Harold Norse (92) poet who broke new ground beginning in the ‘50s by exploring gay identity and sexuality, relying on plain language and direct imagery. Norse was often associated with the Beats and was mentor or peer to many of the greatest talents in 20th century American literature, including Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, and Charles Bukowski. He died in San Francisco, California on June 8, 2009.

Christian (Hitsch) Albin (62) Swiss-born executive chef of The Four Seasons—a ritzy Manhattan restaurant that invented the “power lunch”—who fed the world’s luminaries for 36 years, serving guests from Jacqueline Onassis and Elton John to President Bill Clinton, Princess Diana, and Martha Stewart. Albin died five days after being diagnosed with cancer, in New York City on June 13, 2009.

Sidney W. Bijou (100) psychologist who adapted a set of reward-based techniques to treat troubled children and helped to establish modern behavioral therapy for childhood disorders like autism and attention deficit disorder. Bijou collapsed and died while dressing at his home in Santa Barbara, California on June 11, 2009.

Norman Brinker (78) restaurant mogul who popularized the salad bar and built a worldwide casual dining empire that includes Steak & Ale, Bennigan’s, and Chili’s Grill & Bar, which he transformed from a small regional hamburger chain into one of the world’s largest restaurant companies. Brinker was the widower of ‘50s tennis champion Maureen Connolly (“Little Mo”; d. 1969). He died of aspiration pneumonia in a Colorado hospital while on vacation, on June 9, 2009.

John A. Eddy (78) solar astronomer who studied the history of the sun and demonstrated that it is not a constant star with a regular cycle of behavior but instead has periods of anomaly, or variability. Eddy died of cancer in Tucson, Arizona on June 10, 2009.

George K. Fraenkel (87) former dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, one of the first chemists to use electronic techniques to explore the fundamental structure of molecules, a breakthrough that has led to advances in several fields of science. Fraenkel was one of several chemists who developed high-sensitivity, high-resolution spectrometers that could track the spin of electrons and obtain information on very small structures. He died in New York City on June 10, 2009.

Jean Hugel (84) French winemaker, a leader in resurrecting the Alsatian wine trade after World War II and longtime head (1948-97) of one of the best-known and oldest producers in Alsace, Hugel & Fils. Jean Hugel died of cancer in Ribeauvillé, Alsace, France on June 9, 2009.

Frank J. Low (75) physicist, a longtime professor (1965-96) at the University of Arizona, who helped astronomers to extend their vision beyond visible light into a vast realm of previously invisible colors, revolutionizing the study of the birth of planets, stars, and galaxies. Low died in Tucson, Arizona on June 11, 2009.

John F. Mitchell (81) engineer who helped to perfect the technology that paved the way for the world’s first cellular phone during a 45-year career at Motorola, where he was later president (1980-95). Motorola’s DynaTAC, a radio and telephone cellular system, came out in 1973 and became the basis for the company’s first commercial hand-held cell phone. Mitchell died of cancer in Palatine, Illinois on June 11, 2009.

Dr. Delbert A. Osguthorpe (88) large-animal veterinarian who in 1968 insisted that nerve gas from a US Army chemical warfare facility near Skull Valley, Utah had killed more than 6,000 sheep. Osguthorpe’s testimony before a Congressional committee in 1969 prompted President Richard M. Nixon to halt the nation’s biological weapons program. Osguthorpe died of liver failure in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 8, 2009.

Selma Weiser (84) creator of Charivari, a fashion boutique that in the ‘70s and ‘80s grew into a small retail empire of five stores on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and helped to open the American market to international designers like Giorgio Armani, Issey Miyake, and Claude Montana. In 1990, a stroke paralyzed Weiser’s left side. She died of congestive heart failure in New York City on June 12, 2009.

Peter R. Wheeler (65) former owner of the sports car maker TVR and a maverick of Britain’s car industry. Wheeler died of cancer in England on June 11, 2009.

Barry Beckett (66) producer and keyboard player who recorded and accompanied singers Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Paul Simon, and numerous country music stars. Beckett had been diagnosed with cancer and suffered strokes. He died in Hendersonville, Tennessee on June 10, 2009.

Brian Cardall (32) son of Salt Lake City’s KSL-TV editorial director Duane Cardall who was currently working on his Ph.D degree in molecular ecology at Northern Arizona University. Brian Cardall died after being stunned with a Taser gun during a police confrontation in Hurricane, Utah on June 9, 2009.

Colby Curtin (10) pediatric cancer patient whose dying wish captured thousands of hearts as she lived long enough to see the latest Pixar-Disney animated movie Up when it became apparent that she was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film. Colby was diagnosed with a rare form of vascular cancer in 2005 and had eagerly awaited the release of Up after she saw previews of the film last spring. An employee of the animation studio flew to her house with a DVD copy for a private screening of the film during her final hours. She died in Huntington Beach, California on June 10, 2009.

