The Blog of Death

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson, the popular action star noted for his "Death Wish" movies, died on Aug. 30 from pneumonia. He was 81.

Bronson was born Charles Bunchinsky in 1921 in Ehrenfeld, Pa., the 11th of 15 children. As a teenager, he joined his brothers in the coal mines, earning $1 for every ton of coal he dug. He was drafted into the service during World War II, and served as a B29 tail gunner in the Pacific.

When he returned from the war, Bronson longed to avoid the poverty he suffered as a child. He decided acting would be a lucrative career and used the G.I. Bill to study at the Pasadena Playhouse school in California. Studio scouts saw him perform and immediately cast him in the 1951 movie, "You're in the Navy Now"; it lead to supporting roles in other films, including "Red Skies of Montana" and "Pat and Mike," starring Katharine Hepburn.

During the anti-communist McCarthy era, Charles changed his last name in order to avoid governmental prosecution for having a Russian-sounding name. Under the new marquee moniker, Bronson gave memorable performances in numerous films, including "Kid Galahad," "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape" and "The Dirty Dozen."

Bronson moved to Europe in 1968 to take lead roles in French, Italian and Spanish films. He was hugely popular overseas and in 1971 was presented with a Golden Globe for being "the most popular actor in the world."

When he moved back to Hollywood, the 53-year-old landed the role of Paul Kersey in the movie, "Death Wish." The film was a box office smash, lead to four sequels and gave Bronson $1 million per picture status.

• IMDb Filmography

Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, an influential Shi'ite Muslim cleric, died on Aug. 29 when a car bomb exploded in Najaf, Iraq. He was 63. The bombing outside the Mausoleum of Imam Ali killed 82 others and wounded 125.

Hakim was born in 1939. His father was Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, the spiritual leader of the Shi'ite world from 1955 to 1970.

In the late 1950s, Hakim and Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr joined forces with other scholars to form the Islamic political movement in Iraq. For his efforts, Hakim was arrested and tortured by the government in 1972, and again five years later. Although he was sentenced to life in prison without a trial, Hakim was released in 1979 due to public pressure on the Hussein regime.

When Sadr was murdered by that regime, Hakim fled to Iran and spent 23 years in exile. There he formed the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. In retaliation, the regime executed 18 members of his family.

After the American and British forces invaded Iraq and toppled the Hussein government, Hakim returned to his homeland, where he was welcomed by thousands of supporters. Although he disagreed with the occupation, Hakim ordered his brother, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, to keep his fighters from attacking U.S. troops. He also refused to meet with American and British authorities, but agreed to speak with the United Nation's envoy, Sérgio Vieira de Mello. Vieira de Mello was killed on Aug. 19 when a truck bomb exploded in front of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad.

Santa Claus

Santa Claus died on Aug. 25 of an apparent heart attack. He was 59.

Born Robert William Rion, the northern Illinois man legally changed his name in 1997 after decades of playing Santa. The 6-foot, 300-pound Claus, who sported a white beard and loved to spread good cheer, also operated a Santa Claus telephone hotline for kids.

When asked why he wanted to change his name, Claus replied: "I want to get my driver's license in the name of Santa Claus. That way, if one of the little ones says, 'You're not really Santa Claus,' I can pull out the license and say, 'Well, this says that I am.'"

Connie Douglas Reeves

Connie Douglas Reeves, a legendary cowgirl whose motto was "Always saddle your own horse," died on Aug. 17 of cardiac arrest. She was 101.

Reeves graduated from Texas Woman's University. She was the first woman to study law at the University of Texas at Austin, but had to drop out during the Depression to work as a teacher at her old high school. For years, her teaching salary was her family's only source of income.

In 1936, she became a riding instructor at Camp Waldemar for Girls, where she spent six decades teaching more than 30,000 girls to ride horses. She also met her husband at Waldemar; Jack Reeves was a rodeo star and keeper of the camp's horses.

Reeves was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame for exemplifying the "pioneer spirit of the American West." She was its oldest living member. Her autobiography, "I Married a Cowboy," was published in 1995.

Jacques Deray

Jacques Desrayaud, a filmmaker who was dubbed the "French Hitchcock," died on Aug. 10 of cancer. He was 74.

Jacques always dreamed of becoming an actor. When he grew up, he changed his named to Deray, studied drama in Paris and appeared in several small film and stage roles. After apprenticing with directors Jean Boyer and Henri Verneuil in the 1950s, however, Deray decided his true calling was behind the camera.

From 1960 to 1997, Deray directed more than 20 thrillers, including "Le Gigolo" "Borsalino" and "La Piscine," which was remade by François Ozon into the 2003 hit, "Swimming Pool." Deray worked with many famous French film stars, but his favorite was actor Alain Delon, who appeared in 10 Deray films. He also directed several English-language movies, like "The Outside Man," which starred Jean-Louis Trintignant, Roy Scheider and Angie Dickinson.

For his nearly four decades of cinematic excellence, Deray was honored as a Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier dans l'ordre National de la Légion d'honneur.

Roxie Laybourne

Roxie Laybourne, a feather detective and Smithsonian ornithologist, died on Aug. 7 of cardiac and pulmonary edema. She was 92.

Laybourne's fascination with birds began in childhood; she used to climb pine trees to view owls. She graduated with a master's degree in botany from George Washington University, and became an ornithologist.

In the 1940s, she took a job at the Smithsonian Institution and developed a methodology to identify birds by their feathers. Laybourne then used this process to help solve murder mysteries and pinpoint the cause of plane crashes.

As an expert forensic scientist, Laybourne was able to match fragments of feathers to a pillow that was used as a silencer during a homicide. She also helped the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board crack the case of a fatal airplane crash in Boston that killed 62 people in 1960. She determined the jet was downed when a flock of starlings were sucked into one of its engines.

During her four decades at the Smithsonian, Laybourne oversaw the Institution's collection of 650,000 bird specimens. She retired in 1988 as curator emeritus.

Cedric Price

Cedric John Price, a visionary architect, died on Aug. 10 of a heart attack. He was 68.

The eldest son of architect A.G. Price, Cedric earned a diploma at the Architectural Association School in London. He worked in the offices of Erno Goldfinger and Fry, Drew & Partners, then opened his own firm in 1960.

For more than 40 years, Price chose to work on projects that interested him, rather than paid the bills. While he designed the steel and mesh aviary at the London Zoo, Price's ideas of creating a "university of the streets" and a mobile "higher education facility" failed to exist beyond his drawing board.

Laura R. Borsten

Laura Rapaport Borsten, the last surviving officer of the Navy's WAVES program, died on Aug. 11 of a stroke. She was 91.

In 1942, Borsten was helping German refugees resettle in the U.S. when she enlisted in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. During her four years as a WAVES ensign, Borsten trained thousands of female recruits and championed the inclusion of black women in the service.

She retired as a lieutenant commander of the WAVES, which was disbanded after World War II. Her wartime experiences were featured in her autobiography, "Once a Wave: My Life in the U.S. Navy 1942-1946."

Jinx Falkenburg

Eugenia Lincoln Falkenburg, a model and actress who helped establish the talk show genre, died on Aug. 27. Cause of death was not released. She was 84.

Falkenburg was nicknamed "Jinx" by her mother. As a teenager, she became a top fashion model who appeared on numerous magazine covers.

During World War II, Falkenburg entertained the troops and later appeared on a stamp commemorating the USO. When she returned to the states, Falkenburg appeared in two dozen movies, including "Sing for Your Supper," "Two Senoritas From Chicago" and "Cover Girl."

Falkenburg and her husband, Tex McCrary, began broadcasting the popular morning radio talk show, "Hi Jinx," in 1946. "Tex and Jinx" later hosted the NBC show, "At Home," and published a column together in The New York Herald Tribune.

Clive Charles

Clive Charles, coach of the 2000 U.S. men's Olympic soccer team, died on Aug. 26 from prostate cancer. He was 51.

Charles began playing soccer for West Ham United in England when he was a teenager. He moved to the U.S. and for 17 years served as a defender with the Portland Timbers, Pittsburgh Spirit and Los Angeles Lazers.

In 1986, Charles started coaching the University of Portland's men's soccer team. He took on the duties of coaching the women's team in 1989; they won the national championships last year. With his combined 439-144-44 record, Charles was one of five NCAA coaches to win more than 400 college soccer games.

For the past seven years, Charles has served as the head coach of the U.S. men's Olympic soccer team, which made it to the semifinals at the 2000 Sydney Games. He was recently inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame.

J. Kirk Varnedoe

J. Kirk Varnedoe, one of the most influential art curators in the world, died on Aug. 16 from colon cancer. He was 57.

Varnedoe graduated with a bachelor's degree in art history from Williams College and a master's from Stanford University. He received his doctorate at 26 when he turned in a catalog for a show he curated on Auguste Rodin as his dissertation.

While teaching at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1988, Varnedoe was hired as the chief curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, a job that is considered to be one of the most important positions in the modern-art world. He was only 42 years old.

Varnedoe spent 14 years at MOMA, where he exhibited the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Paola Antonelli, Joshua Siegel, Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollack. He also published 18 books on art, including "Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA Since 1980."

In 2002, Varnedoe began teaching the history of art at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study. This past spring, he served as the Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Varnedoe was married to sculptor Elyn Zimmerman.

John Lansdale Jr.

Col. John Lansdale Jr., the security and intelligence chief of the Manhattan Project, died on Aug. 22. Cause of death was not released. He was 91.

Lansdale graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1933 and received his law degree from Harvard Law School. He worked for the Cleveland law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey until the start of World War II.

From 1941 to 1945, Lansdale ran the investigation and review branches of the G-2 War Department. He also took command of the security and intelligence teams of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M. For his contributions to the war effort, Lansdale received the Legion of Merit and the Order of the British Empire.

After the war, Lansdale returned to Cleveland, where he practiced law and served on the city council for Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Wilfred Thesiger

Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger lived an explorer's life. He traveled to the most distant and desolate parts of the world, and chronicled his adventures in books and on film.

