Park Kyung-ni (81) one of South Korea's most celebrated novelists, best known for her 16-volume epic saga Toji (1955; The Land), set against 19th- and 20th-century turbulence on the Korean peninsula. It took Park about 25 years to write and has been made into a TV drama series, a movie, and an opera. She had been in a coma since suffering a stroke Apr. 4. She died of lung cancer in Seoul, South Korea on May 5, 2008.

Nuala O'Faolain (68) Irish journalist who wrote of longing and childhood suffering in two midlife memoirs and an acclaimed first novel, My Dream of You. O'Faolain died of lung cancer in Dublin, Ireland on May 9, 2008.

Fredric J. Baur (89) organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, where he created the Pringles potato chip tube and the curved system for stacking the potato snacks inside it in 1966. Baur retired from P&G in the early '80s. He was so proud of his accomplishment that he asked to be buried in a Pringles can, and his family obliged by burying some of his ashes in one of the iconic cans. He died in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 4, 2008.

Thomas Boggs (63) man who took a midtown bar named Huey's and turned it into a Memphis institution with seven locations. Although best known for Huey's restaurants and the best hamburgers in Memphis, Boggs's imprint can be found on eateries and charities all over the mid-South. He was also a partner in the Half Shell Restaurants, Tsunami, Folk's Folly, and the Prime Cut Shoppe. He died in his sleep in Memphis, Tennessee on May 4, 2008.

Charles R. Ellis (72) executive who led the family-owned publishing house John Wiley & Sons back to fiscal health in the '90s after a period of misdirected expansion. Now an international publisher of textbooks, business books, scholarly journals, and trade books (including Frommer's travel guides, the "CliffsNotes" study guides, and the "For Dummies" how-to series), Wiley was founded in a Lower Manhattan print shop in 1807. Ellis was president and chief executive (1990-98), taking over after the company made forays outside its core businesses. He died of cancer in Paris, France on May 4, 2008.

André Galerne (81) French deep-sea diver who in the early '60s brought together a band of rugged divers willing to descend hundreds of feet to repair oil rigs, lay cables, or salvage something from a sunken vessel—starting what became the world's largest privately owned deep-sea construction company, International Underwater Contractors. Galerne died in Scottsdale, Arizona on May 6, 2008.

Paul B. Gordon (84) executive under whom Gordon Food Service Inc. grew into one of the largest family-owned food distributors in North America. Gordon's grandparents started the business in 1897, delivering eggs and butter from a horse-drawn cart. In 2007, Forbes magazine listed Gordon Food Service as No. 46 among the country's largest privately owned companies, with estimated sales of $5.9 billion in '06. Gordon died of cancer in Ada Township, Michigan on May 6, 2008.

Joseph Graham (68) pioneering firefighter who broke the color barrier at the Jackson Fire Department in the early '70s and became the city's first black fire chief in 1996. Graham retired in 1998 after 26 years with the Fire Department. He was involved in a minor traffic collision on May 4. He collapsed while talking to the police and was hospitalized, where he suffered a seizure and died two days later from a possible stroke or aneurysm, in Jackson, Mississippi on May 6, 2008.

Paul Haeberlin (84) chef whose restaurant, the Auberge de l'Ill in Alsace, France, has long been a shrine to classical French cuisine and a training ground for such renowned chefs as Jean-Georges Vongerichten. It won the maximum three Michelin stars in 1967 and has held onto them ever since. Haeberlin had been suffering from kidney and heart disease, among other ailments. He died in Illhaeusern, France on May 10, 2008.

Dr. Murray Jarvik (84) psychopharmacologist among the first to study the hallucinogenic drug LSD whose later research on the physiology and psychology of smoking was instrumental in the development of the nicotine patch. Jarvik died of pulmonary edema caused by congestive heart failure, in Santa Monica, California on May 8, 2008.

Irvine Robbins (90) businessman who with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin (d. 1967), started the Baskin-Robbins chain of ice cream stores in the '40s—together concocting quirky flavor combinations with names like Daiquiri Ice, Pink Bubblegum, and Here Comes the Fudge. Robbins died in Rancho Mirage, California on May 5, 2008.

Philipp von Schoeller (86) former national horse-riding champion and International Olympic Committee member. Von Schoeller was elected an IOC member from Austria in 1977 and became an honorary member in 2000 after reaching the mandatory retirement age. As a banker and an industrialist, he was a board member of various companies in Austria and chaired several industrial lobbying institutions in Vienna, London, and Paris (1971-98). He died in Vienna, Austria on May 6, 2008.

