2025 Departures

January

Wayne Osmond

Jan. 1 | 73 | Founding member of The Osmonds who helped make the family vocal group famous through appearances on television that launched the careers of his famous siblings Donny and Marie Osmond.

Richard B. Hays

Jan. 3 | 76 | Respected theologian whose 1996 book The Moral Vision of the New Testament proved influential, but who later made waves in a 2024 book arguing, in opposition to his prior beliefs, that Scripture permitted homosexuality.

Jean-Marie Le Pen

Jan. 7 | 96 | French politician who helped define right-wing politics in France by forming the National Front political party (now National Rally) by advocating for immigration restrictions and a broad welfare state.

Peter Yarrow

Jan. 7 | 86 | Musician from the popular folk group Peter, Paul and Mary that helped define the musical genre in the 1960s through songs like “Puff the Magic Dragon” while helping to launch Bob Dylan’s musical career.

Bill McCartney

Jan. 10 | 84 | College Football Hall of Fame coach for the University of Colorado from 1982 until 1994, including a 1990 Associated Press national championship. He also founded the evangelical men’s ministry Promise Keepers in 1990.

Sam Moore

Jan. 10 | 89 | Florida-born soul singer who collaborated with Dave Prater to form Sam & Dave, the iconic rhythm and blues group responsible for 1960s hits like “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin.’”

Arthur Blessitt

Jan. 14 | 84 | A street preacher in Los Angeles who later became known for his marathon walks dragging a cross through every nation in the world while racking up more than 43,000 miles trod.

David Lynch

Jan. 16 | 78 | Visionary filmmaker known for arthouse films like 1970s cult-classic Eraserhead and the critically acclaimed 2001 mystery Mulholland Drive. Lynch teamed with scriptwriter Mark Frost to create the ABC drama Twin Peaks.

Bob Uecker

Jan. 16 | 90 | A journeyman professional baseball player who became a household name through numerous appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which led to commercials, movies, a starring role on the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere, and decades as a Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster.

Loretta Ford

Jan. 22 | 104 | A groundbreaking nurse and educator who in 1965 helped develop the first nurse practitioner program giving nurses the ability to treat common problems within primary care settings.

Harold Katz

Jan. 24 | 87 | Owner of the Philadelphia 76ers who helped bring the team its most recent NBA Finals victory in 1983; he also founded the weight-loss program Nutrisystem.

Suzanne Massie

Jan. 26 | 94 | Author and Russian culture expert who advised President Ronald Reagan and helped demystify the Russians during the Cold War. Her cultural contextualization led to successful talks between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986.

Dick Button

Jan. 30 | 95 | One of the nation’s first figure skating stars who became an Olympic champion in 1948 and 1952 and then spent decades explaining the sport as an Emmy-winning broadcaster for ABC.

February

Fay Vincent

Feb. 1 | 86 | A major league baseball executive and eventual baseball commissioner from 1989 until 1992 who negotiated an end to the Pete Rose gambling saga that saw Rose depart from the game.

Kenneth Kitchen

Feb. 6 | 92 | Egyptologist and Biblical history scholar from Scotland who argued for an Exodus dated to the reign of Ramses II and who was described by the The Times of London as “the very architect of Egyptian chronology.”

Donald Shoup

Feb. 6 | 86 | Urban planner and economist on staff with UCLA since 1974 who was best known for The High Cost of Free Parking, which altered how many cities approached street parking.

Dick Jauron

Feb. 8 | 74 | A pro bowl defensive back for the Detroit Lions who rose to the top of the pro football coaching ranks, leading the Chicago Bears from 1999 until 2003 and the Buffalo Bills from 2006 until 2009.

Jim Guy Tucker

Feb. 13 | 81 | Arkansas politician who succeeded Bill Clinton as governor of Arkansas but had to resign in 1996 after he was implicated in the Whitewater real estate fraud scandal.

Patsy Grimaldi

Feb. 13 | 93 | New York City pizza icon who helped redefine the Gotham staple with pies made in coal-fired brick ovens, later creating a pizza chain with over 40 locations across 12 states.