Sheryl Flowers (42) producer of Tavis Smiley’s programs on Public Radio International and National Public Radio. Flowers was executive producer (2004-09) of The Tavis Smiley Show on PRI and senior supervising producer (2002–04) of the show on NPR; the news and information show is produced in Los Angeles and airs on 90 stations around the country. Flowers died of breast cancer in Los Angeles, California on June 8, 2009.

Hugh Hopper (64) bassist for the British progressive rock band Soft Machine, a central figure on the music scene that bloomed in Canterbury in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Hopper was the composer of jazz-rock tunes like “Facelift” and “Kings & Queens.” He died of leukemia in Kent, England on June 7, 2009.

Huey Long (105) jazz guitarist whose career included stints with musical giants Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and as part of the famed Ink Spots vocal group, which is often credited with having a direct influence on the evolution of doo wop groups and rhythm and blues. Long is pictured above with the group at lower left. He died in Houston, Texas on June 10, 2009.

Jack Nimitz (79) jazz baritone saxophonist who played in the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton big bands and in the Charlie Parker tribute band Supersax. Nimitz died of emphysema in Studio City, California on June 10, 2009.

Johnny Palermo (27) actor who appeared on more than 30 TV shows in his brief career. Palermo was a regular on the Nickelodeon series Just for Kicks and appeared in three episodes of the CW’s Everybody Hates Chris as Frank DiPaolo, Chris’s overgrown classmate. Palermo also appeared on Cold Case, General Hospital, CSI: Miami, Rules of Engagement, How I Met Your Mother, and CSI: NY. He was killed in an early morning car accident along with his girlfriend, Alessandra Giangrande, who was driving, in North Hollywood, California on June 8, 2009.

Kenny Rankin (69) singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose style combined pop, jazz, and folk. Rankin first won acclaim as one of the guitarists on Bob Dylan’s landmark 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home. He wrote and recorded the pop standard “Peaceful” and wrote “In the Name of Love,” recorded by Peggy Lee, and “Haven’t We Met,” performed by Carmen McRae and Mel Tormé. The Kenny Rankin Album was recorded live in 1976 with a 60-piece orchestra. Rankin died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California on June 7, 2009.

Michael Roof (32) character actor who appeared in supporting roles in a handful of blockbuster films, including Black Hawk Down and The Dukes of Hazzard, among many other TV and movie roles. Roof was also the center of a six-episode reality series on Spike TV called Raising the Roofs, which ran in the summer of 2006, about his father and uncle visiting the aspiring actor in Hollywood. He died unexpectedly in Snellville, Georgia on June 9, 2009.

James M. Schurz (76) former publisher of the Hagerstown (Md.) Herald-Mail. Schurz was senior vice president of South Bend, Ind.-based Schurz Communications Inc., which bought the Herald-Mail in 1960. He went to Hagerstown in 1968 and spent nearly 20 years at the Herald-Mail, including 12 as editor and 11 as both editor and publisher. Schurz Communications has operations in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Georgia, South Dakota, Kansas, and Virginia. James Schurz died of cancer in Williamsport, Maryland on June 10, 2009.

Ralph H. Shively (81) actor and longtime auctioneer at Indianapolis’s Kesler-Schaefer Auto Auction, probably best remembered by movie fans for his role as Doc Buggins in the 1986 basketball film Hoosiers. Shively died of kidney failure in Mt. Summit, Indiana on June 7, 2009.

Helle Virkner (83) one of Denmark’s most famous and best-loved actresses whose career began in 1946 at the Royal Theatre. Virkner eventually made her indelible mark on the Danish acting scene in a string of popular films and TV series until her career ended in 2003. She was married three times, including to then-Danish Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag (1959-73). She died of cancer in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund, Denmark on June 10, 2009.

Bruce Watson (68) actor who appeared on such TV shows as Star Trek, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, and Charlie&rsquol;s Angels. Watson also starred in the 1975 film The Swinging Barmaids and made appearances in other films like This Property Is Condemned (1966) and Johnny Got His Gun (1971). He suffered from lifelong bipolar disease and committed suicide at his unfinished home outside Albuquerque, New Mexico on June 11, 2009.

Omar Bongo (73) president of Gabon, Africa’s longest-entrenched autocrat, whose 42-year rule (since 1967) was a throwback to an era when the “dark continent” was ruled by “Big Men.” Bongo had become immensely wealthy in office while serving as France’s point man in the region. Hospitalized since May, he died of cardiac arrest in Barcelona, Spain on June 8, 2009.

