Amanda Louise Martin (36) author who published her first book, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2007), loosely based on her neighborhood, which caused a critical stir among suspicious neighbors who thought some of the characters hit a little too close to home. Martin's controversial murder-mystery best-seller mostly based the crime-solving heroines on herself, but the only true character in the book was her dog, Yale. She died of complications from lupus in Tampa, Florida on June 19, 2008.

Walter A. Netsch Jr. (88) prominent Chicago architect who designed the University of Illinois-Chicago campus and the Cadet Chapel at the US Air Force Academy (shown above) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Netsch died of pneumonia in Chicago, Illinois on June 15, 2008.

Tasha Tudor (92) illustrator of such children's classics as Little Women and The Secret Garden. Tudor wrote or collaborated on nearly 100 children's books after making her debut with Pumpkin Moonshine (1938). She also illustrated The Night Before Christmas and wrote books of her own, including Corgiville Fair. She died in Marlboro, Vermont on June 18, 2008.

David Caminer (92) former employee of a chain of British tea shops who found the earliest ways to use a computer for business purposes. LEO, the computer Caminer helped to develop in the early '50s for J. Lyons & Co., was the world's first business computer. Lyons was the first company in the world to computerize its commercial operations: running more than 200 teahouses in London and its suburbs; catering events like tennis at Wimbledon and garden parties at Windsor Castle; and operating hotels, laundries, and ice cream, candy, and meat pie companies, plus tea plantations. Caminer died one week before his 93rd birthday, in London, England on June 19, 2008.

Monroe J. Carell Jr. (76) Nashville businessman who helped Central Parking Corp. to become one of the largest parking providers in North America. Carell was chief engineer with the Duck River Electrical Cooperative before going to work for his father at Central Parking in 1967, where he later was chairman and chief executive. He died of cancer in Nashville, Tennessee on June 20, 2008.

Hewitt D. Crane (81) electrical engineer instrumental in the design and construction of the first commercial computer to automate checking accounts. Working at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in the late '50s, Crane developed ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting) for the Bank of America. He died from complications of Alzheimer's disease in Portola Valley, California on June 17, 2008.

Rafael del Pino (87) founder of construction and infrastructure company Grupo Ferrovial SA and one of Spain's richest men. Madrid-born Del Pino began his career with the construction company Vias y Construcciones in 1947, reaching the post of director. In 1952, he left to found Ferrovial, stepping down in 2000 in favor of his son Rafael del Pino Calvo-Sotelo. In 2006, Ferrovial led a group of investors in buying BAA, the world's largest airport operator, which manages seven British airports, including London's Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted. Del Pino died in Madrid, Spain on June 15, 2008.

Carl G. Eilers (83) electrical engineer who helped to develop production of high-fidelity stereo sound over the airwaves. A 50-year employee of Zenith Electronics, Eilers led the team that developed FM stereo broadcasting. He was also codeveloper of another key industry standard known as multichannel TV sound or stereo TV. Zenith's system was adopted by the industry in 1984. Eilers died of an apparent heart attack in River Forest, Illinois on June 20, 2008.

Arthur W. Galston (88) Yale plant biologist who did early research that ultimately led to the development of the herbicide Agent Orange, then helped to raise awareness of the military's use of it in Vietnam in the '60s and its devastating effects on river ecosystems. Galston died of congestive heart failure in Hamden, Connecticut on June 15, 2008.

Wilbur Hardee (89) founder of the Hardee's Restaurant fast-food chain who opened his first walk-up hamburger joint in eastern North Carolina in 1960. Hardee was long gone from the enterprise when it grew to be the nation's largest privately held franchise company, with more than 2,900 stores nationwide and in 11 countries. He died in Greenville, North Carolina on June 20, 2008.

Michael Shernoff (57) psychotherapist who, beginning in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, wrote widely on its emotional toll on gay men and organized an early safe-sex workshop. Shernoff died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on June 17, 2008.

Valentine Vester (96) Yorkshire, England homemaker who went to Jordanian Jerusalem in 1963 to take over a little hotel, the American Colony, and turned it into one of the city's finest. Vester and her husband, Horatio Vester (d. early 1980s), adapted to the Israeli victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which unified Jerusalem under Israeli rule. The Vesters were proud that their hotel, shot up during the fighting, remained one of the few places in the city where Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians could gather. The American Colony was also the site of numerous secret talks among Palestinian and Israeli officials. Valentine Vester died in Jerusalem, Israel on June 15, 2008.

