Sports
Foster Andersen - Football coach who was the only man to have served on the coaching staffs of USC, UCLA and the Los Angeles Rams, who coached for eight teams during a career that began in the early 1960s, and was awarded a Purple Heart for service in Vietnam, died April 26 in Mission Hills, California of complications of a long illness. He was 64 years old.
Jenna Cooper - Standout soccer player at the University of Nebraska, who was one of the top defenders in the Big 12 Conference, earning first team, All-Big 12 honors in 2003, and who on April 25 was hosting a party celebrating the end of the spring soccer season, was accidentally shot and killed at the party in Lincoln, Nebraska when an argument between two party guests resulted in gunshots being fired. She was 21 years old and not the intended victim of the gunfire. 22-year-old Lucky Iromuanya is being held in her death.
George Hardwick - British football (soccer) great who was among the "100 Legends of Soccer" listed by the Football League in 1998, who played in 17 internationals during the Second World War and served as England's first post-war captain, and who also coached the Netherlands from 1959-61, died April 26 at a nursing home in England at the age of 84.
Jack Lyons - Head baseball coach at Fordham University from 1977-1983 who compiled a record of 102-92-1, including a 30-15 record in 1978, who was inducted into Fordham's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995, died April 27 in New York City at the age of 75.
John Parsons - Tennis writer who covered 44 Wimbledon tournaments as the tennis correspondent for Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper for 23 years and was well respected by tennis players and colleagues alike, winning numerous media awards over his career, died in Miami of kidney failure on April 26, having received a kidney transplant more than 20 years ago. He was 66 years old.
Sid Smith - Hockey great who played parts of 12 seasons for the Toronto Maple Leafs between 1946-1958, including three teams that won the Stanley Cup, who was known for his durability, playing in more than 400 consecutive games at one point, who was team captain of the Maple Leafs in 1955-56, and who was awarded the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the NHL's most gentlemanly player in 1951-52 (they need to bring this award back!), died April 29 after a long illness in Wasaga Beach, Ontario at the age of 78. Note: I've been informed that the Lady Byng is still an active award, won in 2003 by Alexander Mogilny of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Mike Wadsworth - Athletics director at Notre Dame who spent five tumultuous years at the school before resigning under pressure in 2000, who himself played for Notre Dame and was once selected as rookie of the year in the Canadian Football League, in addition to being a lawyer and serving as Canada's ambassador to Ireland, died on April 28 in Rochester, Minnesota after sufferring from bone and bladder cancer. He was 60 years old.
Sidney Watson - Football player in the NFL with the Steelers and Redskins during the 1950's, who after leaving football became one of college's most respected hockey coaches at Bowdoin, compiling a sterling record of 326-210-11 over 24 seasons at the school, and who in 2001 was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, receiving the Hobey Baker Legend of Hockey Award, died April 25 of a heart attack at his home in Naples, Florida at the age of 71.
Willie Watson - Star cricket player in England who also played professional football (soccer), who was known as a graceful correct left-hander in cricket, scoring 25,670 first-class runs in his career that spanned 25 years, and who is best remembered for a match-saving century in the 1953 Lord's Test against Australia, died April 24 at his home in Johannesburg, South Africa at the age of 84.

Art and Literature
Orazio Fumagalli - Italian-born sculptor known for his works of the human figure, who created the art department at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and lifted it to distinction, died April 10 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Camarillo, California at the age of 83.
Richard Lancelyn Green - World's leading Sherlock Holmes expert, chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society, and author of a biography of the fictional detective's Scottish creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had recently expressed concern about an auction of Sir Arthur's diaries and felt there was a conspiracy against him, was found strangled on March 27, with a shoelace tightened around his neck with a wooden spoon and surrounded by cuddly toys and a bottle of gin. Officials could not determine whether the death was a murder or a suicide. He was 50 years old.
Thom Gunn - British poet who was once acclaimed as one of the most promising young poets of postwar Britain where he was part of a group of young writers known as The Movement, who later became identified with the San Francisco counterculture and adopted a unique writing style that combined traditional form with unorthodox themes like LSD, panhandling and homosexuality, died on April 25 of an apparent heart attack in San Francisco at the age of 74.
