Clyde Robert Bulla (93) prolific writer who captivated young readers for decades with his stories of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Pocahontas, and other historical figures, and tales of contemporary boys and girls. Bulla, who spent most of his adult life in Los Angeles, wrote more than 60 children’s books, mostly fiction but some nonfiction, starting with The Donkey Cart (1946). He died in Warrensburg, Missouri on May 23, 2007.

Art Stevens (92) veteran Disney animator who launched his career at the studio working as an artist on the classic Fantasia (1940) and later codirected The Fox & the Hound and The Rescuers. Stevens died of a heart attack in Studio City, California on May 22, 2007.

Dr. Harvey R. Colten (68) pediatric immunologist and a leading medical educator at Columbia University whose research helped to isolate a gene tied to respiratory failure in infants. Colten died of colon cancer in New York City on May 24, 2007.

Douglas Holmes (73) noted social psychologist who spent his career investigating means of improving social services for people at both ends of the life cycle—children and the elderly. Holmes was emeritus director of the research division and national Alzheimer’s center at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Bronx, New York. He had founded the research division there in the mid-’80s. He died of progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative neurological disease, in Weston, Connecticut on May 23, 2007.

Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya (73) psychiatrist, a leading figure in California’s medical marijuana movement. Mikuriya helped to draft Proposition 215, a state ballot measure that legalized marijuana for the seriously ill who have a doctor’s recommendation. He died of cancer in Berkeley, California on May 20, 2007.

Stanley L. Miller (77) scientist whose spectacular discovery as a young graduate student pioneered the study of the origin of life on earth. Miller was known for a classic experiment he performed as a graduate student and published in 1953, which showed how amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could easily be generated from the simple chemicals assumed to have been present on the primitive earth. He died of heart failure in National City, California on May 20, 2007.

Rodney Smith (67) former chairman of computer chipmaker Altera Corporation. An active philanthropist, Smith had spent 20 years as Altera’s chairman before retiring in January 2003. He was killed when he was struck by an automobile while riding a bicycle in Menlo Park, California on May 25, 2007.

Lewis Nobles (81) former president of Mississippi College for 25 years before being convicted of embezzling $3 million in donor contributions. The college’s nursing and law schools were established during Nobles’ tenure. In 1996, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering. He was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison. He died in Ridgeland, Mississippi on May 25, 2007.

Herbert H. Reynolds (77) former president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas who led the world’s largest Baptist university for 14 years. During his tenure (1981-95), Reynolds was known for his work to move Baylor’s governing body outside the control of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. He died suddenly in Angel Fire, New Mexico on May 25, 2007.

Sylvia Thayer (81) philanthropist who with her late husband, financier James Thayer, was a longtime benefactor of the University of California at Los Angeles. The couple created an endowed fellowship for special collections at UCLA’s library and funded several academic and athletic scholarships at the school, their alma mater. Sylvia Thayer died of cancer in Beverly Hills, California on May 25, 2007.

Lauren Alcantar (20) actress who got parts in Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Maniac Magee at theater camps. Alcantar also performed on stage as a cast member of the musical Mamma Mia on Broadway in May 2006. She died of cancer in Portland, Oregon on May 20, 2007.

Laurie Bartram (49) former actress who appeared in the classic horror film, the original Friday the 13th (1980). After a brief acting career, Bartram entered college, where she met her future husband, Greg McCauley. They had five children. Bartram died of cancer in Lynchburg, Virginia on May 25, 2007.

Marion ("Buddy") Childers (81) self-taught musician, arranger, and composer who played lead trumpet in the big bands of such jazz luminaries as Stan Kenton and Tommy Dorsey and later led his own ensemble. Childers died of cancer in Woodland Hills, California on May 24, 2007.

J. Cecil Jarvis (58) president of Clarksburg Publishing Co., which publishes the Clarksburg (W. Va.) Exponent Telegram. Jarvis was an avid outdoorsman and amateur athlete. He completed four Ironman triathlons and two Boston Marathons and was working on a goal of running one marathon in every state. He was riding with a group of cyclists in Lewis County’s Skin Creek area near Stonewall Jackson Lake when he was killed in a bicycle accident, in West Virginia on May 22, 2007.

