Josef Burg (97) one of the last Yiddish authors in eastern Europe who saved remnants of a once-vibrant culture in his fictional reflections on Jewish life, from city ghettos to remote villages of the Carpathian Mountains. Republished in German in recent years, Burg’s early works found a new audience in Germany and Austria and won him a wide following. He died in Chernovitsi, the city where he grew up in what is now Ukraine, on August 10, 2009.

Richard Poirier (83) cultural critic who founded a literary journal, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and was a founder of Library of America, the nonprofit publisher of American classics. Poirier died of injuries suffered in a fall at his home in New York City on August 15, 2009.

Sherwood Cryer (81) former co-owner of Gilley’s, a Pasadena, Texas bar and nightclub made famous by the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Debra Winger. The quintessential Texas honky tonk in the industrial Houston suburb opened in the ‘70s and was named after Cryer’s business partner and country singer Mickey Gilley; it closed after the two broke up their partnership, and an arson fire later destroyed the building in 1989. Cryer died in Houston, Texas on August 13, 2009.

Tony Huesman (51) Ohio man who lived the longest on one transplanted heart. Huesman got his heart transplant in 1978 at Stanford University Medical Center. He later founded the Huesman Heart Foundation in Dayton and was its president; the foundation seeks to reduce heart disease by educating children. He died of cancer in Dayton, Ohio on August 9, 2009.

Louis Rosen (91) Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later created a neutron center at the facility. Rosen led the way in developing the world’s most powerful linear accelerator, culminating in construction of the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, known today as the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, or LANSCE, of which he was director until 1986. He died after an apparent fall at his home, in Los Alamos, New Mexico on August 15, 2009.

Leonard Britton (78) superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District for three stormy years. Britton led two of the nation’s largest school systems, leaving behind a successful legacy in Miami that he was unable to translate to LA before he resigned in 1990. He died in Los Angeles, California on August 9, 2009.

Joseph Stephen Kimani Nganga Maruge (89) believed to be the world’s oldest elementary school pupil. Maruge entered primary school in Eldoret, Kenya in 2004 so that he could learn to read the Bible. He died of stomach cancer in Nairobi, Kenya on August 14, 2009.

Rashied Ali (76) free-jazz drummer who backed John Coltrane (d. 1967) and accompanied him on a duet album, Interstellar Space, in the final months of the jazz master’s life. Over a career that spanned more than 40 years, Ali performed with artists including Don Cherry, Albert Ayler, Alice Coltrane, and Archie Shepp. In recent years he formed the Rashied Ali Quintet. He died of a blood clot in his lung, in New York City on August 12, 2009.

Virginia Davis (90) first of several child actresses who appeared in Walt Disney’s pioneering “Alice” film comedies (1923-27). Davis was 4 when she was hired by Disney in 1923, then a struggling filmmaker in Kansas City, Mo., and later worked with him in Hollywood; her moving image was photographed and combined with animated cartoons, before the creation of Mickey Mouse. Davis died in Corona, California on August 15, 2009.

Jim Dickinson (67) musician and producer who helped to shape the Memphis sound in a career that spanned more than 40 years. Perhaps best known as the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson, two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated North Mississippi Allstars, Jim Dickinson recently had bypass surgery and was undergoing rehabilitation. He died after three months of heart and intestinal bleeding problems, in Memphis, Tennessee on August 15, 2009.

Ruth Ford (98) film and stage actress who turned her Manhattan apartment at the legendary Dakota into a salon as she became a muse to writers, artists, and musicians. For more than 40 years, Ford’s apartment at the Dakota—the gabled, fortresslike building on the northwest corner of 72nd Street built in the 1880s—welcomed such literary luminaries as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Terrence McNally, and Truman Capote. The widow of actor Zachary Scott (d. 1965), Ford died in New York City on August 12, 2009.

Lester Glassner (70) one-time picture editor, designer, and art librarian at CBS Records who over 30 years gathered a massive collection of vintage movie memorabilia, dime-store merchandise, and other pop-culture artifacts numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Glassner died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on August 9, 2009.

Ernst Katz (95) former piano teacher who nurtured thousands of young musicians during 72 years as founding conductor of the Jr. Philharmonic Orchestra of California. Katz formed what he originally called the Little Symphony in 1937 with four youths and built it into a 120-member orchestra that has played with such renowned guest artists as Isaac Stern, Jerome Kern, Meredith Willson, Richard Sherman, José Iturbi, and Dimitri Tiomkin. Katz died in Los Angeles, California on August 11, 2009.