Robinson Everett (81) Duke University law professor who spent nearly 10 years challenging the way North Carolina’s congressional districts were drawn. Everett was best known for his fight over the state’s 12th District, one of two drawn to have a majority of black voters. He and four other white voters sued in 1992, and Everett appeared before the US Supreme Court four times before losing the case in 2001. He died in his sleep in Durham, North Carolina on June 12, 2009.

Edward V. Hanrahan (88) former Cook County (Ill.) state’s attorney whose political career was ruined when police assigned to his office killed two Black Panthers in a 1969 predawn raid on Black Panther headquarters in a search for illegal weapons. Hanrahan was indicted on conspiracy charges; he was acquitted in 1972 but lost his bid for reelection that same year and later ran unsuccessfully for mayor, Congress, and the Chicago City Council. He died in Chicago, Illinois on June 9, 2009.

Carl Pursell (76) former US congressman (R-Mich., 1977-93) who served in the US House of Representatives for 16 years and later became an Eastern Michigan University trustee. Pursell was the ranking Republican on the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee during his tenure and was reelected seven times until deciding to step down in 1992. He died in Lansing, Michigan on June 11, 2009.

Roger Terry (87) member of the World War II black fighters unit, the Tuskegee Airmen, whose conviction for “jostling” a superior was reversed 50 years after he and other Airmen attempted to enter a whites-only officer’s club. A US Army lieutenant and bomber pilot, Terry and more than 100 black officers were arrested in April 1945 for refusing a general’s demand that they sign papers admitting they were wrong to protest the segregated club at Freeman Field, a military airfield near Seymour, Ind. Terry was court-martialed, convicted of “jostling” a white officer, and dishonorably discharged. In 1995 the US military exonerated Terry, and he was among 300 Tuskegee Airmen who received the congressional Gold Medal in ‘97. He died of heart failure in Los Angeles, California on June 11, 2009.

Johanna Ganthaler (??) Italian pensioner on vacation with her husband Kurt in Brazil who narrowly missed boarding the ill-fated Air France 447 flight after arriving late at the Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31. The couple later took another flight to Europe the next day after the doomed Paris-bound jetliner crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and killed all 228 people aboard on June 1. Johanna Ganthaler was killed in a car accident in Kufstein, Austria on June 11, 2009.

Stephen T. Johns (39) security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum since 2003. Johns worked for Wackenhut Services Inc., which has contracted security services at the museum since 2002. The museum has about 70 officers and supervisors on the force. Guards are armed with .38-caliber revolvers and dress in police-type uniforms. Johns was fatally shot by James W. von Brunn (88), a white supremacist who walked into the museum and opened fire with a rifle. Johns died in a Washington, DC hospital on June 10, 2009.

Bruno Kroker (93) journalist and information officer for religious organizations who fled Nazi Germany as a young man in 1935. Kroker spent 14 years in China, where he worked as a war correspondent and covered the Communist takeover of the mainland. Moving to the US in 1950, he became an American citizen and worked for the National Council of Churches. He died in Secaucus, New Jersey on June 11, 2009.

Hugh R. Manes (84) veteran civil rights lawyer who for 40 years fought for victims of police misconduct. Manes began representing victims of police misconduct in the ‘60s, nearly 30 years before the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers threw a spotlight on police brutality. Manes died of emphysema in Los Angeles, California on June 13, 2009.

Joshua Miller (34) Pennsylvania state trooper, the state’s first trooper to be killed in the line of duty since 2005. Miller was a US Marine veteran and a married father of three. He was killed in a gun battle with Daniel Autenrieth (31), a car salesman who kidnapped his own 9-year-old son from his estranged wife and led police on a 40-mile chase into the Pocono Mountains. The boy was rescued, but Autenrieth was shot eight times and died at the scene. Miller died at a hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania on June 7, 2009.

Thembi Ngubane (24) South African AIDS activist whose radio diaries of her struggle against the virus won her audiences and admiration around the world. Ngubane carried a tape recorder with her for a year; US National Public Radio aired the diaries in 2006. Ngubane also had drug-resistant tuberculosis, diagnosed too late to save her life. She died in Khayelitsha, South Africa on June 9, 2009.

Charlie Sabatier (63) decorated Vietnam War veteran and disability rights advocate who spent most of his life confined to a wheelchair when he returned home paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot in the spinal cord in 1968 as he crossed a Vietnam battlefield to rescue a fellow soldier on the first day of the Tet Offense. Sabatier became a leader in universal access efforts on behalf of the disabled as he continued to help thousands of newly wounded soldiers to find jobs and move on with their lives. He was later assistant advocacy director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America when the federal government started a study on how to make transit systems more accessible to people with disabilities. He died of bladder cancer in Wellesley, Massachusetts on June 9, 2009.

