Elsie B. Washington (66) writer whose 1980 book, Entwined Destinies, is widely considered the first black romance novel. Primarily a journalist, Washington wrote two nonfiction books, Sickle Cell Anemia (1974; with Anthony Cerami) and Uncivil War: The Struggle Between Black Men & Women (1996). She died of multiple sclerosis and cancer in New York City on May 5, 2009.

Robert B. Choate Jr. (84) engineer who gave up that career to fight poverty and malnutrition. In 1970 Choate told a US Senate subcommittee that most breakfast cereals barely qualified as food. His crusade led to federally mandated nutritional labeling of most foods by 1994. He died from a medical condition that prevented him from swallowing, in Lemon Grove, California on May 3, 2009.

Maria Elena Ibarra Martin (76) director of the Center for Marine Research at the University of Havana, a cofounder of the Cuban Society for the Protection of the Environment, and a leader in Caribbean marine ecology. Ibarra Martin died in Cuba on May 5, 2009.

Sidney N. Laverents (100) former vaudevillian, aircraft engineer, and amateur filmmaker whose technically precocious and humorous 1970 musical short film Multiple SIDosis was only the fourth amateur film included in the National Film Registry since its inception in '89. In his film, Laverents whistles and plays the song "Nola" on several instruments simultaneously. He died in Chula Vista, California on May 6, 2009.

Guy Mascolo (65) cofounder of the international hair salon Toni & Guy. Guy Mascolo founded the company with his brother Toni in London in 1963 when they were both teens. The sons of Italian immigrants, they created a global company known for its cutting-edge salons and hair care products such as Bed Head, S-factor, and Catwalk. In 1983, Guy and another brother, Bruno, opened salons in Dallas and developed TIGI, their professional product line, sold in April for $415 million. Guy Mascolo died of a heart attack in Dallas, Texas on May 6, 2009.

John Tsukasa Tanimura (88) founding member of the farming partnership Tanimura & Antle Fresh Foods Inc., which farms more than 40,000 acres in North America, Europe, and Asia. Tanimura died in Salinas, California on May 4, 2009.

Alfred Appel Jr. (75) expert on Vladimir Nabokov (d. 1977), author of Lolita, and himself the author of books on modern art and jazz. Appel attended Nabokov's lecture course at Cornell and later wrote articles, books, and essays on the novelist and his work. He died of heart failure in Evanston, Illinois on May 3, 2009.

Eleanor Perenyi (91) writer and amateur gardener whose only gardening book, Green Thoughts (1981), is widely considered a classic of garden writing. Perenyi died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Westerly, Rhode Island on May 3, 2009.

Ellen Revelle (98) philanthropist and descendant of the Scripps publishing family who helped her oceanographer husband, Roger Revelle (d. 1981), to establish the University of California at San Diego. Ellen Revelle was viewed as the school's unofficial ambassador and founded several campus facilities, using the breathtaking views from her La Jolla home to court potential faculty members. She died of a stroke in La Jolla, California on May 6, 2009.

Walter T. Shatford 2nd (94) attorney for whom Pasadena City College named its library in recognition of his 40 years of service on the school’s boards. Shatford died in Pasadena, California on May 5, 2009.

Stephen Bruton (60) Texas musician long admired and much in demand for his guitar work and his talents as a songwriter. Bruton had played with Kris Kristofferson for nearly 40 years, and his songs had been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Buffett, and numerous others. He died of throat cancer in Los Angeles, California on May 9, 2009.

Julia Canning (55) free-lance editor and sister of noted British TV producer and director Ed Bye. Canning was also the sister-in-law of well-known comedienne and TV personality Ruby Wax. She was killed in a freak accident when she was struck by a train as she tried to rescue her two dogs when they ran toward a country railway line near her home in Little Bedwyn, Wiltshire, England on May 6, 2009.

Mickey Carroll (89) one of the last surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Carroll was one of more than 100 adults and children recruited to play the movie natives of what author L. Frank Baum called Munchkin Country in his 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Carroll played the part of the Munchkinland Town Crier, marched as a Munchkin Soldier, and was the candy-striped Fiddler who escorted Judy Garland down the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City. He suffered from heart problems and died in his sleep in Crestwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, on May 7, 2009.

