Barry Flanagan (68) British sculptor who abandoned the common materials that characterized Postminimal sculpture to make sly but relatively traditional bronzes of exuberant, loose-limbed hares. Shown above is Flanagan’s hare-y depiction of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. He died of a motor neuron disease in Ibiza, Spain on August 31, 2009.

Richard Merkin (70) painter and illustrator whose fascination with the ‘20s and ‘30s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. As an artist, Merkin went back in time to the interwar years, creating brightly colored, cartoonish portraits and scenes of film stars, jazz musicians, sports heroes, and writers; his illustrations appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s. He died in Croton-on-Hudson, New York on September 5, 2009.

Richard F. Cunningham Jr. (32) New Jersey labor leader who helped to found New Labor, an organization for low-wage, immigrant workers, and started a punk rock record label, Happy Days Records, named after the ‘70s sitcom whose lead character shared his name. Cunningham died of colon cancer, diagnosed in 2005, in Milltown, New Jersey on September 4, 2009.

Sheila Lukins (66) former co-owner of the Silver Palate food shop and an author of four Silver Palate cookbooks who helped to usher in the new American cooking of the ‘80s. The Silver Palate opened in 1977 on New York’s Upper West Side, when few Americans had heard of raspberry vinegar or ratatouille. It was sold in 1988 and closed in ‘93. Since 1986, Lukins had been food editor of Parade magazine. She died of brain cancer diagnosed in May, in New York City on August 30, 2009.

William Marvin (92) former president and chairman of Marvin Windows & Doors, responsible for its growth into a major manufacturer. Marvin died in Warroad, Minnesota on August 31, 2009.

Francis Rogallo (97) aeronautical engineer who in the early ‘50s, beginning with a model made from a kitchen curtain, designed the wing that led to hang gliding, paragliding, sport parachuting, and stunt kite flying. Rogallo died in Southern Shores, North Carolina on September 1, 2009.

Sylvia Schur (92) former Parade magazine food editor who through her pioneering consulting company, Creative Food Services, developed products like Clamato and Cran-Apple juices and the diet drink Metrecal, wrote recipes for fictional chefs Ann Page and Betty Crocker, and helped to conceive the menus for restaurants like the Four Seasons in Manhattan. At Parade, Schur was succeeded by Julia Child and Sheila Lukins (d. Aug. 30). Schur died of respiratory failure in Chicago, Illinois on September 2, 2009.

Robert J. Spinrad (77) computer designer who carried out pioneering work in scientific automation at Brookhaven National Laboratory and later was director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center while the personal computing technology invented there in the ‘70s was commercialized. Spinrad died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in Palo Alto, California on September 2, 2009.

Nancy Talbot (89) woman who helped her husband Rudolf (d. 1987) to build his small clothing store into Talbots, a giant retail and mail-order company catering to women looking for classic styles at affordable prices. Nancy Talbot died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in Boulder, Colorado on August 30, 2009.

Carl F. Hovde (82) former dean of the undergraduate school at Columbia University who played a key role in restoring calm to the campus after six weeks of student protests in the spring of 1968. Hovde died of lung cancer in New Canaan, Connecticut on September 5, 2009.

Robert Schnabel (86) former president (1978-88) of Valparaiso (Ind.) University. Schnabel’s tenure at Valparaiso included the construction of three major campus buildings—the Athletics-Recreation Center, the School of Law, and the communications and computer facility that bears his name. He died in Angola, Indiana on September 1, 2009.

William A. (Bill) Schoneberger (83) author and aviation historian who wrote California Wings, a 1980 account of the state’s aviation pioneers, and was president of the Aero Club of Southern California when the group owned the massive Spruce Goose wooden airplane built by Howard Hughes. Schoneberger died in Santa Barbara, California on August 31, 2009.

Mohammed Afifi (73) Moroccan-born actor perhaps best remembered by many movie audiences for his role as the executioner ordered to hang Brendan Fraser’s character at a Cairo prison in the adventure thriller The Mummy (1999). Afifi died in Rabat, Morocco on September 5, 2009.

Guy Graham Babylon (52) Grammy-winning musician who played keyboards with Elton John’s band for more than 20 years. Babylon swam competitively during his youth in Baltimore. He was stricken with arrhythmia while swimming and later pronounced dead at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, California on September 2, 2009.