David Maehr (52) British-born associate professor of wildlife and conservation biology in the Department of Forestry at the University of Kentucky known for his work reintroducing elk to eastern Kentucky and his reaserch on the black bear population in Appalachia. Maehr also spent time protecting Florida's endangered panther population while previously working for the Florida Game & Fresh Water Fish Commission. He was the only passenger killed in a small plane crash piloted by citrus grove owner Mason Smoak (33) during a mid-air observation near Placid Lake, Florida on June 20, 2008.

Rudolph J. Vecoli (81) Italian-American historian whose chronicles of the American immigrant experience offered a new view of what immigrants kept and left behind. As longtime director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and in numerous scholarly articles and books, Vecoli argued against the notion that immigrants to the US left their cultures behind and did their best to blend into mainstream American society. Rather, he wrote, they clung to their traditions and developed strategies to retain their heritage and resist pressures to embrace the American social and economic system. Vecoli died of leukemia in St. Louis Park, Minnesota on June 15, 2008.

Brewster Yale Beach (83) Episcopal priest and psychotherapist who in 2005 produced family documents proving that the Associated Press was organized two years earlier than previously thought. Beach's great-great-grandfather, Moses Yale Beach, second owner-publisher of the New York Sun, originated the idea for an alliance of newspapers sharing Mexican War dispatches in 1846 that led to the creation of the AP, now the world's largest news agency, which formerly had cited 1848 as its birth year. Beach died in his sleep in Staatsburg, New York on June 17, 2008.

Franklin Otis Booth Jr. (84) former Los Angeles Times executive ('50s-'60s) and businessman whose early investment in a venture headed by a young and then little-known Warren E. Buffett later won him a fortune and a title as one of the richest men in the nation. Booth was also a philanthropist and a great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, founder of the Times. He died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in Los Angeles, California on June 15, 2008.

Matthew Butler (28) musician, record producer, and owner of Zion Gate Records, a studio that specialized in contemporary Christian music. Butler started his own recording company at his parents' house about three years ago, shortly after he became interested in audio recording in 2000 during a visit to a friend's makeshift studio. He was found shot to death along with sound engineer Stephen Swan (26) outside their studio in Garland, Texas on June 19, 2008. Authorities arrested three teenage suspects in connection with the capital murder.

Cyd Charisse (86) classy, long-legged, graceful Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Charisse's fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the '40s and '50s. Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in Ziegfeld Follies (1946) to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire in The Band Wagon (1953; with Astaire). She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on TV and in nightclub appearances with her husband of 60 years, singer Tony Martin. She is shown above in Singin' in the Rain (1952; with Kelly), Band Wagon, Silk Stockings (1957), her Broadway debut in the musical Grand Hotel (1991), and in a recent public appearance. Charisse died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on June 17, 2008.

Jean Delannoy (100) classic French filmmaker who adapted novels by Victor Hugo and André Gide and won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize in 1946 for La Symphonie Pastorale, his adaptation of a Gide novel. Many of Delannoy's films, starring actors including Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, and Michele Morgan, were French box office successes in the '40s and '50s. But his classic style went out of fashion in the '60s, when he was derided by the more avant-garde New Wave filmmakers, including Franç�ois Truffaut. Delannoy died in Guainville, France, southwest of Paris, on June 18, 2008.

Pamela Forrester (65) one of three women awarded $58 million in damages against pharmaceutical giant Wyeth earlier in the year after a jury found that one of the drugs, Prempro (an estrogen replacement prescribed to women to ease menopause symptoms), caused their breast cancer. It is the largest award to date filed against the Madison, NJ-based company, which faces about 5,300 similar lawsuits across the country in state and federal courts. Forrester died of lung cancer at a hospice in Yerington, Nevada on June 18, 2008.

Wera Frydtberg (78) German stage and screen actress who appeared in over 30 films and TV shows, including her successful roles in Der Kommissar (1969), Love, Vampire Style (1970), Flash Gordon (1954), Elle (1954), and The Story of a Sinner (1951). Frydtberg died in Munich, Germany on June 16, 2008.

Christopher A. Johnson (32) lead singer of the Minneapolis-based indie punk rock band Useless Wooden Toys who had recently recorded a handful of split 7's top singles and was set to perform a gig at Target Center on July 18. Johnson died of stab wounds suffered during a fight outside a house party in Bloomington, Indiana on June 21, 2008. Police later arrested Brian P. White (32).

Miyuki Kanbe (24) Japanese actress and singer best known for her award-winning role as Usagi Tsukino in the musical stage adaptation of the magna series Sailor Moon. Kanbe had also appeared in several TV series and movies, including her lead roles in Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003) and the Kamen Rider Hibiki TV series and film (2005-06). She died of heart failure in Kawasaki, Japan on June 18, 2008.

