News and Entertainment
Richard Biggs - Actor who played Dr. Stephen Franklin on "Babylon 5" and also enjoyed a lengthy career as a soap opera actor, appearing for five years as Dr. Marcus Hunter on "Days of our Lives" and three years on "Guiding Light," in addition to appearing in numerous other television and movie roles, died suddenly on May 22 in Los Angeles, possible of an aneurysm or a massive stroke. He was 43 years old.
Brian Collins - Popular Kentucky meteorologist whose conversational style of reporting the weather won many fans and who was a frequent visitor to schools to teach children about weather, died of lung cancer in Lexington, Kentucky on May 20 at age 62.
Rod Hall - English agent for writers and directors in film, theatre and television, who managed the scriptwriters for "The Full Monty", "Billy Elliott" and "Calendar Girls", was murdered by unknown assailants at age 53 in his South London home on or about May 23.
William S. Hart Jr. - Real estate appraiser and son of the 1920s silent film star of the same name, who engaged in a long court battle for guardianship of his father's $1.2-million estate, which includes the 220-acre Horseshoe Ranch that is now a Los Angeles Park, and was unable to convince a jury or appellate courts that his father had been unduly influenced by others to exclude him from the will, but who nonetheless continue to honor his father's legacy by speaking out to preserve his father's properties, died on May 13 in Seattle at that age of 81.
Vernon Jarrett - Journalist and broadcaster who was the first black syndicated columnist for The Chicago Tribune and became a prominent commentator on race relations and African-American history, who produced more than 1,600 programs and commentaries during a career that spanned more than 50 years, and who was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, died of cancer of the esophagus on May 23 in Chicago. He was 84 years old.
Lu Leonard - Familiar heavy-set actress often typecast as comedic foes because of her large size and coarse features, who had recurring roles in the TV series "Jake and the Fatman" as Gertrude the secretary, who had other memorable TV roles in such shows as "Married With Children" (as Ms. DeGroot the librarian), and who appeared in numerous films including "Mickey & Maude", "Made In America" and "Annie", died May 14 of heart failure in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 77.
Portland Mason - Child actress and daughter of actors James and Pamela Mason, who was more familiar to American moviegoers because of her widely publicized bohemian upbringing unfamiliar to mainstream 1940's and '50's families, whose most famous movie role was as Gregory Peck's daughter in "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", and who appeared in other films such as "Bigger Than Life" and "Cry Terror!", died May 10 in Beverly Hills after a long, unspecified illness at the age of 55.
Tom Nystrom - Singer and drummer with the popular 1960's Midwest rock band the Accents, who had a minor hit in 1965 with "Why?", and who later joined the Underbeats, died May 22 of colon cancer at a hospital in Minneapolis at the age of 60.
Carlos Orta - Award winning dancer, teacher and choreographer who was an integral part of the Jose Limon Dance Company, who often drew themes from rich Venezulan folklore, died May 15 in New York City at the age of 60 after a fall that is suspected to have been caused by a heart attack.
Gene Wood - Prolific television game show announcer who was best known for his work on the first two network incarnations of "The Family Feud" where his catchphrase "On your mark.....let's start the FAMILYYYYYY FEEEEUUUUUUD!" became a hallmark for the show, who was the announcer for over 20 more game shows including "Password", "The Match Game" and as a back-up announcer for "The Price Is Right", died on May 21 in Boston at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer.

Topper Martyn - English-born magician who lived most of his life in Sweden and was a popular stage act throughout Europe, known for integrating comedy into his magic act, and who was bestowed numerous awards for both his comedy and magic, died May 24 in Sweden at the age of 80.

