Kate Duffy (56) one of the foremost editors of romance novels in the US. Duffy was one of the prime movers behind the explosion of romance publishing in the late ‘70s and early ’80s; today, the genre is a major enterprise. She died of uterine cancer in New York City on September 27, 2009.

Henry T. Hopkins (81) museum director and educator who played a leading role in establishing the Los Angeles art scene. Hopkins achieved national prominence as director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1974-86) but got his professional start at UCLA and returned there in later years.

 He had suffered from a brain tumor for about eight months and died in Los Angeles, California on September 27, 2009.

Donal McLaughlin (102) architect and graphic designer whose hasty design for a lapel pin became one of the world’s most recognizable symbols—the official United Nations emblem, showing the continents embraced by olive branches. McLaughlin led a design team under the supervision of Oliver Lincoln Lundquist (d. 2008). McLaughlin died of esophageal cancer in Garrett Park, Maryland on September 27, 2009.

Peg Mullen (92) author and former Iowa farm wife who hounded the US military to find the truth about her son’s death in Vietnam. Mullen wrote the 1995 book Unfriendly Fire: A Mother’s Memoir after her son Michael died at age 25 when a US artillery shell fell short and killed him on Feb. 18, 1970, near the South Vietnamese village of Tu Chanh. Peg Mullen died in La Porte City, Iowa on October 2, 2009.

Charles Seliger (83) artist whose small, jewellike paintings of imaginary natural forms made him one of the most individualistic of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists. Seliger died of a stroke in New York City on October 1, 2009.

Donald G. Fisher (81) cofounder of apparel giant Gap Inc. Fisher and his wife Doris opened the first Gap store in 1969 in San Francisco, after having trouble finding jeans that fit. They named the company after “The Generation Gap” and sold jeans and music to appeal to a younger crowd. The Gap became one of the US’s largest specialty retailers with more than 3,000 stores in over 25 countries. Donald Fisher died of cancer in San Francisco, California on September 27, 2009.

Marty Forscher (87) for decades the most sought-after camera repairman in the US. For more than 40 years (1946-87), Forscher ran Professional Camera Repair Service in midtown Manhattan. Among the shop’s well-known clients were photographers Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz. Forscher died of heart failure in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on September 30, 2009.

Dr. Charles S. Houston (96) physician and mountaineer who led a legendary failed Himalayan expedition in 1953 and did trailblazing research on high-altitude medicine. Houston’s eight-man team came to within 3,000 feet of the 28,251-foot summit of K-2, the second-highest mountain in the world, but turned back when one man fell ill and later disappeared. Houston died in Burlington, Vermont on September 27, 2009.

Reinhard Mohn (88) entrepreneur who helped to transform media group Bertelsmann AG from a German book publisher to an international media company. Mohn helped to steer the company into a wide array of publishing—including the acquisition of US-based Random House—music, and other ventures. He died in Guetersloh, Germany, his birthplace, on October 3, 2009.

Luis Villalobos (70) founder of Tech Coast Angels, an Orange County investment group that expanded throughout southern California to become one of the biggest in the nation. Villalobos died of lung disease in Orange, California on October 1, 2009.

Harriet Allen (95) environmentalist who mentored generations of desert activists and played a key role in the 1994 passage of the landmark California Desert Protection Act. Allen died in San Diego, California on September 30, 2009.

Alan Dick (55) principal of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. The international public school was founded in 1991 by a group of Canadians living in Hong Kong who volunteered their time to establish a school offering Canadian curricula. It now has over 1600 students from over 30 nationalities enrolled from prereception (kindergarten) to Grade 12. Dick died unexpectedly after contracting swine flu in Hong Kong, China on September 27, 2009.

Alain Bernheim (86) French-born producer and literary agent who with US humorist Art Buchwald (d. 2007) sued Paramount Pictures for using their concept for the 1988 film Coming to America. After a seven-year legal battle, Buchwald and Bernheim received a settlement of $825,000. A Hollywood Hills resident, Bernheim died three days before his 87th birthday of complications during dialysis treatment in Paris, France on October 2, 2009.

Amy Farris (40) fiddler, singer, and songwriter, an in-demand session and touring musician who became a regular presence on the Los Angeles roots music scene after moving from Austin, Texas to launch a solo career. Farris’s body was found in her home in Los Angeles, California on September 29, 2009. The LA County coroner’s office said her death was being investigated as a suicide.

Nat Finkelstein (76) photographer whose pictures of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and the Velvet Underground are among the most famous images of Warhol’s Factory and its revolving cast of characters. As house photographer for the Factory (1964-67), Finkelstein created spontaneous portraits not only of Factory regulars like Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga but also of the artists and celebrities who drifted in and out of the Warhol orbit. He died of pneumonia and emphysema in Shandaken, New York on October 2, 2009.

Laura Mae (Mama) Gross (89) Mississippi woman who moved to the West Coast and founded a club that became a staple of the Los Angeles blues scene. Also known as “Mama,” Gross opened Babe’s & Ricky’s Inn on Central Avenue in 1964 and hosted blues legends such as Bobby (“Blue”) Bland and John Lee Hooker while serving cold beer and soda to an integrated crowd. She died of heart failure in Los Angeles, California on October 3, 2009.

