Sports
Bill Braucher - Miami Herald sports writer and columnist who was influential in luring Don Shula to coach the Miami Dolphins and who covered the Dolphins from their inception in 1966, died in Florida on March 26 of lung cancer at the age of 77.
Bob Cremins - Major league baseball pitcher who appeared in four games for the Boston Red Sox in 1927, and who was the second oldest surviving former major league player, died March 27 at his home in Pelham Manor, New York at the age of 98.
Scott Fraser - One of Canada's best known stock car racers, who competed in race car events in both the U.S. and Canada, who was beginning to make his mark on the ASA circuit, one of the NASCAR feeder series, winning four championships and numerous feature races, was killed in a snowmobiling accident on March 20 in Wentworth Hill, Nova Scotia at the age of 33.
Matthew Gribble - Olympic swimmer who won a gold medal at the 1982 World Games and once held the world record in the 100-meter butterfly, was killed on March 21 in Miami as he was returning from the county fair with his young son, when another driver struck his car head-on. He was 41 years old.
Leonard Lewin - Award winning sportswriter who wrote five books with former New York Knicks coach Red Holzman and wrote for the New York Post for 30 years, and who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, died of natural causes in Tampa on March 22 at the age of 87.
Brian Maxwell - Canadian marathon runner and founder the multimillion-dollar PowerBar empire, who in 1977 was ranked as the No. 3 marathon runner in the world by Track and Field News, who was part of the 1980 Olympic team that boycotted the games in Moscow, who in 1986 invented the high-carb energy bar PowerBar to help long-distance runners maintain energy levels during marathons, and who sold his company in 2000 to Nestle for $375-million, collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack on March 19 at a post office in San Anselmo, California at the age of 51.
Russell Reineman - Thoroughbred owner and breeder who made his fortune as owner of Crown Steel Sales in Chicago, who was best known for selling 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem to Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salman for $900,000 just two weeks before he won the Derby, died March 23 in Chicago at the age of 86.
Jack Russell - World-renowned yo-yoist known for his "pocket tricks" (he could maneuver a yo-yo into any one of his pockets almost effortlessly), who, starting in the 1930's, traveled around the world showing off his skill, but who is probably best known as the founder of The Jack Russell Co., which some consider the most well-known yo-yo distributor in the world, died March 17 at his home in Stuart, Michigan at the age of 83.

Art and Literature
Peggy Bauer - Wildlife photographer who partnered with her husband Erwin to form an award winning photography team that published more than 40 books, who traveled to every continent on Earth and was once chased by a polar bear in the far north, and who climbed Mount Kenya with Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide who conquered Everest, died in a car crash on March 23 in Sequim, WA a month after the death of her husband. She was 72 years old.
Andolin Eguzkitza - Poet and novelist, who devoted his life to work in support of the Basque language and culture, died of a heart attack on March 27 in Spain. He was 50 years old.
Martin Emond - Comic creator and artist from New Zealand who created the punk character Switchblade and the internationally acclaimed series White Trash, whose career included work in Marvel and DC Comics and album cover art for bands Shihad and Danzig, and whose Rolling Red Knuckles strip gained a huge cult following in Japan and was being negotiated to become an animated series, committed suicide in Los Angeles on March 15 at the age of 34.
Sofia Golovkina - Head of the Soviet Union's Bolshoi Ballet, who was known directing the company with an iron grip for over 40 years, who toured her pupils in the United States and Europe during the 70's and 80's, but whose aggressive manner left many in the West cold, died Feb. 17 in Moscow at the age of 88.
Nathan Heard - Author who drew from his experiences in prison and on the tough streets of Newark to write five novels, including his 1968 debut, "Howard Street," which sold over a million copies and was hailed for its gritty realism and insight into the urban black experience, and who used to list "New Jersey State Prison" under the education section of his resume, died in Livingston, NJ of complications from Parkinson's disease on March 16 at the age of 67.
James C. Hefley - Christian author and journalist and key figure in the 1980's resurgence of the Christian conservative movement, whose six-volume series "The Truth In Crisis" became the catalyst of understanding the movement for thousands of laypeople, who founded the evangelical publishing company Hannibal Books, and who wrote over 70 books including many notable Christian biographies, as well as hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, died March 20 at his home in Hannibal, Missouri after a long illness at age 73.