Fred Kinne (93) veteran editor who helped the San Diego Evening Tribune to win the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of a 1978 plane crash that killed 144 people. Kinne died in La Mesa, California on August 9, 2009.

Valerio Lazarov (73) private TV channel Telecinco’s Romanian-born founding director, one of Spanish TV’s most successful producers. Lazarov was credited with producing and introducing dozens of successful programs for Spanish National Television in the ‘70s and for Spain’s Telecinco (1985-94). He died in Madrid, Spain on August 11, 2009.

Lawrence Lucie (101) rhythm guitarist whose career began in the early years of jazz and continued into the early years of the 21st century. Lucie’s employers included Duke Ellington in the early ‘30s and Louis Armstrong, with whom he worked for four years in the ’40s; he also performed or recorded with Billie Holiday, Benny Carter, and Fletcher Henderson, among many others. He was the last living musician known to have recorded with New Orleans jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton. Lucie’s last show was at Arturo’s in Greenwich Village, where he played solo guitar on Sunday nights until 2005. He died in New York City on August 14, 2009.

Mary Morris Lawrence (95) among the first female photographers who joined the Associated Press, in 1936. Morris Lawrence’s work also appeared in magazines such as Look, Life, and Mademoiselle. She died of heart failure in Oakland, California on August 12, 2009.

Les Paul (94) guitar virtuoso and inventor who revolutionized pop music by developing the solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording. Paul and wife Mary Ford (d. 1977) enjoyed a string of hits in the ‘40s and ‘50s, including “Mockin’ Bird Hill” and “How High the Moon,” before they divorced in 1964. Paul died of pneumonia in White Plains, New York on August 13, 2009.

André Prokovsky (70) Paris-born Russian ballet dancer who performed and choreographed around the world and was a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet (1963-67). Prokovsky died of cancer near Beausoleil, the village in the south of France where he lived, on August 15, 2009.

John Quade (71) veteran character actor who specialized in playing heavies and appeared in several Clint Eastwood movies, including Every Which Way But Loose and its sequel Any Which Way You Can. Quade died in his sleep in Rosamond, near Lancaster, California, on August 9, 2009.

Philip Saltzman (80) TV writer and producer best known for his work on the ‘70s detective series Barnaby Jones. Saltzman died in his sleep in Woodland Hills, California on August 14, 2009.

Allen Shellenberger (39) drummer for the multiplatinum-selling Orange County rock band Lit. The band’s major-label (RCA) album debut, A Place in the Sun (1999), sold over a million copies; it included the hit single “My Own Worst Enemy,” which held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Modern Rock list for three months and, according to Billboard, was the No. 1 Modern Rock single of 1999. Shellenberger died of brain cancer in Artesia, California on August 13, 2009.

Kitty White (86) versatile vocalist who sang “Crawfish” with Elvis Presley in the 1958 film King Creole. Known for what has been described as “exceptional control of breath, pitch, vibrato, and dynamics,” White sang jazz, gospel, pop, and spiritual music. She died of complications from a stroke in Palm Springs, California on August 11, 2009.

Jasmine You (30) bass player and guitarist with the Japanese visual kei rock band Versailles who had performed his last concert with the musical group at a Shibuya-O-West performance gig in Tokyo and was in the process of recording bass tracks for the band’s new album, in the final stages of production. You died unexpectedly in Tokyo, Japan on August 9, 2009.

Bill Cahir (40) former Lehigh Valley Express-Times correspondent and decorated US Marine Corps staff sergeant who in 2003 gave up his journalism career to join the Marines in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Cahir was a Washington, DC-based journalist from the late ‘90s before joining the Marines. He served more than two tours in Iraq and in 2004 wrote a first-person account of his experience at boot camp. He was killed by “enemy fire” during combat in Helmand, Afghanistan on August 13, 2009.

Wade Hopping (77) youngest Supreme Court justice in Florida history when he was appointed by former Gov. Claude Kirk to fill an unexpired term on the bench in 1968. But Hopping was defeated later that year in an election for a full term. The post was later changed from elected to appointed. He died from complications of a stroke and esophageal cancer, one day before his 78th birthday, in Tallahassee, Florida on Aug. 11, 2009.