Richard Swanson (42) Oregon man slated to testify in the upcoming April 2010 murder trial of his landlady Hazelynn Stomps (56), accused of the Jan. 30, ‘09 fatal shooting and dismemberment of her husband Gerald Stomps (60). Swanson told investigators that he saw smoke coming from the couple’s nearby property as the woman allegedly burned her husband’s dismembered body. Swanson was never a suspect in the case despite rumors that he was somehow involved. He suffered from anxiety, health issues, and a long history of depression that had caused him to attempt suicide in the past. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an apparent suicide at his home in Corbett, Oregon on June 10, 2009.

Jack Trawick (62) Alabama man sentenced to die for the 1992 abduction and capital murder of Stephanie Gach (21), whose badly mutilated body was found stabbed, beaten, and strangled off an embankment near an isolated area the morning after she was kidnapped outside her Birmingham-area apartment complex. Trawick had previously been sentenced to life without parole for another murder at the time and claimed at the trial to have slain several other women. A grand jury upheld his death sentence, and no legal efforts were ever made to stop his scheduled execution. He was executed by lethal injection in Atmore, Alabama on June 11, 2009.

Sargis Aroyan (18) up-and-coming Armenian international football (soccer) player, a reserve squad forward at the junior level on the country’s national U-21 team for the past several years. Aroyan plunged to his death from a high bridge in an apparent suicide in downtown Yerevan, Armenia on June 8, 2009.

Roy Boe (79) owner of both the Julius Erving-led New York Nets of the old American Basketball Association and the expansion New York Islanders of the National Hockey League in the ‘70s, which won the first of four consecutive Stanley Cup trophies after only seven years. But Boe became cash-strapped and sold Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers for $3 million in 1976. He resurfaced in the ‘90s as owner of minor-league hockey franchises in Worcester, Mass. and most recently the Islanders’ farm team in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he died on June 7, 2009.

Billy Bye (81) halfback at the University of Minnesota in the ‘40s. Bye played for the Gophers (1946-49) and was their most valuable player in 1946. He was boating with his wife, Sally, and friends on Bay Lake when his motor became entangled. Bye freed the motor but was unable to get back in the boat despite attempts by passengers to throw him ropes and lifejackets. He died of drowning the next day at Cuyuna Regional Medical Center in Crosby, Minnesota on June 13, 2009.

Woodie Held (77) baseball shortstop and outfielder who played 14 years in the major leagues, mostly with the Cleveland Indians after being acquired in 1958 from the Kansas City Athletics in a multiplayer trade for future home run king Roger Maris. Overall, Held hit .240 with 179 homers and 559 RBIs in 1,390 games (1954-69). He died of cancer in Dubois, Wyoming on June 11, 2009.

Gordon Lennon (26) Irish association football (soccer) player who recently became club captain of Scotland’s Dumbarton Football League and helped to secure the team’s promotion to the Scottish Second Division Championships last season. Lennon was killed in a car accident near Dingwall, Scotland on June 7, 2009.

Nathan Marsters (29) former Canadian professional ice hockey player initially drafted as a goaltender by the Los Angeles Kings in the 2000 NHL entry draft but later signed as a free agent by the Anaheim Ducks. Marsters played in 115 games in two seasons on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s minor-league hockey team (2000-04). He was killed when a deer crashed through the windshield of his pickup truck in Smithville, Ontario, Canada on June 8, 2009.

Bill Nichols (80) sportswriter at the Plain Dealer who broke the story that Cleveland was getting an NBA expansion team in 1970. Nichols covered the Cavaliers for more than 10 years, and Cleveland State basketball. He died in Rocky River, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, on June 13, 2009.

Richard Quick (66) Auburn University men’s and women’s swimming coach who won 13 NCAA titles with three schools during a career that spanned 40 years. Quick won one title at Auburn, seven at Stanford, and five at Texas. He also led three US Olympic teams (1988, ‘96, 2000) and was an assistant coach at the 1984, ‘92, and 2004 Games. His women’s teams at Texas won five straight titles; the Stanford women’s team won the title in his first year there in 1989. Auburn’s men won the championship in 2009, and Quick was named NCAA Coach of the Year for the sixth time. He had been diagnosed in December 2008 with an inoperable brain tumor and died in Austin, Texas on June 10, 2009.

Pio Sagapolutele (39) American-Samoan defensive lineman who played five years for the Cleveland Browns and started in the 1997 Super Bowl for the New England Patriots. Sagapolutele also played for the New Orleans Saints during a seven-year NFL career. He died of an aneurysm in Chandler, Arizona on June 9, 2009.