Arts and Letters
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Laura Caldwell (age 52) - While being a trial lawyer and a law professor at Loyola of Chicago, Laura Caldwell also found the time to pen two non-fiction books and fourteen mystery novels. She was a dedicated friend of the wrongfully convicted, as evidenced by the organization she founded, Life After Innocence. Caldwell succumbed to breast cancer on March 1, 2020. |
| Tomie dePaola (age 85) - dePaola was a beloved children's author and illustrator and a media figure, known for his Strega Nona series and his hundreds of "legends, folktales, and stories." He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1990 and was a multiple runner-up for the Caldecott and Newberry awards. He appeared multiple times on "Barney and Friends" and had his own television series, "Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola." He died March 30, 2020, of complications from a fall. |  |
John Seward Johnson II (age 89) - Johnson, grandson of a founder of Johnson & Johnson, was a sculptor who specialized in bronzes of people taking part in ordinary activities. His works include a "retelling" of the famous V-J Day photograph ("Unconditional Surrender") and a bronze hitchhiker "leaving" Hofstra University. Johnson was the cousin of actor Michael Douglas, whose mother was Johnson's mother's sister. Johnson died March 10, 2020.
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Richard Reeves (age 83) - Reeves was a writer, a syndicated columnist for the UPI, and a travel writer for Travel and Leisure. He published some twenty non-fiction books, mainly on presidential politics. Over the years, Reeves collected a Peabody Award (984) an Emmy Award (1980), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from his fellow newspaper columnists. He died of heart failure on March 25, 2020. |
Business
William Bartholomay (age 91) - Bartholomay made his fortune as an insurance executive who, at 34, became a baseball owner when he joined a consortium buying the then-Milwaukee Braves. Although the team was doing well in Wisconsin, Bartholomay believed that the future of the sport was in the American south. In 1966, he moved the team to Atlanta, where it became a mainstay of the new Turner Broadcasting Network in the mid-70s. Bartholomay died of a respiratory illness on March 25, 2020.
Brian Blume (age 70) - Blume partnered with Dungeons & Dragons developer Gary Gygax and another to form TSR in the 1970s. He helped writer some of the earliest add-ons and updates, although the company collapsed from internal struggles in the 1980s. He continued to work in the games industry, mainly in the White Wolf series. He died March 27, 2020, of a form of dementia.
Bill Braum (age 92) - Kansas native Bill Braum grew up in a dairy family and stayed in that business until his death, In 1968, he started the chain of Braum's Restaurants in Oklahoma. By 2020, the chain had grown to more than 300 stores in four states. The restaurants are best known for their brand of ice cream, which is sold only within the chain. Bill Braum died on March 23, 2020.
Jack Welch (age 89) - "Neutron Jack" Welch took over General Electric in 1981, and immediately adopted a "shareholder value" program. While he increased the company's book value by 200% in the next 20 years, he reduced the company's workforce by some 100,000 employees. For his troubles, he received a severance package of some $417 million. Welch shuffled off this mortal coil on March 1, 2020, to the delight of tens of thousands of former GE employees.
Miscellaneous
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Philip Warren Anderson (age 96) - Anderson was a theoretical physicist and one-time professor at Cambridge and Princeton. He specialized in areas that led to the development of a theory of high-temperature superconductivity. He spend the early portion of his career at Bell Labs, where he developed much of the particle physics work that earned him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977. Anderson passed away March 28, 2020. |
CC (age 18) - The domestic shorthair cat, whose name was short for "Carbon Copy" (or perhaps "CopyCat") was cloned by Texas A&M scientists in 2001. She managed to have a litter of four kittens of her own at age five, another first for cloned pets. She died of old age on March 3, 2020.
| Floyd Cardoz (age 59) - Born in Mumbai, Cardoz emigrated to the States by way of Europe and established himself as a chef in New York City. He competed on reality food shows "Top CHef" and "Top CHef Masters." Cardoz contracted COVID-19 on a trip to his native India and died in New Jersey on March 24, 2020. |  |
Lonnie "Grim Sleeper" Franklin (age 67) - Franklin was a serial killer convicted of ten murders and an attempted murder in California. His nickname arose from a fourteen-year "sleep period" in his crimes. Franklin was sentenced to death in 2016. On March 28, 2020, he was found dead in his cell at San Quentin.