Sports
Carl Allen - Harness racing breeder, trainer and racer who trained numerous world champions, including CR Kay whom many regard as the most talented female trotter in history, who was one of the oldest racers still racing and who was recovering from a devastating racing accident on April 30 that broke his shoulder, pelvis and several ribs, died May 24 at age 74 as a result of a head injury sustained in a fall at his farm.
Barbara Graham - Longtime technical director for the Canadian Figure Skating Association, who was credited with creating the golden age of Canadian skating during the 1980s and 1990s, who produced such Olympic talents as Brian Orser, Tracy Wilson, Rob McCall and Liz Manley, and who was inducted into the Canadian Skating Hall of Fame in 2003, died of cancer on May 8 at a hospital in Edmonton, Alberta at the age of 67.
Wayne Weaver - Popular Florida stock car racer, who most recently won first prize at the Auburndale Speedway on May 15, was killed on May 18 at his shop in Winter Haven, Florida when a car he was working fell from its jack stand, trapping him underneath. He was 46 years old.

Art and Literature
William Hinton - Author whose writing about his experiences in China offered a sympathic view of Communist China and whose accounts of Chinese village life helped shape America's understanding of Mao Zedong's revolution through his books "Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village" and "Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village" which were based on his experiences and which resulted in his blacklisting as a traitor during the McCarthy era, died May 15 in Concord, Massachusetts, at the age of 85 as the result of congestive heart failure.
Melvin J. Lasky - Journalist described as a 'cultural cold warrior' for his position at the center of many debates and controversies offered up by the cold war, who served as editor of two major intellectual journals, including the influential Berlin magazine Der Monat and the monthly magazine Encounter, one of Europe's leading literary and political journals and a voice for liberal anti-Communism, who faced scandal when it was alleged that his magazine was secretly financed by the CIA, but who nevertheless enjoyed a career that spanned several decades and was seen as a was seen as a hero by many for his fierce opposition to totalitarianism, died of heart failure on May 19 in Berlin at the age of 84.
Bernard Lefkowitz - Author who explored complex social issues in the retelling of true crime stories, whose 1989 book "Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb" told the story of a gang rape of a mentally retarded girl by a group of suburban high school boys and was made into a 1999 TV movie starring Ally Sheedy and Eric Stoltz, and whose other books included "The Victims" and "Tough Change: Growing up on Your Own in America", died May 21 of cancer of the thymus gland at a hospital in New York City at the age of 66.
Robert David MacDonald - Playwright, translator and actor who co-directed the Glasgow's Citizens' Theatre for more than three decades (a theatre that launched the careers of actors such as Rupert Everett, Pierce Brosnan, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth) where he wrote 14 plays, including "De Sade Show" and "Don Juan", was a lead actor in many other productions, and who translated more than 60 plays in ten languages, died as the result of a heart attack on May 19 at the age of 74.
John Yoshio Naka - World-renowned bonsai master who was credited with bringing the art to Western culture (bonsai is the ancient Japanese art that involves dwarfing and shaping miniature trees and shrubs with wire and careful pruning and creating shapes and landscapes), whose most famous piece, "Goshin", is a miniature landscape of 11 juniper trees which took 55 years to grow and now resides in the United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., and who wrote the definitive books on the art "Bonsai Techniques I" and "Bonsai Techniques II", died May 19 at a hospital in Whittier, California at the age of 89.
Jacques Rouxel - French animator and creator of Les Shadoks, a cartoon with a major cult following that featured bird-like creatures with bird brains whose efforts to escape to Earth were constantly foiled by rivals from another planet, died on April 25 in Paris after a long illness. He was 73 years old.
Ku Sang - Korean journalist and poet known for his meditative essays on social, literary, and spiritual topics, who wrote on the sufferings caused by the Korean War and found himself imprisoned for a time after he wrote essays criticizing president Syngman Rhee's abuses of power after the war, who was in his seventies before translations of his poetry, including his acclaimed "River and Fields", began to be published in English and other languages, and who wrote his last poem, "Today," in October while struggling with his last illness, died of respiratory disease on May 11 in Seoul, South Korea at the age of 84.
Percy Young - Musicologist whose many books included studies of Elgar, Handel, Vaughn Williams and the Bach family, and a reconstructed version of an unfinished opera by Elgar, died May 9 in York, England of pneumonia as a result of a fall suffered several months previous at the age of 91.

