Elmer Kelton (83) Western novelist whose book The Good Old Boys was made into a 1995 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones. Kelton wrote 62 fiction and nonfiction books. He died in San Angelo, Texas on August 22, 2009.

Karla Kuskin (77) children’s author and illustrator whose work combined wit and vitality with thoughts about the essential natures of people, animals, and things. Kuskin was known for the volumes of rhymed verse she wrote and illustrated, including In the Middle of the Trees (1958), The Rose on My Cake (1964), and Soap Soup & Other Verses (1992). She died of cortical basal ganglionic degeneration, a neurological disorder, in Seattle, Washington on August 20, 2009.

Michael Mazur (73) printmaker, painter, and sculptor whose work encompassed social documentation, narrative, and landscape while alternating between figuration and abstraction. Mazur died of congestive heart failure in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 18, 2009.

Leo Obstbaum (40) Argentine-born Spanish design director for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics who led the organization’s influential team that created some of the most iconic Olympic pieces, including the yet-to-be unveiled medals for the upcoming Vancouver Winter Games. Obstbaum died unexpectedly in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on August 21, 2009.

Frank Fertitta Jr. (70) founder of casino operator Station Casinos Inc. who retired in 1993 when his sons took the company public. Fertitta opened The Casino off the Las Vegas Strip in 1976; its name was changed to Bingo Palace in 1977 and to the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in ’83. Fertitta died of complications from a heart condition, in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 21, 2009.

Dr. A. Stone Freedberg (101) Harvard cardiologist who developed an early treatment for angina but whose pioneering 1940 work in identifying the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers was at first ignored. In 2005, two Australian researchers won Nobel Prizes for their 1983 work in identifying Helicobacter pylori. Freedberg died in his sleep of heart and lung complications after suffering a gash in his leg, in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, Massachusetts on August 18, 2009.

Dr. Gordon Woods (57) veterinary scientist who helped to create Idaho Gem, the world’s first cloned mule. Woods died unexpectedly in Loveland, Colorado on August 20, 2009.

Rose Friedman (98) free-market economist whose collaboration with her husband, Milton Friedman (d. 2006), proved essential to his Nobel Prize-winning career. The couple wrote several books together, including Free to Choose (1980), an explication of free-market theory for a general audience, published in conjunction with a 10-part series on PBS-TV. Rose Friedman died of heart failure in Davis, California on August 18, 2009.

Charles Kaplan (90) first chairman of the English department at what is now Cal State Northridge. Kaplan was nationally renowned for his work in promoting literary criticism and theory. He died of congestive heart failure in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on August 22, 2009.

Angus McDougall (92) pioneering photographer and professor who headed the Missouri School of Journalism’s Photojournalism Sequence and its Pictures of the Year competition. A former Milwaukee Journal photographer, McDougall cowrote Visual Impact in Print, considered the definitive book on picture editing. He died in Columbia, Missouri on August 20, 2009.

Virginia Ramo (93) patron of the arts and education who took special interest in her alma mater, the University of Southern California, which named a music building after her. Ramo was the wife of aerospace pioneer Simon Ramo—the “R” in TRW. She died in Los Angeles, California on August 19, 2009.

Edward Rondthaler 3rd (104) typographer who helped to bring typesetting from the age of hot metal to today’s digital typography. An advocate of spelling reform, from the early ‘60s on Rondthaler was also known for his campaign to respell English as it sounds. As he wrote in SoundSpel, a simplified English spelling system he had refined, “Foenetic speling wil maek reeding and rieting neerly automatic for evrybody.” He died in Cedar City, Utah on August 19, 2009.

David Avadon (60) professional illusionist who wrote a 2007 book on picking pockets, his trademark theatrical act. For more than 30 years Avadon had regularly presented his pickpocket act at the Magic Castle in Hollywood and had entertained throughout the US, Japan, Canada, and Great Britain. Avadon, who had a recent history of heart problems, suffered a heart attack and died while working out at a fitness club in Santa Monica, California on August 22, 2009.

Hildegard Behrens (72) German soprano, one of the finest Wagnerian performers of her generation. Behrens was among the finest actors on the opera stage during a professional career that spanned more than 30 years. On Aug. 16, she felt unwell while traveling to a festival near Tokyo, Japan. She was hospitalized in Tokyo and died of an apparent aneurysm two days later, on August 18, 2009.