Robert Levinson (age 72) - Levinson, a one-time agent of the DEA and FBI, disappeared in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA. His death was communicated to members of his family on March 24, 2020. Further details are, however, unknown, including the date, manner, and location of his death.
Joseph Lowery (age 98) - Lowery was a towering figure in the civil rights movement, a Methodist minister who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with MLK and others. He sereved as the SCLC's vice president, president, and board chairman. He gave the benediction at President Obama's first inauguration in 2009, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama later that year. Lowery died March 27, 2020.
Rosalind P. Walter (age 95) - Born Rosalind Palmer, Rosalind went to work in an aircraft factory straight out of high school, assembling fighter planes for the war effort. She is said to have inspired the hit 1942 song "Rosie the Riveter." In later life, Walter was an advocate for public broadcasting and a trustee of the Tennis Hall of Fame. Walter died March 4, 2020.
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Al Worden (age 88) - Worden was the command module pilot during the lunar mission known as Apollo 15, orbiting the moon while fellow astronauts David Scott and James Irwin went to the surface in 1971. He lost a congressional race from Pennsylvania in 1982 and published m=his memoir in 2011. Col. Worden died March 17, 2020. |
Movies, Television, and Stage
Bobbie Batista (age 67) - Battista began her career in radio, quickly moving to television with a Raleight (NC) station, where her team won a 1981 Peabody Award. She was one of the original anchors pn CNN's Headline News, moving to the network's main channel in 1988. Her career with CNN ended soon after the merger of the parent company, Time-Warner, with AOL. Battista died of cervical cancer March 3, 2020.
| Mark Blum (age 69) - Blum acted in all three media, especially in film and television. His face is familiar to television viewers for a wide variety of guest appearances, as well as a recurring part in "Mozart in the Jungle." On the big screen, he appeared in Desperately Seeking Susan and Crocodile Dundee. He was well-known for acting off-Broadway for decades. Blum died of COVID-19 on March 26, 2020. |  |
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Mart Crowley (age 84) - Crowley was a playwright whose best-known work was 1968's The Boys in the Band, which ran off-Broadway for some three years and was adapted for film in 1970. He ealso worked in television, scripting the series "Hart to Hart" and writing the plays People Like Us and adapting the book There Must be a Pony. Crowley passed away March 7, 2020, after a heart attack. |
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William Dufris (age 62) - Dufris made a name for himself as a voice actor and narrator of audio books. He was nominated a dozen times for an Audie Award, winning once in 2012 for his reading of Paul Collins' The Murder of the Century. Dufris also voiced the title character of "Bob the Builder" dubbed to American English. Dufris died of cancer March 24, 2020. |
Wendell Goler (age 70) - Goler had a fourteen-year career with the Fox News Channel beginning with day one of its broadcasting. He began as a White House correspondent, much as he had acted for AP in his previous job, moving to a supervisory position in the Washington bureau in 2011. He retired in 2014. Goler died March 3,2020.