Ken Rosenthal

Feb. 14 | 81 | A woman’s clothier who ditched fashion to open the St. Louis Bread Company in 1987 before selling to Au Bon Pain, which transformed Rosenthal’s chain into Panera Bread.

Uri Shulevitz

Feb. 15 | 89 | Author and children's book illustrator who won four Caldecott awards for best illustrated children’s book including the 1969 medal for his book entitled The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship.

James Harrison

Feb. 17 | 88 | Prolific Australian blood donor whose unique antibodies helped millions of babies survive a blood disease common to newborns making 1,173 blood and plasma donations over nearly six decades.

Gene Hackman

c. Feb. 18 | 95 | A cinema icon whose rough, everyman demeanor made him a Hollywood staple for decades, Hackman earned nominations for five Academy Awards, winning two for his roles in The French Connection and Unforgiven.

David Boren

Feb. 20 | 83 | A conservative Democratic politician who served as a reform-minded governor of Oklahoma in the 1970s, a thrice-elected U.S. senator, and the president of the University of Oklahoma from 1994 to 2018.

Larry Dolan

Feb. 23 | 94 | Longest-tenured baseball owner in Cleveland franchise history who oversaw the changing of the team’s mascot from the Indians to the Guardians during his 25-year run.

Roberta Flack

Feb. 24 | 88 | Award-winning jazz and R&B balladeer best known for her soaring vocals on the 1973 hit “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and her 1973 and 1974 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year.

Martin E. Marty

Feb. 25 | 97 | Prolific Lutheran academic and historian who authored more than 50 books and thousands of academic articles – considered by many an essential historian of the development of the American church.

Boris Spassky

Feb. 27 | 88 | Aggressive Russian chess grandmaster who became a world champion in 1969 and whose defeat in a heavily publicized 1972 match in Reykjavik against American Bobby Fischer was treated as a Cold War confrontation of West versus East.

March

Lincoln Diaz-Balart

March 3 | 70 | A Havana-born politician who fled Cuba with his family as a child and became an eight-term Republican congressman representing South Florida from 1993 until 2011 with a tough stance on the Castro-led Cuba.

Thomas Moser

March 5 | 90 | American carpenter and furniture maker who made bespoke pieces for American presidents and Pope Benedict XVI and founded the handmade furniture company Thos. Moser.

Kevin Drum

March 7 | 66 | American center-left political commentator who helped pioneer political blogging, beginning as an independent blogger in 2002 and then moving his web publication first to Washington Monthly in 2004 and Mother Jones in 2008.

L.J. Smith

March 8 | 66 | Young adult novelist best known for creating The Vampire Diaries novel series, which became popular enough to be adapted into an eight-season CW network TV series.

Anthony Dolan

March 10 | 76 | A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist at The Stamford Advocate who became a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, penning Reagan’s famous “Evil Empire” speech in 1983.

John Feinstein

March 13 | 69 | A longtime Washington Post sportswriter known for the best-selling A Season on the Brink, which profiled Coach Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team during the 1985-86 season.

Alan Simpson

March 14 | 93 | Republican senator from Wyoming who rose to the ranks of leadership and, in 2010 after retiring from the Senate, helped lead a bipartisan commission to make suggestions to fix the nation’s fiscal problems.

Sam Keen

March 19 | 93 | Author and popular philosopher whose 1991 self-help book Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man encouraged men to follow their “warrior spirit” and spent six months on bestseller lists.

Kitty Dukakis

March 21 | 88 | Longtime United States Holocaust Memorial Council member and former first lady of Massachusetts whose famous political husband, Michael Dukakis, served as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1988.

George Foreman

March 21 | 76 | An Olympic gold-medalist boxer who interspersed his professional career—becoming a world heavyweight champion in his 20s and again in his 40s—with a career as a minister and businessman selling more than 100 million George Foreman grills

Mia Love

March 23 | 49 | A political commentator and Tea Party-era Republican politician elected to two congressional terms by Utah voters who made her the first Haitian American to serve in Congress.