Kei Kumai (76) Japanese film director whose focus on true stories with strong social themes won him international recognition. Kumai made his first impression abroad with Sandakan Hachiban Shokan Bokyo (1974; Sandakan Brothel No. 8), which portrayed the plight of Japanese women forced to work as prostitutes in Sandakan, Borneo in the decades before World War II. He collapsed at home on May 18 and died of a brain hemorrhage in Tokyo, Japan on May 23, 2007.

Bud Molin (81) veteran film and TV editor who edited I Love Lucy and worked frequently with director Carl Reiner, beginning with The Dick van Dyke Show. Molin died five days before his 82nd birthday, in Rancho Mirage, California on May 21, 2007.

Charles Nelson Reilly (76) Tony-winning comic actor who later became known for his ribald appearances on the Tonight Show and various game shows. Reilly began his career in New York City, appearing on Broadway in 1962 as Bud Frump in the original production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; the role won him a Tony. He later gained fame in Hollywood by becoming what he described as a “game show fixture’’ in the ’70s and ’80s. He was a regular on programs like Match Game and Hollywood Squares, often wearing giant glasses and outlandish costumes. His larger-than-life persona and affinity for double entendres also landed him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson more than 95 times. Reilly died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on May 25, 2007.

Patrick Stockstill (57) historian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and backstage “keeper of the Oscars’’ during ceremonies. Stockstill kept track of all the serial-numbered trophies and originated the database that attempts to record the whereabouts of each of the more than 2,500 Oscars handed out so far. He died after a heart transplant, in Los Angeles, California on May 24, 2007.

Ben Weisman (85) classically trained pianist who helped to write nearly 60 songs for Elvis Presley, including many for his movies. Weisman wrote or cowrote a string of gold- and platinum-selling songs for Presley, including “Follow That Dream’’ and “Fame & Fortune.’’ He suffered from Alzheimer’s disease but died of complications from a stroke and pneumonia, in Los Angeles, California on May 20, 2007.

Christo Anton (75) former professional bowler who served during the ’70s as first director of the Maine State Lottery. Anton was the state’s top candlepin bowler for three years, winning a place in the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1995. In 1972, he was named by Gov. Kenneth Curtis as Maine’s first state lottery director, with responsibility for establishing and administering the money game. He died in Scarborough, Maine on May 22, 2007.

Driss Benzekri (57) former political prisoner who later headed a truth commission in Morocco. Benzekri was president of the Equity & Reconciliation Commission, founded in 2004 by Morocco’s King Mohamed VI to look into past human rights abuses—including those perpetrated under the monarch’s father, King Hassan II. Benzekri was one of many Moroccans illegally detained, imprisoned, tortured, or forcibly “disappeared’’ by state security forces (’50s-’90s). He died of stomach cancer in Rabat, Morocco on May 20, 2007.

Maj. Gen. I. J. Rikhye (86) retired major general in the Indian army, a military advisor to United Nations secretaries-general Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant in the ’60s. Rikhye served with the famed Bengal Lancers during World War II and, starting in the late ’50s, was assigned to UN peacekeeping units. He died of respiratory failure in Charlottesville, Virginia on May 21, 2007.

Roy Ringer (88) longtime aide and speechwriter for former California Gov. Pat Brown who later worked as an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times. Ringer fell ill suddenly and died of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California on May 20, 2007.

Fannie Lee Chaney (84) mother of one of the three civil-rights workers killed in the “Mississippi Burning’’ case in 1964. Her son James Chaney was killed on June 21, 1964, in central Mississippi’s Neshoba County, along with fellow civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. The case was the basis for the movie Mississippi Burning (1988). Fannie Lee Chaney lived to see a reputed leader of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, Edgar Ray Killen, convicted in 2005 of the young men’s deaths. She died in Willingboro, New Jersey on May 23, 2007.

Robert Charles Comer (50) Arizona man condemned to death for a 1987 crime spree in which he killed a camper and raped a woman in front of her boyfriend at a campsite near Phoenix. Comer became the first inmate put to death in Arizona since 2000. He was executed by lethal injection in Florence, Arizona on May 23, 2007.

