Sports
James "Tip" Anderson - Longtime caddie for Arnold Palmer at the British Open from 1960 through 1990, including Palmer's wins in the tournament in 1961 and 1962, died Jan. 3 in St. Andrews, Scotland at age 71.
Shalva Apkhazava - International soccer star and player with Ukraine's top-flight side Arsenal Kiev, who was voted Georgia's young player of the year in 2001 and made his international debut in 2003, was found dead on Jan. 7 in Kiev, Ukraine of heart failure at age 23.
Chris "Sledgehammer" Ballard - World champion heavyweight British kickboxer, who was nicknamed the 'white Mike Tyson', was found dead on Jan 4 in his home in Lower Earley, Berkshire, England of unknown but apparently natural causes at age 33.
James "Doc" Counsilman - Legendary and innovative swimming coach, who was the head coach of the United States men's swimming teams that won 9 of 11 gold medals in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and 12 of 13 in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, who developed and coached a Who's Who of American swimmers including Sullivan Award winners Mark Spitz and John Kinsella, who wrote the groundbreaking book "The Science of Swimming", the principles of which redefined the sport, and who at age 58 in 1979 defied all odds by swimming the English Channel, becoming the oldest individual to do so, died Jan. 3 of Parkinson's disease in Bloomington, IN at age 83.
Yinka Dare - Nigerian basketball player who was the first round draft pick of the New Jersey Nets in 1994, who played in 110 games over four seasons for the team, and who had previously played in college at George Washington, leading the Colonials to two consecutive NCAA appearances, collapsed and died on Jan. 9 at his home in Englewood, NJ of a heart attack due to an arrhythmia condition that was discovered when he was in college. He was 32 years old.
Charles Dumas - Track and field star who was the first high jumper to clear 7 feet which he accomplished at the 1956 Olympic Trials, who went on to win a gold medal in high jumping at the games in Melbourne that year, whose career was shortened by a knee injury, and who was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1990, died Jan. 5 in Los Angeles of cancer at age 66.
Chuck Hasley - Legendary southern California surfer, who in 1962 founded the Windansea Surf Club, which sponsors many of California's surfing events, was killed in a car accident on Jan. 2 in Pacific Beach, CA at age 69.
Frank Edwin "Tug" McGraw - Colorful baseball relief pitcher and fan favorite, who pitched 19 years in the major leagues, 9 years with the Mets and 10 with the Phillies, who pitched in World Series for both the 1973 Mets and 1980 Phillies, leading the Phillies to their only World Series championship, and who is the father of popular country singer Tim McGraw, died Jan. 5 in Nashville of brain cancer at age 59.
John Prchlik - Offensive and defensive tackle in the NFL for the Detroit Lions from 1949 to 1953, who helped the team to a pair of NFL championships in 1952 and 1953, and who was named co-captain of the team in 1951, died Dec. 31 of pancreatic cancer in Fairfield Glade, TN at age 78.
Leon Wagner - Major league outfielder who played 12 seasons for five different teams including the Cleveland Indians and Anaheim Angels, who was nicknamed 'Daddy Wags' during his playing days, and whose best season was 1962 with the Angels when he hit 37 homers and had 107 RBI's, finishing 4th in the MVP voting, died Jan. 3 of natural causes in Los Angeles at age 69.
Max West - All Star outfielder and first baseman who played seven seasons in the majors from 1938 to 1948, who spent six of those seasons with the Boston Bees/Braves, and whose career highlight came in the 1940 All-Star game when he hit a 3-run home run off the Yankees Red Ruffing that gave the National League a 4-0 victory, died Dec. 31 of brain cancer in Sierra Madre, CA at age 87.
Danny Whelan - Trainer for the New York Knicks basketball team from 1967 to 1978, including the franchise's only two NBA championships, who gave Walt Frazier the nickname 'Clyde', and who had previously been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates team that won the 1960 World Series, died Jan. 2 in New York after a long illness at age 84.

Art and Literature
Joan Aiken - Prolific British novelist of over 90 novels, who, though she wrote many books for adults, was best known for her quirky children's stories with characteristic unpredictability and dream-like quality, among whose titles are included her most famous book "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" (1963), which was made into a 1988 film, as well as classics like "The Whispering Mountain" (1968) and "Night Fall" (1972), died Jan. 4 in Petworth, Sussex, England at age 79.
Norberto Bobbio - Italian philosopher and essayist, who was a highly regarded figure in Italy and the nation's "critical conscience", who in 1984 was made a senator for life, who over the course of his career wrote hundreds of books, essays and newspaper articles, including the important works "Politica e Cultura" (1955) and "Destra e Sinistra" (1994), died Jan. 9 in Turin, Italy of a respiratory condition at age 94.
