News and Entertainment
John Barron - British character actor best known for his role as CJ in the highly successful TV show, "The Rise And Fall Of Reginald Perrin," who appeared in dozens of other TV shows and several films, and who was the president of Actor's Equity for four years, died July 3 in Northwood, Middlesex, England at age 83.
Phoebe Brand Carnovsky - Noted acting teacher, actress and widow of legendary Shakespearean actor Morris Carnovsky, who was the last surviving member of the Group Theater, whose careers were ruined in the 1950's when director Elia Kazan named them as Communists in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, died July 6 at the age of 97.
Michael Curtis - Journalist and founding editor of Kenya's highly respected Daily Nation newspaper, and who was a personal aide to the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, died of cancer on July 3 in Chipping Campden, England. He was 84 years old.
Eric Douglas - Actor and comedian who was the youngest son of Kirk Douglas and half- brother to Michael Douglas, but spent most of his career in small roles in television movies and box office flops, and who struggled with alcohol and drug abuse for much of his life and had numerous run-ins with the law, was found dead of an apparent heart attack on July 6 in his New York City apartment. He was 46 years old.
Cal Green - Guitarist who played for over 10 years as a member of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who was heard on their early 'Annie' hit songs including "Work With Me Annie" and "Annie Had A Baby", who played on other records by notables such as Little Willie John, Brother Jack McDuff and Lou Rawls, and who later recorded several albums of his own music, died July 6 at the age of 68.
Alexandra Middendorf - Emmy nominated television producer who worked most recently for The Learning Channel, who was nominated for an Emmy in 2001 as producer of "Junkyard Wars", whose varied career also included work as an artist, a stuntwoman, circus performer and an actress, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) on June 29 in Kensington, Maryland. She was 52 years old.
Syreeta Wright - R&B singer best-known for her hit duet with Billy Preston, "With You I'm Born Again" (reached #4 pop in 1980), who was married to Stevie Wonder from 1970 to 1972 and co-wrote several hit songs including "If You Really Love Me" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" for Wonder and "It's a Shame" for the Spinners, who recorded six albums for Motown, the first two produced by Stevie Wonder, and who worked with other artists such as Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Leon Ware and Donald Byrd, died July 5 in Los Angeles of bone cancer at the age of 58.
Sports
Dexter Daniels Sr. - Golfer who was a two-time U.S. Senior Amateur golf champion and seven-time winner of the Father-Son National Golf Tournament (with son, Dexter Jr.) who additionally won the Western, the Eastern, and Southern regional golf tournaments and who continued to play golf until he was 96, died July 4 at his home in Winter Haven, Florida at age 99.
Marvin "Skeeter" Francis - Longtime assistant commissioner of the ACC collegiate sports conference and sports-information director at Wake Forest, who helped guide the ACC into the modern age, coordinating the television coverage and directing the ACC Basketball Tournament, died July 6 at a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina during heart surgery at the age of 82.
C.J. Hart - Drag racing pioneer who had the idea of charging hot rodders a dollar and spectators 50 cents, spawning the United States' first commercial drag strip and advancing a motor sport that today is backed by Fortune 500 companies and is second only to NASCAR in popularity, who is also a member of the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame died of complications from a stroke on June 25 in Placentia, California. He was 93 years old.
Rodger Ward - Oldest living winner of the Indianapolis 500 and highly respected driver, who won the Indy 500 twice (in 1959 and 1962) and who had the finest record at that track over a six year stretch, finishing in the top five six years in a row, died July 5 at a hospice in Anaheim, California at age 83.
Art and Literature
Robert Burchfield - Lexicographer and chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries from 1971 to 1984, who pushed for inclusion in the dictionary English words from Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan and the Caribbean, and who went to court to defend the OED's right to include derogatory terms, arguing that a dictionary describes language as it is, not as readers would like it to be, died July 5 in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England at the age of 81.
Elaine Garvin - Children's book illustrator who illustrated more than 30 children's books, many of which were aimed at an educational audience, including "Babe Ruth and the Ice Cream Mess," "The Little Elephant With the Big Earache," and "The Story of The Lord's Prayer," died June 21 in Boston, Massachusetts as the result of a heart attack at the age of 59.
Nikos Kessanlis - Painter and one of Greece's foremost contemporary artists, who was one of the first artists to blend photography with painting and was a former dean of the Athens School of Fine Arts, died of a heart attack on July 4 in Athens, Greece. He was 74 years old.
Samir Naqqash - Author and playwright who emigrated from his native Iraq to Israel and continued to write his works almost exclusively in Arabic (most were never translated into Hebrew or English), thus remaining almost unknown in Israel while receiving wide acclaim in the Arab world and the Iraq exile community, died of a heart attack on July 6 in Petah Tikvah, Israel. He was 66 years old.
Politics and Military
Thomas Klestil - President of Austria since 1992, whose second and last term in office was set to end on July 8, who succeeded Kurt Waldheim and restored a sense of dignity and calm to the office tainted by Waldheim's revelation that he had served in the Nazi army, and who is credited with strengthening the Austria's ties with the U.S. and emerging democracies in Eastern Europe, died July 6 at a hospital in Vienna after suffering heart failure the day before. He was 71 years old.
Hugh Shearer - Prime minister of Jamaica in the early stages of its independence (from 1967 to 1972), who is credited with overseeing one of Jamaica's most stable economic periods, building dozens of primary schools, and being an influential trade unionist and advocate for the Jamaican working class, died on July 5 in Kingston. He was 81 years old.
Social and Religion
Elmer Rusco - Expert on race relations in the state of Nevada, who wrote several books on the subject including "Good Time Coming?: Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century", and who was president of the ACLU of Nevada, died July 2 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at his son's home in Virginia. He was 76 years old.
Elizabeth Kropotkin Sidorov - Russian princess born to Prince John Kropotkin during the Bolshevik Revolution that ravaged her country and left her an orphan at age 10, who immigrated to the U.S. and became a successful San Francisco shopkeeper and Russian historian, died of Alzheimer's disease on June 30 in Novato, California. She was 87 years old.
Business and Science
Dr. Howard Frank - Groundbreaking heart surgeon and colleague of Dr. Paul Zoll, the cardiologist who first conceived the pacemaker, who in 1960 became the second surgeon (after Zoll) to implant a pacemaker in a patient, and who later helped refine the surgical insertion of the device, died June 27 at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of 89.
Alexander Lerner - Soviet mathematician and leading practitioner of cybernetics (an esoteric branch of science that deals with human control systems like the brain and nervous systems, and where they interconnect with complex electronic systems), who published scores of scientific papers and several books including the groundbreaking 1967 book "Fundamentals of Cybernetics", and who was denied the right to leave the Cold-war era Soviet Union because the Soviets didn't want his knowledge leaving the country, died April 6 in Rehovet, Israel at age 90.
Andrian Nikolayev - Russian cosmonaut whose 1962 flight into space in which he circled the Earth 64 times in 96 hours set an endurance record at the time, died of a heart attack on July 3 in Cheboksary, Russia. He was 74 years old.
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