Francisco Igartua - Noted Peruvian journalist and author, who founded Peru's two most important magazines, the Oiga and Caretas (both closed by Peru's military regime in the 1970's), who later wrote several award-winning memoirs including "Siempre un extraño" ("Always a Stranger") and "Huellas de un destierro" ("Traces of Exile"), died March 25 at a nursing home in Lima after a long illness at the age of 71.
Gerome Kamrowski - Noted American surrealist painter, whose work is part of the permanent collections at some of the world's top museums, including New York's Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, who later in life experimented extensively with three-dimensional works, died March 27 of natural causes in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the age of 90.
Donald Morris - One of America's leading art dealers and namesake of the Detroit-based Donald Morris Gallery, who as a private dealer placed numerous blue chip paintings, sculpture and rare African art pieces in museums and private collections internationally, died from complications of cancer on March 21, in Royal Oak, MI at the age of 78.
Karl Weintraub - Historian, scholar and author of numerous articles and book chapters as well as books like "The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography", but who is probably best remembered for the legendary popularity of his Western Civilization course at the University of Chicago (it was common for students at the school to line up and sleep out overnight the night before registration to secure a place in the class), died March 25 at a hospital in Chicago at the age of 79.

Politics and Military
Dominic Agostino - Popular Canadian parliamentarian, who served as a Liberal party representative from Hamilton, Ontario, who was first elected into public office at age 20, died March 24 of liver cancer at a Toronto hospital at the age of 43.
Roy F. Craig - Chief field investigator on The Colorado Project, the U.S. government's largest, most systematic investigation of flying saucers, whose team of investigators searched for scientific, verifiable evidence for the existence of unidentified flying objects, and who co-authored the three-volume Condon report on the group's findings, as well as the book "UFOS: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence", died March 18 of cancer at his home in Ignacio, Colorado at the age of 79.
Joshua Eilberg - Six-term U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during President Nixon's impeachment hearings and was later convicted on ethics charges in connection with money he received to obtain a federal grant for a hospital, died in Philadelphia on March 24 of Parkinson's disease at the age of 83.
Sir Rupert Hamer - Australian politician and Liberal party leader, who served as premier of Victoria from 1972 to 1981, who was best known for establishing Australia's Land Conservation Council and the country's system of national parks, died March 23 in his sleep at the age of 87.
Marjorie McKeithen - Former first lady of Louisiana as the wife John McKeithen, two-term governor of the state from 1964 to 1972, who is also the mother of current Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, died March 24 of natural causes at her home in Columbia, Louisiana at the age of 84.
Franklin Nugent - Missouri Libertarian Party official who ran for lieutenant governor in 1992, died March 21 of cardiac arrest in St. Louis at the age of 79.
J. Edward Roush - U.S. Congressman from Indiana who served as a Democrat from 1960 until he was beaten by Republican Dan Quayle in 1976, who later was appointed by Jimmy Carter as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, died March 26 in Huntington, Indiana of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 83.
Mirwais Sadiq - Afghan aviation minister and son of noted military commander and now governor of Herat, Ismail Khan, was assassinated when his car was hit by a rocket propelled grenade on March 21 in Herat, Afghanistan. His father was unhurt in a separate attack in the city. Sadiq, whose age was not stated, is the third leading figure (and the second aviation minister) from President Hamid Karzai's administration to be assassinated.
Pierre Sévigny - Canadian cabinet minister who was at the center of an early 60's sex scandal known as the Munsinger Affair, who was accused of having an affair with an East German communist spy named Gerda Munsinger, the charge of which consumed the media and effectively ended his political career and ruined him financially, died March 20 at a hospital in Montreal at the age of 87.
Mitchell Sharp - Canadian political figure with over a half-century of public service, who was an outspoken Liberal cabinet minister and served under prime minister Pierre Trudeau, and who at the age of 82 signed on as a $1-a-year personal adviser to prime minister Jean Chrétien, continuing in that role into his 90s, died on March 19 of prostate cancer at the age of 92.