Thesiger was born in the British Legation in Addis Ababa, where his father was British Minister at the court of the Emperor of Abyssinia. He studied at Eton and Oxford in England, then traveled back to Addis Ababa to attend Haile Selassie's coronation. During World War II, he joined the Sudan Defense Force and helped the now-deposed Emperor Selassie liberate his country from Italian occupation.

After the war, Thesiger explored Iraq, Persia, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kenya. He searched for locust breeding grounds in Saudi Arabia, saw the quicksands at Umm as Samim and traveled by camel across the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world. He described his adventures in the books "Arabian Sands" and "The Marsh Arabs," and was knighted in 1995.

Thesiger died on Aug. 24. Cause of death was not released. He was 93.

Robert H. Dowd

Robert H. Dowd, a decorated war hero, meteorologist and author, died on Aug. 5 from kidney failure. He was 81.

Born and raised in Miami, Dowd attended the University of Florida for one year before enlisting in the Army Air Corps. Trained to fly B-26 Marauder bombers, Dowd was sent to Europe a week after D-Day in 1944 to provide air support for ground troops. He received a Purple Heart and a distinguished flying cross.

When the war ended, Dowd joined the research and development division of the Air Force, and flew some of the first hurricane tracking missions. He went back to school to earn a degree in meteorology, and after a brief stint in Korea, was assigned to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland where he gave weather briefings to the pilots flying Air Force One. In the late 1960s, Dowd flew AC-47 Gunships in Vietnam in a special operations squadron. He also monitored launch and recovery weather as the chief meteorologist for six Apollo flights (8-13).

Dowd retired from the military in 1973. He spent a decade as a mortgage banker in Miami, then turned his attention to writing. In 1997, Dowd published "The Enemy Is Us: How to Defeat Drug Abuse and End the 'War on Drugs.'" He was also one of 75 retired veterans who urged the federal government to reconsider its military involvement in the Colombian civil war.

Josefina B. Magno

Josefina B. Magno, an oncologist who established some of the first hospice programs in America, died on July 27 from congestive heart failure. She was 83.

Dr. Magno received her medical degree from the University of Santo Tomas. She served as the Special Assistant to the Chairman of the National Science Development Board in the Philippines, and as the Assistant to the Secretary of Health of the Philippines until dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.

After immigrating to America in the 1960s, Dr. Magno took a job as a physician at Georgetown University Hospital. Her views on patient care were drastically altered when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent chemotherapy treatments and a radical mastectomy to treat the disease, then became one of the first four fellows to train in oncology at Georgetown.

Working with cancer patients encouraged Dr. Magno to co-found Hospice of Northern Virginia, one of the first hospice centers in the United States. Today it helps care for more than 600 patients a day. As the first executive director of the National Hospice Organization of the United States, Dr. Magno sought to give patients in every state hundreds of hospice options.

John J. Rhodes

John Jacob Rhodes II, the Arizona Republican who served as the minority leader of the House of Representatives during the Nixon presidency, died on Aug. 24 of cancer. He was 86.

Rhodes graduated from Kansas State University and Harvard Law School, then served as an administrative officer with the Army Air Forces during World War II. He practiced law in Mesa, Ariz., until 1952 when he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives. Rhodes was elected by a landslide, and was the first Republican to ever serve Arizona in the House. He also served the longest House of Representatives tenure in Arizona's history.

During his 15 terms in office, Rhodes chaired the House Republican Policy Committee, served on the appropriations committee and backed the war in Vietnam. In 1973, he was elected minority leader when Gerald R. Ford became President Richard Nixon's vice presidential running mate.

After he retired from politics in 1982, Rhodes practiced law for the Virginia firm, Hunton and Williams. He received the Congressional Distinguished Service Award in the Capitol last month.

Martha Chase

Martha Chase, a scientist who helped conduct a famous DNA experiment, died on Aug. 8 of pneumonia. She was 75.

Chase was only in her 20s when she worked with biologist Alfred D. Hershey on the "blender experiments" at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Chase and Hershey used an ordinary kitchen blender to demonstrate that the DNA of a virus, and not its proteins, carried its inherited information. Hershey won the Nobel Prize in 1969 for proving this theory.

Chase received her bachelor's degree in biology from the College of Wooster in Ohio, and her post-doctoral degree at the University of Southern California. In the late 1960s, her scientific career ended when she experienced a series of personal and financial setbacks, and succumbed to dementia.

Carl Pitti

Carl Pitti, an actor and stuntman who worked in Hollywood for over five decades, died on Aug. 9. Cause of death was not released. He was 86.

Pitti appeared in 10 movies, including the 1939 film, "Of Mice and Men" starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. He made numerous television appearances on shows like "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza" and "Little House on the Prairie."

Pitti acted as a stunt double for Bob Hope in "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number," and taught Glenn Ford how to shoot in "The Fastest Gun Alive." He also worked as a Western coach for actors like Barbara Stanwyck, Rock Hudson and Michael Landon.

In 1984, Pitti was inducted into the Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.

Bobby Bonds

Bobby Bonds, a legendary baseball player and the father of a rising baseball star, died on Aug. 23 from lung cancer. He was 57.

Bonds was a four-sport standout at his high school in Riverside, Calif. He signed with the San Francisco Giants right after graduation, and hit a grand slam during his first major league game. He would eventually spend 23 seasons working with the Giants, either as a player, coach or scout.

Bonds was the fourth player to enter baseball's "30-30 club," whose members have hit at least 30 home runs and stolen 30 bases in a single season. In 1969, Bonds joined this exclusive group when he hit 32 homers and stole 45 bases during his first full major league season. He qualified for the club five times in his career and almost became the first member of the "40-40 club" in 1973 when he hit 39 homers and stole 43 bases. Unfortunately, Bonds also led the majors in strikeouts three times in his first six seasons.

During his 13-year career in professional baseball, Bonds played for the Giants, New York Yankees, California Angels, Chicago White Sox, Texas Rangers, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs. A three-time All-Star, Bonds retired with a .268 batting average, 1,258 runs scored and 1,024 runs batted in.

His son, Barry Bonds, is only 104 homers short of eclipsing Henry Aaron's all-time mark of 755. If he accomplishes this feat, Barry will become the sport's all-time home-run leader.

• Bobby Bonds Statistics From Baseball-Reference.com

Kenji Ito

Kenji Ito, an attorney who was once accused of being a Japanese spy, died on Aug. 10 from Alzheimer's disease. He was 94.

Ito earned his law degree at the University of Washington in 1935. Once he was admitted to the bar, the school sent him on a yearlong debate tour around the world. When he returned, Ito gave speeches to civic groups about the Sino-Japanese War. He took the rhetorical position in favor of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, a move that would have unforeseen repercussions years later.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, Ito was arrested by the FBI, charged with being a Japanese spy and held on a $25,000 bond. Five months later, Ito was acquitted by an all-white jury. His ordeal was not over, however. Ito and his family were then rounded up, along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans, and placed in detention camps. During his imprisonment, Ito offered free legal assistance to the other detainees.

When the war ended, Ito moved to Los Angeles and became the first Japanese American admitted to the California state bar after World War II. Ito spent 50 years practicing corporate law and helping former detainees reclaim their lost property. He also served five terms as president of the Southern California Japanese Chamber of Commerce.

John Geoghan

John Geoghan, a defrocked priest who unleashed the latest sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, was murdered in prison on Aug. 23. He was 68.

Although an autopsy is scheduled for Monday, it appears Geoghan was strangled in the Souza-Baranowski Correction Center by fellow inmate Joseph L. Druce. A convicted murderer and neo-Nazi, Druce is already serving a life sentence and will face murder charges in Geoghan's death.

More than 130 people claimed Geoghan sexually abused them as children when he served as a Boston priest. In 2002, he was convicted of indecent assault and battery for fondling a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool.

Geoghan was ordained in 1962. He served the Catholic Church for 30 years, during which time he was repeatedly reassigned to new parishes when allegations of sexual abuse were made. Although the archdiocese settled with many of Geoghan's victims for $10 million, he still faced more criminal trials and 86 lawsuits.

Tony LaBarba

Anthony James LaBarba, a successful Dallas wine merchant, died on Aug. 10 of heart failure. He was 81.

LaBarba was born in Dallas to Sicilian immigrants. His father ran a fruit and vegetable company, and taught his 10 children how to stomp grapes in the wine cellar of their home. By the time he was a teenager, LaBarba was already learning the family business. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, he helped his father buy wine in California, bottling it and sell it.

LaBarba served in the Navy during World War II, then took over his father's struggling wine business in 1947. By visiting European vineyards and developing a palate for fine wine, LaBarba was able to build up a multimillion-dollar wholesale wine business that sold to all the best restaurants and bars in Dallas. LaBarba, the former president of American Wine and Importing Co., was also a board member of the Texas Hill Country Wine Festival.

Cynthia Doyon

Cynthia Ann Doyon, a popular radio host in Seattle, committed suicide on Aug. 5. She was 48.

Every Saturday night for 24 years, Doyon produced and hosted "The Swing Years and Beyond," on KUOW-FM (94.9). "A quirky mix of swing, R&B, country western, bebop and popular song," the show featured artists like Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman.

Doyon studied history and communications at the University of Washington. Her first job was as the host of a rock-n-roll show at the college radio station, KCMU-FM (90.3). She was also KCMU's first woman program director.

Doyon died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She was found on the UW campus.

Antonis Samarakis

Antonis Samarakis, a Greek author and children's advocate, died on Aug. 8 of a heart attack. He was 84.

Samarakis studied law at Athens University, then became a civil servant in the labor ministry. During the German occupation, he fought in the Resistance until his activities were discovered. In 1944, he was sentenced to death, a fate he avoided by going into hiding until the end of World War II.

In the 1950s, Samarakis turned his love of writing into a career. He published three short story collections, seven novels and an autobiography. His work was eventually translated into 30 languages.

Samarakis was the first Greek to serve as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. He also became a leader of Greece's youth parliament program. Each year, the program gives 300 high school students the opportunity to gather in the country's parliament building and serve in a mock government.

Wesley Willis

Wesley Willis, a musician and underground icon in Chicago, died on Aug. 21. Cause of death was not released. He was 40.