Dave Pelz

March 23 | 85 | Former NASA scientist who became a golf guru specializing in the short game spreading his ideas through instructional books, training aids, and schools for pros and amateurs.

Dick Carlson

March 24 | 84 | Head of the U.S. government-sponsored Voice of America from 1986 to 1991 during the end of the Cold War, former head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and father of populist commentator Tucker Carlson.

J. Bennett Johnston

March 25 | 92 | Four-term Democratic senator representing Louisiana who is broadly credited for a landmark energy reform law passed in 1992 that facilitated regulation and created incentives for energy efficiency.

Ronald Katz

March 28 | 89 | American inventor whose technological innovations made 1-800 numbers lucrative by verifying checks and credit cards over the phone, distributing calls, and creating technologies to make call centers possible.

Richard Chamberlain

March 29 | 90 | A popular singer and actor who won multiple Golden Globe awards for starring in shows like Dr. Kildare in the 1960s and the miniseries The Thorn Birds in the 1980s.

April

Val Kilmer

April 1 | 65 | A scene-stealing American actor best remembered for his leading role in Batman Forever, his portrayal of Doc Holliday in Tombstone, and perhaps most notably his depiction of Iceman in the Top Gun franchise.

Theodore McCarrick

April 3 | 94 | A former archbishop of Newark and archbishop of Washington who rose to cardinal until a sex abuse scandal involving both minors and adults led Pope Francis to defrock him in 2019.

David Paton

April 3 | 94 | American ophthalmologist who co-founded Orbis International, a charity group known for transforming passenger jets into mobile eye clinics that have treated the eyes of millions of developing world patients.

Jay North

April 6 | 73 | A child actor whose portrayal of the titular character in the CBS series Dennis the Menace from 1959 to 1963 caused him to become typecast making it difficult to find acting work in adulthood.

Jeremiah P. Ostriker

April 6 | 87 | Astrophysicist at Columbia and Princeton who theorized that galaxies were mostly composed of an invisible dark matter and for which he received the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2015.

Kathleen Thomerson

April 7 | 91 | An accomplished church organist and hymnwriter who served churches in St. Louis and Austin and whose hymn “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light” appears in numerous hymnals.

Octavio Dotel

April 8 | 51 | An effective relief pitcher and sometimes closer who at the time of his retirement in 2014 had played for 13 teams.

John LaFalce

April 11 | 85 | A 14-term veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives who from his perch on the House Banking Committee helped shape the 1999 Financial Services Act and the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Richard Armitage

April 13 | 79 | A former U.S. Navy officer and Reagan and Bush Administration official who was notable for leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity to journalist Robert Novak.

Wink Martindale

April 15 | 91 | A disc jockey turned game show host who hosted shows like Gambit and Tic-Tac-Dough and became one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame.

Pope Francis

April 21 | 88 | First Jesuit and first Latin American holy father of the Roman Catholic Church who was elected in 2013 and demonstrated interest in moving the church toward a more inclusive approach on some social issues.

Steve McMichael

April 23 | 67 | NFL Hall of Fame defensive lineman who played from 1980 until 1994 who helped anchor the middle of the vaunted 1985 Chicago Bears defense and earned a Super Bowl victory in the process.

Roy Cooper

April 29 | 69 | Hall of Fame rodeo cowboy who won an all-around world championship in 1983 whose tie-down roping techniques revolutionized the sport and led to his acquisition of the nickname "Super Looper."

Samuel Escobar

April 29 | 90 | Evangelical theologian from Peru who worked in his native country but also as a professor at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary; influential in making social justice theology more popular within protestant circles.

David Horowitz

April 29 | 86 | American polemicist who traversed the path common to many Jewish intellectuals of his era from radical New Left politics in the 1960s to neoconservatism and advocacy for Zionism later in life.

May

Ruth Buzzi

May 1 | 88 | Sketch comic and Golden Globe winner as a fixture on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In appearing in every episode of the six-season variety show and was most remembered for her portrayal of a sometimes-violent spinster.