Ernest Brown (93) last surviving member of the Original Copasetics, an ensemble of tap-dancing stars formed in 1949 that helped to revive the art of tap. The group’s founding members also included stars like Honi Coles (d. 1992) and Cookie Cook (d. 1991), with whom Brown performed into the ‘60s as half of the Cook & Brown comedic tap vaudeville duo. Brown died in Chicago, Illinois on August 21, 2009.

John E. Carter (75) R&B lead tenor and two-time inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum. Known for his falsetto, Carter was the last surviving founding member of The Flamingos. The classic doo-wop group gained fame with such hits as “Golden Teardrops” and their reworking of the pop classic “I Only Have Eyes for You." In 1960 Carter joined The Dells, formed in the early ‘50s by some of his high school friends. The Dells’s 1954 breakout hit, “Oh What A Night,” sold more than a million records when it was reissued in ‘69 with Carter on falsetto lead; the Dells were also famous for “Stay in My Corner,” one of the first R&B hits to run more than 6 minutes. Carter died of lung cancer in Harvey, Illinois on August 21, 2009.

Ryan DeZurik (18) lead singer with the St. Cloud, Minnesota-based Christian heavy metal bands Against the Tide and Oath by Blood who had performed in a handful of regional venues in recent years and unexpectedly left the group thereafter. DeZurik was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver in Holdingford, Minnesota on August 16, 2009. Authorities later arrested two men, Timothy Allen Rausch (29) and Eugene Rivetts (41), in connection with his death.

Jacqueline Anne Gouin (86) paternal grandmother of award-winning stage and screen actress Anne Hathaway. Gouin had spent most of her life in France, Ireland, and the US and raised five children, including the star’s father, Gerald Hathaway. She died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 21, 2009.

Don Hewitt (86) TV news pioneer who created 60 Minutes and produced the popular CBS newsmagazine for 36 years, until 2004. Hewitt joined CBS News in TV’s infancy in 1948 and produced the first televised Presidential debate in ’60, between then-Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. The TV newsmagazine was born on Sept. 24, 1968, when the 60 Minutes stopwatch started ticking. Hewitt died of pancreatic cancer in Bridgehampton, New York on August 19, 2009.

Tullio Kezich (80) former Italian film critic for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera who collaborated with Italian directing greats Federico Fellini and Ermanno Olmi. Among Kezich’s credits was the screenplay for The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988), starring Rutger Hauer and directed by Olmi, who won the Venice Film Festival’s coveted Golden Lion prize for the film. Kezich died in Rome, Italy on August 17, 2009.

Larry Knechtel (69) Grammy-winning keyboardist who accompanied big-name musicians like Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and the Dixie Chicks. A member of the ‘70s soft-rock group Bread, Knechtel won a 1970 Grammy for his arrangement of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.” He died of an apparent heart attack in Yakima, Washington on August 20, 2009.

Richard Moore (83) cinematographer and cofounder of Panavision, which developed a projector lens for the widescreen format called Cinemascope, then began making camera lenses. The company revolutionized film in the ‘70s with a hand-held studio camera that could record sight and sound simultaneously. Moore’s cinematography credits include Winning (1969), Myra Breckinridge and Sometimes a Great Notion (both 1970), The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), and Annie (1982). He died in Palm Springs, California on August 16, 2009.

Sammy Petrillo (74) nightclub comic who built his career mostly on his striking resemblance to Jerry Lewis and a spot-on impression of him—much to Lewis’s displeasure. Petrillo died in Bronxville, New York on August 22, 2009.

Ed Reimers (96) actor who told TV viewers, “You’re in good hands with Allstate” (1957-79). Reimers also appeared in episodes of several series, including Star Trek and the ‘50s hit The Millionaire; his movie credits included the 1965 comedy The Loved One, starring Robert Morse. Reimers died in Saratoga Springs, New York on August 16, 2009.