Willis began his music career performing on the street. He opened for a few local bands until 1989 when he was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia. Several years of mental illness and homelessness followed as Willis struggled to play music and battle what he called the "schizophrenia demons" in his head.

In 1992, Willis and guitarist Dale Meiners formed the Wesley Willis Fiasco. The band, which Willis fronted, built up a cult following by recording more than 50 albums of indie music and rants, and getting airplay on the "Doctor Demento Show."

Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, released two of Willis' albums: "Greatest Hits, Volume I" and "Volume II," on the Alternative Tentacles Records label. "Greatest Hits, Volume 3" is scheduled for release on Oct. 6.

Merrill Cohen

Merrill Cohen's father loved tropical fish, but he wouldn't let his son get a puppy. Fish and dogs eventually became Cohen's life-long pursuits.

Cohen grew up and became a dog breeder. Yorkshire terriers were his favorite breed, and during the 1950s and '60s, he and his wife, Helen, won numerous prizes at dog shows around the country. Cohen eventually traveled the world as a judge for purebred dog competitions.

When he wasn't training terriers, Cohen was nurturing his interest in tropical fish. He preferred to decorate his tanks with natural materials rather than plastic ornaments and plants, and he developed one of the first all-glass tanks without a metal rim. In the mid-1940s, Cohen opened The Aquarium, a Pikesville, Md., store devoted to selling and designing natural fish tanks. Twenty years later, he sold the business to an employee and launched Aquarium Products, one of the nation's largest tropical fish wholesalers.

Cohen died on Aug. 6 of lung cancer. He was 75.

Kieran Kelly

Kieran Kelly was the first jockey killed in a fall on an Irish racecourse in more than two decades.

He suffered head injuries on Aug. 8 when he fell off his horse, Balmy Native. The horse went down at the fifth fence from home during the Joe Cooney Memorial Handicap Chase at Kilbeggan. Kelly died four days later. He was 25.

Kelly apprenticed with Mickey Flynn, then joined up with Dessie Hughes, who trained Balmy Native. In the 2000-2001 season, he rode 32 winners.

Grover Mitchell

Grover Mitchell, a jazz trombonist who lead the Count Basie Orchestra, died on Aug. 6 of cancer. He was 73.

As a child growing up in Pittsburgh, Mitchell wanted to play the trumpet, but his band teacher said he had the arms of a trombone player. Mitchell protested until he heard Tommy Dorsey play, then he dedicated himself to learning the instrument.

Mitchell earned a degree in music from Empire State College, then moved to San Francisco to work with Earl "Fatha" Hines, Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. He played in the Count Basie Orchestra from 1962 to 1970, and again from 1980 to 1984.

After Basie died, Mitchell was the third person tapped to lead the group. Under his guidance, the band recorded "Count Basie Orchestra With the New York Voices," which won a Grammy in 1996 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance.

During his years away from the Basie Orchestra, Mitchell played on the "Flip Wilson Show" and in the film, "Lady Sings the Blues." He also led his own band, a 12-piece unit that produced five recordings and played in the Rainbow Room.

• Read an Interview With Grover Mitchell

Carlos Roberto Reina

Carlos Roberto Reina, the former president of Honduras, committed suicide on Aug. 19. Reina was suffering from cancer of the gall bladder, pancreas and liver when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 77.

As a young adult, Reina worked as an activist for the Liberal Party. In 1944, he spent six months in jail for protesting against dictator Tiburcio Carias. During the 1960s, Reina published the Liberal Party newspaper El Pueblo and served two more prison terms for his political beliefs.

When free elections were restored in Honduras in 1981, a more democratic form of government replaced Gen. Paz Garcia's military regime. Reina won the presidential election in 1993 on a Liberal Party platform that called for a "Moral Revolution." During his four years in office, he eliminated mandatory military service, and created both a modern attorney general's office and an investigative police force.

Reina also taught law at the National Autonomous University of Honduras and served as an ambassador to France.

True Boardman

True Eames Boardman, a child star-turned-screenwriter, died on July 29 of cancer. He was 93.

Born in Seattle in 1909, Boardman was the only child of actress Virginia Eames and action-adventure star True Boardman. By the time he was 13 years old, he had already appeared in a dozen movies, including the Charlie Chaplin film, "Shoulder Arms."

Boardman graduated with a bachelor's degree in English literature and Spanish from UCLA, and a master's in theater from Occidental College. He worked as the chief writer for Lux Radio Theater until World War II began. Then he volunteered for the Army and worked on the Armed Forces Radio Services.

In the 1950s and '60s, Boardman wrote for television shows like "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke" and "Perry Mason." He also wrote scripts for several films, including "Pardon My Sarong" and "The Painted Hills."

Boardman's autobiography, "When Hollywood and I Were Young," was published by the Library of Congress Press. He received the Valentine Davies Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Writers Guild of America in 1993.

George Marquardt

Gen. George William Marquardt, the Army pilot who photographed the atomic attack on Hiroshima, died on Aug. 15. Cause of death was not released. He was 84.

On Aug. 6, 1945, Marquardt flew the plane, "Necessary Evil," right beside the "Enola Gay," the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Marquardt captured the blast on film. At least 80,000 people were killed in the attack.

Three days later, Marquardt was flying the Enola Gay beside the bomber "Bock's Car" when it launched the atomic bomb against Nagasaki. According to the Nagasaki City Atomic Bomb Records Preservation Committee, more than 73,800 people died.

"I have never for one moment regretted my participating in the dropping of the A-bomb. It ended a terrible war," Marquardt told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1995.

After his discharge from the military, Marquardt moved to Salt Lake City, where he worked as a sales manager and vice president for the Allen Steel Co.

James Culp

Cmdr. James D. Culp, a war hero who survived more than three years in Japanese prisoner of war camps, died on July 25 of cancer. He was 86.

Culp dropped out of high school, joined the Navy and served six years aboard the destroyer Pennsylvania. A few months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Culp volunteered to become a PT boat gunner in the new Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron.

In 1941, Culp's boat was grounded during a night raid in the Philippines. The crew swam ashore, behind enemy lines, but Culp remained on the boat to help shoot down a Japanese plane. The event was chronicled in the book, "They Were Expendable," by William Lindsay White, and in a 1945 movie of the same name starring John Wayne.

Culp eventually made it to the American-held positions on the Bataan Peninsula. While fighting with the 4th Marines on Corregidor Island, he was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Japan. The Allies declared victory three years later and Culp took command of the POWs, a move that earned him a Bronze Star.

After he regained his strength, Culp became a welfare officer at the naval prison on Terminal Island in San Pedro. He served as a gunnery officer during the Korean War, then as an executive officer at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Culp retired from the military in 1964. He spent a year working as a safety engineer for NASA before moving to California to become professional skipper.

Jannie Brandes-Brilleslijper

Jannie Brandes-Brilleslijper, a member of the Jewish resistance during World War II, died on Aug. 15 of heart failure. She was 86.

Before she was deported, Brandes-Brilleslijper forged identification papers to help Jews escape the Nazis in occupied Netherlands. She survived the Westerbork and Auschwitz concentration camps, then in 1945, was transferred to Bergen-Belsen where she worked as a nurse.

Brandes-Brilleslijper was believed to be the last person to see diarist Anne Frank alive. After the war, she told Otto Frank of his daughter's death.

In her memoirs, Brandes-Brilleslijper described her time in the concentration camps: "We were stripped in an icy room with the wind billowing through it. Five women under one trickle of water. No towels. Tattooed, shaved ... we were totally confused and unable to understand anything."

Sérgio Vieira de Mello

Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative in Iraq, was killed on Aug. 19 when a truck bomb exploded in front of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. He was 55.

The hotel was being used by the U.N. as its Iraqi headquarters. At least 17 people were killed in the blast.

Vieira de Mello was born in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and humanities at the Liceu Franco-Brasileiro in Rio, then obtained four more degrees, including two doctorates, from the Sorbonne in Paris.

In 1969, Vieira de Mello took a job with the U.N. in Geneva as an assistant editor. During his 34-year tenure at the U.N., he worked as a field officer in East Pakistan/Bangladesh, a deputy representative in Mozambique, a senior political adviser of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon and a special representative of the Secretary-General and the U.N. Transitional Administrator in East Timor.

He was tapped to man the U.N.'s post in Iraq last May. A widely respected diplomat, Vieira de Mello planned to return to his permanent position as the high commissioner for human rights, in September.

Julius Baker

Julius Baker, a principal flutist of the New York Philharmonic, died on Aug. 6 of an apparent heart attack. He was 87.

A native of Cleveland, Baker first picked up the flute after watching his father play it. He graduated in 1937 from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and joined the Cleveland Orchestra. Then he performed as the principal flutist for the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony in New York and the Chicago Symphony.

Baker joined the New York Philharmonic in 1965 and spent 18 years in the solo flute position under the directorships of Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez. He also taught music at the Juilliard School and Toho University in Tokyo, released nine CDs and performed at the 200th birthday of Theobald Boehm, the developer of the modern flute.

Chung Mong-hun

Chung Mong-hun, chairman of the South Korean company Hyundai Asan, committed suicide on Aug. 4 by jumping off the 12th floor of his office building in Seoul. He was 54.

Mong-hun's father, Chung Ju-young, turned an auto repair shop into South Korea's largest business empire. After World War II ended, Chung Sr. joined forces with the U.S. and won contracts to rebuild the Han River bridge and construct the world's largest shipyard at Ulsan. By 1947, Ju-young's company, Hyundai, held interests in trading securities, shipbuilding, construction and car making. A year later, Chung Mong-hun was born.

Mong-hun graduated with a degree in Korean literature from Yonsei University. He joined Hyundai Heavy Industries in 1975, and became head of the group's shipping interests within six years. His management style and loyalty impressed his father, and he was placed in charge of the corporation's highly successful electronics ventures.

Tough economic conditions hit Asia in 1997, and the South Korean government called for the break-up of Hyundai. To comply with new corporate reform policies, the company was divided into three subgroups -- one controlled by Hyundai Motor, the second led by Hyundai Heavy Industries and the third run by Mong-hun, which handled the rest of the former conglomerate's interests.