George Ryan

May 2 | 91 | Governor of Illinois from 1999 until 2003 when a federal corruption scandal, which included charges of bribery and racketeering, induced him to leave politics and ultimately spend five years in prison.

David Souter

May 8 | 85 | Former Supreme Court justice appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1990 and who penned a portion of the Court’s 1992 decision that affirmed Roe v. Wade and eventually became known as one of the court’s most left-leaning jurists.

Kit Bond

May 13 | 86 | Republican politician from Missouri known for becoming the state’s youngest governor at age 33, who later served as a U.S. senator from 1987 until 2011 and used his perch on the Appropriations Committee to direct home federal spending.

Richard Garwin

May 13 | 97 | American nuclear physicist who, after learning from famed nuclear scientist Enrico Fermi, designed the bomb used in the 1952 Ivy Mike test—the first test of a hydrogen bomb.

James Till

May 18 | 94 | Canadian biophysicist who in a 1961 paper co-authored with colleague Ernest McCulloch proved the existence of stem cells and set the stage for new medical breakthroughs such as bone marrow transplants.

George Wendt

May 20 | 76 | Popular character actor who gained fame, and six Primetime Emmy Award nominations, for his character Norm Peterson on TV's Cheers from 1982 until 1993.

Giovanni “Nino” Benvenuti

May 20 | 87 | Italian Olympic gold medal-winning boxer who would become the undisputed champion in the super-welterweight and middleweight divisions in the 1960s while amassing an 82-7 professional record.

Kay Arthur

May 20 | 91 | Award-winning evangelical Christian author best remembered for her series of Bible studies penned while working for Precept Ministries International, an evangelical education ministry founded by Arthur and her husband.

Alasdair MacIntyre

May 21 | 96 | Influential Scottish-born philosopher and public intellectual who reacquainted readers with classical and medieval thinkers in his 1981 book After Virtue, arguing Enlightenment thinking had forgotten man’s purpose.

Jim Irsay

May 21 | 65 | Son of Indianapolis Colts owner Robert Irsay, becoming the NFL’s youngest general manager at age 24 and finally inheriting the team in 1997 at age 37.

Phil Robertson

May 25 | 79 | Sporting goods businessman and television star who parlayed his wildly successful Duck Commander hunting business into the reality television series Duck Dynasty that aired on A&E from 2012 until 2017.

Charles Rangel

May 26 | 94 | Prominent Democratic politician who represented Harlem in the House of Representatives from 1971 until 2017 chairing the powerful Ways and Means Committee and helping to form the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971.

Bernard Kerik

May 29 | 69 | A New York City cop who rose through the ranks and served as police commissioner at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks and was later convicted of tax fraud.

Loretta Swit

May 30 | 87 | Actress who became one of the most beloved stars of one of television’s most beloved shows playing Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H from 1972 to 1983 during which time she won two Emmy Awards.

June

Walter Brueggemann

June 5 | 92 | Renowned Old Testament scholar who influenced many through his more than 100 books and his time as a seminary professor at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Bill Atkinson

June 5 | 74 | A software designer who joined Apple in 1978 and would create much of computing’s early graphical user interface including drop-down menus and the mouse double-click.

Sly Stone

June 9 | 82 | Erratic frontman for Sly and the Family Stone who found success in the late 1960s with “Everyday People” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) until his drug use degraded the group’s career.

Gary England

June 10 | 85 | Chief meteorologist for CBS affiliate at the center of Tornado Alley in Oklahoma City, best known for issuing advance warnings during numerous deadly tornadoes and for creating the First Warning weather alert system.

Brian Wilson

June 11 | 82 | Enigmatic Beachboys frontman and chief songwriter who aimed for sonic perfection on the group’s Pet Sounds album but whose drug use and mental health problems led to long spells away from performing and recording.

Fred Smith

June 21 | 80 | Businessman and FedEx founder who was a decorated Marine Corps officer in Vietnam and afterward bought a struggling aircraft maintenance firm with his inheritance and turned it into a transportation giant.