Emily Starkloff (19) daughter of local activist Max Starkloff, who championed the rights of people with disabilities for decades and later founded Paraquad Inc., a not-for-profit community-based Center for Independent Living. Emily Starkloff attended two St. Louis-area alternative high schools and was studying to become an ICU nurse. She was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Maplewood, Missouri on May 5, 2008.

John Altieri (38) actor and singer best known for his role as Bob Crewe in the first national tour of the award-winning Broadway musical Jersey Boys. Altieri had also worked in several Los Angeles-based regional theater productions. He recently left the tour to perform in an extended run of Jersey Boys at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. He died of pneumonia in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 4, 2008.

Eddy Arnold (89) singer who took country music uptown and sold more than 85 million recordings over 70 years. Arnold personified the evolution of country music in the years after World War II, from a rural vernacular to an idiom with broad mainstream appeal. His mellow baritone on songs like "Make the World Go Away" made him one of the most successful country singers in history. Folksy but sophisticated, he became a pioneer of "the Nashville sound," also called "countrypolitan," a mixture of country and pop styles. His crossover success paved the way for later singers such as Kenny Rogers. Arnold died one week short of his 90th birthday, near Nashville, Tennessee on May 8, 2008.

Ian Ellery Brodie (72) British journalist who covered the US from the '60s to the end of the 20th century and briefly lived in Topanga Canyon, where he ran the local newspaper, the Topanga Messenger. Working for London's Daily Telegraph and later the Times of London, Brodie reported on the 1968 assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and years later on "hanging chads" in the 2000 US Presidential election. He died of a stroke in Bethesda, Maryland on May 8, 2008.

Alvin Colt (92) Tony-winning costume designer whose work spanned more than 60 years of theater from On the Town (1944) to the long-running series of Forbidden Broadway revues that spoof Broadway shows. Colt won his Tony for the costumes he designed for Rodgers & Hammerstein's Pipe Dream (1955). He died in New York City on May 4, 2008.

Leyla Gencer (79) Turkish soprano who made her career at Italy's famed La Scala opera house. Gencer's career spanned about 30 years and included more than 70 roles. In 1956, she became the first Turkish soprano to be heard in opera in the US when she sang the title role of Francesca da Rimini with the San Francisco Opera. In 1957, she debuted with La Scala, playing Madame Lidoine in the premiere of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites. She died of respiratory problems and heart failure in Milan, Italy on May 9, 2008.

Dorothy Green (88) TV actress who made a career as a guest performer on such popular prime-time series as My Three Sons, Marcus Welby MD, and Ironside. Green was best known as a dramatic actress who appeared on detective series and westerns such as Hopalong Cassidy and Gunsmoke. She also had guest roles in lighter fare starting with five episodes of Disneyland in the late '50s and later The Love Boat in the '80s. She tried daytime TV in 1975 when she played Jennifer Elizabeth Brooks in an episode of The Young & the Restless. Green died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on May 8, 2008.

Fred Haines (72) writer and director who cowrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay adaptation of Ulysses, the highly experimental novel by James Joyce, and wrote and directed a film version of Steppenwolf, a tormented quest novel by Hermann Hesse. Haines died of lung cancer in Venice, California on May 4, 2008.

John Jay Iselin (74) former president (1973-87) of New York's WNET, also known as Channel 13, the nation's largest public TV station. Among the programs the station originated and produced during Iselin's tenure were Great Performances, Live from Lincoln Center, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Bill Moyers' Journal, and Nature. A descendant of John Jay, first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, Iselin died of pneumonia in New York City on May 6, 2008.

George ("Leo") Jackson (73) guitarist who had played two stints as a member of Jim Reeves's Blue Boys band before Reeves's death in a plane crash in 1964. Among Jackson's hits featured on recordings by Country Music Hall of Famers are the George Strait singles "Right or Wrong" and "Let's Fall to Pieces Together," Reeves's "Distant Drums," Moe Bandy's "A Cheating Situation," and Bandy's duet with Joe Stampley, "Just Good Ol' Boys." Diagnosed with cancer in 2002, Jackson committed suicide by gunshot outside his home in Goodlettsville, Tennessee on May 4, 2008.

