Sports
George Bayer - Three-time winner on the PGA Tour, who competed in the PGA and Senior PGA Tours from 1955 until 1997, who was known for his mammoth drives, and who had played college football for the University of Washington and six games as a pro in the NFL with the Washington Redskins, died March 16 of a heart attack while dining with one-time Masters champion Bob Goalby in Palm Springs, CA at the age of 77.
Al Blades - Tackle who played at the University of Miami from 1996 to 2000 and was second on the team in tackles in 2000 and was named to the All-Big East Conference Team, who played briefly for the San Francisco 49"ers in the NFL and is the brother of NFL players Bennie and Brian Blades, was killed in a car accident March 20 in Miami at age 26.
Joe Buzas - Shortstop who played 30 games with the Yankees in 1945, but who is best known for owning more than 60 minor league teams since the 1950's including teams in Allentown, PA; New Britain, CT and Springfield, MA, and who was current owner of the Salt Lake Stingers, the Angels AAA affiliate, died March 19 in Salt Lake City after a long illness at age 84.
Alphonso Ellis - College football player at the University of Georgia, who was a running back from 1987 to 1990 and was the primary lead blocker for future 49"ers star Garrison Hearst, died March 21 of colon cancer in Dallas at age 35.
Hiromichi "Kodo" Fuyuki - Professional wrestler and founder of the WEW promotion who had wrestled since the early 80's, who formed one of the most popular tag team trios with Jado and Gedo, and who retired from wrestling in 2002 after diagnosis of liver cancer (many people believed he was faking it), succumbed to the disease on March 19 at age 42.
Karl Kling - German motor racing great who was called "the Gentleman", who competed in the heyday of German motor sports in the 1940's and 50's and was a legend in his homeland, died March 18 in Berlin at age 92.
Henryk de Kwiatkowski - Thoroughbred horse racer who owned 1982 Horse of the Year Conquistador Cielo, who purchased the legendary but failing Calumet Farm in Kentucky in 1992 rescuing it from bankruptcy, died March 17 at his home in the Bahamas at age 78.
Ed Murphy - Sports reporter for the Wilmington News-Journal (Delaware) newspaper, who covered Delaware State University and high school athletics for the paper, was killed in Richmond, VA when he walked into the propellers of the Cessna airplane he was boarding to fly home (Ouch!). He was 46.
Chuck Ogbogu - Football player at Thomas More College, who is the brother of Cincinnati Bengals lineman Eric Ogbogu, died March 21 in Fayette County, KY of apparently natural causes at age 20.
'sailor" Art Thomas - Bodybuilder and professional wrestler who was one of only a handful of big-name black stars in pro wrestling from the 50s through the early 70s, whose gimmick was that of a merchant marine bodybuilder, died March 20 of cancer in Madison, WI at age 79.

Art and Literature
Herbert Aptheker - Noted scholar of black history and prot" of black leader W.E.B. Dubois, who compiled the multi-volume "Documentary History of the Negro People", a collection of writings by blacks dating back 300 years, died March 17 in Mountain View, CA of pneumonia at age 88.
Sylvia Burack - Longtime editor and publisher of The Writer, a magazine that offered advice to budding writers, who solicited articles from authors like Sue Grafton, Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon, died Feb. 14 in Boston at age 86.
Margaret L. Coit - Historian who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for "John C. Calhoun: American Portrait", and who penned seven other acclaimed historical books including "Andrew Jackson" and 'sweep Westward, 1829-1849", died March 15 in Amesbury, MA at age 83.
Neale Copple - Leader of the University of Nebraska&s school of journalism from 1966 until 1990, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Charles Starkweather's killing spree in 1958 for the Lincoln Journal, died March 18 of cancer in Lincoln, NE at age 79.
Amanda Davis - Novelist who had just published her first book "Wonder When You"ll Miss Me", and who was on a book tour with her parents promoting the book, was killed in a plane crash with her parents on March 15 in the North Carolina mountains at age 32.
Jack Goldstein - Post-modern artist who created works in multiple medias including paintings of fine-tuned photo realism, short films showing the beauty and spectacle of the cinema (like the MGM lion growling into infinity), and 45 RPM recordings with titles like "Two Wrestling Cats" and 'six-Minute Drown", committed suicide on March 14 in San Bernadino, CA at age 57.