Politics and Military
Hector Barreto Sr. - Founder and former president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which he founded with several other businessmen in 1979 in an effort to bring the issues and concerns of the nation's Latino-owned businesses to the forefront of the national economic agenda, and who is the father of Small Business Administration head Hector Barreto Jr., died May 14 after a long illness in Guadalajara, Mexico at the age of 68.
Janaka Bandara Nakkawita - Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United States, who came to Washington in April 2003 after serving in similar diplomatic posts in Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, died April 27 of lung cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland at the age of 62.
Rev. Peter Raible - Senior minister in the Unitarian Universalist church, who lead a the 1980's sanctuary movement for Central American refugees that defied the federal government by making churches havens for those fleeing civil wars in Central America, and who was the author of the church text "Manual for Ordination and Installation Services in Unitarian Universalist Churches", died May 17 in Seattle of congestive heart failure at the age of 74.
Gen. Robert F. Seedlock - Army general who oversaw 1,000 engineers and 20,000 Chinese laborers to help lead the building of the Burma Road, which was used to break the Japanese blockade of China in World War II, and who led an effort to desegregate off-base housing as commander at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, died of heart disease on May 5 in Arlington, Virginia. He was 91 years old.
Doug Werner - Famed war correspondent who reported one of the first eyewitness accounts of the D-Day invasion in 1944 and was one of only 20 journalists to land with the Allied invasion forces, wading ashore at Normandy while carrying a portable typewriter as artillery shells burst around him, died of diabetes on May 19 in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 91 years old.

Social and Religion
John Blackwelder - Florida convict who while serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting a child, strangled fellow inmate Raymond Wigley, 39, a convicted murderer, to death for the sole purpose of getting a first-degree murder charge and death sentence, all in an effort to avoid serving life in prison, got his wish and was executed on May 26 at the state penitentiary in Starke, Florida at the age of 49.
Stephanie Dieudonne - Seven-year old New York girl who went the Rye Playland amusement park with a family friend on May 15, who rode the Mind Scrambler ride several times, and who, when left in a three-person car by herself, decided to try the ride on her knees, free of the restraining bar, was thrown from the ride and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Port Chester, New York.

Business and Science
Dr. Jacob Arlow - Pioneering psychoanalyst and author of the landmark 1964 book "Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory", who expanded on the Freudian idea of making the unconscious conscious as part of psychotherapy to actually understand and explain repressed wishes, and whose work is credited with helping form the core of modern analytic thinking, died May 21 of prostate cancer at his home in Great Neck, New York at the age of 91.
James Krumhansl - Physicist best known for testifying before Congress in opposition to the high cost of a federal research project that would have created the world's largest particle accelerator-the supercollider (a study proposed to help scientists understand the building blocks of the universe-a project that was abandoned in 1993) and who served on several national science foundation governing bodies, died at age 84 in Lebanon, New Hampshire as a result of complications from a stroke.
Alexander Skutch - Legendary ornithologist whose legacy to the field is paralleled only by John James Audubon, who was first to observe and record much of the behavior of hundreds of species of birds, who bought a swath of tropical rain forest in Costa Rica in 1941 for the sole purpose of watching neo-tropical birds from dawn to dusk (his property is now a public nature reserve), who detailed the life histories of about 300 avian species in dozens of colorful books (many say his books read like poetry), and who published his own autobiography "A Naturalist on a Tropical Farm" in 1980, died May 12 in San Isidro, Costa Rico, eight days short of his 100th birthday.
Mort Turner - Polar geologist who opened up avenues for geological exploration on the continent of Antarctica, including a drilling project that penetrated the Antarctic ice sheet and reached its base for the first time, who has had a dinosaur, a prehistoric sea mammal, a mineral and a range of hills in Antarctica named after him, died after a seizure on May 1 in Boulder, Colorado at the age of 83.
Dr. Evon Vogt - Anthropologist and leading researcher on the indigenous people of southern Mexico and Guatemala whose extensive fieldwork helped advance the understanding of modern Maya culture, who believed that studying a community of people required adopting their lifestyle and therefore moved his family to live among the Zinacantans in a small village with no running water where he learned to speak their dialect and understand their way of life, died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis on May 13 in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 85.