Jessica Jacobs (17) Australian actress who starred in the children's TV series The Saddle Club (2001-04), a joint Australian-Canadian production based on the books of American author Bonnie Bryant. Jacobs played Melanie Atwood at age 12 in the hit Australian TV series that also screened in North America and Britain. She also appeared in a stage production of The Sound of Music opposite child stars Burt Newton and Lisa McCune and made guest appearances on other TV programs, including Worst Best Friends, Fergus McPhail, and Holly's Heroes. She slipped from a platform and was killed instantly by a train at Cheltenham Railway Station in Melbourne, Australia on May 10, 2008.

Larry Levine (80) recording engineer who helped to translate the sonic vision of record producer Phil Spector into some of the biggest-selling and most influential recordings of the rock era. If Spector was the architect of the "Wall of Sound" that defined such '60s hits as the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron," and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," Levine was the nuts-and-bolts contractor charged with making it work. He suffered from emphysema and heart ailments and died on his 80th birthday in Encino, California on May 8, 2008.

D. C. Minner (73) grandson of a whiskey hall owner who became a respected blues musician and later introduced the genre to Oklahoma schoolchildren through the Blues in the Schools program, performing and discussing music in classrooms. Minner had suffered from numerous health problems in recent years, including high blood pressure, diabetes, failing kidneys, and a heart attack. He died in Rentiesville, Oklahoma on May 6, 2008.

Michelle Parker (52) longtime news reporter for CBS's KCCI-TV in Des Moines who began her career in 1979 and had covered education stories for many years. Parker had more recently been a general assignment reporter covering everything from the day's lead story to a human-interest feature. A story she did with photographer Cortney Kintzer, about a soldier returing from Iraq in 2007 who surprised his elementary school son by showing up at his class, had just won a first place in "general reporting" from the Associated Press Broadcasters of Iowa. Parker fell ill at a birthday party on May 3 and died of heart failure the next day, in Des Moines, Iowa on May 4, 2008.

Beverly Rowland (79) character actress who had recurring minor roles in several made-for-TV films, including Head over Heels (1979), Side by Side: The True Story of the Osmond Family (1982), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), and most recently A Loss of Innocence (1996). Rowland died in St. George, Utah on May 7, 2008.

Joshua Sack (22) drummer for the Philadelphia rock band the Brakes who had performed at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas in 2006 and at the Xponential Music Festival in Wiggins Park in the summer of '07. The group had released three self-titled EPs (2004-06); its song "Special" was featured in an H&R Block TV commercial in 2006, and its debut album A Tale of Two Cities was released on May 6. Sack died of acute myelogenous leukemia in Merion, Pennsylvania on May 4, 2008.

Jerry Wallace (79) country singer who shot to fame in the late '50s with a pair of hit songs including "Primrose Lane." Wallace began recording in 1951 and scored his first major hit in '58 with the release of "How the Time Flies," followed in '59 by the upbeat "Primrose Lane," which sold more than a million copies. He scored more than 45 chart successes on both the pop and country music hit parades, then stopped recording in the late '70s. He died of congestive heart failure in Victorville, California on May 5, 2008.

Joseph R. Egan (53) nuclear engineer-turned-lawyer who led Nevada's legal campaign to block a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Legal challenges by Egan's firm, Egan, Fitzpatrick & Malsch, helped to set back the Energy Department's project at Yucca by years. Egan died of gastroesophageal cancer in Naples, Florida on May 7, 2008.

Clifford Jones (80) former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, a Cabinet secretary under six governors. Jones was secretary of commerce, labor, and industry and environmental resources and chairman of the Public Utility Commission. He headed the Governor's Action Team early in Gov. Ed Rendell's administration. Jones also was president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business & Industry. He died of prostate cancer in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania on May 7, 2008.

Schmuel Katz (93) former close adviser to Menachem Begin (d. 1992), Israel's prime minister in the late '70s and early '80s, who later became an opponent of Begin's peace efforts with Egypt and the Palestinians. Katz died in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 9, 2008.

Dick Netzer (79) economist who advised mayors of New York City and governors of New York state and served on the first board of the Municipal Assistance Corp., which helped the city out of bankruptcy in the '70s. Netzer died one week before his 80th birthday, in New York City on May 7, 2008.

Louise Shadduck (92) Idaho newspaper reporter and author who became the first woman in the nation to serve in a state cabinet post when Gov. Robert Smylie appointed her secretary of commerce and development in the late '50s. Shadduck worked as a journalist and columnist at the Coeur d'Alene Press and the Spokesman-Review newspapers, then was on the staffs of Lt. Gov. Donald Whitehead; Govs. C. A. Robins, Len Jordan, and Don Samuelson; US Sen. Henry Dworshak; and US Rep. Orval Hansen. She died in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on May 4, 2008.