Pat Williams

June 25 | 87 | A Democratic congressman representing Montana from 1979 until 1997 who became an ardent defender of the National Endowment for the Arts drawing the ire of the Religious Right.

Bill Moyers

June 26 | 91 | Powerful official within the Lyndon B. Johnson political operation who helped create public broadcasting in the United States and later became an award-winning reporter and documentarian for PBS hosting and producing programs including Frontline.

Carolyn McCarthy

June 26 | 81 | Democratic congresswoman from New York who entered politics after a 1993 mass shooting left her husband dead and her son severely injured, focusing her efforts on gun control measures including a 2007 bill to tighten background checks.

Dave Parker

June 28 | 74 | Hall of Fame slugger primarily for the Pittsburgh Pirates with whom he won a National League MVP award and the 1979 World Series; later Parker would win another World Series with Oakland in 1989.

D. Wayne Lukas

June 28 | 89 | Legendary horse trainer whose stable of horses won a record 20 Breeders’ Cup events and four Kentucky Derby races, and whose 1999 horse, Charismatic, came close to winning the Triple Crown.

S. Daniel Abraham

June 29 | 100 | Billionaire businessman whose Thompson Medical Company introduced the SlimFast brand of diet foods and who founded the nonprofit Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace in 1989.

July

Jimmy Swaggart

July 1 | 90 | American gospel music artist and popular televangelist famous for confessing “I have sinned” to his congregation after being discovered at the center of a prostitution scandal in 1988.

Bobby Jenks

July 4 | 44 | Two-time All-Star relief pitcher mostly for the Chicago White Sox who once tied a major-league record for most consecutive batters retired and finished his career second all-time in saves for the White Sox.

Simon Groot

July 6 | 90 | Dutch agronomist and World Food Prize winner whose company East-West Seed helped develop hybrid cultivars that smallholders in developing countries could use to turn a profit.

David Gergen

July 10 | 83 | Former communications director for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and a longstanding political commentator with CNN and editor-at-large for U.S. News & World Report who served on the academic faculty of both Duke University and Harvard University.

John MacArthur

July 14 | 86 | Influential commentator, popular theologian, and pastor of Grace Community Church who hosted a nationally syndicated Bible program for radio and television focused on expository preaching and whose MacArthur Study Bible sold more than 4 million copies.

Bill Clay

July 16 | 94 | A Civil rights-era demonstrator who became a 32-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives from St. Louis and became a co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Connie Francis

July 16 | 87 | A pop balladeer whose songs, including “Who’s Sorry Now” and “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” which in 1960 made her the first woman to get a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, made her one of the most popular female acts of the 20th century.

Edwin Feulner

July 18 | 83 | A former congressional aide who co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and served as the think tank’s president from 1977 until 2013 and again in 2017.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

July 20 | 54 | Actor best known for portraying teenager Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 until 1992 later starring in his own UPN sitcom and becoming a Grammy-winning musician.

Ozzy Osbourne

July 22 | 76 | Frontman of heavy metal band Black Sabbath whose dark and ominous persona for the stage softened in later years as he became a tame reality television star.

Chuck Mangione

July 22 | 84 | Two-time Grammy-winning flugelhorn player whose instrumental track “Feels So Good” became a hit propelling Mangione to unlikely fame including becoming a recurring character on Fox’s King of the Hill.

Hulk Hogan

July 24 | 71 | Born Terry Bollea, a professional wrestler who helped mainstream the sport and whose body slam of Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III in 1987 became one of the sport's most indelible moments.

Tom Lehrer

July 26 | 97 | Math academic turned musical satirist who gained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s by composing parodies of well-known songs with his own whimsical lyrics and became the resident songwriter for That Was The Week That Was.

Ryne Sandberg

July 28 | 65 | Hall of Fame second baseman for the Chicago Cubs who blasted 282 home runs between 1981 and 1997 winning an MVP award and being named to 10 straight All-Star teams.

