Sports
Bill Alley - (85) Australian cricket player with a formidable record in the Lancashire League when in 1957, who who played 400 first class matches for New South Wales, Somerset and a Commonwealth XI and was the last person to score more than 3,000 runs in an English summer, and who was also a middleweight boxer, and was undefeated in 28 contests when he was forced to give it up after being hit on the head in the nets at cricket practice, died on November 26.
Harry "The Horse" Danning - (93) Former catcher for the NY Giants (1933--42) who played in two World Series and hit .300 or better three years in a row, who was a member of four NL All-Star teams and hit one of the five home runs in one inning that broke a major league record of four set in 1894, and who was voted best catcher in baseball in 1940, died on November 29 in Valparaiso IN.
Gunder Hagg - (85) Marathon runner known as "Gunder the Wonder" who set the mile world record in 1945 and held it until Roger Bannister broke the 4-min barrier, who broke 15 world records in middle distance running and set no less than 10 world records over three months in 1942 leading to his selection as the AP male athlete of the year, and who later was disqualified from amateur competition in 1946 for receiving money for running, died on November 27 in Sweden.
Tom Haller - (67) All-Star baseball catcher who played for the San Francisco Giants, the LA Dodgers, and the Detroit Tigers in a 12-year major league baseball career and was later the Giants general manager, who played in the 1962 World Series with the Giants and was named to the All Star team in 1968, died on November 26 in Los Angeles, CA.
Ronald Williamson - (51) Former Oklahoma death row inmate who was exonerated by DNA evidence five days before his scheduled execution in 1999, who had previously played baseball for the farm teams of the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees and later spent 12 years in prision for a murder for which he was ultimately cleared, died of cirrhosis of the liver on December 4, 2004.

Art and Literature
Kurt S. Adler - (83) Importer who changed the look of Christmas in the US by importing hand-crafted ornaments and artificial trees, who created the 'santa's World" brand name to bring a more European flavor to Christmas even though he, himself did not celebrate the holiday because of his Jewish heritage, who was one of the first to sell strands of miniature lights, died of heart failure in New York City on November 25.
Pierre Berton - (84) Journalist and historian who wrote more than 50 books on a wide range of historical subjects, including 1970's "The National Dream" and 1971's "The Last Spike," who was well known for hosting Canadian television and radio programs and writing many newspaper columns, and who appeared as a quiz-show panelist for 37 years, died of heart failure in Toronto on November 30.
Gene Greif - (50) Graphic artist whose witty album-cover illustrations for CBS Records helped to popularize the retro style of graphic design in the '80s, who designed scores of album covers for CBS Records, including some for Phoebe Snow, The Clash and the B-52s and designed a special Bloomingdale's shopping bag that combined elements of Cubism and Dada into a composition now in museum collections, who was a staff designer at Rolling Stone magazine and an art director at Vogue and Working Woman magazines, died on November 20 in New York City of hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion after a 1977 car accident.
Maude Lloyd - (96) Ballerina who became a dance critic who was the lead ballerina in the Ballet Rampert and was the muse to Antony Tudor, who was known for her role as Caroline in "Jardin aux Lilas," and who, along with her husband wrote under the pseudonym Alexander Bland wrote criticisms of dance as a team, and who, after he defected from Russia, took a young Rudolf Nureyev in and helped him adjust to his new life, died on November 27 in London, England.
J. P. Miller - (91) Early animator for Walt Disney whose later art adorned best-selling children's books, including those in the popular Little Golden Books series, who currently had about 40 books for young children in circulation, including a version of The Little Red Hen, which he first illustrated 50 years earlier, who helped to create the animated screen characters for Disney stalwarts like Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo, died on October 29 on Long Island, New York.
Mona van Duyn - (83) America's first female poet laureate who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for "Near Changes", who was named poet laureate in 1992 (an eight-month position appointed by the Library of Congress,) who wrote nine volumes of poetry on life, marriage and love, who won a National Book Award for her book of poems "To See, To Take" in 1971, and a number of additional awards for her work, died of bone cancer in University City, Missouri on December 2.