Eran Karmon - Science writer and founder of the Berkeley Science Review, committed suicide March 5 in Berkeley, CA at age 27.
Larry McWhorter - Award-winning Texas writer known as the "cowboy poet" who wrote verse about the cowboy lifestyle he felt was misrepresented, and whose work was published in the anthology book "Contemporary Cowboy Poetry" as well as in numerous periodicals, died March 19 of cancer in Weatherford, TX at age 46.
Ted Ward - British poet known for his poetry about the natural world and humanity of individuals, who published more than a dozen books of poetry including "The Dead Snake", died Feb. 14 of a heart attack in Plaistow Lane, England at age 93.
Harry Warner - Publisher of the Sci-Fi fanzine Horizons since 1939, who chronicled science fiction fandom in several books like "All Our Yesterdays" and "A Wealth of Fable: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the 1950's", died Feb. 17 in Hagerstown, MD at age 80.

Politics and Military
CMSAF Thomas N. Barnes - Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force from 1973 to 1977 who became the first black person selected to the highest enlisted post in any of the military services, died March 17 in Sherman, TX of cancer at age 72.
Louis Jones Jr. - Decorated Gulf War veteran who was convicted of the 1994 kidnapping, raping and beating death (with a tire iron) of 19-year-old Private Tracie Joy McBride at a Texas Air Force base, who claimed he was brain damaged from nerve gas he was exposed to in the Gulf War, was executed by lethal injection on March 18 at a federal prison in Terre Haute, IN (becoming the third federal inmate executed since 1963 following Timothy McVeigh & Juan Garza). He was 53 years old.
Vasily Petrenko - General of the Russian Red Army who was the last surviving commander of the four divisions that liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of WW2, died March 21 in Moscow at age 91.
Col. Edson Raff - Colonel of the Army Special Forces unit who infuriated Pentagon brass in 1954 when he came up with the distinctive green beret that became the trademark of the unit, died March 11 in Garnett, KS at age 95.
Irma Rangel - Texas state representative who was the first Mexican-American woman to be elected to the Texas House, who was known as a fighter for diversity at the state's colleges and universities, died March 18 in Austin of cancer at age 71.
Harold Willens - Liberal political activist who spent three decades sponsoring causes and candidates that supported nuclear disarmament, and who authored a groundbreaking California bill that called for the U.S. government to propose to the Soviet Union that both countries halt the manufacture, research and proliferation of nuclear weapons, died of heart failure on March 17 in Brentwood, CA at age 88.
Umar Wirahadikusumah - Vice president of Indonesia from 1983 to 1988 under the dictator Suharto, who during the 1960's helped Suharto plot and undertake the overthrown of communist President Sukarno, and the subsequent slaughter of over 500,000 people in the country, died March 21 in Jakarta of heart trouble at age 79.

Social and Religion
Keith Clay - Texas man convicted in the 1994 killing of convenience store clerk Melathethil Tom Varughese during a robbery, who was also the prime suspect in the murder of a man and his two children in 1993, and who became the 300th inmate executed in Texas since the death penalty was resumed 20 years ago, was executed by lethal injection on March 20 in Huntsville, TX at age 35.
Rachel Corrie - Peace activist and college senior at Evergreen State College in Washington who went to Palestine as part of the International Solidarity Movement, and who was acting as a "human shield" to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing the house of a Palestine pharmacist and his family, was crushed to death by a bulldozer in the town of Rafah on March 16. She was 23 years old.
Webster "Little Eagle" Custalow - Chief of the Mattaponi Indian tribe in King County, Virginia, who began the efforts of the tribe to reclaim land for the tribe's reservation, which is one of the nation's oldest, died March 20 in King William, VA at age 90.
Ronald Ferguson - Father of Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York who had been a major in the Household Cavalry and was involved in several scandals involving infidelities, died of a heart attack on March 16 in Basingstoke, England at age 71 (Fergie's mom was killed in a car accident in 1998).
Dr. George Morales - Anesthesiologist at George Washington University Hospital who was a member of the trauma team that saved President Ronald Reagan's life after he was shot by John Hinckley in 1981, and who appeared in the Emmy-award-winning documentary "The Saving of the President", died March 15 in Bethesda, MD after a stroke at age 76.