Tiffany Simelane (21) former beauty queen crowned Miss Swaziland in 2008 in a glittering ceremony at the Royal Swazi Sun Convention Centre in the tiny South African landlocked country. Although she relinquished her title to the current Miss Swaziland, Nompilo Mncina, earlier this month, Simelane’s reign was remembered mostly for the run-ins she had with organizers of the pageant because she would sometimes disappear without a trace. She committed suicide by allegedly ingesting poison (possibly weevil tablets) in Mbabane, Swaziland on August 17, 2009.

Dudu Topaz (62) Israeli entertainer whose struggle to deal with his waning stardom enthralled the country. One of Israel’s most famous TV stars, Topaz had been in jail for several months since the start of his trial for allegedly hiring thugs to assault top Israeli media executives he blamed for keeping him off the air. He hanged himself in the shower of his jail cell in Jerusalem, Israel on August 20, 2009.

Maj. Gen. Charles R. Bond Jr. (94) retired US Air Force major general and one of the last surviving Flying Tigers. Made up of about 400 pilots and ground personnel and based in Burma and China, the Flying Tigers protected military supply routes between China and Burma during World War II and helped to get supplies to Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. Bond died of dementia in Dallas, Texas on August 18, 2009.

Robert Decatur (88) former Tuskegee Airman who later became a judge and civil rights lawyer. Decatur was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the US’s first black military pilots and crew, who fought overseas during World War II but faced discrimination when they returned home. In 2007, Decatur was among the surviving airmen who received the Congressional Gold Medal. He spent 25 years as a probate judge in Ohio, hearing thousands of cases, and taught at six different law schools. He died in Titusville, Florida on August 19, 2009.

Warren E. Hearnes (86) Missouri’s first consecutive two-term governor (1965-73) and a champion of education and mental health care. Hearnes died after being gravely ill for several days, in Charleston, Missouri on August 16, 2009.

Kim Dae- jung (85) Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South Korea president (1998-2003) who survived several assassination attempts and a death sentence. While in office, Kim devised the “Sunshine Policy” of reaching out to wartime rival North Korea to encourage reconciliation; his efforts led to an unprecedented thaw in relations with the North and culminated in a historic North-South summit—the first on the divided peninsula—and a meeting in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong Il in 2000. Among other attempts on his life, Kim survived a dramatic 1973 abduction at a Tokyo hotel. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia since July and died in Seoul, South Korea on August 18, 2009.

Robert Novak (78) longtime syndicated conservative political columnist and TV commentator known as the “Prince of Darkness" who played a central role in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. A familiar face as cohost of CNN’s Crossfire, Novak had been a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times for decades. In 1963 he teamed up with the late Rowland Evans Jr. (d. 2001) to write a political column, “Inside Washington,” that lasted 30 years. Novak died of brain cancer in Washington, DC on August 18, 2009.

Barbara Lauwers Podoski (95) multilingual Czechoslovakian woman who launched one of the most successful psychological campaigns of World War II, which resulted in the surrender of more than 600 Czechoslovakian soldiers fighting for the Germans. One of the few female operatives in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), wartime predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Podoski found creative ways to undermine German morale. She died of cardiovascular disease in Washington, DC on August 16, 2009.

Beryl W. Sprinkel (85) chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration who helped to guide the administration’s response to the October 1987 stock market crash. Sprinkel suffered from Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a rare neuromuscular disease, and died in Beecher, Illinois on August 22, 2009.

Malcolm R. Wilkey (90) former federal appeals judge (1970-85) on the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC and later US ambassador to Uruguay (1985-90). Wilkey died of prostate cancer in Santiago, Chile on August 16, 2009.

Cecilia E. Casals (42) Florida woman who suffered from third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body after she covered herself with flammable liquid and set herself ablaze in an apparent suicide attempt at a Miami shopping mall on August 13. Casals was on fire for nearly three minutes as she walked around the mall until bystanders doused her with a fire extinguisher. According to court records, she had a history of mental illness and drug trafficking charges. She died from her burns in Miami, Florida on August 18, 2009.

Bobby Augusta Davis (67) inmate convicted of killing four California Highway Patrol officers. Davis was serving four consecutive life sentences for the April 6, 1970 murders of George Alleyn, Walt Frago, Roger Gore, and James Pence. He originally received the death penalty, but his sentence was commuted when the state’s highest court banned capital punishment in 1972. Davis was pronounced dead after correctional officers found him unresponsive in his maximum-security single cell at Kern Valley State Prison in an apparent suicide, in Delano, California on August 16, 2009.