Angela Leigh - (78) Ballerina who was the founder and principle dancer for the National Ballet of Canada, who taught at its school and was an assistant professor of dance at York University, and who helped found Ballet Victoria-the first professional ballet company in Vancouver, died in Victoria, British Columbia on November 3.
Dame Alicia Markova - (94) Ballet star who founded the company that is now known as English National Ballet and who was the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of art, whose name was known for her interpretation of "Giselle," and who was given the title of "Dame" (the female equivalent of knight) in 1963, died in London on December 2.
Rosemary Nicholson - (85) British co-founder, with her husband, of the Museum of Garden History in south London, which houses a collection of artifacts, tools, ephemera, drawings, and gardening literature and commemorates the lives of the Tradescants, a father and son team of 17th-century gardeners and plant hunters, which earned early support from the Queen Mother and Prince Charles and was officially opened by the Queen Mother in 1983, died on October 28 in England.
Miriam Schlein - (78) Author of nearly 100 books that helped teach children about animals and more obscure ideas like space and time, whose more recent books about dinosaurs are still in print- "Before the Dinosaurs" (1996), "The Dino Quiz Book" (1995), "Let's Go Dinosaur Tracking!" (1991) and "Discovering Dinosaur Babies" (1991,) and who wrote several books that were Junior Literary Guild Selections, died of vasculitis in New York City on November 23.
G. Stanton Selby - (84) Former Mayor and councilman of Pomona, California who was the founder of the Pomona Concert Band, who was the conductor and director for more than five decades, who was mayor from 1983 to 1987 and was an advocate of redevelopment including the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, died of lung cancer in Pomona on November 23.
Jackie Torrence - (60) Storyteller who overcame an early speech impediment who was asked by Steven Speilberg to tell stories to the best creative artists in his studios, who recorded eight albums, five of which won Parents Choice and/or American Library Association awards, and who appeared frequently on television including in "The Teller & the Tale," a Halloween special she cohosted with actress Sally Struthers, died of a heart attack in Granite Quarry, North Carolina on November 30.

Politics and Military
Dr. Fathi Arafat - (67) Brother of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader who died only three days previous, and founder of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, who worked as a physician in the hospital, and who was also a senior member in Fatah, the PLO_s political movement headed by his brother, died of stomach cancer (from which he"d been suffering for four years) in Cairo on November 14.
Robert S. Barnett - (54) Senior aide to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and an important political adviser in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, who was secretary of labor and industry under Gov. Robert Casey and visited more than 40 countries (sometimes traveling for six months at a time), and who was chief of staff to US Rep. Thomas Foglietta in the 1980s, died on November 26 of brain cancer in Bryn Mawr, PA.
Brig. Gen. Emil Eschenburg - (88) Retired US Army officer, one of the few remaining members of the US-Canadian First Special Service Force, an elite 1,800-man secret WWII force sometimes called the "Black Devils" that was best known for capturing German forces in the mountains of Italy and inspired the 1968 film "The Devil's Brigade", who served in Vietnam as assistant commander of the 101st Airborne Division and later a commanding general, and who won 115 military decorations, including the Purple Heart, before retiring in 1970, died on November 26 in Helena MT.
Basil McIvor - (76) Liberal Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Parliament and a champion of integrated education, who began his career as a lawyer before he was called to politics and who wrote an autobiography entitled "Hope Deferred: Experiences of an Irish Unionist", died on November 5 after collapsing on the a golf course in Newcastle, England.
Brent McKnight - (52) US District Court Judge who spent 20 years as a state prosecutor before being named a North Carolina district judge, then a federal magistrate before being named as a US district court judge by George Bush in 2003, who in the mid -1980s worked with District Attorney Peter Gilchrist to close adult bookstores in Charlotte, died of esophageal cancer on November 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands - (93) Born Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld in Germany, was the father of the Netherlands Queen Beatrix, he headed the Dutch army at the end of World War II and helped to raise money to restore the broken country at the end of the war, who was born into an ancient but impoverished line of German nobility, and who helped found the World Wildlife Federation in 1961, died of cancer in Utrecht on December 1.