Richard J. Berg (87) longtime TV and screenwriter and producer. A pioneer of the made-for-TV movie format that revolutionized network programming in the ‘70s, Berg helped to launch a generation of young directors, including Sydney Pollack, Mark Rydell, Robert Ellis Miller, and Stuart Rosenberg. Berg was also the patriarch of a family prominent in Hollywood, with three sons who followed him into the entertainment industry and a fourth, A. Scott Berg, who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Richard Berg died from a fall at his home in Los Angeles, California on September 1, 2009.

Jake Brockman (53) former keyboard player of the postpunk alternative rock band Echo & the Bunnymen. Known to fans as the "Fifth Bunnyman," Brockman had been associated with the Liverpool-based band since its ‘80s heyday and became a full-time member in 1989. He died from injuries sustained in a freak motorbike accident near Kirk Michael, Isle of Man, England on September 1, 2009.

Simon Dee (74) British TV chat show host and radio disc jockey. Dee’s Saturday evening Dee Time program was one of the most popular TV shows of the late ‘60s with a peak audience of 15 million. He died of bone cancer in London, England on August 30, 2009.

Jesse Fortune (79) Chicago blues singer most active in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Better known as the “Fortune Tellin’ Man,” Fortune was perhaps best known for his 1963 recording “Too Many Cooks,” which became a minor hit. He collapsed on stage while performing at a West Side club and was pronounced dead of coronary atherosclerosis at a hospital in Chicago, Illinois on August 31, 2009.

Mohammed Ismail (??) father of Slumdog Millionaire child actor Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail who became an outspoken critic of the sleeper hit movie’s producers and director Danny Boyle, saying they had abandoned both his son and child costar Rubina Ali after the film’s shoot in Mumbai’s slums, where both children’s families currently live. The elder Ismail also made headlines earlier this year when he slapped his son in front of reporters after the boy refused to speak to them upon his return from the Academy Awards ceremony. Mohammed Ismail suffered from tuberculosis and died in Mumbai, India on September 4, 2009.

Jang Jin-young (35) South Korean actress and model considered one of that country’s highest-paid stars in the Korean film industry. Jang received critical praise and became only the second actress to win several awards for her work, including her first starring role as an abused chain-smoking wife in the psychological horror film Sorum (2001) and a lead role as aviation pioneer Park Kyung-won in the biopic Blue Swallow (2005). She died of stomach cancer in Seoul, South Korea on September 1, 2009.

Wycliffe (Steely) Johnson (47) Jamaican composer and producer known as Steely, who influenced over 20 years of reggae music. Best known for his role in the team Steely & Clevie (with drummer Cleveland Browne), Johnson was equally influential in his early work as a sideman and helped to transform reggae at several stages. He had moved from Kingston, Jamaica to Brooklyn this summer for treatment of kidney problems related to hypertension and diabetes. He died of a heart attack following pneumonia, several weeks after surgery for a blood clot in the brain, in Patchogue, New York on September 1, 2009.

Caro Jones (86) longtime casting director who cast more than 1,000 TV shows, pilots, movies of the week, and miniseries and worked on films including two from director John Avildsen: best-picture Oscar winner Rocky (1976) and Save the Tiger (1973) with Jack Lemmon in one of his two Oscar-winning turns. Jones died of multiple myeloma in Los Angeles, California on September 3, 2009.

Erich Kunzel (74) award-winning conductor who headed the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra since it was founded more than 30 years ago and won international fame through sales of more than 10 million recordings. Kunzel had led the National Symphony on the Capitol lawn in nationally televised Memorial Day and Independence Day concerts since 1991. In 2009, he also conducted a concert in Beijing, China, where he and the Cincinnati Pops performed in ’08 opening festivities for the Summer Olympics. Kunzel also led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops in many performances. He was diagnosed with liver, colon, and pancreatic cancer in April but continued conducting while undergoing treatment. He died on Swan’s Island, Maine on September 1, 2009.