Mong-hun's involvement in arranging the historic summit between the two Koreas in 2000 led to an indictment for doctoring company books. The "cash-for-summit scandal" revealed that Hyundai-Asan secretly sent $100 million to North Korea in order to get the country's leaders to agree to the summit. Mong-hun was also charged with embezzling $12.5 million in company funds, used to bribe government officials into providing political and financial support to Hyundai. If convicted, he would have faced three to five years in prison.

James Welch

James Welch, a poet and author who wrote about Native American culture, died on Aug. 4 of a heart attack. He was 62.

Welch was raised on the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap Indian reservations. The son of a Blackfeet father and a Gros Ventre mother, Welch referred to himself as an Indian -- not a Native American or an American Indian.

"Indian writers might come from different eras, from different geographies, from different tribes, but we all have one thing in common: We are storytellers from a long way back. And we will be heard for generations to come," Welch once wrote.

After two years at Northern Montana College, Welch transferred to the University of Montana and took a poetry workshop with Richard Hugo. Hugo became Welch's friend and mentor, and the two made a wager with writer J.D. Reed to each write a poem about a bar and get it published. All three succeeded when their barroom writings appeared in The New Yorker.

Welch published his first collection, "Riding the Earthboy 40," in 1971. Eight books followed, including "Winter in the Blood," "Fools Crow" and "The Indian Lawyer." He was best known for his retelling of the Battle of Little Bighorn in "Killing Custer," which served as a companion book to the PBS documentary "Last Stand at Little Bighorn." Welch received the American Book Award in 1986.

Wesley Speakman

Wesley Speakman, a veteran Miami police officer, died on July 30 of complications from a stroke. He was 78.

Born and raised in South Florida, Speakman dropped out of high school in his junior year to enlist in the Navy. He served his country in World War II as an aviation machinist mate on the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier.

Speakman joined the Miami Police Department when he returned to America in 1948. During his 27 years on the force, Speakman secured the waters around Miami and coordinated rescue efforts as part of the Harbor Patrol. He was also the department's first licensed pilot.

Speakman retired in 1975, then took a job monitoring motion sensors in the Sinai Desert region between Egypt and Israel.

Alex Gong

Alex Gong, a world champion kickboxer, was murdered in San Francisco on Aug. 1. He was 32.

Gong was working out at the training gym he owned when he saw a dark green Jeep Cherokee hit his car and drive off. Still wearing his boxing gloves, Gong pursued the Jeep on foot. He caught up to the Jeep when it stopped at a traffic light; the driver then shot him in the chest and sped away. After a 12-hour stand-off with police, Rodger Wayne Chastain, the man who claimed to be Gong's killer, committed suicide.

Gong was born in New England. He spent a brief time at an orphanage in India, then was reunited with his mother and transplanted to California. After graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in business, Gong started studying karate, judo and tae kwon do.

In 1994, Gong discovered Muay Thai, a form of kickboxing. He took up the sport and eventually won several championships in the middleweight and welterweight classes. A dedicated competitor, Gong headlined fights at the MGM Grand and the Mirage in Las Vegas, and appeared on ESPN, HBO and the CBS TV show, "Walker, Texas Ranger" with Chuck Norris.

"Muay Thai kind of fits into the psyche of Americans, you know, like it has quick results and action and quick attention-getting scoring. And combat is about as real as sports get. When you have unlimited combat with class, rules, sophistication and actual talent, I think there is a true appreciation for that," Gong once said.

Gong opened the San Francisco branch of the Fairtex Combat Sports Camp in 1996. It became the nation's top Muay Thai training facility and the only one recognized by the World Muay Thai Council.

Walter Taussig

Walter Taussig spent half a century training singers at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

From 1949 to 2002, the Vienna-born vocal coach served as the chorus master and assistant conductor at the Met. His students included Placido Domingo, Birgit Nilsson and Maria Callas.

As a child, Taussig studied composition and conducting at the Music Academy in Vienna. After graduation, he was forced to flee Europe in order to avoid Nazi persecution for being Jewish. Taussig coached music students in Istanbul and Cairo before moving to Cuba, where he conducted the Havana Philharmonic. Before settling in New York, Taussig also worked at the Chicago Opera, the Montreal Opera and the San Francisco Opera.

Taussig died on July 31 of natural causes. He was 95.

Tom Lewis

Thomas Francis Lewis, Jr., a six-term U.S. representative from Florida, died on Aug. 2. Cause of death was not released. He was 78.

Although he was born in Philadelphia, Lewis moved to Florida after graduating from high school. He attended Palm Beach Junior College and the University of Florida, then joined the Air Force to serve in both World War II and the Korean War. Once he was discharged from the military, Lewis took a job at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, where he spent 17 years as the chief of jet and rocket engine testing.

From 1964 to 1971, Lewis was a mayor and councilman for the city of North Palm Beach. He spent eight years as a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives and two years in the Florida Senate. In 1983, Lewis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

During his 12 years in Washington, Lewis served on several committees, including the Appropriations Subcommittee on National Defense and the Agriculture Committee. While sitting on the Science and Technology Committee, Lewis helped save the Hurricane Hunter Plane Program from budget cuts. The program is responsible for sending planes into hurricanes to gather prediction data for meteorologists.

"It's one of the reasons why when Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida, it wasn't as devastating as it could have been,'' Mickey Bowman, Lewis' daughter, said.

Ed Townsend

Ed Townsend, a successful R&B songwriter, died on Aug. 13 of heart failure. He was 74.

Townsend, who was known as "Big Papa" to his friends, started singing as a child in the church choir. He graduated from Arkansas State College, then served two years in South Korea with the Marine Corps. While overseas, Townsend honed his singing skills with a troupe of traveling minstrels.

Upon his return to the states, Townsend moved to Los Angeles where he hosted a TV show and signed with Capitol Records to record the song, "For Your Love." The single hit #13 on the Top 40 charts.

None of Townsend's follow-up recordings for Capitol, Liberty, Tru-Glo or Warner Brothers sold well so he became a songwriter for other artists, including Marvin Gaye, Nat King Cole and Etta James. In a career that spanned five decades, Townsend wrote over 200 songs, but he was best known for writing Gaye's 1973 hit, "Let's Get It On."

Robert Blumofe

Robert F. Blumofe, a Hollywood producer, died on July 22. Cause of death was not released. He was 94.

Blumofe received his law degree from Columbia University and joined the legal staff of Paramount Pictures in New York. In 1952, he switched to the production side of filmmaking. He worked on television films for Revue Productions and as the vice president in charge of production and West Coast operations for United Artists.

Blumofe produced three films: "Yours, Mine and Ours," "Pieces of Dreams" and "Bound for Glory," which was nominated for a best picture Oscar in 1976. He eventually shifted his focus to producing independent pictures, and from 1977 to 1981, served as the director of the American Film Institute's West Coast operations.

Herman Schneider

Herman Schneider liked to make science fun for kids to learn.

Schneider was a Polish immigrant who moved to New York City when he was a child. He started writing books in the 1940s, and eventually published 80 titles. His first was "The Harper Dictionary of Science in Everyday Language," a collaboration with his brother Leo. He also wrote numerous science books with his wife Nina, including "Science Fun With Milk Cartons" and "How Scientists Find Out: About Matter, Time, Space and Energy."

As a solo author, Schneider wrote explanatory texts like "Everyday Machines and How They Work" and "Everyday Weather and How It Works." His 1978 book, "Laser Light," was named the best science book for teenagers by the New York Academy of Sciences.

When he wasn't writing, Schneider taught science classes in the New York City school system. He also consulted on 52 filmstrips with University Films, Inc.

Schneider died on July 31. Cause of death was not released. He was 98.

Frederick Robbins

Dr. Frederick Chapman Robbins, a Nobel Prize-winning pediatrician, died on Aug. 4 from congestive heart failure. He was 86.

Robbins earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri and his medical degree from Harvard. He was appointed resident physician in bacteriology at The Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston until the start of World War II when he joined the Army Medical Corps. While stationed in North Africa and Italy, Robbins patched up wounded soldiers and conducted studies on hepatitis, typhus and Q fever. His efforts overseas earned him a Bronze Star.

After the war ended, Robbins returned to the states to finish his training in pediatrics. In 1948, he worked with the research division of the infectious diseases laboratory at Children's Hospital. With the aid of Dr. John F. Enders and Dr. Thomas H. Weller, Robbins developed a way to grow the polio virus in tissue culture. This method aided in the creation of polio vaccines, and earned the three scientists the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1954.

Robbins mentored many doctors as a professor at Harvard and the Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, and as the chief of pediatrics and contagious diseases at Cleveland City Hospital. In the 1980s, Robbins was elected president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Transcript of Robbins' Nobel Lecture

Idi Amin

Idi Amin Dada Oumee, the former Ugandan dictator responsible for the deaths of at least 100,000 people, died on Aug. 16 of kidney failure. He was either 78 or 80.

Amin was born to a peasant father and a self-proclaimed sorceress of the Lugbara tribe. He dropped out of school and joined the Kings African Rifles of the British colonial army. In 1951, Amin also started boxing. At 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, Amin served as Uganda's heavyweight boxing champion for nine years.

In 1966, President Milton Obote appointed Amin to be the military's chief of staff. Five years later, Amin overthrew Obote and declared himself president for life. Under Amin's rule, an army of 15,000 men was formed and told to rape and pillage -- in order to keep the peace. He also deported the country's entire Asian population.

As Uganda plunged into economic chaos, Amin ordered the deaths of anyone who opposed him. He described himself as "a pure son of Africa," and fed his enemies to crocodiles. Obote described him as "the greatest brute an African mother has ever brought to life." Human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed during Amin's eight-year reign.

After surviving 22 assassination attempts, Amin decided to invade Tanzania. In 1979, Tanzanian troops responded by seizing control of the Ugandan capital. Amin was removed from power and forced into exile. He fled to Libya, Iraq, then Saudi Arabia, where he lived comfortably until his death.

• Timeline of Amin's Life

Redd Stewart

Henry Ellis Stewart, a country music singer who co-wrote Tennessee's official song, died on Aug. 2 of complications from head injuries he suffered in a fall at his Louisville home. He was 80.