Sam Cohn (79) talent agent whose long client list of top actors, writers, and directors and his ingenious deal-making for them made him the most powerful talent broker in theater and film during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the original Hollywood superagent. Cohn was a cofounder in 1974 of International Creative Management (ICM), a huge talent agency whose clients over the next 15 years were involved in more projects in movies, theater, and publishing than those of any other agency. He died five days before his 80th birthday, in New York City on May 6, 2009.

Adam Cook (36) lawyer and elder brother of alternative rock music singer-songwriter and bass guitarist David Cook, best known as winner of the seventh season of the reality TV show American Idol. Adam Cook died after a 10-year battle with brain cancer in Terre Haute, Indiana on May 3, 2009.

Linda Dangcil (67) actress, singer, and dancer whose best-known role was as Sister Ana on the ‘60s TV series The Flying Nun. Starting in the ‘60s Dangcil had numerous guest parts on TV series, including Maverick and The Rifleman. She had a long run as Elena on Villa Alegre, a bilingual children’s program that aired on public TV in the early ‘70s, and had many parts as a voice actor, including as Carmen Alonso on the ‘80s animated series Jem. She died after an eight-year battle with tonsillar cancer, in Los Angeles, California on May 7, 2009.

Dom DeLuise (75) character actor and comedian popular for decades with movie and TV audiences, directors, and fellow actors. DeLuise appeared in scores of movies and TV shows, in Broadway plays, and as the voice of characters in numerous cartoons. He was a favorite of writer-director-actor Mel Brooks, who cast him in several films, including Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, History of the World Part I, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. His TV credits included appearances on such shows as The Munsters, The Girl from UNCLE, Burke’s Law, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Diagnosis: Murder. In later years DeLuise wrote two successful cookbooks. He died in Santa Monica, California on May 4, 2009.

Travis Edmonson (76) folk singer and songwriter of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Performing as the duo Bud & Travis, Edmonson and Bud Dashiell (d. 1989) influenced other folk musicians and helped to expand the audience for Spanish-language songs. Edmonson had Parkinson\'s disease and suffered a stroke in 1982; he died in Mesa, Arizona on May 9, 2009.

Ean Evans (48) bass player of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd for the past several years. Evans joined the band in 2001 after the death of its longtime bassist, Leon Wilkeson. Lynyrd Skynyrd was one of the South’s most popular rock groups in the ‘70s, known for such hits as “Free Bird,” “What’s Your Name,” and especially “Sweet Home Alabama,” a top 10 hit in 1974. Three of its original members, including lead singer Ronnie van Zant, were killed in a plane crash in 1977. Evans died of cancer in Columbus, Mississippi on May 6, 2009.

William (Rocky) Foster (55) prominent horse breeder and husband of former Little House on the Prairie child star Sidney Greenbush, who, with her twin sister Lindsay, played Carrie Ingalls on the show for eight years (1974-82). The couple had been married for more than nine years, but Greenbush had recently asked for a divorce. Foster committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at his family home in Visalia, California on May 5, 2009.

John Furia Jr. (79) screen and TV writer who wrote for popular series including Bonanza, The Waltons, and Hawaii Five-O, among many others. A former president of the Writers Guild of America West, Furia was also a founding chairman of USC’s School of Cinema-Television Writing Division and was a full professor there, teaching screen and TV writing. He died in Los Angeles, California on May 7, 2009.

Brooks McNamara (72) theater historian who spent 10 years (1976-85) organizing the Shubert Archive, a huge collection of letters, photographs, scripts, sheet music, set and costume designs, business records, and other theater memorabilia. McNamara had been suffering from sporadic cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative nerve disorder, but died of pneumonia in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on May 8, 2009.

Jane Randolph (93) Ohio-born B-movie actress in the ‘40s, best known for her role in the film noir feature Cat People (1942). Randolph died after surgery on a broken hip, in Gstaad, Switzerland on May 4, 2009.

Evgenios Spatharis (85) Greek master of shadow puppet theater. Spatharis was well known throughout Greece for his puppet theater stories revolving around the hunch-backed character “Karagiozi,” who represented the virtues and vices of the average Greek. Spatharis died two days after faling from a staircase May 6 on his way to a performance, in Athens, Greece on May 8, 2009.

Viola Wills (69) disco singer discovered by bandleader Barry White who later worked with Smokey Robinson and Joe Cocker before landing a hit of her own with "Gonna Get Along Without You Now." Wills later enjoyed a string of dance hits and earned the title "disco diva" in the US and the UK. She died of cancer in Arizona on May 6, 2009.

