Sports
Gene Bearden - Major league knuckleball pitcher from 1947 to 1953 who is best remembered for his remarkable 1948 rookie season with the Cleveland Indians, where he went 20-7 with a league-leading 2.43 ERA and 15 complete games, who beat the Boston Red Sox in a one game playoff for the pennant, and then threw a shut out in the World Series against the Boston Braves, helping the Indians win their last World Series championship, but who never came close to duplicating that magical season, died March 18 in Alexander City, Virginia at the age of 83.
George Boiardi - Captain of the men's lacrosse team at Cornell University, who was hit in the chest with a lacrosse ball during a game with Binghampton on March 17, died three hours after the game of a vascular rupture at a hospital in Ithaca, New York. He was 22 years old and became the fourth player in the last five years killed playing lacrosse in the U.S.
Roxie Campanella - Widow of Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella (died 1993), who was a tireless advocate for victims of spinal cord injury, the type of injury that paralyzed her husband in a 1958 car accident, died March 14 of cancer in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 77.
Yvonne Cernota - German bobsled star who had finished fourth at the world championships earlier in 2004, who had achieved most her success on the brakes, was killed on March 12 in a sledding accident in Koenigsee, Germany at the age of 24.
Norb Hecker - NFL player and longtime coach, who won a championship as a defensive back and receiver for the 1951 Los Angeles Rams, who won seven more championships as an assistant coach under Vince Lombardi at Green Bay during the 1960's and Bill Walsh at San Francisco in the 70's, but who didn't have the same success as the inaugural head coach of the Atlanta Falcons when they entered the league in 1966, going 4-26-1 in three seasons there, died March 14 of cancer at his son's home in Los Altos, California at the age of 76.
Sidney James - Longtime journalist and executive with Time-Life and founding managing editor of Sports Illustrated magazine, who took the sports periodical, which was considered a doubtful proposition by Time-Life, and made it an immediate hit when it debuted in 1954, and who wrote about his long career in journalism in the 1994 book "Press Pass: A Journalist's Tale", died March 11 of prostate cancer at a nursing home in Alameda, California at the age of 97.
Antonio Lomelín - One of the premier Mexican matadors of the 1970s and 1980s, who was just as popular with bullfight aficionados in the U.S., who fought in the world's major arenas and for many years and was a frequent attraction in Tijuana , where he drew fans from the U.S., and who received life-threatening injuries during several bullfights in his career, was found dead on March 15 at his home in Mexico City of a heart attack (several media outlets report a suicide by gun). He was 59 years old.
James Parrish - 6-foot-6, 320-lb NFL offensive tackle out of Temple, who spent time with 10 different teams in a pro career that began in 1992 and included two Super Bowl teams, the 1994 Cowboys and the 1996 Steelers, died March 10 of cancer at a Dallas hospital at the age of 35.
Dick Stealy - Head basketball coach at Ball State University from 1948 to 1952, who compiled a record of 36-42 during his tenure, who was a star athlete at the school during the 1930's, and who was inducted into the Ball State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1977, died March 13 in Muncie, Indiana at the age of 85.
Veterans Stadium - Home of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team and Philadelphia Eagles football team for the last 33 years, and witness to the Phillies lone World Series championship in 1980, was demolished on March 21 using 3,000 pounds of explosives, reducing the grand structure to a pile of concrete slabs and pillars. Both teams now play in brand new stadiums, the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field, and the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park (ahh, more charming stadium names).
Chris Timms - New Zealand yachtsman who won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic games in the Tornado class, was killed in a plane crash on March 19 on New Zealand's North Island at the age of 56.
Luis Villalta - Peruvian lightweight boxer with a career record of 29-6-1, who moved to the U.S. in 2001 to help improve his stock as a fighter, who on March 6 fought in his first title fight against Ricky Quiles in Coconut Creek, Florida, but lost a 12-round decision and collapsed in the dressing room following the fight, died March 10 at a hospital in Miami of head injuries sustained in the fight. He was 35 years old.