Sheik Ahmed Yassin - Spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas and a symbolic figure for Palestinians to resistance against Israel, who helped establish Hamas and became its spiritual leader in 1987, who was blamed by the Israeli government for planning suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel, though he denied the allegations, and who was confined to a wheelchair (he was paralyzed since boyhood), nearly blind and very hard of hearing, was killed in an airstrike by the Israeli Army after he left a mosque in Gaza on March 22. He was believed to be 68 years old.
John C. West - Democratic Governor of South Carolina from 1971 to 1975 who worked to smooth racial tensions after the Orangeburg Massacre left three black student protesters dead, who was one of the first governors to hire a black man, James Clyburn, as a senior aide, and who was appointed by President Carter as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia after he left office in 1977, died in Hilton Head, SC on March 21 after a long battle with cancer at the age of 81.

Social and Religion
Dominick Arduin - Finnish-French adventurer who attempted to become the first woman to reach the North Pole alone on skis, who set out on her journey from Russian Siberia on March 5, is presumed dead after contact was lost on March 6 and several rescue attempts have found no signs of her. She was 43 years old.
Hopeton Brown - Member of the violent street gang called Jamaican Posse, who was wanted for a 1997 murder in Minneapolis among several other charges, who was also wanted for a double murder in Jamaica, and who had been listed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list since 1999, was shot and killed by police on March 22 in Montego Bay, Jamaica at the age of 29.
Boonreung Buachan - Thai man who held the Guinness Book of World Records title for spending the most time penned up with snakes, who got his listing after living with snakes in a glass box for seven days in 1998, was killed after being bit by a cobra during his daily show on March 22 in Prai Bung, Thailand at the age of 34.
Lawrence Colwell - Nevada man convicted of strangling 76-year-old Frank Rosenstock to death with a belt after his girlfriend had lured Rosenstock to a motel room in 1994, who got away with $91 in cash and some credit cards, was executed by lethal injections at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City on March 26 at the age of 35.
Brenda Cox - Massachusetts woman who became stranded with her husband while hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and spent two nights in subzero temperatures and a snowstorm, died on March 23 of severe hypothermia shortly after the two were rescued from a ridge near the summit of Mt. Lafayette. She was 43 years old.
Rev. Thomas R. Fitzgerald - Jesuit priest who served as the president of St. Louis University from 1979-1987 and once served as academic vice president of Georgetown University, who was an advocate for free speech and academic freedom and spoke out against a 1985 Vatican proposal that he believed would give Catholic bishops too much authority over theology professors, died of a heart attack in Washington, DC on March 22 at the age of 82.
Eva Fridell - Oldest person in the state of Washington, who married her husband as a 17 year old in 1910, died March 20 at her home in Sequim, Washington at the age of 110.
David Clayton Hill - South Carolina man convicted of shooting police officer Spencer Guerry in the head during a traffic stop in 1993 (his driver's license and registration were in the officer's pocket), was executed by lethal injection on March 19 at the state prison in Columbia, South Carolina at the age of 39.
Mildred Jeffrey - Longtime Democratic activist whose work on behalf of labor, women, minorities and liberal causes was recognized with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded in 2000 by Bill Clinton, died March 24 at nursing home in Detroit of natural causes at the age of 93.
Esther Johnson - The first woman admitted to the Rotary International club after it opened its doors to women, who was a longtime secretary for the all male organization when the California state appellate court ordered the Rotarians to integrate in 1986 (later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court), and who joined the Santa Monica, California chapter by initiation shortly after the ruling, died March 21 at a nursing home in Santa Monica of natural causes at the age of 89.
Hung Thanh Le - Vietnamese refugee who while living in Oklahoma City in 1992, hacked to death fellow refugee Hai Nguyen with a meat cleaver and kitchen knife because Nguyen had refused to repay $10,000 owed to him from a business deal, was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma at the age of 37.
Dany Tremblay - College student at the University of Quebec in Canada, who disappeared on March 17 after getting off a bus about 2 kilometers from his home in La Baie, Quebec, who appeared intoxicated when he got off the bus, was found frozen to death in a field in the opposite direction from his home. He was 19 years old. Authorities believe he had participated in an initiation into a "Century Club" where he chugged 100 shooters of beer in 100 minutes, prior to the bus trip, and then stumbled away in the wrong direction after he exited the bus, becoming lost.
