Sports
Morley Fraser - Longtime athletics coach at Albion College in Michigan and a well-known motivational speaker, who coached football at the school for 18 years, leading the team to 11 conference titles, and for whom the school's football field is named, died June 28 in Albion, Michigan of leukemia at the age of 82.
Carl James - Commissioner of the Big Eight Conference from 1980 to 1996, and the last commissioner of the college sports conference before it merged with the Southwest Conference to become the Big 12, who previously had served as athletic director at Duke and Maryland, as well as executive director of the Sugar Bowl, died July 3 of skin cancer at his home in Cornelius, North Carolina at the age of 75.
Karol Kennedy - Ice skater who competed with her brother Peter as the "Kennedy kids", winning a silver medal in the pairs competition at the 1952 Winter Olympics, who as a team won six national championships and the world pairs championship in 1950, and who was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1991, died June 25 of pneumonia at a hospital in Seattle at the age of 72.
Ken Monte - Roller derby star who achieved matinee idol status in the popular sport during the '40s and '50s, who was known for his speed and skill as a skater as much as his flying elbows and crushing knees, and who was a spokesman for Lucky Strike cigarettes at the height of his popularity, died of cancer on June 24 in Alameda, California at the age of 75.
Darrell Russell - Drag racer and the 2001 National Hot Rod Association rookie of the year, who set the track record on June 25 while seeking to qualify for the upcoming Sears Craftsman Nationals, died of injuries suffered in a violent crash on June 27, when his car lost control and burst into flames just as he passed the finish line. He was 35 years old and the first participant to be killed in competition at an NHRA national event since 1996.

Art and Literature
Fari Amini - Psychiatrist best known as the co-author of "A General Theory of Love", a book which explains how impressions associated with people become embedded in memory, become reinforced and lead to "affectional bonds" (aka love), died June 13 of a heart attack at a hospital in Greenbrae, California at the age of 73.
Peter Barnes - English playwright who earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay of "Enchanted April" and is best known for his play and film "The Ruling Class," starring Peter O' Toole, who in recent years became a frequent television commentator on the subject of senior fatherhood, having fathered triplets in 2002, died of heart attack on July 1 in London. He was 73 years old.
Anthony Buckeridge - British author who wrote the best-selling "Jennings" series of childrens' books, whose first book "Jennings Goes To School" was published in 1950 and was followed by 24 in the series, which have been translated into 12 languages and gained international acclaim selling millions of copies around the world, and who was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2003, died June 27 at his home in Barcombe, Sussex, England after a long illness at the age of 92.
Hugh B. Cave - Prolific writer of fiction whose career spanned nine decades and who wrote in nearly every genre, who, during World War II wrote for pulp magazines (he wrote nearly 800 stories for those magazines!), who later wrote accounts of the war, including "Long Were the Nights" and "The Fightin'est Ship", and general fiction including horror and detective novels, and whose books are still being newly released including several collected works of private eye fiction yet to be published, died on June 27 in Vero Beach, Florida due to complications from diabetes. He was 93.
Ruth Heller - Children's book artist and author who wrote and illustrated 23 children's books and was known for the intricate drawings and infectious word play of her popular books, which were also teaching tools, with titles such as "Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns" and "Fantastic! Wow! and Unreal! A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions," died of cancer on July 1 in San Francisco. She was 81 years old.
John Cullen Murphy - Illustrator best known for his Medieval-style illustrations for the comic-strip "Prince Valiant" which is now syndicated in over 300 newspapers, who was hand-picked by the strip's creator, Harold Foster, in 1970 to inherit the comic, and who made it into a family business with his children doing the lettering and coloring and scripts, and whose mentor and next door neighbor, Norman Rockwell introduced him to the craft at age 15 by asking him to pose for the cover of "Saturday Evening Post," died at age 85 on July 2 in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Carl Rakosi - Acclaimed poet whose real name was Callman Rawley, who published 15 books of poetry and was the last surviving figure in a group called the Objectivists, a group of poets who came to prominence in the early 1930s, whose 70-year writing career survived a 30 year interruption during which time he worked as a social worker and psychotherapist, died on June 25 in San Francisco. He was 100 years old.
Gerald Trottier - Painter considered one of Canada's most celebrated artists, best known for his self portraits, postage stamp designs, public murals, and covers for Canadian Art Magazine, who was the director of design at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and has works exhibited in Canada's National Gallery and Carleton University, died of Alzheimer's disease on July 1 in Ottawa, Canada. He was 78 years old.