Jess - Artist who went only by his first name (his full name was Jess Collins), whose idiosyncratic paintings and collages made him a cult figure in American art, who was best known for his giant collages made up of things like magazine photographs, old engravings and illustrations and jigsaw puzzle parts, and who was the longtime companion of the late poet Robert Duncan, died Jan. 2 at his home in San Francisco at age 80.
Cresson Kearny - Author of the famous best-selling manual "Nuclear War Survival Skills", first published in 1979 and which included instructions on how to build a fallout shelter and a radiation meter, and who, since the manual was published, had been a consistent critic of what he considered inadequate civil defense preparations in the U.S., died Dec. 18 in Montrose, CO at age 89.
Doug Morton - Canadian abstract painter best known as a member of The Regina Five, a group of five artists from Regina, Saskatchewan who exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada and are credited with introducing prairie art to the nation and stimulating interest in prairie artists, died Jan. 4 in Victoria, British Columbia at age 77.
Douglas Anne Munson (aka Mercedes Lambert) - Author of three well-regarded novels that explored the hard edges of Los Angeles at the turn of the 21st century, whose books included 1990's "El Nino" (as Munson), and the Whitney Logan detective novels "Dogtown" and "Soultown" (as Lambert), died Dec. 22 in Norwalk, CT of breast cancer at age 54.
Francesco Scavullo - Fashion photographer who was best known for the covers he shot for Cosmopolitan magazine for 30 years, whose covers started the careers of such stars as Rene Russo, Farrah Fawcett and Brooke Shields, who took celebrity portraits of luminaries like Sting and Elizabeth Taylor, who shot several noted album covers including Diana Ross "Diana" and Edgar Winter's "They Only Come Out at Night", and who made a name for himself as part of the Studio 54 party crowd in the 1970's, died Jan. 6 in New York City of heart failure at age 82.
John Toland - Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. author of World War II era history books that were best sellers during the 1960's and 70's, whose 1970 book "The Rising Sun" won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, and whose other titles included "Battle: The Story of the Bulge", "Adolf Hitler" and "No Man's Land", died Jan. 4 in Danbury, CT of pneumonia at age 91.

Politics and Military
Pierre Charles - Prime Minister of the Caribbean island of Dominica, one of the Caribbean's poorest countries located near Grenada, who was appointed prime minister in 2000 after predecessor Roosevelt Douglas died of a heart attack, and who was critical of the U.S. action in Afghanistan and called for an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, died Jan. 6 of a heart attack in Roseau, Dominica at age 49.
Mamoun al-Hodeiby - Leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition group that advocates turning Egypt into a strict Islamic state and has been outlawed for 50 years, and which was once known for violence but now says it seeks change thru peaceful means, died Jan. 8 in Shibin el-Qanatir, Egypt of natural causes at age 80.
Harold "Tex" Lezar - Texas attorney who worked as a speechwriter and special assistant to President Richard Nixon, who served as assistant attorney general and chief of staff in the Reagan administration, and who in 1994 made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor of Texas, died Jan. 5 in Dallas of a heart attack at age 55.
Alfred Pugh - The last known combat-wounded U.S. veteran of World War I, who was wounded in 1918 during the Meusse-Argonne offensive, one of the war's bloodiest battles, and who in 1999 was bestowed the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the French government, died Jan. 7 in St. Petersburg just short of his 109th birthday.
Michael Straight - Political insider with ties to the infamous 'Cambridge ring' of Soviet spies that operated in Britain between the mid-1930s and the early 1950s, who held several high-level political jobs including economist at the State Department, editor and publisher of The New Republic magazine and deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Nixon and Ford administrations, who claimed he leaked to the Soviets only political and economic analyses written by himself, and who confessed all in his 1983 memoir "After Long Silence", died Jan. 4 in Martha's Vineyard, MA of pancreatic cancer at age 87.
Aaron Weaver - Army helicopter pilot who was part of a Ranger strike team Oct. 3, 1993, whose mission was to capture two of a Somali warlord's lieutenants, the story of which was memorialized in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down", who escaped injury and was awarded the Bronze Star for his courage, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2003 and recently recovered from a series of surgeries that left him hospitalized for 6 months, who fought back after the cancer went into remission and was allowed to go to Iraq, was killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 8 near Fallujah, Iraq when a Medvac helicopter in which he was the patient was shot down. He was 32 years old.

Social and Religion
Brent Benaschak - Director of the travel company Out On The Slopes who founded Whistler Gay Ski Week, an event held every February at the Canadian winter resort of Whistler, British Columbia and attracts more than 3,000 men from all over the world, and whose obituary somehow made it into London's The Telegraph main obituary section, died suddenly on Dec. 30 in Vancouver of undisclosed causes at age 41.
Ynobe Matthews - Texas man who was convicted of the 2000 rape and strangling death of 21-year-old Carolyn Casey, who also pleaded guilty to the 1999 rape and murder of 19-year-old Jamie Hart, was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 6 in Huntsville, TX at age 27 ('Ynobe' backwards is 'ebony').