The Wesson Children - Nine of the children of 57-year-old Fresno, California resident Marcus Wesson, who were known to be very strictly ruled by their father, not speaking in his presence with the girls walking behind him wearing dark robes, were shot to death on March 12 at their home in Fresno. Marcus Wesson shot each child in the face and stacked their bodies inside the house before surrendering to police. Dead were Sebhrenah, 25; Elizabeth, 17; Illabelle, 8; Aviv, 7; Jonathan, 7; Ethan 4; Sedona, 1; Marshey, 1; and Jeva , 1. The motive behind the slayings remains unclear.
Woodrow Wiggins - Dallas police lieutenant whose face appears in millions of American history books as the officer standing directly behind Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot on Nov. 24, 1963, who was the police lieutenant in charge of the city jail and met the elevator carrying the suspected JFK assassin on that fateful day when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, died March 24 of congestive heart failure at a hospice in Tyler, Texas at the age of 86.

Business and Science
Bodizar Benc - One of the original developers of Palm OS software/shareware, who was best known for his suite of pop-up tools, Launcher III and more recently Launcher X, and whose technological achievements are seen in the Palm miniature computers used throughout the world, died March 23 at his home in Zagreb, Croatia from injuries he received in a car accident in February, 2004. He was 47 years old.
Dr. Zhong Wei Chen - Pioneering microsurgeon called the 'father of replantation', who was among the first doctors to successfully reattach a severed hand, who in 1963 operated on a Chinese factory worker whose right hand had been severed an inch above the wrist, which became the first case of extremity replantation reported in medical literature, who published dozens of medical journal articles, including many in English, and who was a founding member of the International Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery, died March 23 in Shanghai, China when he fell from the seventh-floor balcony of his apartment (he had locked himself out and was trying to crawl in through the window). Dr. Chen was 74 years old.
Irving Crespi - Public opinion pollster and professor who was the former vice president of the Gallup Organization, who authored books on polling, public opinion and democracy and examined the predictive power of polls before elections, died on March 18 in Princeton, N.J after suffering several minor strokes in recent years. He was 77 years old.
Rhoda Fisher - Psychologist who co-wrote the controversial 1973 book "The Female Orgasm" with her husband Seymour Fisher (died 1996), who was interviewed on the "Today" show, "Phil Donahue" and other broadcast programs, died March 21 of lung cancer in Medina, Ohio at the age of 79.
Ann Lydecker - Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, who became the university's first female chancellor in 2001, was killed in a car accident on March 25 in River Falls, Wisconsin at the age of 59.
Edward Piszek - Founder of Mrs. Paul's, the line of frozen seafood that became famous for its fish sticks, who started the company in 1946 with $450 barrowed from friend John Paul (hence Mrs. Paul's), and who sold the company to Campbell's Soup in 1982 for a reported $55 million, and who published his memoir "Some Good in the World: A Life of Purpose: A Memoir" in 2001, died March 27 at his mansion in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania at the age of 87.
Claus Josef Riedel - Ninth generation glassmaker and former president of Austria-based Riedel Crystal, who pioneered and made wine glasses in different shapes after he recognized the effect of shape on the perception of a wine's taste, who created the world's largest wine glass and worked in his early years with noted glassmaker Daniel Swarowski, died of a heart attack on March 17 in Genoa, Italy at the age of 79.
John Rodgers - Geologist, mountain range expert, and Yale University professor whose research into the Appalachian range lent early support to the theory of continental drift, who mapped the bedrock geology of the state of Connecticut, and who was the editor of the American Journal of Science for more than 40 years, died on March 7 in Hamden, CT at the age of 89.
Dr. J. Wayne Streilein - Ophthalmologist and immunologist, whose research, including his study on the concept of immune privilege (the eye's unique ability to protect itself from the immune responses that cause other parts of the body to reject foreign matter), helped lay a foundation for corneal and other eye-tissue transplants, died March 15 while being treated for a blood infection in Boston at the age of 68.
Edward Zubler - Research chemist with General Electric during the 1950's who invented the halogen lamp, who developed the halogen bulb by using halogen gas and a filament made from tungsten, which allowed the light to burn brighter and longer than normal incandescent light bulbs, and whose invention is listed along with the greatest inventions of the 20th century by the Smithsonian Institution, died March 20 after surgery for a herniated disc at a hospital in Cleveland at the age of 79.