Flaco Jimenez

July 31 | 86 | Grammy-winning San Antonio-based accordion player who served as a frontman for Tex-Mex supergroups Los Super Seven and the Texas Tornadoes and as a session musician on hits including the chart-topping “Streets of Bakersfield.”

August

Ercole Spada

Aug. 3 | 88 | Italian car designer who worked for the famous design firm Zagato and was responsible for the 1960s-era Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato as well as other designs for Ferrari, Ford, and others.

Loni Anderson

Aug. 3 | 79 | Actress best known for starring in WKRP in Cincinnati and for being a subject of tabloid speculation during her marriage to screen legend Burt Reynolds.

Edward T. Blake

Aug. 6 | 80 | Forensic scientist who first used PCR DNA testing to analyze criminal cases becoming a sought-after expert witness whose testing and testimony helped exonerate roughly 50 people falsely convicted.

Jim Lovell

Aug. 7 | 97 | NASA astronaut who, while commanding the Apollo 13 mission, avoided near calamity when a failure in the spacecraft forced the crew to abandon their moon-landing mission.

William H. Webster

Aug. 8 | 101 | A federal district and 8th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who left the judiciary to serve nearly a decade as FBI director from 1978 until 1987 and then spent four years leading the CIA, the only person in U.S. history to lead both agencies.

Dale Webster

Aug. 9 | 76 | A Northern California man whose love of surfing led him to catch waves for 14,642 straight days between 1975 and 2015 despite inclement weather, shark infestations, and kidney stones, giving him a Guinness World Record.

Mike Castle

Aug. 14 | 86 | Moderate Delaware Republican who served two terms as governor of Delaware before spending 18 years in the House of Representatives before losing in a 2010 Senate Republican primary to a Tea Party candidate.

Frank Caprio

Aug. 20 | 88 | Providence, R.I., municipal judge who became both a viral social media sensation and the star of Caught in Providence, which depicted traffic cases in Caprio’s courtroom.

James Dobson

Aug. 21 | 89 | An academic psychologist at USC before founding Focus on the Family in 1977 building a broadcast empire based on his winsome defense of traditional family values and offering childrearing advice from an evangelical perspective.

Gordon Bowker

Aug. 21 | 82 | Seattle entrepreneur who co-founded the first Starbucks Coffee in 1971 and Redhook Ale Brewery in 1981, later selling the 11-store coffee franchise in 1987 to Howard Schultz.

Forrest Lucas

Aug. 23 | 83 | A long-haul trucker and freight broker who founded the Indiana-based automotive oil and fuel additive company Lucas Oil in 1988.

Duke Cunningham

Aug. 27 | 83 | Vietnam fighter ace and multi-term Republican congressman from California who resigned in disgrace in 2005 after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors.

Lee Roy Jordan

Aug. 30 | 84 | Stalwart linebacker for the Alabama Crimson Tide winning a 1961 national championship before playing a central role in the Dallas Cowboys’ Doomsday Defense that won Super Bowl VI in 1972.

September

Graham Greene

Sept. 1 | 73 | Oscar-nominated Canadian actor known for playing Native American roles in films like Dances with Wolves and Maverick who also won a Grammy for a children’s spoken word album in 2000.

Giorgio Armani

Sept. 4 | 91 | Sartorial icon who created the luxury fashion house Armani in 1975 and whose chic designs helped reimagine power suits for men and women and became a favored uniform for celebrities walking the red carpet.

Davey Johnson

Sept. 5 | 82 | Four-time All Star infielder who won two World Series with the Baltimore Orioles in 1966 and 1970 and who also managed five different teams, including the champion New York Mets in 1986.

Ken Dryden

Sept. 5 | 78 | Six-time Stanley Cup-winning goalie for the Montreal Canadiens between 1971 and 1979 who would later serve seven years as a Liberal member of Canadian parliament representing a portion of Ontario.

Rick Davies

Sept. 6 | 81 | English rock musician and founding member of Supertramp, for which he sang, played keyboard, and composed hits including “Goodbye Stranger.”

