Egon Bondy (77) Czech poet and philosopher, a former anti-Communist dissident. At first a devoted Marxist and Socialist, Bondy became one of Czechoslovakia's first anti-Communist dissidents in the '50s and was a leading personality in the Czech underground in the '70s. After Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, Bondy moved from Prague to Bratislava, where he received Slovak citizenship. He died in Bratislava, Slovakia on April 9, 2007.

Hans Koning (85) writer whose outpouring of more than 40 fiction and nonfiction books ranged from exotic travel to erotic trauma to a withering indictment of Christopher Columbus. Koning died in Easton, Connecticut on April 13, 2007.

Sol LeWitt (78) artist known for his dynamic wall paintings and as a founder of minimal and conceptual art styles. Much of LeWitt’s art was based on variations of spheres, triangles, and other basic geometric shapes. He died of cancer in New York City on April 8, 2007.

Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel (88) “Okie poet’’ with a down-home style whose writings reflected the lives of her fellow Dust Bowl migrants who found their way to central California during the Great Depression. McDaniel died in Tulare, California on April 13, 2007.

Salvatore Scarpitta (88) artist whose work ranged from three-dimensional wrapped (or “bandaged’’) canvases that evoked survival and death, to sculptural renderings of cars and sleds that extolled his belief in travel as a metaphor for life. Scarpitta also created a series of racing cars that he raced himself at a dirt track in New Oxford, Pennsylvania. He died of diabetes in New York City on April 10, 2007.

Kurt Vonnegut (84) American cultural hero celebrated for his wry, loonily imaginative commentary on war, apocalypse, technology, materialism, and other afflictions in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and other novels. Vonnegut’s dark comic talent and urgent moral vision caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation. He suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks earlier and died in New York City on April 11, 2007.

James Aljian (75) Tracinda Corporation executive and MGM Mirage board member since 1988. Aljian was part of a team that developed several major Las Vegas casinos, including Caesars Palace, the Flamingo Hotel, the International Hotel—now the Las Vegas Hilton—and the first MGM Grand Hotel. He died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on April 12, 2007.

Robert N. Buck (93) distinguished pilot who in the ’30s crossed the continent at record speed, flew a light plane higher than anyone had done before, and photographed ancient ruins of the Yucat¡n from the air for the first time—all by age 20. A retired chief pilot at TWA, Buck was also a respected aviation writer, a particular authority on the weather and its effects on aviation. During World War II, he performed research on hazardous weather of all kinds by flying gamely into it and recording what he saw, heard, and felt. He died of complications from a fall, in Berlin, Vermont on April 14, 2007.

Rubin Caslow (86) chairman of the largest producer and distributor of smoked fish in the country. Caslow’s Acme Smoked Fish Corp. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, sells certified kosher smoked salmon, herring, whitefish, and pickled lox. Caslow died of cancer in Roslyn, Long Island, New York on April 8, 2007.

E. Dorritt Hoffleit (100) astronomer who studied the features of stars visible to the naked eye, edited a standard reference on them, and was probably the oldest working scientist in her field. A tireless observer, Hoffleit studied bright stars, or the roughly 11,700 stars that can be viewed without the aid of a telescope. She died in New Haven, Connecticut on April 9, 2007.

Paul Leventhal (69) president of the small but influential Nuclear Control Institute and one of the most vocal opponents of expanding the commercial use of nuclear power. Leventhal founded the NCI in 1981, two years after becoming codirector of the US Senate’s bipartisan investigation of the Three Mile Island accident, the nation’s most serious commercial reactor failure. He died of cancer in Chevy Chase, Maryland on April 10, 2007.

Dr. Taylor McKenzie (76) former vice president (1999-2003) of the Navajo Nation and a distinguished physician, the tribe’s first medical officer. Before entering public office, McKenzie had a 30-year career as a physician and surgeon with the Public Health Service on the Navajo Nation. He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico on April 13, 2007.