Stewart, who legally changed his first name to Redd to match his appearance, was raised in Louisville, Ky. He learned to play the banjo, piano, fiddle and guitar as a child then dropped out of junior high to perform in local bands. At 14, his first professional job was to write a jingle for a car dealer's commercial.

In 1937, Stewart became a singer and fiddler in Pee Wee King's Golden West Cowboys, a group that made regular appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and in Gene Autry films. During the 1940s and 1950s, Stewart signed a lifetime exclusive songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose Publications, and co-wrote numerous songs, including "Bonaparte's Retreat," "Slow Poke" and "You Belong to Me."

He co-wrote "Tennessee Waltz" with King while on a road trip from Nashville to Texarkana. Patti Page's version of the song sold millions. It was adopted as the official song of Tennessee in 1965.

Stewart was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1972.

Jerry Frutkoff

Gerald "Jerry" Frutkoff, a veteran horse racing photographer, died on Aug. 1 from cancer and kidney disease. He was 81.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Frutkoff joined the Navy after high school and served as an aviation boatswain's mate during World War II. When his tour ended, Frutkoff went to Florida to work in his uncle's photo shop. In 1947, he moved to Maryland and became a freelance photographer.

For more than five decades, Frutkoff used his camera to capture the personalities and triumphs of horse racing. His work appeared in numerous magazines, including Life, The Saturday Evening Post and Sports Illustrated. His shot of stakes winner Irish Course sitting in the starting gate at Laurel earned him the prestigious Thoroughbred Racing Association's press photo award in 1968. It later appeared on the back cover of Life magazine.

Frutkoff photographed 55 of the last 56 Preakness Stakes, missing only the 1973 race when he filled in for a colleague at another track. Secretariat won the Triple Crown that year.

In 2000, Frutkoff received the Humphrey S. Finney Award for his lifetime contributions to horse racing. To honor his memory, the Maryland Jockey Club will rename its annual award for the best shot from the Preakness to the "Jerry Frutkoff Preakness Photography Award."

Helmut Rahn

Helmut Rahn, a German soccer champion, died on Aug. 14. Cause of death was not released. He was 73.

Rahn, a right-winger known as "the Boss," scored 21 goals in 40 international games. He served as the captain of the Rot-Weiss Essen, which won the German Cup in 1953 and the World Cup in 1954 when Rahn scored the winning goal against Hungary. That same year, the Buenos Aires team offered Rahn 150,000 DM to switch teams; he declined the offer.

His soccer career ended in 1965 when he suffered a debilitating knee injury.

Leeland Thomas Engelhorn

During World War II, Leeland Thomas Engelhorn was shot out of the sky, starved and held as a prisoner of war.

Engelhorn, a 170-pound North Dakota native, worked as a gunner and a radio operator on a B-24 bomber. After conducting a strike against a German aircraft-production plant in 1944, Engelhorn's plane was shot down. He bailed out, survived the fall and started walking toward Switzerland. While stealing some fruit from an orchard, Engelhorn was spotted. The orchard owner and his wife gave him a cigar then turned him in to German authorities.

The Nazis took Engelhorn to a POW camp in Poland where the doctors cleaned his shrapnel wounds without the benefit of anesthetics. When Russian troops advanced toward the camp, the Germans moved all 6,000 allied prisoners. Known as the "Black March," the POWs were forced to walk hundreds of miles through one of the worst European winters in history. Almost 1,500 died from cold and hunger.

When he was liberated by American troops, Engelhorn weighed only 95 pounds. For his stamina and bravery, he received the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.

After the war ended, Engelhorn returned to America and earned a bachelor's and master's degree in geography from the University of North Dakota. He became a founding faculty member at Grossmont Community College, and was named a National Educator of the Year in 1972.

Engelhorn died on July 28 from complications of prostate cancer. He was 80.

Edward McKie

Edward F. McKie Jr., a Washington lawyer who successfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that microorganisms were patentable, died on July 31 of congestive heart failure. He was 78.

McKie graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received his law degree from Georgetown University. In 1960, McKie co-founded the Washington D.C. law firm Irons, Birch, Swindler & McKie, the predecessor firm to Banner & Witcoff. He was a member of the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and on the International Industrial Property Panel for the U.S. Department of State. He also testified before various Congressional committees on patent matters.

McKie was best known for representing Ananda Chakrabarty, a scientist who sought to patent a genetically engineered bacterium capable of breaking down crude oil. Chakrabarty's application was denied by the Patent Office because regulations said living things could not be patented. After 10 years of litigation, McKie argued the Diamond v. Chakrabarty case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a live, artificially engineered microorganism could be patented.

McKie also spent 38 years teaching intellectual property law at Georgetown University. He received a Silver Vicennial Medal in 2002 for his loyal and distinguished service at the school.

Steve Hislop

Robert Steven Hislop, the current British Superbike champion and one of the fastest motorbike racers of all time, died on July 30 in a helicopter accident. He was 41. Hislop was training to be a commercial helicopter pilot when his aircraft crashed in Scotland. No one else was on board.

Hislop, a.k.a. "The Flying Haggis," was always fascinated by motorcycles. As a child, he and his brother Garry were given a Honda ST50, a bike they rode at every spare moment. Garry died in a motorbike race when he was 19.

Despite this loss, Hislop dedicated his life to the machines, first as an apprentice mechanic, then as a motorbike racer. In 1983, Hislop placed second in the Manx GP Newcomers 350cc, and 11th in the 250cc event. Two years later, he entered the Isle of Man TT, and rode in the F1, Classic and 750 production classes. He won the F2 race in 1987, and was sponsored by Honda for the 1989 season.

Hislop won the F1, Senior and 600cc races and set the record for riding a 120 mph lap during a single week of competition. He repeated the feat two years later when he set an unofficial track record of 125.36 mph.

While he won the Championship in 1995 and again last year, Hislop's riding career also experienced some speed bumps. He lost sponsorships with Ducati and Yamaha due to injuries and breach of contract. After placing third in the BSB Championships, Kawasaki fired him too.

Then in 2000, Hislop was involved in a horrifying crash at the Brands Hatch World Superbike race. He took the Paddock Hill bend at about 120 mph and lost control. The motorcycle hit him in the head twice, and he cartwheeled four times in mid-air. The next day, Hislop signed himself out of hospital only to find out weeks later that he had broken his neck in the accident.

Hislop eventually won three British Championships and 11 races at the Isle of Man TT. He published his autobiography, "Hizzy," earlier this year.

• Complete Coverage From The Scotsman

Michael Griswold

Most sailors use electronic compasses and global positioning systems to guide a boat in the right direction. Michael Bernard Griswold used the stars.

Griswold's insatiable wanderlust led him to enlist in the Navy right out of high school. He was stationed in Alaska until 1954, then moved to Southern California to earn a computer science degree from San Diego State College.

Over the next 30 years, he married, raised a family and worked at the Department of Defense as a civil servant. In his spare time, Griswold coached the Ocean Beach Little League and volunteered as a counselor for troubled teens.

In the mid-1980s, Griswold retired and went through a divorce. With extra time on his hands, he renewed his interest in oceanic travel and studied celestial navigation. He bought the Aeolus, a 28-foot ketch named after the Greek god of winds, and sailed to Hawaii, Samoa and around the Sea of Cortez -- using only the stars as his guide.

Griswold died at the end of July from emphysema. He was 70.

Don Estelle

Don Estelle, the 4-foot-9-inch actor and singer who was best known for playing Gunner "Lofty" Sugden in the British comedy series "It Ain't Half Hot Mum," died on Aug. 2. Cause of death was not released. He was 70.

Estelle started his singing career as a boy soprano at the Holy Trinity Church in Darwen, England. After World War II ended, he moved to Manchester and joined the Manchester Kentucky Minstrels charity group. He embarked on a solo career on the North of England Club circuit where he met actor Windsor Davies. They formed a double act and toured the U.K. for four years.

His first television role was in David Croft's show, "Dad's Army." Estelle had a small role in the series, and when Croft began to develop "It Ain't Half Hot Mum," Estelle was his first choice for the part of Lofty Sugden. The role of Sgt.-Major "Shut Up" Williams was played by Davies. "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" aired from 1974 to 1981, and became a cult classic in Australia and New Zealand.

In 1975, a cast album was recorded. The Estelle and Davies release, "Whispering Grass," topped the British charts and sold more than 1 million copies. They also recorded the album, "Sing Lofty," which became one of EMI's top 20 best-selling albums.

Estelle appeared in a variety of television programs, from "The Benny Hill Show" to " Midsummer Night's Dream." He released 11 albums in his career, including "Beautiful Dreamer," "Lonely Wine" and "The Best of Don Estelle Requests." In 1999, Estelle published his memoirs, "Sing Lofty: Thoughts of a Gemini."

Jack Steiner

John Edward Steiner, an aerospace engineer who was known as the "Father of the 727," drowned in Lake Washington on July 29. He was 85.

Originally, Steiner wanted to design boats. After he received a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Washington in 1940, he looked to the sky for inspiration.

Steiner was best known for the inventive design work he did at Boeing from 1941 to 1984. Steiner created the triple-slotted flap, a device that allowed planes to take off and land on shorter runways. In 1963, he helped build the high-performance Boeing 727, turning it into a commercial airliner that was ideal for domestic flights. Previously, commercial jets only flew international flights.

Boeing sold over 1,800 727s during Steiner's tenure, making it the second best-selling commercial jet airliner of all time. The first was the 737; Steiner was the chief engineer on that project. In the final design of the 737, Steiner used 60% of the 727's parts, including its doors, cockpit layout and avionics.

From 1982 to 1990, Steiner served on the White House Aeronautical Policy Review Committee.

Daniel O'Connell

Daniel J. O'Connell, a veteran police officer of the California Highway Patrol, died on July 30. Cause of death was not released. He was 86.

O'Connell studied civil engineering in college, but the Great Depression forced him to leave school before graduation. He took a brief stint as a salesman for a beverage company before dedicating his life to law enforcement.

In 1941, O'Connell became a California Highway Patrol officer. During World War II, he guarded the Monterey coast from enemy submarines. He was drafted in 1943 and served two years in the Navy before returning to the CHP.