David Baltimore

Sept. 6 | 87 | Nobel Prize-winning biologist and virologist who chiefly studied RNA viruses like polio and who served as president of CalTech from 1997 until 2006.

John Burton

Sept. 7 | 92 | Former Congressman representing California who resigned in 1982 due to a crack cocaine addiction but forged a political comeback to chair the California Democratic party from 2009 until 2017.

Charlie Kirk

Sept. 10 | 31 | Political activist and co-founder of the youth-focused conservative group Turning Point USA who was gunned down during an event at Utah Valley University during a barnstorming tour of college campuses.

Ricky Hatton

Sept. 14 | 46 | English boxer who won world championships in the super lightweight and welterweight divisions and was known for his crunching body shots, finishing his career 45-3.

Robert Redford

Sept. 16 | 89 | Oscar-winning Hollywood star, known for appearing alongside Paul Newman in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as in the 1973 film The Sting and who later founded the Sundance Film Festival.

Sara Jane Moore

Sept. 24 | 95 | Radical activist associated with the Symbionese Liberation Army who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975 just 17 days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme also attempted to assassinate Ford.

Voddie Baucham

Sept. 25 | 56 | Firebrand reformed Baptist preacher and theologian who railed against social justice politics of the left and who had recently served as the founding president of Founders Seminary.

Robert Barnett

Sept. 25 | 79 | Washington, D.C., attorney famous for negotiating some of the biggest political book deals, inking lucrative advances for the memoirs of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama.

Assata Shakur

Sept. 25 | 78 | Radical activist associated with the Black Liberation Army who gunned down a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, escaped prison, and lived at large in Cuba as a radical left cause célèbres.

Russell M. Nelson

Sept. 27 | 101 | Prominent cardiologist turned leader of the Latter-day Saints from 2018 until his death, during which time he made changes to modernize the Mormon movement.

October

Jane Goodall

Oct. 1 | 91 | Famed British zoologist and expert on the social lives of primates whose long association with National Geographic and her research into chimpanzees turned her into a popular author, documentarian, and lecturer.

Patricia Routledge

Oct. 3 | 96 | Tony winning actress who was best known as the social-climbing star character on 1990s-era BBC comedy series Keeping Up Appearances for which she won a British Comedy Award in 1991.

Jilly Cooper

Oct. 5 | 88 | Prolific British romance novelist who penned the Rutshire Chronicles series of 11 books published between 1985 and 2023 and which were later adapted into the streaming television series Rivals in 2024.

Bruce Cutler

Oct. 6 | 77 | American trial lawyer made famous for high-profile criminal defense cases winning three acquittals for Gambino crime family boss John Gotti before being disqualified from representing Gotti in his subsequent murder trial.

John Gurdon

Oct. 7 | 92 | British biologist and Nobel Prize winner who, while a graduate student at Oxford, successfully cloned a frog and whose research and methods paved the way for cloning larger species.

Diane Keaton

Oct. 11 | 79 | Actress who featured in The Godfather trilogy and who won an Oscar for playing the title character in the 1977 film Annie Hall opposite Woody Allen—just one of eight films on which she and Allen would collaborate.

Drew Struzan

Oct. 13 | 78 | Award-winning illustrator whose more than 150 movie poster designs—including for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future—created an era-defining aesthetic.

D’Angelo

Oct. 14 | 51 | Hall of fame R&B singer who won Grammy awards and whose Voodoo album found a high place on Rolling Stone magazine’s top albums of all-time list.

Ace Frehley

Oct. 16 | 74 | A New York musician who became a founding member of KISS and helped design the band’s stage persona, costumes, makeup, and pyrotechnics before leaving the group in 1982.

Susan Stamberg

Oct. 16 | 87 | Journalist and radio legend who helped form the voice of NPR over decades of on-air service including co-hosting of the network’s All Things Considered program from 1972 to 1986.

Phyllis Trible

Oct. 17 | 92 | An influential Christian feminist and theologian who argued that men and women were equal before God from her perch at Union Theological Seminary and Wake Forest School of Divinity.