Matthew J. Troy Jr - (75) New York City Councilman in the 1970's who was a leader in the Queens Democratic party until he fell from grace when he was convicted of tax evasion and stealing from his law clients and was disbarred, and failed to be re-elected in 1977 but who eventually regained his law license and practiced law in his later years, died of Parkinson's Disease on December 3 in Queens, New York.

Social and Religion
Eugene Conser - (100) Real estate agent executive during the unstable markets during the 1930's depression and after World War II, and spearheaded the Real Estate Research Council-an organization designed to help stabilize the markets, and who later was executive secretary of the California Real Estate Assn. which created a statewide educational program that resulted in many changes in California real estate law, died in Laguna Hills, California on November 28.
Rev. Joseph Dantica - (81) Haitian Baptist pastor who fled to the US in late October, seeking asylum after gangs in his Port-au-Prince slum neighborhood ransacked his church and threatened to kill him, who escaped safely to Miami, but died five days later in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities, in disputed circumstances that relatives say boiled down to mistreatment (a charge the U.S. Department of Homeland Security denies), died on November 3.
Brother Timothy Diener - (94) Winemaker and monk who was Cellarmaster for Christian Brothers' wines and brandies, whose order was dedicated to education but ran the winery to raise money after he, a high school chemistry teacher, was named as the "wine chemist," and who worked there for more than 50 years, died at the Brothers", residence next to the vineyards in Napa Valley, California on November 30.
Dudley (Otis) Duncan - (82) Social scientist who used statistical tools and models to show sociological trends and later helped to determine that education played a greater role than social status in determining a boy's future success, who was early proponent of what has been called quantitative sociology, searching for numerical comparisons to analyze social phenomena, and who best known for a book, "The American Occupational Structure" and for his claims that that blacks, unlike whites, were somewhat less likely to pass on any gains in social status, died on November 16 of prostate cancer in Santa Barbara CA.
Rev. Billy James Hargis - (79) Radio and TV evangelist and anti-Communist crusader who founded the interdominational Christian Crusade with the message for Christ and against communism, who went to West Germany where he launched the Bible Balloon Project, inserting scriptures in balloons and floating them over the Iron Curtain (aiming them at residents of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, and East Germany), whose broadcast ministry spanned some 40 years on more than 500 radio stations and 250 TV stations, and who founded the David Livingstone Missionary Foundation, which operated hospitals, orphanages, leprosy villages, medical vans, and mission services in Korea, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, and Africa, died on November 27 of Alzheimer's disease in Tulsa, OK.
Barna Norton - (89) Ferry operator who took bird watchers from around the world to Machias Seal Island off the coast of Maine for more than 40 years to watch thousands of puffins, arctic terns, common terns, and razorbill auks frolic on the rocks of the 15-acre island, whose great-grandfather laid claim to the island for his family in 1865 (although the US and Canada both say the island is theirs in a dispute that has yet to be resolved), who once a year, would parade around the rocky outcropping with a large American flag, a way of thumbing his nose at the Canadian government, was found dead by a housekeeper on November 22 in Jonesport, ME.

Business and Science
Ulysses Auger Sr. - (83) Restaurateur who owned the popular Washington, D.C. establishment Blackie's House of Beef, which he started as a hot dog stand after WWII, who made a fortune as one of the city's leading entrepreneurs and helped build the Washington Marriott atop his restaurant in the 1980s (the chain's first in the city), whose mantra was simple: "You eat beef or you don't eat nothing", but who followed that with a promise: "If you don't like it, I'll pick up the tab," and who maintained a reduced but active role in business after a 1999 stroke, died on November of heart attack in Washington, D.C.
Randy Day - (54) Lawyer and the Boundary County Idaho prosecutor who drew national attention in 1992 with the criminal investigation into the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, an 11 day standoff between federal agents and white separatist Randy Weaver and his family (critics contended he had used the case to advance his career, which he disputed), died on November 25 in Bonners Ferry, ID after a long battle with cancer.
Frederica DeLaguna - (98) Anthropologist whose work on the history and culture of little-known Arctic civilizations was groundbreaking in the most literal sense of the word, who founded the anthropology department at Bryn Mawr College and was part of the first generation of women to succeed in the male-dominated field of early 20th century field archaeology, and who, along with Margaret Mead was the first female anthropologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences, died on October 6 in Haverford, PA.