Jon Guthrie (26) bass player who performed with many local bands, perhaps most notably alongside his father and uncle in the acclaimed musical group The Michael Guthrie Band. Jon Guthrie also recently joined the lineup of The Vigilantes of Love punk music troupe and was on tour across the US and Europe, playing pop and rock tunes in clubs and festivals both with the band and solo. He was found dead inside his wrecked car beneath a bridge after an apparent accident in Athens, Georgia on September 28, 2009.

Ashley (A. J.) Jewell (34) former fiancé of Kandi Burruss, a cast member of the reality TV show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which follows the lives of metro Atlanta socialites. Jewell died from massive head injuries after a fight in the parking lot at the Body Tap Club, a strip club where he worked, in Atlanta, Georgia on October 2, 2009. Police said Fredrick Richardson was charged with voluntary manslaughter in Jewell’s death.

Margo Johns (90) British stage, TV, and film actress who starred in the B-movie cult classic Konga (1961), a spoof of King Kong set in London rather than New York. Johns also appeared in several films and TV series, including a supporting role as Beauty in director/actor Peter Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels (1951). She died in London, England on September 29, 2009.

Greg Ladanyi (57) US Grammy-winning producer who earned 16 Grammy nominations and won the Best Engineered Recording—Non-Classical Grammy in 1982 for Toto’s Toto IV album. Ladanyi fractured his skull in a 13-foot fall at Nicosia’s GSP stadium during a concert by Greek pop star Anna Vissi, signed to his Los Angeles-based Maple Jam Music Group. He died in Nicosia, Cyprus on September 29, 2009.

Byron Palmer (89) actor and singer who broke through in the late ‘40s in the hit Broadway musical Where’s Charley? (starring Ray Bolger) and later costarred on the TV show This Is Your Music. Palmer died in Los Angeles, California on September 30, 2009.

John (Mr. Magic) Rivas (53) disc jockey whose persistence in bringing once-reviled rap to mainstream radio in the ‘80s helped to pave the way for the breakout of hip-hop culture. Mr. Magic was the first host on commercial radio to devote a program exclusively to rap when his Rap Attack began broadcasting on WBLS-FM in New York in April 1983. Rivas died of a heart attack in Brooklyn, New York on October 2, 2009.

Beau Velasco (??) drummer and founding member of the critically acclaimed East Coast electropunk group The Death Set. The troupe was named "the best live band of 2007" by the Baltimore Sun after the release of its acclaimed debut full-length album Worldwide in 2008 on Counter Records, an imprint of Ninja Tune. Velasco died unexpectedly in Brooklyn, New York on September 27, 2009.

Douglas Watt (95) critic whose theater reporting and criticism for the New York Daily News were fixtures when theater was king and critics were numerous. Watt started at the News in 1934 as a copy boy in the drama department and retired in ‘93 as a critic at large. He died of pneumonia in Southampton, New York on September 29, 2009.

Ben Williams (56) circus performer who, clad only in his trademark tiger-skin loincloth, caught the attention of Big Top crowds by fearlessly cavorting under, above, and around elephants to become one of the top circus attractions of recent decades. Williams died of gastrointestinal cancer in Tampa, Florida on October 2, 2009.

Henry Louis Bellmon (88) Oklahoma farmer who in 1963 became the state’s first GOP governor since statehood and was known as the father of its modern Republican Party. Later a two-term US senator, Bellmon served two nonconsecutive terms as governor, the second beginning in 1987. He died of complications from Parkinson’s disease in Enid, Oklahoma on September 29, 2009.

Fernando (Frank) Caldeiro (51) Argentine-born American NASA astronaut assigned to high-altitude research flights in NASA’s WB-57 aircraft as part of Astronaut Group 16 (nicknamed “The Sardines”) in 1996. In 2002, Caldeiro was appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. He died of brain cancer in League City, Texas on October 3, 2009.

Marek Edelman (90) last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, the first act of large-scale armed civilian resistance against the Germans in occupied Poland during World War II. Edelman also fought the Nazis in the Warsaw city Uprising in 1944 and for decades fought communism in Poland. He died in Warsaw, Poland on October 2, 2009.

Guillermo Endara (73) former president of Panama (1989-94) who suffered electoral fraud, a cracked skull, and hunger on his path to succeed strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega as leader of Panama in 1989, then helped to steer the country toward democracy. Endara, who suffered from diabetes and kidney ailments, had been hospitalized recently for dialysis treatment and died in Panama City, Panama on September 28, 2009.

Michael Kuryla Jr. (84) one of 317 sailors who survived the sinking of the ill-fated Navy cruiser Indianapolis during World War II and later bonded with other activists to exonerate their ship’s captain, Charles B. McVay 3rd, who they believed was unfairly court-martialed and blamed for putting the ship in harm’s way.

 Kuryla died of cancer in Bartlett, Illinois on October 3, 2009.