Walanzo Robinson - Member of the violent L.A. street gang Van-Ness Gangster Bloods, who moved to Oklahoma City in the 1980's to sell crack and establish a stronghold for the gang, and who was convicted of shooting rival drug dealer Dennis Hill to death in 1989, was executed by lethal injection on March 18 in McAlester, OK at age 31.
Laura Rothenberg - College student who suffered from cystic fibrosis and became the subject of NPR's award-winning documentary "My So Called Lungs", and whose own autobiography of life with the disease "Breathing For A Living " A Memoir", is scheduled to be released in July 2003, succumbed to the disease on March 20 in New York City at age 22.
Robert Shelton - Onetime imperial wizard of the KKK, who oversaw a powerful Alabama faction that claimed 40,000 members in the 1960's, but whose group was bankrupted from a 1981 lawsuit stemming from the murder of a black teenager (members of his group were convicted of the murder), died March 17 of heart problems in Tuscaloosa, AL at age 73.
Diane Stuemer - Canadian woman who in 1997 with her husband and three sons, sold their family business and sailed around the world, captivating Canadians with bulletins from far away places, and who wrote about their adventures in the book "The Voyage of the Northern Magic", died of melanoma on March 15 in Ottowa at age 43 .
Dennis Williams - Illinois man who went to death row in 1978 for the rape and murder of a couple, but who won his release in 1996 with the help of a Northwestern University professor and his class, and who along with his 3 co-defendants (known as the "Ford Heights Four"), sued Cook County for wrongful imprisonment and was awarded a $36 million judgment, died March 20 of undetermined causes in Flossmoor, IL at age 46.

Business and Science
Melvin Bradley - One of the world's leading authorities on mules who published the two volume book "The Missouri Mule: His Origin and Times", and founded the Missouri Mule Skinners Society, died March 14 after surgery in Columbia, MO at age 83.
Su Buqing - Prominent Chinese mathematician and educator who was recognized for his work with affine differential geometry and projective differential geometry, and who was president of the elite Fudan University in Shanghai, died recently in China at age 100.
O. Jay Call - Founder of the Flying J Fuel Company which operates travel plazas throughout the U.S. and Canada, who named the company after himself and his love of flying, was killed in a plane crash on March 15 in southern Idaho at the age of 62.
Vasilios Choulos - California trial lawyer who rose to national prominence defending counterculture heroes like Lee Harvey Oswald, Lenny Bruce, Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Timothy Leary, who had been a partner of flamboyant lawyer Melvin Belli, died March 17 in San Francisco at age 75.
Joseph Coors - Brewery magnate who along with his brother Bill transformed the brewery founded by his grandfather Adolph Coors into one of the nation's largest, and who launched the Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC conservative political group, died March 15 of lymphoma in Rancho Mirage, CA at age 85.
Edgar Fiedler - Oft-quoted economist who served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford and Nixon administrations, who edited both the "International Economic Scoreboard" and "Economic Times" periodicals, died March 15 of a heart attack while playing golf in Chapel Hill, NC at age 73.
Nick Hill - Winnipeg furniture store owner who became famous in Manitoba for his "come-on-down" commercials that permeated local TV, died March 18 of cancer in Winnipeg at age 71.
Quentin Keynes - African explorer, filmmaker and great-grandson of evolutionist Charles Darwin, who is best-known for his African safaris in search of artifacts related to explorer David Livingstone, and traveling throughout England and North America showing his adventure films and introducing Africa to countless school children, died Feb. 26 of cancer in Cambridge, England at age 81.
Robert Leonard - Technical and marketing expert who teamed with a group of college students in 1980 to form the advance ticket sales service Ticketmaster, which today has grown into the near ticket-selling monopoly that we all love so dearly (NOT!), and who served as CEO and president from inception until 1996, died of a heart attack March 12 in San Diego at age 70.
William Meecham - Authority on airport noise and its effects on human health and longevity, who showed that people living near airports suffered increased mortality from suicides, homicides, heart disease and strokes because of increased tension, anxiety and fear, died March 11 of heart failure in Santa Monica, CA at age 77.
Ulysses Seal - Chairman of the Conservative Breeding Specialist Group, who developed the International Species Information System (ISIS), a computer program that can find matches for mateless animals from around the world, and initiated the first coordinated breeding program in North America, died March 19 of cancer in Bloomington, MN at age 73.