| Stuart Gordon (age 72) - Gordon was a screenwriter and director, primarily of horror films. He and several different co-writers adapted a number of H. P. Lovecrafts's works for both the large and small screens. He may be best known for his 1985 work, Re-Animator, and a "Masters of Horror" installment titled "Dreams in the Witch House"; both based on Lovecraft. Gordon died March 25, 2020. |  |
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James Lipton (age 93) - Lipton wore many hats in the entertainment business — writer, actor, producer, lyricist, acting teacher — but he will be remembered most for his long-running Bravo series, "Inside the Actor's Studio." He was nominated for an Emmy 20 times, winning in 2013 for his Bravo show. He wrote for television, beginning in 1952 as head writer on the daytime soap opera "The Guiding Light," and published a novel (Mirrors) and a non-fiction book about collective nouns (An Exaltation of Larks). Lipton passed away March 2, 2020, of bladder cancer. |
| Terrence McNally (age 81) - McNally was a playwright and screenwriter, and a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. His best-known works include Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, both of which won him Tony Awards. He also received the Emmy and Obie Awards in his long career. McNally died after contracting COVID-19 on March 24, 2020. |  |
Earl Pomerantz (age 75) - Pomerantz was a comedy writer with a long list of credits on television sitcoms. Among his many writing credits are episodes of such standards and "Cheers," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Cosby Show," and televisions specials. Pomerantz collected two Primetime Emmy awards and a Humanitas Award for his work over a forty-year career. He died March 7, 2020.
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David Schramm (age 73) - Kentuck native Schramm is perhaps best known as curmudgeonly airline owner Roy Biggins on the sitcom "Wings," but also made other appearances both in comedy and drama. When "Wings" was canceled, Schramm returned to the stage and appeared in such plays as Finian's Rainbow and Waiting for Godot. Schramm died March 28, 2020. |
| Lyle Waggoner (age 84) - The hunky Waggoner carved out a career in light television and comedy, most famously on the TV version of "Wonder Woman" and as third (or fourth) banana on "THe Carol Burnett Show." He is also known for having been the nude centerfold in the first issue of Playgirl in 1973. Waggoner died March 17, 2020. |  |
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Stuart Whitman (age 92) - After leaving the Army, Whitman studied acting and picked up small roles in Hollywood. He began picking up leading roles in the late 1950s, and starred in such films as The Comancheros and Cimarron Strip. On the small screen, he played Johnathan Kent on "Superboy." He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, won a Golden Boot Award, and was nominated for an Oscar. Whitman succumbed to skin cancer on March 16, 2020. |
| David Wise (age 65) - Considered a child prodigy for his pre-teen experiments with animation, Wise segued into writing beginning with the animated "Star Trek" series at age 16. He wrote SF stories for anthologies and television scripts for such series as "Wonder Woman." In later life, he developed and/or wrote several animated series, most notably the animated versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers. Wise died of lung cancer March 3, 2020. |  |
Music
Anton Coppola (age 102) - The uncle of film director Francis Ford Copola, Anton Coppola was a celebrity in his own right. He came from a family of musicians, including a composer brother Carmine. Anton's musical career began before his tenth birthday, performing in a Metropolitan Opera production. He became a composer and conductor, composing an opera about anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and leading performances of Carmen and Of Mice and Men. He had a cameo appearance in The Godfather. Coppola died March 9, 2020.
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Joe Diffie (age 61) - Diffie, a country singer, hit the country-western charts with almost three dozen singles in the period 1990-2004, as well as seven albums. He was a writer of note as well, writing or co-writing songs that charted for such acts as Jo Dee Messina and Tim McGraw. Diffie succumbed to COVID-19 and died March 28, 2020, in Nashville. |
Barbara Martin (age 79) - Martin joined a girl group known as the Primettes in 1960, and the following year the four members signed with Motown impresario Berry Gordy, renaming the group The Supremes. Martin left in 1962, and the rest is history: the remaining three formed a trio that became one of the biggest Motown acts of the decade. Martin died March 3, 2020.
Alan Merrill (age 69) - Merrill (born Allan Sachs) was a musician and actor active in the 1970s. As a member of the defunct rock group The Arrows, Merrill was co-author of the pop icon "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." He released multiple albums in Japan and the UK and hosted a television show in England. Merrill died of COVID-19 on March 29, 2020.