Lucile Bemus (88) mother-in-law of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Bemus was a Brooklyn schoolteacher for 35 years before retiring in 1985. Her father, Bertram Baker, was the first black elected official from Brooklyn and later became majority whip of the New York state Assembly. Bemus died on the 25th wedding anniversary of Gov. Patrick and his wife, Diane, in New York City on May 5, 2009.

Leon Despres (101) former Chicago alderman, an independent Democrat who battled the late Mayor Richard J. Daley (d. 1976; also a Democrat) for 20 years. A one-time socialist, Despres served on the City Council (1955-75). He supported civil rights and open housing and was often on the short end of 49-1 votes. He died of heart failure in Chicago, Illinois on May 6, 2009.

M. Reed Hansen (79) Idaho farmer and seven-term (1984-98) Idaho statehouse representative. Hansen (R-Idaho Falls) was part of the “steelhead caucus,” so named because it was always swimming upstream against more conservative interests. He was also known for his homemade sourdough bread, which he delivered to other legislators when a deal was in the works. He died in Idaho Falls, Idaho on May 8, 2009.

Henry T. King Jr. (89) one of the last Nuremberg war crimes prosecutors and an influential voice since World War II in international efforts to bring war criminals to justice. King died of cancer in Cleveland, Ohio on May 9, 2009.

Frank Melton (60) mayor of Jackson, Mississippi’s largest city. Melton had a serious heart condition that sent him to the hospital several times in recent years, including for bypass surgery. He died less than two days after losing a reelection bid in a Democrat primary a week before his second federal trial (the first ended in a mistrial) on two civil rights charges related to a sledgehammer attack in 2006 on a duplex that he considered a crackhouse. He was hospitalized on May 5 and died in Jackson, Mississippi on May 7, 2009.

Gen. Valentin Varennikov (85) retired Russian Army officer who directed the Soviet war in Afghanistan and joined the rebellion against President Mikhail Gorbachev that hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Varennikov underwent neurosurgery in January and died in Moscow, Russia on May 6, 2009.

Ruby Billings (109) supercentenarian believed to be one of the oldest women ever documented in New Zealand. Billings celebrated her 109th birthday in April and was reported to be three years younger than Australia's oldest woman, Melburnian Bea Riley, who turned 112 in 2008. Billings died in Hamilton, New Zealand on May 9, 2009.

Sakhan Dosova (130?) Kazakhstan woman believed to have been one of the oldest people to have ever lived after an uncovered census document claimed her date of birth as March 27, 1879. If confirmed, Dosova would have been the oldest woman on record at age 130 (eight years older than 122-year-old Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 with the longest confirmed lifespan in history). But there were doubts about the claims because Dosova did not have a birth certificate and it was common for people at the time to make up their own dates of birth. She died in Aul, Karaganda, Kazakhstan on May 9, 2009.

Thomas Treshawn Ivey (34) South Carolina man awaiting execution for less than 15 years in the 1993 shooting death of Orangeburg police officer Sgt. Tommy Harrison (38) after trying to pass a bad check, in a crime spree that began when he and another inmate escaped from an Alabama jail. Ivey was also sentenced to death for killing a South Carolina businessman several days before he killed Harrison. He was executed by lethal injection in Columbia, South Carolina on May 8, 2009.

Sister Mary Paul Janchill (88) cofounder of a youth support center in Brooklyn that uses a holistic approach and has become a model for many neighborhood-oriented family centers around the country. The Center for Family Life, which Janchill opened in 1978, is a division of Good Shepherd Services, a social services agency that works with 21,000 children and their families in New York. She died of a heart attack in Brooklyn, New York on May 7, 2009.

Johanna Justin-Jinich (21) student at central Connecticut's Wesleyan University, shot and fatally wounded as she worked at a popular bookstore near the campus area. Investigators released several surveillance videos showing a suspect, later identified as the victim's alleged ex-boyfriend Stephen P. Morgan (29), entering the store's café with a loaded shotgun while wearing a wig. He later began to fire several shots at the young woman. Justin-Jinich died from her wounds in Middletown, Connecticut on May 6, 2009.

Martha Mason (71) woman who spent nearly 61 years living in an iron lung after being stricken with polio but graduated at the top of her college class and wrote an autobiography. Mason died in Lattimore, North Carolina on May 4, 2009.

