her deathbed at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.

Fawcett had been in and out the hospital since April. In a portentous gesture that month, the 1970s icon gave his 91-year old father a note reading, “I’ve loved and I’ve been loved. I’m happy. I’m ready.”

Fawcett discovered her cancer in 2006, after which she acquiesced to cycles of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. She was declared cancer-free around her 60th birthday, only to be told four months later of its remission. Eventually, the cancer metastasized to her liver.

Her renewed fight with cancer hereafter was well-documented in the television special Farrah’s Story. Seen from her own camcorder’s lenses, the documentary followed Fawcett as she trekked across the world in search for novel cancer treatments. Upon its May 15 broadcast on NBC, Farrah’s Story hooked approximately 9 million viewers.

Through it all, Farrah Fawcett contrived to be positive. O’Neal and Fawcett would have wed later this month to consummate their intermittent relationship, which began in 1981. The cancer was, in most ways, pivotal for reuniting the estranged couple, who begat a son, Redmond, in 1985.

Born Farrah Leni Fawcett in Corpus Christi, Texas, the blonde University of Texas alumna first waded into Hollywood circuits at the turn of the 1970s.

Both her career crux and one of pop culture’s greatest milestones happened on 1976. Clad in an orange, skin-tight swimsuit, Fawcett posed for a photo shoot at the poolside of Lee Majors, her first husband. The succeeding poster became the most imperative boy’s pinup in the world, selling 12 million copies. Girls, on the other hand, mimicked her stylishly curled locks, a haircut that came to be known as “The Farrah.”

TV producer Aaron Spelling recruited her soon after for his now-mythic series Charlie’s Angels. Over the years, she fledged her acting prowess even more, garnering a trio of Emmy Awards along the way.