Clifton Maloney (71) multimillionaire investment banker and husband of New York state congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. The couple had been married for more than 30 years and had two daughters. An avid climber, Clifton Maloney died in a mountain climbing accident in Tibet on September 27, 2009.

Mike Peters (42) mayor of Liverpool, Texas who started a committee to organize festivals and parades on holidays to build the community of about 400 people since his election in 2005. Peters was involved when the town helped the state take in about 36 children from a polygamist sect’s west Texas retreat in 2008 and was instrumental in getting a new city hall building. He died after being struck by a train in an apparent suicide in Liverpool, Texas on October 3, 2009.

Nicolae Plesita (80) die-hard Communist and ruthless chief (1980-84) of the Securitate secret police who arranged shelter in Romania for terrorist Carlos the Jackal and was tried for but eventually acquitted of the 1981 bombing of Radio Free Europe in Munich. Plesita died in a hospital, where he was being treated for various illnesses including diabetes, in Bucharest, Romania on September 28, 2009.

Pavel Popovich (78) former Soviet cosmonaut, the sixth man to go into orbit. The first of Popovich’s two trips into orbit was in August 1962 as the solo man aboard the Vostok-4 capsule. His launch came a day after another Soviet was launched into orbit, marking the first time that two humans were ever in orbit around the Earth at the same time. Popovich next went into space in July 1974 as commander of the two-man Soyuz-14, a 15-day mission to the Salyut space station. He died of a stroke in Gurzuf, a resort city on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, on September 30, 2009.

Fatima, Queen of Libya (98) former queen of the United Kingdom of Libya, better known as the widow of King Idris I, last king of Libya before the "Revolution of September" in 1969. After the "revolution," Fatima was tried in absentia in the Libyan court and sentenced to five years in prison in 1971. She died in Cairo, Egypt on October 3, 2009.

William Safire (79) former speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for the New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics, and articles on English usage. Safire spent more than 30 years writing on the Op-Ed page of the Times; in his “On Language” column in the Times “Magazine” and more than a dozen books, he traced the origins of words and everyday phrases such as “straw man,” “under the bus,” and “the proof is in the pudding." He died of pancreatic cancer in Rockville, Maryland on September 27, 2009.

Annie Butler (112) British supercentenarian, believed to be the second-oldest verified living person in Great Britain and the fifth-oldest person in Europe. Butler was born in 1897 during the reign of Queen Victoria and married her husband Edward in 1922, the year the Irish Civil War began. She died in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England on September 28, 2009.

John Couey (51) convicted child killer and registered sex offender condemned to die for the abduction, rape, and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005 in a case that sparked extensive media coverage and legislation across the US clamping down on sex offenders and later inspiring Jessica’s Law. The state of Florida became involved in the case, and representatives often appeared with the Lunsford family lobbying for stricter sex offender laws during years of investigation and a lengthy trial ending with a conviction and death sentence for the neighbor who kidnapped and buried the little girl alive. Couey died of anal cancer in Jacksonville, Florida on September 30, 2009.

Nancy M. Daly (68) children’s advocate, philanthropist, and Los Angeles arts leader. Daly had high-profile marriages to former Warner Brothers chief executive Robert A. Daly and former LA Mayor Richard J. Riordan. She was one of the city’s most prominent activists on behalf of neglected or abused children. She died of pancreatic cancer while traveling back to LA from New York in a motor home with her three adult children, in St. Louis, Missouri on October 2, 2009.

Robert S. Thompson (91) former associate justice of the California Court of Appeal who taught law at the University of Southern California for 11 years. Thompson ruled on several noteworthy cases, including a 1974 decision that bolstered the landmark legal battle of Bill Farr, a Los Angeles journalist who, invoking California’s shield law, spent 46 days in jail after refusing to reveal his sources to the judge in the Charles Manson murder trial. Thompson died in San Diego, California on October 2, 2009.

Michael Toney (43) former death row inmate who finally won his freedom on Sept. 2, 2009 after spending 10 years on the Texas Death Row for his conviction in a 1985 car bombing that left three people dead. Toney maintained his innocence over the years and was finally freed after a key prosecution witness recanted and a judge ruled that the prosecution had improperly withheld evidence. Toney was killed in a car accident in Dialville, Texas on October 3, 2009.

Ernie (Indian Red) Lopez (64) popular boxer in the ‘60s and ‘70s who twice lost title fights before sellout crowds and in 2004 was found in a Texas homeless shelter just in time to be honored by the California Boxing Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in the ring. Lopez died of complications from dementia, in Pleasant Grove, Utah on October 3, 2009.

Best Ogedegbe (55) Nigerian international football (soccer) goalkeeper and assistant coach who played with the Shooting Stars senior football club during most of his career when the domestic league won the country’s first continental African Cup Winners Cup trophy in 1976. Ogedegbe also played for the Nigerian national football team (then known as the “Green Eagles”) when they won the 1980 African Cup of Nations and later represented Nigeria at the ‘80 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia. He died of complications from surgery in Ibadan, Nigeria on September 28, 2009.