Fred Diament - (81) Retired LA clothing manufacturer whose lifelong dedication to Holocaust education was forged during five years as a prisoner in WWII concentration camps, who was sent to a camp near Berlin at age 15 before being assigned to Auschwitz, where his father was beaten to death by guards and one of his brothers was hanged, who survived the death march out of Auschwitz in 1945 before moving to Palestine and fought for Israel's independence as a member of the Haganah, the underground military that became the Israeli army and finally emigrating to the US in 1959; died on November 13 of pneumonia in Los Angeles, CA.
Dr. Isidore S. Edelman - (84) Cell researcher who helped found the Columbia Genome Center at Columbia University, who in 1991 was named co-director of Columbia's Human Genome Project, and who spent much of his career studying physiology, died of gastrointestinal cancer on November 21 in New York City.
Celso Furtado - (84) Brazil's most influential economist during the 20th century and an important theorist on methods of spurring economic growth in developing countries, who helped to pioneer Latin American structuralism and became Brazil's planning minister in the early 1960s, who was removed in 1964 following a military coup and sought exile in Paris, where he accepted a chair in economics at the Sorbonne after a short period teaching in the US, and who returned to Brazil more than 10 years down after political tensions had softened, died on November 27 in Rio.
Morris Gold - (85) Oldest of three brothers who made Gold's Horseradish a national brand in the '70s after taking over the business 20 years earlier from their parents; Gold Pure Food Products Co., based in Hempstead, NY, now sells 17 million jars of horseradish a year and is a staple of Seder plates during Passover, who created a slogan that the company used on and off for decades: "We do the crying for you", died on November 29 in Oceanside, NY of congestive heart failure, after suffering from Alzheimer's for many years.
Carl Levine - (75) Former home furnishings executive at Bloomingdale's who created model rooms for the retailer during the 1960s and 1970s which played a large role in building Bloomingdale's reputation, who later began a consulting firm that brought furniture designers from around the world to sell their work in the US, died on November 26 of cancer in New York City.
Ronald Plesser - (59) Lawyer with the Piper Rudnick law firm and a leading authority on federal privacy law and information policy for the past 30 years, who helped to ease access to government records and shape policy on access to personal e-mail messages, customer databases, and other innovations of the electronic age, who began as a litigator for a group started by Ralph Nader and later became corporate lawyer and helped civil liberties advocates, policy makers, and businesses to negotiate privacy matters, influencing policies and statutes restricting the use of cable subscriber information, video-rental records, cell phone conversations, and e-mail messages, among other things, died on November 18 of an apparent heart attack at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Chern Shiing-shen - (93) Mathematician who was known for his work in differential geometry, who taught at several universities including Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley, who is the only Chinese to have won a Wolf Prize-the top mathematical prize internationally, died in Tianjin, China on December 3.
Joel Edward Short - (34) Computer industry innovator who was the cofounder, senior Vice President, and chief technology officer of Nomadix Corporation, a company he started in 1998 with Internet pioneer Len Kleinrock that assists wireless service providers, who was also the vice chairman of the Wi-Fi Alliance_s wireless Internet service provider roaming committee and a popular speaker in the computer world, died on November 21 in Los Angeles, CA of undisclosed causes.
Lauriston S. Taylor - (102) Scientist who set the standards for X-Ray radiation exposure for the first time in the 1920's which eventually led to a group of government organizations that would set the standards in the next 50 years, who remained active in debates about radiation exposure into his 80's often advocating the viewpoint that small doses of radiation were not important, died of either Alzheimer's disease or pneumonia on November 26 in Mitchellville, Maryland.
Miles Willard - (80) Co-inventor of dehydrated potato flakes who developed several popular snack foods, including Hula Hoops, popular in Britain for decades, and O'Boisies and Tato Skins in the US, who was also a patron of the arts, contributing $1.2 million with his wife to the Miles & Virginia Willard Arts Center and receiving the Governor's Award for Support of the Arts, died on November 26 of Alzheimer's disease in Idaho Falls, ID.