Philip Hamburger - Writer for The New Yorker magazine for more than 60 years, who sometimes wrote under the name Our Man Stanley and covered 14 presidential inaugurations, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt's first (which he watched from a tree), whose unique style helped create and nurture the magazine's reputation for urbanity, died of cardiac arrest on April 23 in Manhattan at the age of 89.
Denis Hills - British writer and adventurer who was arrested and sentenced to death by Idi Amin in 1975 for describing the Ugandan dictator as a "black Nero" and a "village tyrant", but who was freed by Amin, at the urging of Queen Elizabeth, the day before he was to face a firing squad, died April 26 at his home in Richmond, southern England at the age of 90.
Nick Joaquin - The Philippines' national artist for literature, who was widely considered one of the most distinguished Filipino writers in English and wrote about the Spanish colonial period, the diverse Filipino heritage and the dimensions of the human psyche, who also received Asia's version of the Nobel Prize for journalism, literature and creative writing in 1996, died on April 29 of cardiac arrest in the Philippines at the age of 86.
Edward Scouten - Author and innovator in the education of deaf people, who taught for 20 years at Gallaudet University and wrote the book "Turning Points in the Education of Deaf People", died April 25 of heart failure at a nursing home in Frederick, Maryland at the age of 89.
Hubert Selby Jr. - Author and ex-merchant mariner who turned to drugs and then to writing, whose first novel, "Last Exit to Brooklyn," was a brutal tale of urban hell set in the 1950s that was once deemed obscene in the U.S. and England and later was made into a movie that became a cult classic, and who went on to write numerous other books including "Requiem for a Dream" (which also became a successful movie), died on April 26 in Los Angeles of chronic pulmonary disease, the long-term consequence of the tuberculosis he contracted while he was at sea during World War II. He was 75 years old.
Concha Zardoya - Chilean poet and writer who translated the complete works of Walt Whitman into Spanish, who published several books of her own poetry including "Dominios del llanto" and "Debajo de la luz", who wrote historical essays such as "Historia de la Literatura Norteamericana" and who was closely associated with contemporaries such as Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti and Miguel Hernández, died April 21 of heart failure in Madrid, Spain at the age of 89.

Politics and Military
Amado Avendano - Journalist and political activist who was a well-known symbol of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, who is best known for his campaign for governor of Chiapas as a member of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, died April 26 at a hospital in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico after suffering a stroke at the age of 65.
Alphonzo Bell Jr. - Former Republican congressman who represented parts of Los Angeles in Congress for eight terms and was a multimillionaire scion of the pioneering ranching, oil and development family that gave its name to the Southern California communities of Bell, Bell Gardens and Bel-Air, died on April 25 of pneumonia in Santa Monica, CA, just 18 days after the death of his wife, actress and tennis champion Marian McCargo Bell. He was 89 years old.
Alexander Bovin - Russian journalist and former ambassador to Israel, who was a well-known Soviet foreign affairs commentator during the Cold War era, hosted both a popular television show and current affairs radio program in Russia, was the head of the Russian State University for the Humanities journalism department, and received some of the Soviet Union's prominent honors, including the Order of Lenin, died on April 27 in Moscow at the age of 73.
Vince Demuzio - Powerful Illinois politician who in a 29-year political career, rose from young rebel to state Democratic chairman to dean of the Illinois Senate, who was best known as a member of the "Crazy Eight", a group of independent-minded state senators who worked for equality in the state government, died April 20 of colon cancer at his home in Carlinville, Illinois at the age of 62.
Ernest Jasmin - Kentucky's first black commonwealth's attorney (elected in 1988) and prosecutor of some of Louisville's most celebrated murder cases, who was dubbed the "preacher for the prosecution" for his fire-and-brimstone courtroom oratory, died on April 30 of lung cancer in Louisville at the age of 69.