Eugene Smith (88) gospel singer whose dramatic baritone and evangelical showmanship made him a celebrity among churchgoers on the South Side of Chicago and a national influence on generations of gospel singers. Smith was 12 when he was selected by Roberta Martin (d. 1969), minister of music at the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, as one of the original Roberta Martin Singers, a leading gospel group for more than 30 years, recording for Savoy and Apollo Records and performing throughout the country. Smith died in Chicago, Illinois, where he lived his entire life, on May 9, 2009.

George Zinkhan (57) professor of marketing at the University of Georgia, on the faculty from 1994 until he was dismissed after being named prime suspect in the April 25 multiple shooting deaths of his wife and two other people during a picnic outside the Athens Community Theatre. On April 30, police discovered Zinkhan's wrecked Jeep in a ravine after a month-long manhunt and later found his body in a shallow grave, an apparent suicide by gunshot, in a densely wooded area near Athens, Georgia on May 9, 2009.

Glenn Bell (61) former high school football coach who guided Los Angeles's Dorsey High School to a city championship in the ‘80s and taught for nearly 40 years at southern California schools. Most recently, Bell had taught health and life skills at the Santee Education Complex in South LA. He died of a heart attack on his first day of retirement from teaching, in Pomona, California on May 4, 2009.

Chuck Daly (78) basketball coach who led the original "Dream Team" to Olympic gold in 1992 in Barcelona after winning back-to-back NBA championships with the Detroit Pistons. Daly died of pancreatic cancer in Jupiter, Florida on May 9, 2009.

Dom DiMaggio (92) Boston Red Sox center fielder overshadowed by his older brother Joe’s (d. 1999) Hall of Fame career. Known as the “Little Professor” because of his eyeglasses and spare frame, Dom DiMaggio hit safely in 34 consecutive games in 1949, still the longest consecutive-game hitting streak in Red Sox history. He died in Marion, Massachusetts on May 8, 2009.

Kevin Grubb (31) Nationwide Series race driver indefinitely suspended by NASCAR in 2006 after his second violation of its substance abuse policy. The younger brother of former NASCAR driver Wayne Grubb, Kevin Grubb was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, in Richmond, Virginia on May 6, 2009.

Andras Nagy (23) Hungarian light-heavyweight boxer with a 3-0 professional record. After butting heads with a smaller opponent during a training bout on May 1, his 23rd birthday, Nagy was hospitalized with brain swelling. He underwent two operations on May 1 and 4 and was placed in an artificial coma, but died in Melbourne, Australia on May 7, 2009.

Danny Ozark (85) former Phillies manager who led the team to three consecutive National League East titles in the ‘70s but fell short of the World Series every time. Ozark twice led the Phillies to more than 100 wins, racking up back-to-back 101-61 records (1976-77). He was fired late in the 1979 season as the Phillies stood at 65-67; they later finished 84-78 and rebounded under Dallas Green in '80 to win the World Series. Ozark died in Vero Beach, Florida on May 7, 2009.

Edwin Palacios (17) younger brother of Honduran international football (soccer) midfield player Wilson Palacios. Edwin Palacios was kidnapped by five armed bandits from his family home in the coastal city of La Ceiba, Honduras on Oct. 30, 2007. The family paid a $125,000 ransom for his safe return, and it was reported that the boy had been released, but he remained in captivity. After two jailed gang members admitted to the kidnapping, police found a body believed to be the remains of Edwin Palacios in the mountainous area outside Tegucogalpa, Honduras on May 9, 2009.

Gerald W. Scully (67) sports economist who argued statistically that major league baseball players were being exploited by their teams. Best known for an article, "Pay & Performance in Major League Baseball,” published in the American Economic Review in December 1974, Scully anticipated an arbitration decision in 1975 that opened baseball’s era of free agency. He died of pancreatic cancer in San Diego, California on May 4, 2009.

Edwin ("Bud") Shrake (77) colorful Texas sportswriter and novelist, coauthor of the best-selling Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book (1992; on golf), and a writer for Sports Illustrated until 1979. During his Dallas newspaper days in the '60s, Shrake was known to have had drinks with Jack Ruby, later the killer of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. In recent years Shrake was the longtime companion of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards (d. 2006). He died of lung cancer in Austin, Texas on May 8, 2009.

Jimmy Tubbs (60) former Southern Methodist University basketball coach fired after two seasons in 2006 when an internal investigation revealed NCAA violations. Tubbs died in Dallas, Texas on May 9, 2009.