Eben Pyne (89) patrician banker who helped New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller to mold New York City’s suburban transit system from a tangle of decrepit railroad lines. Pyne was a senior officer of an NYC bank that grew into Citicorp when Rockefeller recruited him in 1964 to help rescue the failing Long Island Railroad, the largest commuter line in the country, carrying 260,000 passengers a day on several branches, and in a financial tailspin for years. Pyne died in Hobe Sound, Florida on April 11, 2007.

Rexford E. Tompkins (90) former chairman (1970-72) of the Real Estate Board of New York, one of the industry’s leading voices in creating New York City’s rent stabilization system. Tompkins died in Miami, Florida on April 12, 2007.

Frank H. Westheimer (95) Harvard chemist whose work in understanding how the body metabolizes alcohol became a model for similar studies in the growing field of biochemistry. Westheimer died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 14, 2007.

Marie Clay (81) New Zealand psychologist whose efforts to identify and help struggling readers before they finished first grade profoundly influenced educators in the US and other countries. In 1977, Clay turned her ideas about early remediation of poor readers into a program that became known worldwide as Reading Recovery. She died in Auckland, New Zealand on April 13, 2007.

Richard J. Combs (80) former chancellor (1975-90) at Purdue University at Calumet (Ind.) for 15 years, during which time its enrollment grew from 5,200 to 8,000 students. In 1975, Combs led Purdue Calumet to gain academic autonomy, and the university became a regional campus rather than an extension of the main Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. Combs died of cancer in Munster, Indiana on April 8, 2007.

Paul E. Hadley (92) University of Southern California administrator and international relations professor who founded the university’s College of Continuing Education and other programs. Hadley died in Glendale, California on April 10, 2007.

Kelsie B. Harder (84) scholar whose ruminations about why his parents gave him what sounded like a girl’s name provoked such enthrallment with proper nouns that he became a leading onomastician—a student of names and their origins. Harder, who taught English at the State University of New York at Potsdam, warned that boys named “Jr.’’ ended up on psychoanalysts’ couches. He died of congestive heart failure in Potsdam, New York on April 12, 2007.

Dick Allen (80) jazz historian whose scholarly command of traditional New Orleans jazz was matched only by his role as a French Quarter character. Allen and Bill Russell began recording interviews with traditional jazz musicians in the mid-’50s in an oral history project that grew into the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. Allen died of heart failure in Dublin, Georgia, where he had been bedridden since leaving New Orleans in 2003, on April 12, 2007.

Roscoe Lee Browne (81) actor whose rich voice and dignified bearing brought him an Emmy and a Tony nomination. Browne had a decades-long career that ranged from classic theater to TV cartoons. His deep, cultured voice was heard narrating the hit movie Babe (1995). On TV, he played a snobbish black lawyer trapped in an elevator with bigot Archie Bunker in an episode of the ’70s TV sitcom All in the Family and the butler Saunders in the comedy Soap. He won an Emmy in 1986 for a guest role as Professor Foster on The Cosby Show. He died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on April 11, 2007.

June Callwood (82) Canadian social activist, journalist, broadcaster, and writer. A prominent activist for people with AIDS, Callwood founded the hospice Casey House in Toronto in 1988 and named it after her son, Casey Frayne, killed in 1982 in a motorcyle accident. Callwood died of cancer in Toronto, Canada on April 14, 2007.

A. J. Carothers (75) movie and TV screenwriter whose flair for comedy was apparent in such films as The Secret of My Succe$s (1987), starring Michael J. Fox, and The Happiest Millionaire (1967), starring Fred MacMurray. Carothers died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on April 9, 2007.

Natalia Clare (87) American-born principal dancer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and an important southern California ballet teacher and arts advocate. Clare died from a series of strokes that began in 2003, in Torrance, California on April 8, 2007.

Walter Hendl (90) former director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York (1964-72) and a well-known conductor. Hendl died of heart and lung disease in Erie, Pennsylvania on April 10, 2007.

Don Ho (76) legendary Hawaiian crooner known for his raspberry-tinted sunglasses and catchy signature tune “Tiny Bubbles.’’ Ho entertained Hollywood’s biggest stars and thousands of tourists for 40 years. He had suffered with heart problems for the past several years and had a pacemaker installed in the fall of 2006. In 2005, he underwent an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart in Thailand. He died of heart failure in Honolulu, Hawaii on April 14, 2007.