Muriel Duckworth (100) Canadian activist and pacifist who for decades was an advocate for women’s rights and social justice. Duckworth recently fell and broke her leg. She died in palliative care in Magog, Quebec, Canada on August 22, 2009.

Pasqualina Franco (110) Italian-born supercentenarian, believed to be the second-oldest person in Canada and one of its oldest residents. Franco was among the approximately 400 people age 110 or more listed on the Validated Living Supercentenarians gerontology web site this summer. She died in her sleep in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on August 16, 2009.

Jason Getsy (33) Ohio man sentenced to die for a 1995 murder-for-hire scheme that resulted in the shooting death of the target’s mother, Ann Serafino (66), and left her son seriously injured at their northeastern Ohio home during an apparent dispute over the ownership of a lawn-care business. The intended victim, Charles Serafino, survived the shooting, although he was shot seven times, including once in the face at point-blank range. Getsy was executed by lethal injection in Lucasville, Ohio on August 18, 2009.

Edward Goldsmith (80) British champion of conservation and organic farming, elder brother of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, and founder of The Ecologist magazine and the Ecology Party, which later became the Green Party. Goldsmith died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease and pneumonia, in Siena, Italy on August 21, 2009.

John Marek (47) Florida man sentenced to death with his accomplice Raymond Wigley (later murdered by a fellow inmate while in prison in 2000) for the 1983 murder of Adella Simmons (47), who was abducted, repeatedly raped, tortured, burned, and strangled with a bandana. Marek was executed by lethal injection in Starke, Florida on August 19, 2009.

Jonathan Byrd (57) longtime Indianapolis 500 car owner. A perennial Indianapolis 500 entrant (1985-2001), Byrd was coentrant of Arie Luyendyk’s all-time Indianapolis 500 record qualifier in 1996. Luyendyk drove a single lap at 237.498 mph and averaged 236.986 mph over four laps; those records still stand. Byrd had been disabled by a stroke since 2004. He died in Greenwood, Indiana on August 20, 2009.

Paul (Duke) Hogue (69) star center on Cincinnati’s back-to-back national championship basketball teams. The 6-foot-9-inch center helped to lead the Bearcats to NCAA championships (1961-62), both times defeating Ohio State squads in the title games. Hogue died of heart and kidney failure in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 17, 2009.

Jeff Johnson (65) former professional surfer, environmentalist, and father of soft rock singer-songwriter Jack Johnson. The elder Johnson was one of the pioneering modern-day ocean watermen to have settled in Hawaii’s North Shore coastal resort area. He died of cancer in Oahu, Hawaii on August 17, 2009.

Erkki Laine (61) Finnish pro ice hockey player who represented the Finnish national ice hockey team in 64 games as one of the league’s top goal scorers. Laine won a silver medal at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He was the father of Finland’s top tennis player Emma Laine. He drowned in a lake while on a boat trip in Asikkala, Finland on August 22, 2009.

Greg Montalbano (31) former minor-league baseball pitcher initially drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 1999 who later pitched in the team’s minor-league system for five years during his brief stints with the Lowell Spinners, Sarasota Red Sox, Trenton Thunder, and Portland Sea Dogs. Montalbano died of testicular cancer in Westborough, Pennsylvania on August 20, 2009.

Burl Toler Sr. (81) first black official in NFL history who later worked the 1980 Super Bowl in a distinguished career. Toler was a star player on the University of San Francisco Dons’s famous “Undefeated, Untied, Uninvited” 1951 football team, denied a bowl bid despite a 9-0 record because it refused to leave its two black players—Toler and Ollie Matson—behind. After suffering a career-ending knee injury in 1952, Toler turned to officiating and was hired by the NFL in ’65. He died in Castro Valley, California on August 16, 2009.

Geertje Wielema (75) Dutch swimmer who won a silver medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics on the women’s national 100-meter freestyle backstroke swim team. In 1954, Wielema was named Holland’s first female Sports Personality of the Year. She died in Almere, The Netherlands on August 18, 2009.