Sam Kovolenko - Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania state House who was vying for his party's nomination in the April 27 primary, who had received threatening letters earlier this year demanding that he withdraw from the race (several candidates received similar letters), and who had lost 20 pounds since the beginning of the campaign due to stress, committed suicide on April 27 (election day) at his home in Ambridge, Pennsylvania via a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 46 years old and finished second in the voting.

Social and Religion
Gaetano Badalamenti - Boston mobster once described by federal authorities as the "boss of all bosses" of the Sicilian Mafia, who was the ringleader of a heroin and cocaine smuggling operation that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute the drugs, whose ring members were behind scores of murders in Sicily and the United States, and who was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison in 1987, died recently at the age of 80. Authorities did not announce when, how or where he died but he was most recently housed at the Federal Medical Center in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Betty Clay - Daughter of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the scouting movement after he published a book in 1908 detailing a scheme for training boys, who served in many capacities in the organization during her career and who was considered the last direct link with the founder, died April 24 in her sleep at her home in Maperton, Somerset, England at the age of 87.
Thomas Corbally - Mysterious American businessman and international playboy who hob-knobbed with the rich and famous (though few knew specifically what his business was), who exposed a British sex scandal involving British war minister John Profumo that became known as 'the Profumo scandal' that eventually brought down the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and who was described in his FBI file as an American businessman "who reportedly ran sex orgies in his London flat", died April 15 of heart disease in his New York City apartment at the age of 83.
Alecia Holst - Student at Central Michigan University who went to a lot of concerts, who attended a concert on April 16 by the rap-metal band Slipknot and went into cardiac arrest during the concert, died April 20 at a hospital in Detroit at the age of 21. She had no history of heart problems and drugs and alcohol were not factors.
Winson Hudson - Mississippi civil rights pioneer who endured bombings by the KKK, faced ostracism by both blacks and whites, and fought for 25 years to become a registered voter, who led the effort to topple the state literacy requirement that had kept blacks from the polling booth for decades, co-filed the first school desegregation lawsuit in a rural Mississippi county, and served as president of the local chapter of the NAACP for nearly 40 years, and whose life was chronicled in the book "Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter", died on April 24 in Jackson, Mississippi after a long illness at the age of 87.
Al Shadowitz - New Jersey electrical engineer who during World War II had joined the Communist Party as a way to protest Hitler's treatment of the Jews but who had quit by 1950 after learning of Stalin's atrocities, who in Dec. 1953 was called to testify before the subcommittee of Senator Joe McCarthy, who at the urging of Albert Einstein, became the first person to refuse to cooperate claiming it was a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech, making headlines around the country, and who was charged with contempt of Congress (charges were dropped in 1955), lost his job and was forced to leave his neighborhood, died March 26 at his daughter's home in Toronto at the age of 88.
Adam Shand Kydd - Stepbrother of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was the son of Diana's mother and her second husband Peter Shand Kydd, who was known as Diana's "literary brother", publishing the 1984 novel "Happy Trails", was found dead on April 25 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia of an apparent drug overdose at the age of 49.

Business and Science
Dan Chandler - Legendary casino host and marketing specialist who raised the expression "My man!" to an art form in Las Vegas gaming circles, who was famously hired and fired by Caesars Palace at least six times over the past 30 years, and who was the son of the late Kentucky Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler and uncle of U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, died in his sleep on April 26 in Versailles, Kentucky at the age of 70.
Joseph Cullman - Chairman and CEO of Phillip Morris from the late 1950's until 1978 who made it the world's largest tobacco company and one of the largest corporations in the U.S., who became the top spokesman for the cigarette industry when allegations first surfaced that tobacco use was detrimental to health, who appeared at Congressional hearings testifying that cigarettes were not a proven health hazard, leading efforts to block a ban on cigarette advertising on radio and television, who responded to the charge that pregnant women who smoke give birth to smaller babies saying "Some women would prefer having smaller babies", but who played a crucial role in women's tennis, helping start a women's tour in 1970 and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, died April 30 at a hospital in New York City at the age of 92.
Fred Davison - President of the University of Georgia from 1967 to 1986, who while president, saw the university's budget grow fivefold and the graduate degrees more than double and whose tenure was the third longest in the school's history, died April 28 at a hospital in Augusta, Georgia at the age of 74.