Keith Olson (age 74) - Olson was a musician, sound engineer, and record producer who worked with a wide array of artists including Ozzy Osborne, Heart, Whitesnake, The Animals, and the Grateful Dead. His credits include more than a dozen multi-platinum albums and almost forty gold records; and he launched the careers of such artists ans Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Olson died March 9, 2020 .
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Kenny Rogers (age 81) - Rogers made his bones in the music industry with folk groups The New Christy Minstrels and the First Edition before striking out on his own as a solo act. He was a multiple Grammy, American Music, and Country Music Award winner and a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Some of his biggest hits were duets, especially with Dolly Parton. He also appeared in many television shows. Rogers died March 20, 2020. |
Elinor Ross (age 93) - Ross, a soprano, was an internationally-known opera singer who appeared in operas in the Americas and Europe. She was particularly well-known for her work with Italian operas. Ross retired in 1979 at the age of 53 as a result of Bell's Palsy. She passed away March 6, 2020.
Edward Tarr (age 83) - Tarr was a Grammy-winning trumpeter and musicologist with a specialization in baroque and Romantic music. He died in Germany, where he had lived since the 1970s, on March 24, 2020.
| McCoy Tyner (age 81) - Tyner forged a career as a modern jazz pianist beginning at age 17 in his native Philadelphia. He appeared with John Coltrane throughout the early 1960s, including the bandleader's best-known album, A Love Supreme. After leaving Coltrane in 1965, Tyner was essentially a solo act, releasing numerous albums up through the '90s. He won five Grammy awards and was named a Jazz Master by the NEA. Tyner died March 6, 2020. |  |
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Eric Weissberg (age 80) - A talented multi-instrumentalist, Weissberg began his career as a bluegrass fiddler. After a stint in the National Guard, he rejoined his band to tour with folk icon Judy Collins. When the group broke up, he became a session musician, contributing string accompaniment to albums by such artists as Bob Dylan, Collins, and John Denver. He is probably best known for playing the banjo part of "Duelin' Banjos," theme song for Deliverance, in 1972. Weissberg succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease on March 22, 2020. |
Politics and Government
Tom Coburn (age 72) - Coburn, a physician, was a three-term congressman and two-term U. S. Senator from Oklahoma; all as a Republican. Well known as a hard-line social and fiscal conservative, Coburn earned the sobriquet "Dr. No" for his sometimes unpopular stand on spending. A strong supporter of term limits, Coburn resigned in 2014 before completing his second term, ostensibly because of declining health. Affter leaving government, he worked with conservative activist groups. Coburn succumbed to prostate cancer on March 28, 2020.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (age 100) - The Peruvian Pérez de Cuéllar was a politician and diplomat vaulted to the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982, serving a two five-year terms as the fifth to hold the office. Back home in Peru, he ran unsuccessfully for national president in 1995 before rising to Prime Minister of the country in 2000. He received the Freedom Medal in 1992 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. Pérez de Cuéllar died March 4, 2020.
John Sears (age 79) - Sears was a Republican political strategist even before the days when they were called "spin doctors." He worked on political campaigns for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and was Nixon's Deputy Counsel before Watergate. In the '80s, Sears served as a lobbyist for the apartheid regime in South Africa. At one point he was misidentified as "deep throat," the source for the Washington Post exposé of the Nixon administration. Sears died March 26, 2020, of a heart attack.
Sports
John DeBrito (age 51) - DeBrito was a founding member of the American MLS and a six-time member of the U. S. national soccer team in the 1990s. He played for half a dozen of the many, many, many short-lived MLS teams in the league's early days, including the New England Revolution, New York Fever, Kansas City Wizards, Dallas Burn, and Connecticut Wolves. He died March 25, 2020.