Luis Leon (19) California teen shot multiple times and fatally wounded while standing on the sidewalk, by a suspected gunman who stepped out of a four-door vehicle that rolled up beside him, then later fled the scene. A 19-year-old black man was also critically wounded, but authorities don't have a motive for the shooting. Leon died in South Los Angeles, California on May 9, 2008.

Joseph Lodge (76) Superior Court judge in Santa Barbara County elected to the bench in 1958 who became one of the longest-serving jurists in California history, stepping down earlier this year. Lodge, who taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara throughout most of his law career, was known for his liberal judgments. He died of lymphoma in Santa Barbara, California on May 5, 2008.

William Earl Lynd (53) Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend and became the first inmate put to death since the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections. Lynd was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore (26), three times in the face and head in 1988. He was executed less than an hour after the US Supreme Court rejected efforts to block it, in Jackson, Georgia on May 6, 2008.

Robert W. Nudelman (52) preservationist and nostalgia buff who campaigned over 30 years to save and restore such Hollywood landmarks as the El Capitan Theatre and the Cinerama Dome. Nudelman was found dead at his ailing father's home in Tucson, Arizona on May 6, 2008.

Louis Peck (89) former Vermont Supreme Court Justice who survived a debilitating war injury to become one of state government's most respected lawyers and jurists. A paratrooper in World War II, Peck was wounded jumping into Germany, where an aircraft crashed on top of him, putting him in the hospital for two years and leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. He died in Montpelier, Vermont on May 8, 2008.

Ruth Simpson (82) leader in the gay liberation movement who wrote a well-regarded critique of social and political attitudes toward lesbians in the '70s, From the Closet to the Courts (1976), which examined discrimination against lesbians in various arenas, including religion, psychiatry, the legal system, and the women's and gay rights movements. Simpson died in Woodstock, New York on May 8, 2008.

Alma Hogan Snell (85) Crow tribal elder, a tribal historian, educator, and herbalist. Snell specialized in the knowledge of herbs and healing and was a frequent lecturer, sharing what she learned with tribal members and the non-Indian community. The granddaughter of Crow medicine woman Pretty Shield, she also wrote two books: Grandmother's Grandchild: My Crow Indian Life and A Taste of Heritage. She died in Billings, Montana on May 5, 2008.

Fr. D. George Spagnolia (70) Massachusetts Roman Catholic priest, the first to call for Boston Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation after the church's sexual abuse scandal broke in 2002. Spagnolia later fought his own removal from a Lowell parish after a decades-old allegation that he sexually abused a child. As portrayed by actor Brian Dennehy, Spagnolia was a central character in Our Fathers (2005), a made-for-TV movie about the church scandal. He died in New Bedford, Massachusetts on May 6, 2008.

Sam Aubrey (85) member of a national championship team in 1946 who succeeded Henry Iba as Oklahoma State's basketball coach (1970-73). Aubrey was a starting forward on the 1946 national championship team at what was then Oklahoma A&M; it was the second straight NCAA title for the school. Aubrey died in Stillwater, Oklahoma on May 5, 2008.

Jack Gibson (79) one of Australia's greatest rugby league coaches. Gibson was voted Australia's rugby league coach of the 21st century in April 2008. He won five titles in Australia's top-flight competition, guiding Eastern Suburbs to back-to-back titles (1974-75) and Parramatta to three in a row starting in 1981. He died two hours before a match kickoff between the Kangaroos and New Zealand, in Sydney, Australia on May 9, 2008.

Bill Hargrove (106) oldest US league bowler ever. Hargrove started bowling in 1924 and was still bowling just before he was hospitalized with pneumonia. He died of congestive heart failure four days shy of turning 107, in Gainesville, Georgia on May 5, 2008.

François Sterchele (26) forward for Belgium's national soccer team and FC Brugge. Completing his first season with the club after signing a five-year contract, Sterchele previously played for Charleroi and Germinal Beerschot in the Belgian league. He made four appearances for Belgium, debuting against Portugal in March 2007. He was killed when he lost control of his Porsche and hit a tree near Antwerp, Belgium on May 8, 2008.

Witold Woyda (68) fencer who won medals for Poland in three consecutive Olympics. Woyda won two gold medals, team and individual foil, at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the silver medal for team foil in '64 in Tokyo, and the bronze in '68 in Mexico City. He moved to the US in the late '70s and became a successful businessman and an American citizen. He died of lung cancer in Bronxville, New York on May 5, 2008.