Andrew Doolan - Self-made millionaire and one of Scotland's most acclaimed architects and hoteliers, who was behind the renovation of Edinburgh's old Co-op building into the Point Hotel, the city's first designer hotel, who was known for his work in urban regeneration, and who who established Scotland's largest architecture prize, the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (Rias) prize, died suddenly on April 26 at a hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland of undetermined causes at the age of 52.
Den Fujita - Japanese businessman who was one of the first to introduce Western businesses in Japan beginning in the early 1970's, who used his knowledge of American and Japanese cultures to adapt new businesses to local lifestyles, who established the McDonald's fast-food chain there which now has over 3,000 stores in Japan, and who opened the country's first Toys 'R' Us chain there as well, died April 21 of heart failure in Tokyo at the age of 78.
Bill Grace - Business entrepreneur who owned and operated gambling casinos and race tracks in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Arizona, and who headed the W. M. Grace Construction Co. which employs around 2,200 people in a number of states, died April 25 at a hospital in Houston while preparing for a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer. He was 69 years old.
Dr. John W. Kirklin - Pioneer of modern heart surgery best known for improvements he made to the Gibbon heart-lung machine, a device that keeps patients alive during heart surgery, who changed the apparatus to infuse oxygen as it pumps the blood, eliminating the need to be hooked up to a healthy blood donor during surgery, whose innovations allowed for safer, longer and more successful open-heart surgeries, and who was longtime editor of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and a former president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, died April 21 in Birmingham, Alabama from complications after a fall. He was 86.
Oldsmobile - American automobile first manufactured by the company founded in 1897 by Ransom Eli Olds, which was the first mass-produced automobile (Olds' Curved Dash automobile was mass-produced in 1901, 12 years before Ford's moving assembly line), which became part of General Motors in 1908 and was marketed as GM's mid-market brand, positioned somewhere between the high-end brands Cadillac and Buick and the mass-market brands Chevrolet and Pontiac, but which lost its identity in the age of component-sharing among brands, making many cars indistinguishable from each other, stopped production on April 29 when the last Olds Alero rolled off the assembly line in Lansing, Michigan.
Bert Pfeiffer - Zoologist, social activist and University of Montana professor who played a key role in warning the public about the dangers associated with radioactive fallout from nuclear testing, who conducted research about the radiation hazards of atomic bomb testing in Nevada in the late 1950s and fought to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs in the 1950s and the military's use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, making him a target of investigation by the FBI and CIA, died of illnesses related to aging on April 24 in Missoula, Montana at the age of 88.
Clara Bridges Purnell - Co-founder of Purnell Sausage Company, a family owned and operated business started in 1932 that still thrives today as one of Kentucky's largest sausage makers, died on April 24 in Simpsonville, KY. She was 102 years old.
Alex Randolph - American inventor of popular board games who with fellow inventor Sid Sackson, more or less invented the adult boardgame market which flourishes in Europe and sputters to occasional life in the US, who was one of the lead designers at 3M when they entered the games market in the 1960's, and among whose game titles that he created are Twixt, Buffalo, Ghost and Enchanted Forest, died April 28 at a hospital in Venice, Italy after a long illness at the age of 77.
David S. Sheridan - Inventor who is credited with inventing the modern disposable catheter in the 1940's, who started and sold four catheter companies in his career, who was dubbed the "Catheter King" by Forbes Magazine in 1988, and who held more than 50 patents, including a plastic endotracheal tube now used routinely in surgery, died April 29 in Argyle, New York at the age of 95.
Dr. Roy Walford - Gerontologist and one of the leading researchers of the biology of aging, who championed caloric restriction as the path to extended longevity in his books like "The 120-Year Diet" and "Beyond the 120-Year Diet", who rigorously practiced his dieting techniques in an effort to prove his theory of life extension, who made numerous appearances on TV shows such as "Dateline", "Nova" and "20/20", and who wrote numerous books and published over 325 articles in scientific journals, died April 27 of respiratory failure related to ALS at a hospital in Santa Monica, California at the age of 79.