Art and Literature
Elise Asher - Artist and poet, whose paintings are held in almost 20 public collections including the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, whose poetry has been published in journals such as Partisan Review and in her own books like "The Meandering Absolute", and who combined her writings and artwork in the 2000 book "The Visionary Gleam", died March 7 at her New York City home at the age of 92.
William J. Bouwsma - Preeminent scholar of early modern European culture, whose research focused on the history of European culture in the early modern period, from the 14th to the 17th century, whose writings, such as "The Waning of the Renaissance 1550-1640", became widely influential among scholars and graduate students in Renaissance studies, died March 2 at a hospital in Berkeley, California following complications from an aneurysm at the age of 80.
Finn Carling - One of Norway's best known authors, whose most famous work is the autobiography "And Yet We Are Human", translated into English in 1962, in which he described the challenges of living with cerebral palsy, died March 12 at his home in Oslo after a long illness at the age of 78.
Cid Corman - Prolific American poet who published more that 150 titles, including the six volume series titled "of", who founded the journal Origin in 1951, which provided an outlet for new poets from abroad, and who wrote about 80,000 unpublished poems that have accumulated over the last 60 years, died March 12 after heart surgery at a hospital in Kyoto, Japan (he'd lived in Japan for the last 40 years) at the age of 79.
Keith Hopkins - Sociologist, historian and expert on ancient Rome, who took an unorthodox approach in his numerous books of ancient history, using sociological techniques and mixing fact with fiction in books like "A World Full of Gods", "Conquerors and Slaves" and "Death and Renewal", died March 8 of cancer in Cambridge, England at the age of 69.
Bates Lowry - Art and architectural historian who was the founding director of the National Building Museum in Washington and briefly served as the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who wrote books on subjects ranging from Renaissance art to the early photographic craft known as the daguerreotype, and who helped found the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, which sought to preserve Renaissance art masterpieces threatened by flooding in Florence, died of pneumonia on March 12 in Brooklyn at the age of 80.
Milton Resnick - American abstract expressionist painter, who in the early 1940's was a founding member of the Club, the Abstract Expressionist forum with artists like Ad Reinhardt and Willem de Kooning, but who didn't come into his own until the late 1950's with his dramatic and thickly encrusted canvases usually dominated by a single color, committed suicide on March 12 at his home in New York City at the age of 87.
Peter Tauber - Author best known for "The Sunshine Soldiers", a best-selling and irreverent memoir of the Vietnam era, who also wrote books like "The Last Best Hope" and was a sketch writer in the early days of Saturday Night Life in the 1970's, collapsed and died on March 12 while on the ski slopes in Park City, Utah. He was 56 years old.

Politics and Military
Tooker Gomberg - Environmental crusader and colorful Canadian political figure who served on the city council and ran for mayor in Edmonton in 1998 and in Toronto in 2000, whose political runs were marked by memorable theatrics such as handing out leaflets dressed as Robin Hood, and who founded one of Canada's first curbside recycling programs and led Edmonton's EcoCity Society, was presumed dead on March 5 in Halifax after apparently jumping off a bridge into Halifax harbor. He was 48 years old.
Maxine Morrison - Former first lady of Nebraska, who was the wife of Frank Morrison, governor of Nebraska from 1961 to 1967 (he survives her at age 98), who ran for congress herself in 1968 by lost by less than 1 percent of the vote, died March 18 in McCook, Nebraska at the age of 88.
Dullah Omar - Highly regarded South African human-rights lawyer, anti-apartheid activist and longtime associate of Nelson Mandela, who served as justice minister in the country's first black-led government, and who was currently South Africa's minister of transport, died March 13 of Hodgkin's disease at a clinic in Cape Town at the age of 69.
Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina (Queen Juliana) - Beloved Queen of the Netherlands who reigned from 1948 until 1980, who was referred to as 'the people's queen' for the help she gave the country's citizens in recovering from World War II and her efforts to bring the Dutch royal family closer to the people, who abdicated in 1980 stating ill health, handing the throne to her daughter Beatrix, died March 20 of a lung infection in Soestdijk palace at the age of 94.