Jack Manning (93) character actor with a long and varied career in films and on Broadway and TV. Manning played Roderigo in the 1943-44 production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson, and starred in The Tender Trap (1954-55) and Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), the Richard Rodgers-Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical. On TV, in the ‘50s-‘80s, he had many guest roles on dramatic series and sitcoms, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Here’s Lucy, Sanford & Son, Ironside, and The Paper Chase, and played bit parts in a string of ‘70s Disney film comedies. He died in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on August 31, 2009.

Alvin (Skip) Miller (62) Los Angeles music industry veteran who rose from stock clerk to president of Motown Records and helped to rejuvenate the black music division at RCA Records. Miller also managed Lionel Richie’s solo career. He was being treated for an intestinal infection when he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on September 4, 2009.

Norman J. Seaman (86) producer of 3.000 performances by aspiring musicians. Since 1950, Seaman arranged debut recitals for young performers who otherwise might never be heard. He died of a heart attack in Chicago, Illinois on September 2, 2009.

Keith Waterhouse (80) British writer, raconteur, and wit whose works include the popular novel Billy Liar (1959), made into a hit 1963 film. Waterhouse also helped to write some of the best-known British films of the ‘60s, including A Kind of Loving and Whistle Down the Wind, both starring Alan Bates. Waterhouse died in his sleep in London, England on September 4, 2009.

Bill Hefner (79) former 12-term US congressman (D-NC, 1975-99), Southern Baptist gospel singer, and radio station owner. Hefner fought for funding for Fort Bragg in his home state when he was chairman and later ranking minority member of a military subcommittee that had say over most construction on US military bases. He had a history of heart problems but died of a brain aneurysm in Huntsville, Alabama on September 2, 2009.

Charles E. Hughes (68) leader of a municipal labor union for 30 years, winning substantial gains for part-time workers in New York schools and becoming a political power broker. But in 1998, Hughes’s career ended with a corruption conviction and a prison term. He died of a heart attack in Manhasset, New York on August 30, 2009.

Alec MacLachlan (30) British diplomat, one of five men kidnapped from the Iraqi finance ministry in Baghdad in May 2007 by people posing as security forces and government workers on official business. The hostage-takers initially threatened execution of the captive men and later demanded in a video that all British troops be withdrawn from Iraq within 10 days. At least two bodies were handed over to UK authorities in June; another was presumed dead, and a fifth man was thought to be still alive. MacLachlan’s body was confirmed to have been delivered to the British embassy in Baghdad, Iraq on September 2, 2009.

Rear Adm. Wayne E. Meyer (83) retired US Navy admiral known as the “Father of Aegis,” the Navy’s primary air-defense weapon system that revolutionized how the Navy performed air defense. Meyer managed the development and early building of the Aegis system and later had an Aegis-equipped destroyer named after him. He died of heart failure in Washington, DC on September 1, 2009.

Annabelle Clement O'Brien (86) former state senator, later first chairwoman of three committees in the Tennessee Senate. Clement O’Brien served in the cabinet of two different governors. She was married to state Supreme Court Justice Charles O’Brien and was the sister of former Gov. Frank G. Clement and aunt of former US Rep. Bob Clement (D-Tenn.). She died two weeks after a fall at her Crossville, Tenn. home, in Knoxville, Tennessee on August 31, 2009.

M. Saifur Rahman (77) Bangladesh’s longest-serving (on and off, 1977-2006) finance minister, credited with turning the South Asian nation into a free-market economy. Rahman was killed in a traffic accident as he was returning to the capital from his hometown in the northeast; the van he was riding in veered off the road and crashed into a ditch in Brahmanbaria, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Dhaka, Bangladesh on September 5, 2009.

Ron Raikes (66) former Nebraska state senator who oversaw major changes in rural and urban school districts. Raikes, who held a doctorate in agricultural economics, ran a large cattle operation and grew corn, soybeans, and wheat. He died after getting caught in a hay machine at his farm near Ashland, Nebraska on September 5, 2009.

Mohamed Seineldin (75) former army colonel who led failed military uprisings against two elected governments seeking to prosecute dictatorship-era human rights abuses in Argentina. Seineldin suffered a heart attack in his office and later died in a hospital, in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 2, 2009.