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Leslie Hunter (age 77) - Hunter was on Loyola's 1963 NCAA basketball championship team, which eased his way into the pros. He was drafted by the Pistons, but immediately traded to the Baltimore Bullets, where he spent his rookie season in 1964. He joined the ABA Minnesota Muskies in 1967, and spent seven seaons in the league with Minnesota/Florida, New York, Kentucky, and Memphis. He was twice an All-Star, finishing with more than 5,000 points. Hunter died of cancer March 27, 2020. |
Roger Mayweather (age 58)v - Mayweather was a professional boxer in the '80s and '90s, competing as a featherweight and light welterweight. Along with his brothers Floyd, Sr., and Jeff and his nephew Floyd, Jr., Mayweather was a member of an American boxing dynasty. After retiring from the ring, he trained Floyd Mayweather, Jr., helping him attain accolades as one of boxing's greats. Mayweather died March 17, 2020.
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Bill McPherson (age 88) - McPherson was an NFL coach, primarily of defensive lines. He held the position of defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers from 1989-93, and was with the team from 1970 until he retired in 2005, a period in which the team collected five Super Bowl wins. McPherson died March 17, 2020. |
Curly Neal (age 77) - Fred "Curly" Neal was a fixture in the backcourt - and forecourt- of the Harlem Globetrotters for more than twenty years, and the premier showman on a team of showmen. Neal's ballhandling skills were a feature of every 'Trotter game (or show, if you prefer). He was just the fifth member of the team to have his number retired when the honor was bestowed on number 22 in 2008. Neal died on March 26, 2020.
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Henri Richard (age 84) - Forever nown as The Pocket Rocket, Henri Richard was the younger (and smaller) brother of legendary Maurice "Rocket" Richard. Henri, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame since 1979, was a nine-time All-Star and played on eleven Stanley Cup winning teams. He spent his entire 21-year career with the Canadiens, playing in 1256 games and scoring 1046 points on 358 goals and 688 points as well as 129 points in 180 playoff games. His number 16 has been retired by Montreal. Richard died March 6, 2020. |
| Del Shofner (age 86) - Shofner was a pro football player, spending eleven seasons with the Rams and Giants in the '50s and '60s. He was afive-time first-team Pro-Bowler at wide receiver, and is a member of the NFL's all-decade team for the 1960s. Shofner died March 11, 2020. |  |
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Mike Stratton (age 78) - Stratton, an outside linebacker, was a 12-season pro for the Buffalo Bills and San Diego Chargers, making the shift from the AFL to the NFL with the Bills. He was a six-time AFL all-star and won two AFL championships with the Bills. He payed his final year with the Chargers in 1973. Stratton died after a fall on March 25, 2020. |
Terry Tausch (age 61) - Texas native Terry Tausch was a second-round NFL pick out of college in 1982. The Minnesota Vikings installed him at guard, where he spent seven seasons. In 1989 he joined the San Francisco 49ers during their Super Bowl championship season. Tausch passed away March 25, 2020.
War Emblem (age 21) - The winner of the 2002 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, War Emblem faltered out of the gate at Belmont, ruining his chances to become a Triple Crown winner. His racing career ended in 2002, and he was put to stud, siring a paltry 119 foals over the next 12 years. His offspring proved more successful both on the track and in the breeding rooms than he did. War Emblem retired in 2015 and passed away peacefully on March 11,2020.
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Woody Widenhofer (age 77) - Widenhoffer played linebacker at Missouri before turning to coaching. He spent four years at the college level before joining the Vikings as a linebacker coach in 1972. Over the next 35 years, he was a defensive coordinator or linebacker coach for NFL and college teams and head coach at several colleges. He is often credited with developing the "Steel Curtain" defense that helped Pittsburgh win four Super Bowls in the '70s. Widenhofer died March 22, 2020. |
| Jimmy Wynn (age 78) - Wynn spent fifteen seasons in major league baseball, including the inaugural season of the Houston Colt 45s (later the Astros), where he spent his first eleven years. He later played for the Dodgers and Yankees before retiring as a Brewer in 1977. He was a three-time All-Star and his number was retired by the 'Stros in 2005. Wynn died March 26, 2020, in Houston. |  |