Kermit Love (91) costume designer for some of ballet's most renowned choreographers whose greatest fame came as a creator, with Jim Henson (d. 1990), of the beloved Sesame Street characters Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Love died of congestive heart failure in Poughkeepsie, New York on June 21, 2008.

Michael Norton (66) journalist who spent nearly 20 years covering Haiti's coups, rebellions, and disasters for the Associated Press. Norton chronicled the turmoil that followed former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier's ouster, spent almost 10 years watching the rise and fall of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and wrote compelling accounts of Haiti's crushing poverty that has created a cycle of despair in the country. He died of cancer in Caguas, Puerto Rico on June 15, 2008.

George R. Sample Jr. (84) journalist and a founder in the '60s of what became American Publishing Co., later sold to Hollinger International. Sample was vice chairman of Hollinger's American Publishing Co. and was credited with making improvements to the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post. He also created the family-run Sample News Group, which owned two newspapers in Maine and five in Pennsylvania, and was longtime publisher of the Corry (Pa.) Journal, where he started working after graduating from college. He died of cardiac arrest several months after he was injured in a fall at his home, in Corry, Pennsylvania on June 18, 2008.

Stan Winston (62) Oscar-winning special-effects wizard responsible for bringing the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and other iconic movie creatures to life. Winston created some of the most memorable visual effects in movie history, also helping to bring the extraterrestrials from Aliens, the robots from Terminator, and even Edward Scissorhands to the big screen. He was a pioneer in merging real-world effects with computer imaging and won visual effects Oscars for Aliens (1986), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992), and Jurassic Park (1993) and a makeup Oscar for Batman Returns (1992). He died of multiple myeloma in Malibu, California on June 15, 2008.

Sixtus Petraeus (80s) Dutch-born sea captain and father of four-star US Army Lt. Gen. David Howell Petraeus, top military commander of the American-based Multi-National Force stationed in Iraq. The elder Petraeus sailed into New York Harbor just as World War II began and commanded a Liberty ship through Russian waters, but later gave up sea duty to settle in Hudson, New York, where he worked for a power company. He died in Santa Clarita, California on June 19, 2008.

John Barnett (73) leader of Washington state's Cowlitz Indians who fought for federal recognition of the tribe. Barnett was a longtime timber industry worker who took the helm of the 3,600-member tribe in 1982. The Cowlitz won formal status in 2002 but remain the only federally recognized tribe in Washington state without land of their own. Barnett died north of Aberdeen, Washington on June 15, 2008.

Rev. Henry Chadwick (87) Church of England priest and scholar of the early centuries of Christianity. Much of Chadwick's work involved controversies in the early church. He died six days before his 88th birthday, in Oxford, England on June 17, 2008.

Esmin Green (49) Jamaican woman who collapsed face-down on the floor of the Kings County Hospital Center's psychiatric emergency waiting room, where she had been for nearly 24 hours. Green was largely ignored for about an hour. Surveillance footage showed that security guards and a member of the hospital's staff noticed her prone body at least three times without making any visible effort to see if she needed help. By the time a woman from the medical staff approached her, nudging Green's body with her foot, the stricken patient was already dead, in Brooklyn, New York on June 19, 2008.

Marion Newbert Jorgensen (96) philanthropist, widow of steel tycoon Earle M. Jorgensen (d. 1999; member of President Ronald Reagan's "kitchen cabinet"), and mother of Irvine County (Calif.) Chairman Donald Bren, one of two sons she had with her first husband, Milton Bren, a Hollywood producer who helped to develop the Sunset Strip. Their other son, Peter Bren, is in commercial real estate. Marion Jorgensen died in Santa Monica, California on June 18, 2008.

Henryk Mandelbaum (85) Poland's last surviving member of the Sonderkommando—Jewish prisoners forced to empty the gas chambers at Auschwitz after fellow Jews were gassed and burned. Along with other such workers, Mandelbaum was forced by the Nazis to search the body cavities of fellow Jews for valuables and pull out gold teeth and fillings after they were executed, then carry the bodies to crematories for burning. When the crematories were filled to capacity, they dug huge pits to burn the bodies. Mandelbaum died several days after undergoing heart surgery, in the southern Polish city of Bytom on June 17, 2008.

Tsutomu Miyazaki (45) Japanese serial killer also known as The Otaku Killer or The Little Girl Murderer, found guilty of the random slayings and gruesome mutilation of four young girls (1988-89). The crimes remained unfortgettable and had dominated headlines in the country and prompted calls for tighter restrictions on the content of violent adult videos. Miyazaki received the death penalty in 1997, but the final execution date was set in 2006. He was executed by hanging in Tokyo, Japan on June 17, 2008.