Michael Bloomfield (51) musician best known as a former member of the award-winning Southern gospel musical group The Gospel Harmony Boys. Bloomfield joined the group out of high school as a keyboard player and left in 1998 but continued to be active in the gospel music industry as an arranger and producer. He died of swine flu (H1N1) he had contracted three days earlier while working as a nurse, in Charleston, West Virginia on September 5, 2009.

Dwight Dixon (33) man who accused former Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison of shooting him during an altercation outside a garage and car wash owned by Harrison in northern Philadelphia on April 29, 2008. Dixon was convicted of a misdemeanor earlier this year for filing a false police report about the shooting incident, but no charges were pursued because authorities said there were conflicting accounts of who pulled the trigger of the gun owned by the NFL player. Dixon died from multiple gunshot wounds sustained in a July 21 shooting, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 4, 2009.

Marie Knight (84) gospel singer who came to prominence while touring with longtime musical partner Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the ‘40s. The two became the most popular gospel artists of the era with a string of hits, including “Didn’t It Rain,” “Up Above My Head,” and “Beams of Heaven." Knight died of pneumonia in New York City on August 30, 2009.

Erano Manalo (84) leader of the Philippines’ largest indigenous religious sect. Manalo took over Iglesia ni Cristo, or Church of Christ, after the death of his father and the church’s founder, Felix Manalo, in 1963. Erano Manalo died of a heart attack in Manila, Philippines on August 31, 2009.

Frank E. Milford (101) Briton who with his 101-year-old wife Anita nearly set a record to claim the Guinness World Records title as the couple with the longest marriage ever documented in British history. The Milfords celebrated their 81st wedding anniversary on May 26, 2009 and in February ‘10 would have broken the record to become the longest married couple in Great Britain. Frank Milford died in Plymouth, Devon, England on September 1, 2009.

Akituusaq the Walrus (2) young Pacific walrus, among only a handful ever born in captivity. Akituusaq was born at the New York Aquarium in the spring of 2007 and beat the odds by living a little over two years. He was one of only five walruses born in captivity known to have survived the first year; his father died in 2008 at about age 14. Akituusaq died of pneumonia despite around-the-clock attention from veterinarians, at the New York Aquarium on Brooklyn’s Coney Island on September 1, 2009.

Robert G. (Buddy) Blattner (89) former major leaguer whose broadcast career included being the longtime voice of the NBA’s St. Louis Hawks. Blattner began his baseball career with the Cardinals in 1942, then missed the next three seasons while serving in the US Navy. He later played three seasons with the Giants and one with the Phillies. As a broadcaster, he did play-by-play on national games for ABC (1953-54) and CBS (1955-59). He also did play-by-play stints for the Browns, Cardinals, Angels, and Royals. He died of lung cancer in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Missouri on September 4, 2009.

Joyce Brown (61) mother of NBA player Kwame Brown, whose career has been plagued with several criminal offenses and anxiety over his mother’s debilitating health problems. Joyce Brown died unexpectedly in Brunswick, Georgia on August 31, 2009.

Jesse Mahelona (26) former Tennessee Titans defensive tackle. Mahelona was drafted in the fifth round of the 2006 NFL draft by the Titans, where he played in 10 games as a rookie. He also spent time with the Miami Dolphins before playing his last NFL game with the Atlanta Falcons in 2007. He was killed in a car accident about a mile from his home in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii on September 4, 2009.

Leon Roach (19) University of California-San Diego pole vaulter who placed fourth in the San Diego Collegiate Track & Field Championship last spring and became the only freshman of the school’s top eight athletes who once vaulted 15 feet and 4 inches in the field. Roach died of massive head injuries sustained in a freak accident when he missed the protective padding after making a jump and landed on concrete during practice in La Jolla, California on September 5, 2009.

Jennifer C. Stewart (29) fashion designer, a granddaughter of retired University of Missouri basketball coach Norm Stewart. Jennifer Stewart was killed in a one-car accident in Columbia, Missouri on August 30, 2009.

Ismael Valenzuela (74) Texas-born Hall of Fame jockey who twice won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes in 1958 and ‘68 and retired with a remarkable 2,545 overall wins (1951-80) and purses of more than $20 million. Valenzuela rode five-time Horse of the Year Kelso in the ‘60s. He died in Arcadia, California on September 2, 2009.