Chen Ning Yang

Oct. 18 | 103 | Chinese-American physicist whose discoveries earned him a Nobel Prize in 1957 and who became a noted physics textbook author and long-time professor at Stony Brook University for more than 30 years.

June Lockart

Oct. 23 | 100 | Actress known for supporting roles in prominent 1940s-era feature films and for playing the mother in the 1950s television series Lassie and for her later role in Lost in Space.

Henry Lyons

Oct. 27 | 83 | Former National Baptist Convention president who in 1998 was charged with fraud and money laundering for mishandling millions of dollars belonging to the denomination.

November

Victor Conte

Nov. 3 | 75 | Bass player for funk group Tower of Power who later emerged as the head of BALCO, an illegal performance enhancing drug supplier at the center of baseball’s steroid scandal.

Dick Cheney

Nov. 3 | 84 | Republican luminary who served multiple roles in Congress and presidential administrations culminating in eight years of service as vice president under George W. Bush where he advocated for strong executive power and a muscular foreign policy.

Diane Ladd

Nov. 3 | 89 | Veteran actress appeared in Chinatown and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974 and was later nominated for three Oscars and won one Golden Globe Award for her work on the sitcom Alice.

James Watson

Nov. 6 | 97 | Molecular biologist who in 1953 co-authored a scientific paper describing the double helix nature of DNA—a discovery for which he was later awarded a Nobel Prize.

Lenny Wilkens

Nov. 9 | 88 | A basketball hall-of-famer who was named to nine all-star teams during his 15-year playing career and served as head coach of six different teams across a 32-year coaching career winning 1,332 games.

Paul Tagliabue

Nov. 9 | 84 | Former influential NFL commissioner who led the league between 1989 and 2006 overseeing the expansion of the league and its rapid rise in popularity.

Michael Ray Richardson

Nov. 11 | 70 | A four-time All Star NBA basketball player whose career was cut short when in 1986 he became the league’s first to face a lifetime ban for repeated drug abuse.

Mark Mellman

Nov. 20 | 70 | Political operative who consulted John Kerry on his failed 2004 presidential campaign and formed the Democratic Majority for Israel to promote pro-Israel politicians within the Democratic Party.

H. Rap Brown

Nov. 23 | 82 | A Civil Rights-era agitator who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1967 and worked with the Black Panthers before being convicted of killing a law enforcement officer in 2000.

Jimmy Cliff

Nov. 24 | 81 | A legend of Reggae music who helped spread the musical form outside of his native Jamaica most notably with his remake of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” for the 1993 film Cool Runnings.

Fuzzy Zoeller

Nov. 27 | 74 | A former Masters and U.S. Open champion golfer who won 10 PGA tour events but whose racially tinged comments about a young Tiger Woods in 1997 tarnished his reputation.

Robert A.M. Stern

Nov. 27 | 86 | Longtime dean of the Yale School of Architecture who designed a luxury condominium building in Manhattan, 15 Central Park West, and later won an award for contemporary classical architecture.

Tom Stoppard

Nov. 29 | 88 | English playwright who wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, for which he won a Tony Award, and the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, for which he won an Oscar for best screenplay.

December

Luci Shaw

Dec. 1 | 96 | A poet and prolific Christian writer who published many volumes of free verse poetry, collaborated on books with noted author Madeleine L’Engle, and taught writing for decades at Regent College.

Elden Campbell

Dec. 1 | 57 | A dominating basketball player at Clemson University who fashioned for himself a long NBA career most notably with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Detroit Pistons with whom he won a championship.

Frank Gehry

Dec. 5 | 96 | Notable architect whose designs incorporated unconventional building materials and who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

Jubilant Sykes

Dec. 8 | 71 | Grammy-nominated opera singer known for sacred music as well as jazz and spirituals who performed with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Rob Reiner

Dec. 14 | 78 | An actor and filmmaker who rose to fame playing “Meathead” on All in the Family before directing a string of hit movies including This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and A Few Good Men.

Editor’s note: This page includes additional deaths we didn’t have room for in the January print issue, along with additional deaths from mid-to-late December.