James Earl Reed (49) South Carolina man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents in 1994. Reed's execution, first scheduled for 6 p.m., had been put on hold as defense attorneys successfully obtained a stay from a federal judge, only to see it vacated by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Their attempt to get the US Supreme Court to block the execution was later denied. Reed was the first person executed by electric chair in the US in nearly a year and the state's first since 2004, in Columbia, South Carolina on June 20, 2008.

Victor Remer (88) social worker who, as executive director of the New York Children's Aid Society for 15 years in the '60s and '70s, led the agency toward confronting more serious social problems, including those of young people convicted of minor crimes. Remer died in New York City on June 17, 2008.

Bessie Roffey (111) British-born supercentenarian, believed to be one of Canada's oldest validated persons. Roffey was named Alberta's Centenarian of the Year in 2005 with proof of her age on her birth certificate. She died in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on June 17, 2008.

Terry Short (47) Oklahoma man convicted in the 1995 death of Ken Yamamoto, a Japanese exchange student. Short fire-bombed the apartment of a former girlfriend, who escaped, but the flames spread to Yamamoto's apartment, and he died from his burns. Short was executed by lethal injection as Oklahoma became the sixth state to resume executions since the US Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on capital punishment, in McAlester, Oklahoma on June 17, 2008.

Harry Aleo (88) real estate magnate and longtime thoroughbred horse owner whose colt Lost in the Fog was the 2005 Eclipse Award sprint winner. The horse won 11 of 14 career starts and earned $978,099 before being euthanized in 2006 after cancer was found in his spleen and abdomen. Aleo also owned stakes winners Minutes Away, Beyond Brilliant, Smokey Stover, Victorino, and Wild Promises, who won the Yerba Buena Stakes at Golden Gate on June 8, 2008. Aleo died of cancer in San Francisco, California on June 21, 2008.

Johnny Buzhardt (71) pitcher for the Chicago Cubs and the White Sox during 11 seasons in the major leagues. Buzhardt pitched in the big leagues (1958-68) with the Cubs, Philadelphia, the White Sox, Baltimore, and Houston. His best years were with the White Sox when he went 9-4, 10-8, and 13-8 (1963-65). He retired with a 71-96 mark and a career ERA of 3.66. He suffered a stroke several years ago and died in Prosperity, South Carolina on June 15, 2008.

Mike Dukes (72) former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and two American Football League teams (1959-65), the Houston Oilers and the Boston Patriots. Dukes was killed when an eastbound pickup crossed the median on Interstate 10, striking his truck head-on. He was pronounced dead at the scene in Beaumont, Texas on June 16, 2008.

Ray Getliffe (94) Canadian hockey forward credited with giving Canadiens teammate Maurice Richard the nickname "The Rocket." Getliffe was the second-oldest living former National Hockey League player, about four months younger than Clint Smith, who played for the New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks. Getliffe played 10 seasons with the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens (1935-45). He won a Stanley Cup with the Bruins in 1939 and again with Montreal in '44, then retired at age 31 with 136 goals and 250 points in 393 games. He died in Montreal, Canada on June 15, 2008.

Jimmy Jackson (51) former Olympic wrestler and three-time NCAA heavyweight champion at Oklahoma State. Jackson won consecutive NCAA titles (1976-78) and competed in the 1976 Montreal Games, reaching the third round. He had been suffering from diabetes and congestive heart failure before his death in East Lansing, Michigan on June 17, 2008.

Scott Kalitta (46) National Hot Rod Association 1994-95 Top Fuel season champion who had 18 career victories, 17 in Top Fuel and one in Funny Car. Kalitta was killed when his Funny Car burst into flames and crashed at the end of the track during the final round of qualifying for the Lucas Oil NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in New Jersey on June 21, 2008.

Junior Morgan (74) starting center (1953-56) on Duke's first NCAA tournament basketball team. Morgan had a team-best 9.1 rebounds as a junior (1954-55) in leading the Blue Devils to a 20-8 record and their first berth in the NCAA tournament, where they lost their opener to Villanova. The next season he averaged 11.2 points and a team-leading 9.8 rebounds to help Duke finish 19-7. He was picked in the seventh round of the NBA draft by the St. Louis Hawks but instead worked in manufacturing for Goodyear in Akron, Ohio and played for a semipro team. He died of prostate cancer in Winnetka, Illinois on June 21, 2008.

Bert Shepard (87) World War II fighter pilot who lost his right leg when he was shot down over Germany but later pitched for the 1945 Washington Senators, becoming an inspiration for grievously wounded veterans. Shepard died in Highland, California on June 16, 2008.