John LaPlante (54) Capitol bureau chief for the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate. LaPlante drowned while on vacation with his wife and their two children. While swimming on April 12, LaPlante and the children were swept toward a rock jetty by a rip current. The children were able to climb onto the rocks, but LaPlante was unable to pull himself out. He was not breathing when rescuers reached him. He died two days later in Galveston, Texas on April 14, 2007.

Julian Ludwig (82) TV and film producer who worked with David L. Wolper and Clint Eastwood. Ludwig was an associate producer on Wolper’s The Devil’s Brigade (1968) and The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992). He died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California on April 13, 2007.

Herman Riley (73) jazz saxophonist whose hard-driving, soulful playing as a sideman and accompanist with such artists as Count Basie and Jimmy Smith won him critical acclaim. Riley died of heart failure in Culver City, California on April 14, 2007.

Gaspar Roca (80) journalist who founded the Puerto Rican daily El Vocero and directed its coverage for more than 30 years. The newspaper is considered one of the major dailies in the US territory, with a circulation of 132,000. Roca died of respiratory failure in the Hato Rey section of San Juan, Puerto Rico on April 8, 2007.

Dakota Staton (76) highly respected jazz and blues singer known from the ’50s on for her bright, trumpetlike sound and tough, sassy style. Staton died in New York City on April 10, 2007.

Harry Weber (85) renowned Austrian photographer who fled the Nazis and returned to Vienna after World War II. Weber worked for the magazine Stern and gained respect and recognition for his documentary photographs. He died of a heart ailment in Klosterneuburg, Germany on April 10, 2007.

Jack Williams (85) top Hollywood stuntman who got his first taste of stunt work on a horse at age 4—was tossed from one rider to another in the silent film The Flaming Forest (1926)—and later worked his way through the University of Southern California riding horses and doing stunts in films such as Gone with the Wind and Dodge City. Williams was best known for having trained his horse to fall dramatically on cue at a given spot as if it had taken a bullet or arrow. He died of heart failure five days before his 86th birthday, in Sylmar, California on April 10, 2007.

Ladislav Adamec (80) Czechoslovakia’s last Communist prime minister (1988-89). Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1, 1993. Adamec died in Prague, Czech Republic on April 14, 2007.

June E. Johnson (59) civil rights activist who started as a young teenager in the ’60s and later challenged segregation that kept blacks out of political power in Mississippi. Johnson died of kidney failure in Washington, DC on April 13, 2007.

Jim Jontz (55) former US congressman (D-Ind., 1987-93) whose environmental activism led him to three terms in Congress. A liberal who took on environmental causes such as protecting the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests, Jontz had lived in Oregon since 1999. He was diagnosed in 2005 with advanced colon cancer that had spread to his liver. He died in Portland, Oregon on April 14, 2007.

Konrad Kellen (93) German-born political scientist and research analyst at the Rand Corporation who studied the Vietnam War and later devised antiterrorist strategies for the federal government. Kellen died in Pacific Palisades, California on April 8, 2007.

Bill Mescher (79) longtime South Carolina state senator. A Republican from the small Berkeley County town of Pinopolis, earlier in the year Mescher had pushed a bill to legalize marijuana for medical use, citing his first wife’s painful death from lung cancer in 1987. He died a day after suffering a stroke, in Columbia, South Carolina on April 8, 2007.

René Remond (88) renowned French historian and commentator on the political life of France. Remond contributed to the revival of political history as an area of thought in France. He died of cancer in Paris, France on April 14, 2007.

James Stone (82) retired engineer who filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit in 1989 that helped to expose fraud at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. About two weeks before Stone’s death, the US Supreme Court said he could not receive any of the damages that the plant’s former operator owed to the government because of his lawsuit. Stone suffered from Alzheimer’s disease but died of pneumonia in Denver, Colorado on April 11, 2007.