As he rose through its ranks, O'Connell took on many tough policing assignments, including the civil rights riots in the 1960s. After he retired in 1971, O'Connell helped police widows and retirees obtain and manage their benefits.

Herb Brooks

Herb Brooks was the architect behind the "Miracle on Ice" hockey team that captured the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

In 1979, Brooks was coaching hockey at the University of Minnesota when he was asked to put together a team for the Lake Placid Games. Using players from rival hockey and college teams, he spent a year training the men, preparing them to play the Soviet Union's championship squad.

Just before the Olympics began, the Soviets creamed the American team by 10-3 in an exhibition game. Undaunted, the U.S. players came back a week later to beat the Soviets 4-3, and win the gold.

Brooks was no stranger to international competition. In 1960, he was the last player to be cut in tryouts for the U.S. Olympic team. Four years later, he made the team and played in the 1964 and 1968 games.

After the American triumph in 1980, Brooks coached several N.H.L. teams, including the New York Rangers, the Minnesota North Stars, the New Jersey Devils and the Pittsburgh Penguins. In 2002, he coached the U.S. hockey team to a silver medal at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Brooks was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990. He was returning from a celebrity golf tournament to raise money for the hall when he lost control of his minivan on a Minnesota highway. The vehicle rolled and he was thrown from the car; he was not wearing a seat belt.

Brooks died on Aug. 11. He was 66.

J. Liddon Pennock Jr.

When society brides wanted elegant floral arrangements for their weddings, they called J. Liddon Pennock Jr.

For most of his life, Pennock operated his family's 100-year-old flower shop in Philadelphia. He studied at the agricultural college of Cornell University but was called home before graduation; it was during the Depression, and all hands were needed to save the family business.

So Pennock turned himself into the florist the rich and well-connected always called. He created bouquets for society weddings and floral centerpieces for debutante coming out parties. He decorated the White House for the Tricia Nixon Cox wedding and filled the executive mansion with plants and flowers each Christmas from 1971 to 1973.

Pennock sold the flower shop in 1970, and built a retail nursery and garden shop on a 25-acre estate called Meadowbrook Farm. The 12 public gardens offer visitors to Meadowbrook a horticultural tour of perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs worthy of a spotlight appearance on Home and Garden Television.

Pennock died on July 24. Cause of death was not released. He was 90.

Norman Loop

Norman Earl Loop's name will remain among the stars for as long as two satellites remain in space.

Loop was a master welder, boilermaker and iron worker who built early exploration satellites. When he welded the two halves of the Pioneer space probe together, his name was engraved on the probe and on another space-bound satellite.

Before Loop became famous on a galactic scale, he enlisted in the Marines and fought in the South Pacific during World War II. When he was honorably discharged in 1945, Loop moved to New York then Colorado, where he became a member of The American Legion. He also served with the All Veteran Honor Guard and participated in more than 500 military honor services at Fort Logan National Cemetery.

In his spare time, Loop volunteered with Meals on Wheels for almost a decade and maintained the flags at the Littleton Community Center and at the WWII Memorial in Littleton, Colo.

Loop died on July 13 of cancer. He was 78.

Gregory Hines

Gregory Oliver Hines, a Tony Award-winning actor and dancer, died on Aug. 9 from cancer. He was 57.

When he was a child, Hines' mother encouraged him and his older brother, Maurice, to study tap dancing as a way to get out of the ghetto. Maurice took lessons and then came home and taught Hines the steps he had learned. They performed together at the Apollo, in the Broadway musical, "The Girl in Pink Tights," and in the Francis Ford Coppola film, "The Cotton Club."

Hines joined forces with Maurice and his father, Maurice Robert Hines Sr., in 1963 to create the act, Hines, Hines and Dad. The family performed together for a decade on the nightclub circuit and on television.

In 1981, Hines landed his first film role as a Roman slave in the Mel Brooks comedy, "History of the World Part I." He showed off his tap dancing mastery when he starred alongside veteran hoofers Sammy Davis Jr. and Sandman Sims in "Tap." Hines also acted in dozens of successful movies, including "Running Scared," "Renaissance Man" and "Waiting to Exhale."

Between movie jobs, Hines made numerous guest appearances on television, and headlined his own CBS sitcom, "The Gregory Hines Show," in 1997. He appeared on Broadway and co-hosted the Tony Awards last year with Bernadette Peters.

Hines took home his own Tony for best actor in a musical in 1993 for playing jazz legend "Jelly Roll" Morton in "Jelly's Last Jam." He won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1999 for his work as the voice of "Big Bill" in the Bill Cosby animated TV series "Little Bill," and two NAACP Image Awards for "Bojangles" and "Running Scared."

• Watch Hines Tap Dance With Savion Glover

Eva Garcia

Eva Garcia, a circus artist who performed aerial stunts on ropes and silks suspended from the ceiling, died on Aug. 8. She was 38.

Garcia was performing her acrobatic routine at the Hippodrome Circus in Great Yarmouth, England, when she lost her grip on the safety wire and plunged more than 20 feet to her death. Eight hundred people witnessed the accident.

"There was no safety net because this particular act can't be done with one," said circus owner Peter Jay.

Garcia began her circus career when she was seven years old. Her family has been in the business for more than 100 years.

Jocelyn Moore Evernham

When the U.S. military published want ads seeking female pilots in 1942, Jocelyn Moore Evernham answered the call.

Evernham was already taking flying lessons in Fort Worth, Texas, when she noticed Uncle Sam's ad in the newspaper and immediately signed up. Out of more than 25,000 women, Evernham was one of only 1,074 who became Women Airforce Service Pilots.

After six months of training, Evernham reported to Gardner Field in California. Because women were not allowed to fly into battle, Evernham conducted test flights and transported military personnel to U.S. bases. She logged more than 260 flight hours piloting AT-6s, B-26Cs, BT-13s, PT-19s and UC-78s.

When the WASPs were deactivated in 1944, Evernham gave up flying and worked for the San Diego Unified School District. Fifty-three years later, Congress finally recognized the efforts of women in the military and extended veterans' benefits to them.

The National Veterans' Oral History Project videotaped Evernham's story for posterity. Her memoirs will be completed by her daughter Lorraine, who is also a pilot.

Evernham died in July from complications of cancer. She was 91.

Aaron Bell

Samuel Aaron Bell, a bassist who performed with Duke Ellington's orchestra, died on July 28. Cause of death was not released. He was 82.

When he was a child, Bell's mother taught him to play the piano. In high school, he learned the trumpet and the tuba, and in college, he mastered the double bass. During World War II, Bell played in Navy bands then joined the Andy Kirk Orchestra and moved to New York City. In between performances, Bell took classes at New York University and recorded music with John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway.

In the 1950s, Bell formed his own band and recorded five albums, none of which have been released on CD. Bell joined Duke Ellington's orchestra as a bassist in 1960, and occasionally served as Ellington's arranger.

Bell spent his later years performing in bars and clubs, and teaching music at Essex County College in Newark, N.J. At his funeral, several of his students played "Take the A Train," the famous Ellington song that featured Bell on bass.

Robert J. Donovan

Robert John Donovan, a veteran journalist and author, died on Aug. 8 from complications of a stroke. He was 90.

After graduating from high school, Donovan made $7 a week as a night copy boy for the Buffalo Courier Express. Four years later, he became a reporter for The New York Herald Tribune and covered city hall. During World War II, Donovan wrote for the armed services newspaper, Stars and Stripes, then went back to the Herald Tribune to report on national and political stories in Washington D.C. In 1963, Donovan was hired by the Los Angeles Times to man its Washington bureau.

Donovan covered five presidential administrations and broke many major news stories. He followed the 1948 Harry S. Truman-Thomas E. Dewey campaign, rode in the presidential motorcade in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and broke the story of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Vietnam in 1969 (his story was published before President Nixon had officially announced the event).

Donovan also wrote 13 books, including "PT-109," a best-seller about President Kennedy's war experiences. It was published in 1961 and made into a movie starring Cliff Robertson. Donovan's memoir, "Boxing the Kangaroo," was published in 2000.

Ben Munson

Dr. H. Benjamin Munson performed abortions in South Dakota even before it was legal to do so.

Munson believed women had the right to safely end a pregnancy, and he risked his medical practice and well-being by performing abortions at a Rapid City clinic in the late 1960s. At the time, he was the only physician in the entire state willing to perform the procedure.

In 1969, Munson was arrested and charged with performing an illegal abortion. He won his case at the circuit court level, but the state appealed, and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled against him. His case was still in appeals when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade case.

"He thought it was absolutely essential that women have the right to make that decision themselves. That's what it was all about for him," said Homer Kandaras, Munson's attorney.

Munson died on July 27 of Alzheimer's disease. He was 87.

Kuno

Kuno, the giant catfish that once devoured a dog, died in Germany after his pond dried up.

The five-foot-long, 77-pound fish made international headlines in 2001 when he ate a small dachshund that was swimming in its pond. Kuno was placed on the Moenchengladbach-Rheydt Anglers Club's most-wanted list, but evaded fisherman for two years.

"He was our Loch Ness monster," said Uwe Heil, a member of the rock band, Kuno's Friends.

Anglers in Bremen, Germany, plan to stuff and mount Kuno, then put him on display at a local museum.

Sam Phillips

Samuel Cornelius Phillips, the man who started Sun Records and discovered the King of Rock 'n' Roll, died on July 30 of respiratory failure. He was 80.

Phillips' first job in the music industry was as a radio engineer and disc jockey for stations in Decatur, Ala., and Nashville, Tenn. He settled in Memphis in 1952 and founded Sun Records. His goal was to record raw, up-and-coming blues and hillbilly singers and share their music with the world. The company's motto was: "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime."

Two years after he launched the Sun label, Phillips gave a young singer from Tupelo, Miss., his big break. That singer, Elvis Presley, produced his first album with Sun Records, and released the singles "That's All Right (Mama)" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

Phillips sold Presley's contract in 1955 to RCA for $35,000, and focused his attention on producing other artists, including Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty. That same year, the Carl Perkins' song, "Blue Suede Shoes," became Sun's first certified million-seller.