Abdel Latif Moussa (47) Palestinian radical cleric, leader of the al-Qaeda-inspired pseudo-Islamist terror group Jund Ansar Allah (better known as the Soldiers of the Companions of God). Moussa launched a bloody crackdown on the group after it declared a self-proclaimed “Islamic emirate” in the Palestinian Territories in recent weeks when he and his armed supporters had sworn to fight to the death rather than hand over authority of the mosque to Palestine’s armed-wing political organization Hamas. He was among 24 people killed in a fiery bomb blast during an hours-long shootout outside a mosque in Rafah, Palestine on August 15, 2009.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver (88) member of one of the most prominent families in American politics and a trailblazer in the effort to improve the lives of people with mental disabilities. A sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Edward M. Kennedy and mother-in-law of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shriver never held elective office, but some consider her work on behalf of the mentally retarded, including the founding of the Special Olympics, the most enduring of the Kennedy family’s public contributions. She had been in declining health for months, having suffered a series of strokes. She died in Hyannis, Massachusetts on August 11, 2009.

Thomas C. Slater (68) Democrat state representative who successfully urged the legalization of medical marijuana in Rhode Island. Slater was best known for sponsoring legislation that in 2006 made Rhode Island the 11th state in the US to allow chronically ill patients to possess small amounts of marijuana to ease their pain. The drug remains illegal under federal law. He died of cancer in Providence, Rhode Island on August 10, 2009.

Doris Brin Walker (90) radical lawyer and lifelong Communist who helped to clear activist Angela Davis of murder and kidnapping charges in the ‘70s. Walker died of a stroke in San Francisco, California on August 13, 2009.

Kenneth H. Bacon (64) former Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton administration who became an advocate for millions of refugees uprooted by human rights abuses and natural disasters. In 2001, Bacon became president of Refugees International, a Washington-based assistance group. He died of skin cancer that had spread to his brain, on Block Island, Rhode Island on August 15, 2009.

John Lynley Frazier (62) California inmate serving a life term for murdering ophthalmologist Dr. Victor Ohta, his wife, two young sons, and Ohta’s secretary in October 1970 in Santa Cruz County. Frazier was found dead, an apparent suicide by “asphyxia due to strangulation,” in his cell at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, on August 13, 2009.

Albert Gordon (94) heterosexual attorney who helped to advance gay rights in the ‘70s and ‘80s by challenging discriminatory practices and laws, including a successful effort to decriminalize consensual homosexual acts. Gordon died in Los Angeles, California on August 10, 2009.

Mary B. Henry (82) civil rights activist who helped to create the national Head Start program and encouraged the rise of the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after the 1965 Watts riots. Henry’s lifelong work to provide education and social services to the poor was honored by US Presidents, governors, and mayors over more than 40 years. She died in Los Angeles, California on August 14, 2009.

Billy Wayne Posey (73) former member of the Ku Klux Klan’s militant offshoot White Knights, a key suspect for his possible involvement in the notorious murders of three civil rights workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) in central Mississippi on June 21, 1964. Posey was sentenced to six years in prison for his participation in the conspiracy. He died in Meridian, Mississippi on August 13, 2009.

Rodney Webb (74) US district judge appointed by former President Ronald Reagan to the federal bench in North Dakota in 1987. Webb died of cancer in Fargo, North Dakota on August 9, 2009.

Margaret Bush Wilson (90) pioneering civil rights lawyer, a former national chair of the NAACP. Wilson was the second black woman to pass the Missouri Bar after graduating from the now-defunct Lincoln University School of Law. She died of multiple organ failure in St. Louis, Missouri on August 11, 2009.

Fr. Eleutherius Winance (100) longtime Claremont Graduate University philosophy professor and last of the founding monks of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, Calif. Winance died of a heart attack in Lancaster, California on August 15, 2009.

Lavelle Felton (29) American pro basketball player, a shooting-point guard in 34 games for the European basketball league Paderborn Baskets last season as he helped Germany’s top basketball club Bundesliga to reach the playoffs earlier this year. Felton averaged 13.7 points and 5.1 rebounds per game during his career at Louisiana Tech in 2002-03. He was shot to death by unknown assailants at a gas station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 13, 2009.

Ted (Teeder) Kennedy (83) captain of five Stanley Cup championship teams with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Kennedy spent 14 years in the NHL, all with the Maple Leafs, and was a five-time All-Star. The center captained Toronto (1948-55) when he won the Hart Trophy as league MVP. He finished his career with 231 goals and 329 assists in 696 games. He died of congestive heart failure in Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada on August 14, 2009.

Andy Kessler (48) Greek-born skateboarder credited with designing several of New York City’s skate parks. Kessler was stung by an insect while surfing off Montauk, Long Island, New York. He had an extreme allergic reaction, suffered cardiac arrest, and died on August 10, 2009.

Merlyn Mantle (77) widow of New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle (d. 1995) who for 43 years shared the glory and the turmoil of being married to perhaps the greatest switch-hitter in baseball history. Only after Mantle’s career ended did the world learn of his drinking and womanizing. Merlyn Mantle died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, on August 10, 2009.