Politics and Military
Pfc. Keith 'Matt' Maupin - 20-year old U.S. soldier from Ohio who had been held hostage in Iraq since April after his convoy was attacked by individuals using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, was reportedly shot and killed by militants, according to a video released by his kidnappers on June 28, the same day that Iraq was restored to self-rule.
Sir Richard May - British judge who presided over the first two years of the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, one of the most important international criminal trials in history, died from a brain tumor on July 1 in Oxford, England. He was 65 years old.
Major Gen. George S. Patton - Son and namesake of the legendary World War II general, who often objected to references to his lineage in written reports about him, but who himself saw combat in Korea and Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Purple Heart and two Distinguished Service Crosses, died of Parkinson's disease on June 27 in Hamilton, Massachusetts. He was 80 years old.
Bertrand Seidman - Economist and close associate of AFL-CIO's George Meany, who focused on pension and health care issues for the AFL-CIO becoming an aggressive spokeman for the working class for more than forty years, who served as director of the Department of Social Security for 24 years, and who continued his work as an activist for social issues long after he retired, including founding Save Our Security, one of the first groups opposed to privatization of Social Security, died June 24 in Falls Church, Virginia at age 84 after a heart attack.
Soebandrio - Indonesian foreign minister who spent 29 years in prison for his association with Indonesia's communist party during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of strongman president Suharto, died of natural causes on July 3 in Jakarta. He was 90 years old.
Stipe Suvar - President of Yugoslavia's Communist Party during the 1980's and 90's, who founded the Socialist Workers Party and later went on to become a popular and successful author in Croatia, died of heart failure on June 29 in Zagreb, Croatia at the age of 68.
Jacob Viarrial - Leader of New Mexico's Pojoaque Pueblo tribe for more than twenty years, who was a tireless fighter for his people, battling the state for years over a gaming compact and water rights, and who helped pave the way for a $250 million resort on Pojoaque land, died June 27 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico at age 58 as the result of heart attack.

Social and Religion
Dmitry Dudko - Russian Orthodox priest who spent years in a Siberian labor camp in the 1950's because of his criticisms of Soviet atheism, whose letters and sermons (which also became a book in 1973 called "Our Hope") served as inspiration for many 1970's Soviet dissidents, and who was arrested several more times in the years after his release for his outspoken messages of religion in the officially atheist Soviet state, died June 28 in Moscow at age 82.
David Ray Harris - Murderer whose story was featured in the 1988 documentary "The Thin Blue Line", whose false testimony during the late 70's put another man, Randall Adams, on Texas's death row for killing a policeman (Adams was released from prison in 1989 after release of the documentary which argued Harris was the actual killer), who later was himself put on death row after being convicted of murdering 30-year-old Mark Mays in 1985, was executed by lethal injection on June 30 at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas. He was 43 years old.
Cassandra Hodges - 4-year-old Oregon girl, whose mother claimed was abducted from a Selma, California flea market on June 26, prompting an Amber Alert, was found dead on June 27, buried in a shallow grave near Klammoth Falls, Oregon. Police were led to the body by the girl's mother. Police believe the mother, Amanda Hodges, and her boyfriend, Erik Guillermo, are responsible for the death.
Alice Lindsay - Australia's oldest person, whose identical twin sister, Eugenia, died in 1998 at age 105, and who was able to recall such world events as the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, died June 30 at a nursing home in Adelaide, Australia at the age of 111.
Rookie - Police dog who searched for victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and was part of a national study on WTC search dogs, died Wednesday of cancer in Saginaw, Michigan, where he had been a member of the police department as a drug- and search-and-rescue dog since 1996. He was 8 years old.
Othello Smith - Jacksonville, Florida baby, born with a condition called gastroschisis (intestines that form outside the abdomen), who underwent a multi-visceral transplant, which included a stomach, liver, small intestines, pancreas and spleen, and who had been the focus of a media fundraising campaign to assist with his medical expenses, died July 1 at a Jacksonville hospital of Graft Versus Host Disease (new organ failure) at the age of 2 (Note: I received a correction from Othello's mother, Jennifer Buchanan, on Sept. 2, 2004, concerning his cause of death: "Othello did not die of GVHD, he actually died of Sepsis. He was one of the few solid organ transplant patients who got GVHD, and one of even fewer that were able to beat it multiple times".

Business and Science
William H. Avery - Rocket and ramjet propulsion research scientist, whose studies extended the potential flight speeds of engines to hypersonic levels, and whose work on rocket boosters contributed to the Navy's Polaris nuclear-weapons system used for submarines in the 1950s, who also held patents for rocket propellants, a "people mover" walkway, and a process for collecting energy from seawater, died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure on June 26 in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts. He was 91 years old.
Dr. Joseph Doob - American mathematician known for his work with probability theory and its practical applications to fields such as insurance and polling, whose expertise with martingale theory (a branch of probability theory dealing with sequences of functions) resulted the book "Stochastic Processes" in 1953, who served as president of the American Mathematical Society during the 1950's, and who was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1979, died June 7 of liver cancer in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 94.
Stanley Gortikov - Former head of Capitol Records and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) who led the group during the hotly debated issues with the Parents Music Resource Center (including Tipper Gore), which wanted to ban some artists from recording (which was rejected), and who personally felt the PMRC should spend more time focusing on the music that held positive values, but still agreed to help put warning labels on albums, died June 24 in Los Angeles of natural causes. He was 85.
Irvin "Jack" Morton - Marketing executive whose company, Jack Morton Worldwide, began as one of the first in the industry to book celebrity entertainers at corporate conventions and promotional events, and went on to become an international marketing force, running such events as Sports Illustrated's 50th Anniversary Tour and the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2004 Summer Olympics, died of natural causes on June 28 in Vero Beach, Florida. He was 94 years old.
William F. Schmick Jr. - Newspaper publisher who spent 40 years working at the Sun newspapers in Baltimore, and who was a former president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, died of heart failure on June 23 in Towson, Maryland. He was 90 years old.
William Spicer - Legendary Silicon Valley scientist and inventor, best known for the development of photoemission spectroscopy used in medical imaging devices and night-vision goggles, who authored more than 700 publications and was one of the 50 most cited authors between 1982 and 1997, and who taught at Stanford University for more than 40 years, founding the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, died of heart failure on June 6 while vacationing in London. He was 74 years old.