In 1969, Phillips sold Sun Records to Shelby Singleton and returned to the business of running radio stations in Memphis and Alabama. In his later years, Phillips was inducted into the Rock and Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame.

• Listen to an NPR Interview With Phillips

Norman Roettger

Norman Charles Roettger Jr., a senior U.S. District Court judge who sent dozens of mobsters to prison, died on July 26 from a heart attack. He was 72.

Roettger graduated from Ohio State University in 1952, then enlisted for a three-year stint in the Navy. While he was stationed in Key West, he developed an appreciation for the eccentric people who lived in South Florida. After he received his law degree from Washington & Lee University in 1958, Roettger moved to Fort Lauderdale and joined the law firm of Fleming, O'Brien & Fleming.

Roettger also made connections with local Republicans. The networking paid off in 1969 when he was tapped to serve as the deputy counsel for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington D.C. Three years later, President Richard Nixon nominated Roettger to the federal bench.

Roettger returned to South Florida to establish a full-time federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale and to tackle tough drug and organized crime cases. He presided over the murder conspiracy trial of religious cult leader Yahweh Ben Yahweh, and received death threats for his sentencing of Mafiosos.

Roettger served as chief judge from 1991 to 1997. Despite the fact that he had technically retired, Roettger continued to travel the district and work as a senior judge. Last year, Roettger made news when he overturned the murder conviction of William H. Kelley, a man who had been on Death Row since 1984 for killing Florida millionaire Charles Von Maxcy.

Killian Owen

Although he was only a child, Killian Owen helped raise thousands of dollars for leukemia research.

When he was five years old, Owen was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. To fight the disease, he endured years of chemotherapy, which caused fevers, nausea and made his hair fall out.

Still Owen maintained his sense of humor and purpose. He became a "hero" for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training, and inspired hundreds of people to run in a marathon and raise money for leukemia research. Two years ago, he and his three brothers designed Christmas cards to benefit the cancer center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

NASCAR driver Robby Gordon visited Owen at home and in the hospital. Earlier this month, Owen met his favorite baseball player, Sammy Sosa. During a Cubs-Braves game, Sosa gave him an autographed bat.

Owen died on July 27 of complications from leukemia. He was 9, and he wanted to be an ice hockey player when he grew up.

William Dargie

Sir William Dargie was once given the tough and prestigious assignment of painting the official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The British monarch posed several times for Dargie at Buckingham Palace in 1954. The portrait he painted currently hangs in Australia's Parliament House, while prints appear in dozens of schools and government buildings and on Australian naturalization papers.

Dargie was best known for painting pictures of famous people, like Gough Whitlam, Sir Henry Bolte and Dame Patty Menzies. He won the Archibald Prize, Australia's most prestigious portrait award, eight times, and received an Order of the British Empire in 1959. Ten years later, he was made a Commander of the British Empire.

Dargie died of natural causes on July 26. He was 91.

Ahmed Safwat

Ahmed Safwat, a popular Egyptian squash player, died on July 29 of a heart attack. He was 56.

Although he was born in Cairo, Safwat spent most of his life playing squash in England. In the 1970s, he was praised for his grace and skill, and ranked as one of the top 10 most successful squash players in the world.

In his later years, Safwat won the World Masters Over 40 title and the Over 50 championship twice. When he wasn't playing squash, Safwat was coaching teams in Egypt and Germany.

Foday Sankoh

Foday Saybana Sankoh, the rebel leader who instigated a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone, died on July 29 from natural causes. He was 65.

Sankoh joined the British colonial army in 1956, and reached the rank of corporal. In 1971, he was dismissed for taking part in an attempted coup against Sierra Leone president Siaka Stevens. Sankoh served seven years in prison for his part in the insurgence, then went to Libya to train in the guerrilla camps with a group of exiles.

There Sankoh formed an alliance with Charles Taylor, a rebel leader who later seized control of Liberia. With Taylor's backing, Sankoh returned to Sierra Leone and created an army known as the Revolutionary United Front. In 1991, Sankoh claimed ownership over the country's diamond mines, and ordered the RUF to start a civil war. He offered his soldiers diamonds as payment for hacking off the limbs of civilians with machetes and raping tens of thousands of girls and women. Over the next decade, 50,000 people would be killed in the conflict.

In 2000, Sankoh was captured outside his Freetown home by pro-government troops, and the RUF was disbanded. During his appearance at the United Nations-backed war tribunal in March, Sankoh called himself a "living god." He was charged with 17 counts of murder, rape, sexual slavery and extermination.

Richard Coleman

Richard Coleman, a founder of the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, died on July 18 in an airboat accident. He was 59.

Coleman was killed when his airboat collided with another on the Dead River in Florida. The three people who were riding on Coleman's boat and the driver of the other boat received moderate to severe injuries in the crash.

Coleman moved to Winter Haven, Fla., in 1966 to work as a research chemist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. While he authored or co-authored more than 50 technical papers for the government, Coleman was primarily known as a protector of central Florida wetlands.

He joined the Sierra Club in the early 1970s, helped found its Florida chapter, then served two terms as its chair. His major goal was to restore the Kissimmee River, which the Army Corps of Engineers had turned into a 56-mile drainage ditch. He also led preservation efforts of the 560,000-acre Green Swamp.

Coleman's wetland preservation work was recognized by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Florida Sierra Club, which awarded Coleman its Florida Chapter Medal for exceptional leadership in conservation.

Brian Wright

Brian Wright, a world-renowned figure skating choreographer, died on July 29 from AIDS. He was 42.

Wright watched the 1968 Winter Olympics and immediately started clipping coupons out of the newspaper for free skating lessons. "The day I walked on the ice, it was instantly home," Wright once said.

He placed second as a novice at the national championships, and toured with the Ice Capades for four years, but soon realized that on-ice choreography was his true passion.

At 17, Wright learned he was HIV-positive. He went public with his homosexuality and HIV status, and give speeches in schools about safe sex. He also refused to let his illness stop him from choreographing hundreds of winning figure skating programs, including routines for Scott Williams, Michael Weiss, Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi. In 1994, Wright was named the U.S. Figure Skating Association's choreographer of the year.

Art Brophy

Arthur Brophy Jr., a baseball player who invented a pitching machine, died on July 28 of bone cancer. He was 70.

Brophy attended Rollins College on a baseball scholarship. An All-American player, he pitched a no-hitter game that earned him a spot in the school's Hall of Fame, and won his team an NCAA championship.

He was recruited by the majors and played five seasons with the Washington Senators and the Minnesota Twins. After his professional baseball career ended, Brophy became a scout for the Baltimore Orioles, and invented Quic Hands, a soft toss pitching machine that helps batters sharpen their hand-eye coordination.

Nicolás Guillén Landrián

Nicolás Guillén Landrián, a painter and Cuban filmmaker who was once accused of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, died on July 22 from pancreatic cancer. He was 65.

Although Guillén directed 18 documentaries and won several awards at film festivals in Europe, he was expelled from Cuba's Institute of Cinematography for making a movie that mocked the Cuban dictator. In the late 1960s, Guillén was accused of plotting to kill Castro. He was imprisoned for two years, then confined for nearly a decade to mental institutions where he was subjected to electroshock therapy.

Guillén left Cuba in 1989, moved to South Florida and became a painter. His artwork was exhibited at the former Cuban Museum of Art to sell-out crowds. But when he ran out of money, Guillén refused to take an ordinary job. Instead, he and his wife, Grettel Alfonso, ended up living on the streets. They bounced around the country, struggling to survive in dilapidated hotels.

Guillén eventually returned to Miami to produce the documentary, "Inside Downtown," a 30-minute look at homelessness. It was released last year.

Phil Halpin

Paul Philip Halpin, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor who won two famous murder trials, died on July 25 from cancer. He was 65.

Halpin graduated from the UCLA law school in 1964. He was only 29 years old when he was given the tough retrial of the Onion Field case. Jimmy Lee Smith and Gregory Powell were convicted of kidnapping two Los Angeles police officers, and murdering one of them in a California onion field. Their sentences were overturned in 1967 based on the Supreme Court's Miranda ruling.

Halpin won a second murder conviction against Smith in 1968. The case later spawned a best-selling true crime book by Joseph Wambaugh, and a feature film starring James Woods and Ted Danson.

In 1989, Halpin again tackled a tough murder case in his vigorous prosecution of Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez, a self-proclaimed Satanist and serial killer who murdered more than a dozen people in Los Angeles from 1984-1985. After nine months of testimony, 537 pieces of evidence and 139 witnesses, Ramirez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder and 30 other charges including attempted murder, burglary, robbery, rape and sodomy. Ramirez was sentenced to death.

John Selover

John Lewis Selover, publisher of the Christian Science Monitor, died on Aug. 1. Cause of death was not released. He was 72.

The son of Christian Scientists, Selover became a Christian Science practitioner (spiritual healer) in 1975. He worked as the church's manager of community and public affairs during the 1970s, and was elected to the Christian Science board of directors in the 1980s.

In 1998, Selover was named manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society, which publishes the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. During his tenure as publisher, the daily newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its political cartoons and expanded its online presence.

Peter Safar

Dr. Peter J. Safar taught physicians how to cheat death.

During his distinguished career, Safar developed the first intensive care unit and paramedic ambulance service. He was a driving force behind the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in hospitals, and he received three nominations for the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Safar graduated from the University of Vienna School of Medicine in 1948, immigrated to the United States on a student visa, and spent two years as a resident at Yale University. Visa regulations required him to leave the U.S., so he spent 14 months working as the chief anesthetist at the National Cancer Hospital in Lima, Peru. He then secured a special-preference immigration visa to the states, which allowed him to practice at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. There Safar experimented on volunteers and documented the best steps for performing CPR.

In 1961, Safar moved to Philadelphia to work as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He founded the International Resuscitation Research Center, which has trained more than 500 physicians in critical care medicine, anesthesiology, emergency medical services and disaster reanimatology.

As a researcher, Safar designed a technique to lower a patient's temperature during cardiac arrest by inducing mild hypothermia. Injecting a cool liquid into the patient's lungs during a heart attack would, in theory, lower overall body temperature and give paramedics a few extra minutes to arrive before permanent brain damage can occur. Safar received several grants from the U.S. Department of Defense to study this concept for use on the battlefield.