Bea Thurston (84) former member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots who flew noncombat missions during World War II. With male military pilots needed in war zones, women were sought to ferry planes, transport personnel, and haul cargo in Army Air Forces planes (1942-44). Thurston died of complications from an infection in Santa Monica, California on April 14, 2007.

Katia Brice (21) aspiring actress and student at Rutgers University, majoring in linguistics, who had acted in local plays. Brice came to the US from Haiti in 2000. She was killed in a car accident in Franklin, New Jersey on April 11, 2007.

Ed Charon (71) retired pastor at Umpqua Trinity Fellowship in Roseburg, Oregon who gained fame for ripping apart telephone books, often as he preached. In September 2006, Charon tore through 56 Portland, Oregon white-page directories, each 1,006 pages long, in 3 minutes, claiming a Guinness World Record for the fifth time. He collapsed and died after returning from a church service in Sutherlin, Oregon on April 8, 2007.

James Lee Clark (38) Texas killer convicted of the 1993 slaying of a high school honors student just days after he was paroled from prison. Clark was on parole after serving less than a year of a 10-year term for burglary in Dallas County when he was arrested for the slaying of Catherine Crews (17) and her 16-year-old classmate Jesus Garza. Both were shot in the head with a shotgun on June 7, 1993. Clark was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas on April 11, 2007.

John R. Drexel 3rd (87) scion of a powerful Philadelphia banking family and a prominent socialite in an era when the charity galas and debutante balls of the affluent dominated society-page headlines. Drexel died of heart failure in Newport, Rhode Island on April 13, 2007.

Mary Ewen (128) Jamaican woman claimed to be the country's oldest resident and the oldest person in the Western hemisphere, after the recent passing of Cruz Hernandez from El Salvador. Ewen had no birth certificate but the ages of her elderly children suggest that she was probably over 100, although the age gap of forty-plus years leaves room for exaggeration. She died in Manchaster, Jamaica on April 10, 2007.

Florence Finch (113) British-born supercentenarian, the oldest resident of New Zealand and the sixth-oldest verified person in the world. Finch died of cardiorespiratory failure in Hastings, New Zealand on April 10, 2007.

Prince Wilhelm-Karl of Prussia (85) grandson of Germany’s last emperor. Wilhelm-Karl was the last surviving grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II (d. 1941), who abdicated and went into exile after World War I. The prince died in Holzmindern, Germany on April 9, 2007.

Audrey Marie Santo (23) Massachusetts woman who clung to life after a near-drowning accident in 1987 that left her in a comatoselike state. Santo was paralyzed and mute, a condition known as akinetic mutism, and was an inspirational figure to those who prayed for her healing. She died of cardiorespiratory failure in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 14, 2007.

Ralph Heywood (85) All-American end at the University of Southern California in 1943 who later served in three wars as a US Marine—World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Heywood captained the 1943 USC team that went 8-2, including a 29-0 victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl. He died in Bandera, Texas on April 10, 2007.

Ron Rhoads (66) All-American golfer at the University of Southern California in the ’60s who returned to coach the Trojans in the ’80s. Rhoads died of heart failure near Agoura, California on April 12, 2007.

Carly Stowell (14) teen who played on the girls’ basketball team at Kentlake (NC) High School and won co-MVP honors while leading the Falcons to the 2007 Class 4A tournament. The team was set to play in the finals on April 15. Stowell died unexpectedly in Raleigh, North Carolina on April 12, 2007.

Warren Strelow (73) pioneering goal-tending and assistant coach of the gold medal-winning 1980 US Olympic hockey team. Strelow had mentored a string of successful goalies for the San Jose Sharks during the last 10 years. A diabetic who had a stroke on February 28, he had been in poor health for several years after undergoing a kidney transplant. He died in Worcester, Massachusetts on April 11, 2007.

Neal Valiton (18) Swiss freeskier who spent a good portion of the 2007 winter season in the US competing on the IFSA World Freeskiing Tour. Valiton won The North Face Young Gun Award at the Subaru US Freeskiing Nationals. He was killed in a skiing accident in Tignes, France on April 11, 2007.