Social and Religion
Baptist missionaries - Baptist missionaries in Iraq, who had been in the country since late 2002 helping to distribute food, organize relief projects, perform odd jobs and renovate schools, were gunned down on March 15 by unknown assailants in Mosul, Iraq. Killed were Larry Elliot, 60, his wife Jean Elliot, 58, Karen Watson, 38, and David McDonnall, 29. McDonnall's wife Carrie survived.
Brian Cherrix - Virginia man who was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of 23-year-old pizza delivery woman Tessa Van Hart, who lured his victim by ordering a pizza to be delivered to a vacant house where she was raped and shot twice in the head, was executed by lethal injection at the state correctional prison in Greensville, Virginia at the age of 30.
Rosilyn and Robbie Hines - New York City woman who was bathing her 3-year-old foster son on the evening of March 15, collapsed and died of as-of-yet unknown causes, leaving the toddler to drown in a bizarre tragedy. She was 51 years old.
Jabari - 13-year-old, 300-lb gorilla in the Wilds of Africa exhibit at the Dallas Zoo, who inexplicably broke out of its enclosure on March 18 after reportedly being taunted by several children, who attacked four people, including snatching up a toddler with his teeth (the child was injured but survived) during a 40 minute rampage inside the jungle exhibit, was shot to death by police after efforts by zoo personnel to tranquilize the animal failed. Investigations are underway by authorities on both how the gorilla escaped and whether killing the animal by police was warranted.
Cardinal Franz Koenig - Roman Catholic cardinal widely credited as having played a crucial role in the 1978 nomination of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland (Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in more than four centuries), who worked for many years to break down barriers between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Europe, died March 13 in Vatican City at the age of 98.
David Pasquarelli - San Francisco activist and leader of the AIDS denialist movement, who challenged medical findings that HIV causes AIDS and opposed increases in federal AIDS funding, who was a member of ACT-UP/San Francisco and was sentenced to three years of probation for harassing and making threatening telephone calls to public health officials and newspaper reporters who covered HIV issues, died on March 8 in Walnut Creek, CA, of AIDS-related complications at the age of 36.
Frank Riessman - Noted social psychologist who was active in the antipoverty movement of the 1960's, who believed that providing meaningful work for the poor would help break the cycle of poverty, who was the founding editor of the journal Social Policy, and who in 1976 founded the National Self-Help Clearinghouse, died March 1 of Parkinson's disease and diabetes at a New York City nursing home at the age of 79.
Steve Thoburn - British fruit and vegetable trader who became a household name in 2001 after his scales were seized from his market stall by authorities who caught him selling bananas by the pound (European Union rules require that the produce be sold in grams and kilograms only), whose legal battles were followed closely in the British media, and who became nicknamed as the 'Metric Martyr', died March 14 of a heart attack at his home in Sunderland in northeast England at the age of 39.
Rev. Kenryu Tsuji - First U.S. citizen to serve as bishop of the 105-year-old Buddhist Churches of America, who was first elected in 1968 and served until 1999, died Feb. 26 of Alzheimer's disease in San Mateo, California at the age of 84. The Buddhist Churches of America had about 100,000 members at mid-century, but now have about 17,000 members, as second- and third-generation Japanese Americans are less likely to join the church.

Business and Science
William Bellano - Prominent oil industry executive who was president of Occidental Petroleum in the early 1970's, died March 8 in a Tucson, Arizona retirement home at the age of 91.
Dr. Ewald 'Bud' Busse - Leader in the field of geriatric psychiatry who studied the physiological, psychological and social aspects of aging, who was best known for initiating the Duke Longitudinal Study in 1957, where for the next 25 years he studied the physical, mental, social and economic aspects of aging on more than 800 adults, and who edited "The American Psychiatric Press Textbook of Geriatric Psychiatry" among his numerous writings, died March 14 at his home in Durham, North Carolina at the age of 86.