Kiharu Nakamura - Japanese geisha girl who moved to the U.S. and became a well-known entertainer, mingling with such stars as Charlie Chaplin and Babe Ruth, who taught traditional Japanese music and dance and appeared on numerous TV talk shows, and whose autobiography "The Memoir of a Tokyo-born Geisha" was published in 1983 and became a best-seller, died Jan. 5 in New York City at age 90.
Mark Reynolds - Account executive at a California marketing firm that represents extreme sports athletes, who on Jan. 8 went mountain biking on a popular trail in the rugged Orange County foothills, who stopped to fix a broken chain on his bike and crouched next to it, was attacked and killed by a mountain lion. He was 35 years old. Authorities believe the crouching posture he assumed as he was fixing the bike spurred the lion to attack.
Raymond Rowsey - North Carolina man who in 1992 shot convenience store clerk Howard Sikorski six times during a robbery before stealing $54 and two porno magazines from the store, was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 9 in Raleigh, NC at age 32.
Martin Sheridan - Freelance journalist, photographer and author, who on Nov. 28, 1942 was working as a publicist for famed cowboy actor Buck Jones and accompanied the star to the popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston's theater district, who escaped the deadly fire that night that killed nearly 500 people including Jones and Sheridan's wife, and who later authored two books "Comics and their Creators" and "Overdue and Presumed Lost", died Dec. 31 in New London, CT of kidney failure at age 89.
Charles Singleton - Arkansas murderer whose case received national attention and was argued in courts for many years, who was convicted of the 1979 murder of grocer Mary Lou York during a robbery, who was diagnosed as a schizophrenic but was considered sane enough to execute only if on medication, and whose case was finally settled by the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled that the medications could be forcibly administered, was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 6 in Varner, AR at the age of 44.
Min Zhiting - President of China Taoist Association, the government-monitored body to which the communist government requires all Taoist temples in China to belong (similar official groups exist for China's Buddhists, Muslims, Roman Catholics and Protestants), died Jan. 3 in Beijing at age 80.

Business and Science
Steven Bazerman - Pioneering attorney who built a body of case law around "secondary meaning" and "trade dress protection", which expanded intellectual property law to cover not just the names of products but the way they look and feel (e.g. you can't sell your product in a container that's similar to your competitor's product), died Dec. 19 in New York City of kidney failure at age 63.
Lawrence Bogorad - Leading researcher in plant biology and genetics who was widely known for his work on the synthesis of chlorophyll and on inheritance patterns in a variety of plants, died Dec. 28 of a stroke while vacationing with his family in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico at age 82.
Elizabeth Bunce - Noted oceanographer and seismological researcher who was the first woman to serve as chief scientist on a deep-sea drilling cruise, and the first woman to dive in a submersible, and who appeared on the popular television show "To Tell the Truth" in the early 1960s, where she fooled three of the four panelists, who did not select her as an oceanographer, died Dec. 13 in Falmouth, MA at age 88.
Dr. Joseph Church - Child psychologist best known for his landmark textbook on child development, "Childhood and Adolescence: A Psychology of the Growing Person" (1957), which suggested that children mature and acquire language through stages of cognitive development, rather than solely through behavioral means which was the widely assumed theory at the time, died Dec. 23 in New York at age 85.
J. Douglas Creighton - Founding publisher of The Toronto Sun in 1971 who turned the fledgling tabloid into the national Sun Media newspaper chain, which became one of the most successful launches of a newspaper in the last half of the 20th century, died Jan. 6 at a hospital in Toronto of Parkinson's disease at age 75.
Arthur von Hippel - Physicist who helped pioneer the study of material science, the study of the molecular structure of materials, who founded the Laboratory for Insulation Research at MIT, died Dec. 31 in Boston of the flu at age 105.
Samuel Nabrit - Noted marine biologist and pioneering black scholar, who in 1932 became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Brown University, where he became the university's first black trustee, who later became president of Texas Southern University and played an integral role in the desegregation of Houston public schools during the 1960's, and who was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) by Lyndon Johnson in 1966, died Dec. 30 in Atlanta of a heart attack and pneumonia at age 98.
Thomas Stockham - Researcher often called the 'father of digital recording', who in the 1970's developed techniques to convert analog sound into a digital format, who developed one of the first digital audio editing systems, whose work was instrumental in the creation of the compact disc, and who was awarded a special Scientific/Engineering Academy Award in 1999, died Jan. 6 in Salt Lake City of Alzheimer's disease at age 70.
Dr. Melvin Yahr - Medical researcher whose study of the amino acid L-dopa in the late 1960's helped establish it as a leading treatment for Parkinson's disease, whose work was an outgrowth of the work of Nobel laureate Dr. Arvid Carlsson, who took Carlsson's concepts and theories and turned them into treatments, died Jan. 1 of lung cancer at his home in Scarsdale, NY at age 86.