Safar died on Aug. 3 from cancer. He was 79.

Norm McRae

Norman McRae always had a passion for baseball. When he was 17, the Detroit Tigers recruited him to play in the minor leagues. Within three years, McRae moved up to the majors. He pitched 34 innings for the Tigers from 1969 to 1970 and appeared on a rookie baseball card.

McRae was then traded to the Washington Senators, where he played for two more seasons. From 1972 to 1981, McRae pitched in the Mexican League. When he could no longer perform on the field, McRae became a coach for Los Dorados and a recruiter for Tomateros de Culiacan.

McRae died on July 25 from cancer. He was 55.

Vance Hartke

Rupert Vance Hartke, a three-term Indiana senator, died on July 27 of heart failure. He was 84.

Hartke served in the Coast Guard and as a Navy officer during World War II. When his military service ended, he earned a law degree from Indiana University, set up his own law practice and became the mayor of Evansville, Ind. He was best known for integrating the town's swimming pools during his two-year tenure.

Hartke was elected to the Senate in 1958 as a hard-working, liberal Democrat with good connections to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Those connections landed him on the Finance and Commerce committees. During his first term, Hartke lobbied for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Hartke helped create student loan programs and new veterans benefits during his second term. He ordered automakers to equip cars with seat belts and helped to establish Amtrak. In 1970, after a tight race and a ballot recount, Hartke won a third term. He briefly considered a run for the presidency, but couldn't secure the Democratic nomination.

His opposition to the Vietnam War led to the publication of two books -- "The American Crisis in Vietnam" and "You and Your Senator" -- and a fallout with President Johnson and President Richard Nixon. It also cost him his Senate seat in 1976.

Hartke then set up a law practice in Falls Church, Va. In 1994, he was indicted by a grand jury in Indiana for polling violations. As part of a plea agreement, Hartke received a six-month suspended sentence.

Walter Zapp

Walter Zapp, the inventor of the Minox mini camera, died on July 17. Cause of death was not released. He was 97.

In the early 1920s, Zapp worked as an apprentice art photographer in Estonia. A self-described weakling, Zapp found it difficult to carry the heavy wooden cameras used at the time so he decided to create a smaller one.

Fourteen years later, Zapp invented a camera so small it could be hidden within a closed hand. He started manufacturing it in Riga, Latvia, using the first standard 8x11 film cartridge, but production was halted during World War II when Zapp was warned that the Russians planned to co-opt his designs and send him to work in Moscow. Afraid of such a fate, Zapp moved to Germany and co-founded Minox with Richard Jürgens.

Although he never intended it to be used for espionage, the Minox mini camera was featured in several James Bond movies. More than 1 million were sold, but Zapp received none of the profits because he sold the patent for a single, lump sum fee.

Harold Altman

Harold Altman, an artist whose portraits and still life lithographs were displayed all over the world, died on July 28. Cause of death was not released. He was 79.

Altman studied at the Cooper Union Art School and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. Although he lived and worked in a 19th century frame church in central Pennsylvania, Altman spent at least four months a year doing etchings and paintings in France.

Altman's work was featured in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. He had hundreds of one-man shows, and commissions of his artwork hang in the New York Hilton and the Galleria Prova in Tokyo.

Altman taught at Penn State University, and was the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Norman Lewis

Travel magazines may offer glossy pictures of the latest hot spots, but to know the stories behind the places where tourists rarely travel, you have to read Norman Lewis.

Lewis was born in London to a spiritual medium and a faith healer. When his three older brothers unexpectedly took ill and died, Lewis was shipped off to Wales to live with his eccentric aunts. Tales of his childhood were featured in his first autobiography, "I Came I Saw"; the second memoir, "The World, The World" focused more on his writing and travels.

During World War II, Lewis served in the Intelligence Corps in Algeria, Tunisia and Naples. He chronicled his experiences in the book, "Naples '44," which The Sunday Times of London called "one of the greatest books to emerge from the Second World War."

Lewis wrote numerous nonfiction books including, "A Dragon Apparent" and "The Missionaries,'' then he tried his hand at fiction, penning a dozen political thrillers like "Darkness Visible" and "The Sicilian Specialist."

After 60 years of travel writing, Lewis was most proud of the article he wrote exposing the genocide of Amazonian tribes in Brazil. It appeared in The Sunday Times in 1969 and prompted the foundation of Survival International, a worldwide organization supporting tribal peoples.

Lewis died on July 22. Cause of death was not released. He was 95.

Marie Trintignant

Marie Trintignant, one of France's most popular actresses, died on Aug. 1 of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 41.

Trintignant was in Lithuania shooting her latest film when she fought with her boyfriend, Bertrand Cantat, a member of the French rock group, Noir Desir. At some point during the argument in their hotel room, Trintignant cracked her skull against a wall and fell into a coma. She died six days later and Cantat was detained on "suspicion of causing bodily injury."

Trintignant grew up in a creative environment. Her first role was in the film, "Mon Amour, Mon Amour," which was directed by her mother, Nadine Trintignant. Her father was Jean-Louis Trintignant, an actor who starred opposite Brigitte Bardot in "Et Dieu Créa Femme" in 1956.

When she was 17, Trintignant made "Série Noire," her first critical success. She appeared in more than 30 films, including "Une Affaire Des Femmes," "Les Amands Du Pont-Neuf" and "Cible Émouvante."

Her private life was ideal fodder for the press. She had four sons by three men -- Richard Kolinka, the drummer of the rock band Téléphone, actor François Cluzet and director Samuel Benchetrit. Trintignant was still married to Cluzet when she and Cantat moved in together.

[Update 3/29/04: Bertrand Cantat was found guilty in a Lithuanian court, and sentenced to eight years in prison for fatally beating Trintignant.]

John Burns

The image of John C. Burns wearing a wide-brimmed Quaker hat has been seen in millions of kitchens. A part-time actor, Burns once modeled for the cover art of Quaker Oats cereal packages.

The oatmeal box exposure brought him national visibility, but most of his thespian work occurred at the local level. Burns appeared at the Drury Lane Theatre in Evergreen Park, Ill., and narrated the St. Patrick's Day parades in Chicago. He hosted the "Something About the Irish," radio program and worked as a DJ for a local AM station.

Burns died of a heart attack on July 24. He was 84.

Harold Schonberg

Harold Charles Schonberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for The New York Times, died on July 26. Cause of death was not released. He was 87.

Schonberg took his first trip to the Metropolitan Opera when he was 11. That night he decided he wanted to become a music critic when he grew up. Almost four decades later, he devoted a Sunday column to his recollections of that evening.

As an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, Schonberg published his first reviews in the Musical Advance. He attended grad school at New York University and wrote a master's thesis on the musical and literary significance of Elizabethan songbooks.

In 1939, Schonberg became a record critic for American Music Lover magazine, a publication that was later renamed the American Record Guide. His career was placed on hold during World War II when he served as a code breaker and parachutist in the United States Army Airborne Signal Corps.

When the war ended, Schonberg returned to New York City and took a job as a music critic for The New York Sun. He also contributed reviews to the Musical Courier, Musical Digest and Gramophone.

Schonberg joined The New York Times in 1950 and became its record editor five years later. By 1960, he was promoted to senior music critic, a position he held for two decades. Schonberg wrote daily reviews and longer Sunday features on opera and classical music. In 1971, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. It was the first time the award was given to a music critic.

Schonberg also had a passion for writing about chess and literature. He covered the Boris Spassky-Bobby Fischer championship match in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972, and the championship match between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in 1984. From 1972 to 1995, Schonberg reviewed mysteries and thrillers for The New York Times Book Review under the pseudonym Newgate Callendar.

Schonberg also published 13 books, including "The Great Pianists," "The Lives of the Great Composers" and "Facing the Music," a collection of his favorite columns.

John Houlihan

John J. Houlihan, a war hero who became the first director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, died on July 24 of lung cancer. He was 80.

Upon graduating from high school in 1941, Houlihan enlisted in the Marines. He fought in the Battle of Midway and Guadalcanal, and was wounded by artillery fire in Bougainville. A big shell exploded, killing and injuring a dozen Marines; Houlihan's left leg was amputated in the blast. His service during World War II earned him a Purple Heart, the Marine Corps Medal and the Asian Pacific Medal with three Bronze Stars.

When he returned to the states, Houlihan earned a degree in business and accounting at DePaul University, and took a job with the Cook County clerk's office.

In 1965, he was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat. He served four terms, ran two failed campaigns for Congress, then became the first appointed director of veterans affairs in Illinois.

He also spent several years with the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., where he worked directly for President Ronald Reagan as the V.A. representative who handled benefits supplied to the Marines injured in Beirut. Before he became too ill to work, Houlihan supervised the Cook County Veteran's Assistance Commission.

Adrian Burk

Adrian Burk, one of only five players to throw seven touchdowns in a single game, died on July 28. Cause of death was not released. He was 75.

Burk was an All-American in 1949 and threw for over 2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns at Baylor University.

From 1951 to 1956, he played quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. During the 1954 season, Burk tied the record for the most touchdown passes in a single game. The only other players to match this feat were: Sid Luckman, Chicago, 1943; George Blanda, Houston, 1961; Y.A. Tittle, New York, 1962; and Joe Kapp, Minnesota, 1969.

After his pro career ended, Burk joined the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, and spent his weekends working as a football official. Burk refereed the longest playoff game ever between Kansas City and Miami in 1971, and the Immaculate Reception game between Pittsburgh and Oakland in 1972.

He also served as the general counsel to the Houston Oilers, where he was credited with signing Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, the Houston Oilers' first player.

Bryant Snapp

Bryant Davis Snapp, the editorial page copy chief at The Washington Post, died on July 22 in a head-on collision with a water tanker near Toledo, Wash. He was 36.

Snapp was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at the University of Virginia, then spent nine years copyediting The Washington Times. He joined The Washington Post in 1999 as a deputy copy editor on the national news desk, and was later promoted to copy chief of the editorial page.

David Hancock, 45, and David K. Ringstrom, 49, were also killed in the automobile accident. Hancock and Snapp were joined in a commitment ceremony in Hawaii last year.