Roy F. Farmer - Longtime chairman and CEO of Farmer Bros. Co. coffee, who took the company founded by his father in 1912 and turned it into one of the U.S.'s largest commercial coffee roasters, who was an early proponent of the use of high-speed packaging equipment and continuous-feed roasters, and who worked for the company for 68 years, 50 as CEO, died March 16 of cancer at his home in Torrance, California at the age of 87.
Grant Gentry - Grocery industry executive who built a reputation for reviving failing supermarket companies, including both the A&P and Food Fair chains during the 1970's and 80's, died March 4 of pulmonary fibrosis at a hospital in Newport Beach, California at the age of 79.
Athan Gibbs - Inventor of the TruVote Vote Validation System, a computer system he developed after the 2000 election and designed to restore the public's confidence in the ability to get each and every vote counted, who was in the process of marketing the system with Microsoft's backing in nearly every state, was killed in a car accident on March 12 in Nashville at the age of 57. The TruVote system allows voters to touch their candidates' names on a computer screen, receive receipts of their vote and validate their votes later on the Internet. It has been described as one of the most promising technologies to replace antiquated voting systems.
John Goldie - Chief engineer during the 1950's of the X-20 Dyna Soar project, one of the first U.S. space programs, whose team developed a mock-up of the space plane, designed to be launched into orbit from a Titan II missile, but who saw the program cancelled in 1963 before it was built, died March 11 of a heart attack while vacationing in Palm Desert, California at the age of 77.
Jim Holton - Giant in the world of climate and weather research, whose 1972 textbook "An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology" remains a standard at universities worldwide, who was editor of the six-volume "Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Science", and whose research helped to explain wind patterns, weather predictions, climate change and ozone depletion, died March 3 at a hospital in Seattle, Washington after collapsing while jogging eight days earlier. He was 65 years old.
Thomas Maciag - Internationally recognized molecular and cell biologist, who conducted groundbreaking research in the field of angiogenesis (the study of blood vessels), and whose work was hoped to lead to a treatment that creates new blood vessels so patients can avoid heart bypass surgery or angioplasty, died March 8 of a heart attack at his home in Freeport, Maine at the age of 57.
Burrell L. Markum - Businessman who opened a small gas station in Fort Worth that eventually grew to be Buddie's Supermarkets, one of North Texas' larger grocery chains, and who started Markum Enterprises which invested in real estate, ranches and cattle, died March 18 in Fort Worth at the age of 85.
Harrison McCain - Founding chairman of food industry giant McCain Foods Ltd., the multinational conglomerate selling frozen foods and juices and which is the world's largest supplier of French fries, accounting for about a third of the world's supply, whose company is one of the largest privately held companies in Canada, employing 18,000 people worldwide, died March 18 of kidney failure at a Boston hospital at the age of 76.
Dr. William Pickering - Famed scientist involved in the first successful space flights by the U.S. during the opening years of the space race with the Soviet Union, oversaw the first of the country's robotic missions to the Moon, Venus and Mars, who headed up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the Explorer 1 (launched Jan. 31, 1958) was built and where he worked closely with the famous German racketeer Dr. Wernher von Braun, who appeared on two covers of time magazine and was awarded the National Medal of Science by Ronald Reagan in 1987, among his numerous awards, died March 15 at his home in La Cañada Flintridge, California at the age of 93.
Sir John Pople - Mathematician and chemist who won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the computer program, Gaussian-70, that predicts properties of the molecules during chemical reactions, who was among the first to realize the potential usefulness of computers in chemistry, and whose program is used by thousands of chemists worldwide, died March 15 of liver cancer at his daughter's home in Chicago at the age of 78.
John W. Seybold - Pioneer in the field of computer typesetting, whose company, Research on Computer Applications in the Printing and Publishing Industries (aka ROCAPPI), invented and developed concepts for creating, editing and formatting text for publication, replacing the old manual typesetting systems used in the publishing industry, whose company also created a pagination program that made it possible to control the appearance of text on a printed page with software, and who coined the term WYSIWYG ('what you see is what you get') in reference to computerized word processing, died March 14 of heart failure in Haverford, PA at the age of 88.