Jason Hamilton (37) Idaho man, apparently upset over a court-ordered mental evaluation, who shot and killed his wife Crystal Hamilton (30) at their home. Then from the parking lot at the Latah County courthous, Jason Hamilton fired an M1 rifle into the Sheriff’s Office and dispatch center, killing police officer Lee Newbill and critically wounding a deputy. Hamilton later killed caretaker Paul Bauer (62) at the First Presbyterian Church. He had a history of violence, including the attempted murder of his former girlfriend in January 2006. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound (suicide) in Moscow, Idaho on May 20, 2007.

Sam Kagel (98) mediator and arbitrator whose career settling labor disputes ranged from the rowdy San Francisco docks of the ’30s to the NFL fields of the early ’80s. Kagel died in San Francisco, California on May 21, 2007.

Marion King Jackson (74) Georgia woman who became a rallying point in the civil rights movement. On July 22, 1962, King Jackson traveled to the Mitchell County jail in Camilla, Georgia to take food to jailed civil rights demonstrators. She was told to leave, pushed to the ground, and kicked in the abdomen by a sheriff’s deputy; six months pregnant, she lost consciousness and later miscarried. The next day, hundreds marched through the streets in protest, galvanizing support for the movement in southwest Georgia. King Jackson died during heart surgery in Atlanta, Georgia on May 22, 2007.

Rev. David Kirk (72) Eastern Orthodox priest who spent most of his adult life working with New York City’s disenfranchised. For decades a presence in the civil rights and antiwar movements, Kirk established Emmaus House, a communal residence for the homeless, in the mid-’60s. In declining health with kidney trouble and other ailments, he died in his sleep in New York City on May 23, 2007.

Norm Maleng (68) longtime King County, Washington prosecutor who reached a plea bargain in 2003 with the notorious Green River serial killer, Gary Ridgway, sentenced to 48 consecutive life terms rather than death for helping investigators to locate long-missing remains. Nearly 50 women—most of them prostitutes or runaways—were believed to be his victims. Maleng, who had vowed that his office would not bargain away the death penalty, said he made the deal to bring answers—and peace of mind—to victims’ families. He died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington on May 24, 2007.

Jordan Manners (14) student at Toronto's C. W. Jeffreys Collegiate Institute, shot and fatally wounded by two unidentified gunmen near the school's swimming pool area. The shooting was high-profile and received media attention as the first fatal school shooting in Toronto's history since 1999. Manners died of gunshot wounds in North York, Toronto, Canada on May 23, 2007.

Lucille Meyer (110) one of the oldest residents of San Francisco, California. Meyer was 9 years old when the 1906 earthquake struck and destroyed the city. She got married in 1924 but later never remarried after her husband’s death four years later, in ’28. She died in Millbrae, California on May 23, 2007.

Christopher Newton (37) Ohio man convicted of the beating and choking to death of cellmate Jason Brewer (27) in 2001 after they argued over a chess game. Newton’s execution had been delayed on several occasions because he was too obese (it took him an hour to die). He was executed by lethal injection in Lucasville, Ohio on May 24, 2007.

Kelly Jo Dowd (42) cancer-stricken mother whose dream of seeing her teenage daughter Dakoda play in a Ladies Professional Golf Association event was realized in the spring of 2006. Kelly Jo Dowd’s death came just over a year after seeing Dakoda, then 13, play in the Ginn Open in Reunion, Florida. Kelly Jo spent years battling breast cancer, which spread to her bones and liver, then to her brain in the final months of her life. She died in Palm Harbor, Florida on May 24, 2007.

Jill Jarrett (37) wife of professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett whose 11-year battle with bone cancer superseded her husband’s career over the past several years. Jill Jarrett died in Hendersonville, Tennessee on May 23, 2007.

Norman von Nida (93) former Australian Open champion who won more than 80 titles worldwide and was a trailblazer for Australian golf. Von Nida won three Australian Opens and four Australian Professional Golf Association Championships. He was renowned for his short temper; at an Australian tournament in 1948, he became involved in an argument with US Ryder Cup player Henry Ransom that resulted in police having to pull them apart. Von Nida was also known to hurl his putter into the bushes after missing putts and breaking or losing them mid-round. After two months of ill health, he died on the Gold Coast of Australia on May 20, 2007.