Tom Aldredge

83, July 22 | Emmy-winning stage, film, and TV character actor, seen often in roles as a cantankerous old man (Carmela's father on The Sopranos, Ozzie in Sticks and Bones).

John R. Allison

98, June 6 | WWII fighter ace who co-led a 1944 secret Allied nighttime mission by glider from India into enemy-held Burma, taking only six days to bring in over 9,000 troops, supplies, pack animals, and heavy equipment to build an airbase in the jungle from which the British launched devastating ground attacks against the advancing Japanese.

William Aramony

84, Nov. 11 | President of the United Way of America for two decades, with annual donations increasing to more than $3 billion, but jailed in 1995 for defrauding the UWA of over $1 million.

James Arness

88, June 3 | Six-foot-seven actor who played morally principled U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon in two decades and 635 episodes of TV's Gunsmoke, keeping compassionate law and order in the Kansas frontier cow town of Dodge City in the late 1800s.

Hermann J. Austel

83, May 29 | Hebrew scholar, seminary professor, Bible translator, and editor of the Old Testament translation of the New American Standard Bible.

George Ballas

85, June 25 | Inventor in 1971 of the Weed Eater, better known as the Weed Whacker, an essential tool for lawn care and landscape work-an idea he got from watching his auto go through a car wash.

Seve Ballesteros

54, May 7 | Spanish golfing great with more than 90 international tournament wins, including a record 50 European titles, who, Tiger Woods said, was "probably the most creative player who's ever played the game."

Paul Baran

84, March 26 | Rand company engineer who in the late 1950s discovered the U.S. Defense Department could build a more secure communication system by using a computer network that would break messages into units, then route each unit along any open path, and reassemble them at the destination-a process known as "packet switching." The government used the method to build its ARPA network, the precursor to the internet.

Charles Kingsley Barrett

94, Aug. 26 | British New Testament scholar, author of Bible commentaries, teacher, and Methodist minister whose opposition to a proposed Anglican-Methodist union in the 1960s gained him recognition.

David Barrett

83, Aug. 4 | Anglican-priest-turned-Baptist and missions researcher who focused on "unreached people groups," and founding editor of the monumental World Christian Encyclopedia.

John Barry

83, May 29 | Composer of the music scores for James Bond films and winner of five Academy Awards as composer for Born Free, Dances with Wolves, and other films.

Doris Belack

85, Oct. 4 | Veteran stage, film, and television actress best known as no-nonsense Judge Margaret Barry on Law & Order.

Derrick Bell

80, Oct. 5 | First tenured black professor at Harvard Law School who resigned his post to protest the school's hiring practices, noted mainly for his controversial promotion of a body of legal scholarship known as "critical race theory," claiming that racism is ingrained in laws and legal institutions.

Pauline Betz (Addie)

91, May 31 | Tennis champion of the 1940s, winning four U.S. Open titles and the 1946 women's singles trophy at Wimbledon.

Shahbaz Bhatti

42, March 2 | Pakistani legislator, government Minister for Minorities, human-rights advocate opposed to the country's anti-Christian blasphemy law, and a Catholic who defended fellow Christians from the law's abuses; gunned down in the streets by an Islamic group claiming he was a "known blasphemer."

Osama Bin Laden

54, May 2 | Saudi founder of al-Qaeda who planned the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York and Washington; shot by U.S. forces in a firefight at his comfortable hideout near Pakistan's capital.

Roberts Blossom

87, July 8 | Veteran character actor remembered best as "old man Marley," the white-bearded next-door neighbor who befriends Macaulay Culkin in the hit movie Home Alone.

John Morton Blum

90, Oct. 17 | Prominent Yale historian who specialized in scholarly studies of U.S. presidents, including a surprising revamp of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt's typically dismissed importance.

Baruch Samuel Blumberg

85, April 5 | Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who in the late 1960s discovered the liver-deadly hepatitis B virus and later co-developed a vaccine against it that saved untold millions of lives across the world.

Wally Boag

90, June 3 | Disneyland's legendary "Pecos Bill," a hilarious cornball jokester and trickster billed as an Old West traveling salesman in the amusement park's Golden Horseshoe Revue multiple times a day for nearly 30 years and 40,000 performances. At his side most of that time was Betty Taylor as his sweetheart Slue Foot Sue, saloon hostess; she died at age 91 the day following Boag's death.

Lilian Jackson Braun (Bettinger)

97, June 4 | Prolific humorous-mystery novelist whose popular The Cat Who ... series spanned 29 volumes and four decades.

Patricia Breslin (Modell)

80, Oct. 12 | Stage, film, and television actress whose roles included wife of a politician (Jackie Cooper) with a talking dog named Cleo in The People's Choice 1950s sitcom, Meg Baldwin in the soap opera General Hospital, and Laura Brooks in Peyton Place.

Walter Breuning

114, April 14 | Reputedly the world's oldest man at the time of his death, who credited his longevity to eating only two meals a day, working as long as he could, helping others, and embracing change.

David Broder

81, March 9 | Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated Washington Post political columnist, often called the dean of the Washington press corps, a frequent panelist on national TV news talk shows.

Albert Brown

105, Aug. 14 | Oldest living survivor of the 1942 WWII six-day, 66-mile Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

Frank Buckles

110, Feb. 27 | The last U.S. World War I veteran of the nearly 5 million Americans who served in that war.

Don Butler

80, Feb. 3 | Gospel singer, composer, talent agent, co-founder in 1964 of the Gospel Music Association, and TV producer for the GMA Dove Awards.

Charles Callas

83, Jan. 27 | Zany comedian who accompanied his jokes with sound effects from his own mouth and appeared on just about every television variety and talk show from the 1960s to the 1980s; he was a regular on The Andy Williams Show and The ABC Comedy Hour.

Delois Barrett Campbell

85, Aug. 2 | "The mightiest voice of the greatest female trio in gospel," as the Chicago Tribune music critic described her. She grew up in church, with Mahalia Jackson and composer Tommy Dorsey as neighbors, and with her siblings performed as the Barrett Sisters for more than 60 years, with over 50 world tours and the acclaimed 1982 documentary, Say Amen, Somebody.

William Campbell

87, April 28 | Film and TV actor probably best known for his roles in the Star Trek series, including as Koloth, a Klingon captain fighting off little Tribble creatures.

Warren Christopher

85, March 18 | President Bill Clinton's first-term secretary of state, who shunned publicity and delegated the nitty-gritty of negotiations with foreign powers to others.

Jackie Cooper

88, May 3 | Popular child star who played Jackie in the Our Gang comedies, the title role in Skippy, and years later as an adult played editor of the Daily Planet in the four Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Harry Coover

94, March 26 | Eastman-Kodak chemist who accidentally discovered a powerful adhesive compound known today as Super Glue and Instant Krazy Glue.

Ken Curtis

71, Jan. 3 | Evangelical filmmaker and church historian, founder of Gateway Films/Vision Video and Christian History magazine.

Al Davis

82, Oct. 8 | Combative, win-at-any-cost, super-tough-guy Football Hall of Fame owner, general manager, and former coach of the Oakland Raiders whose teams won 15 conference titles and three Super Bowls in his 48 years at the helm, often marked by his feuds with the NFL and some of his own coaches and players.

John Dye

47, Jan. 10 | Actor who played the angel of death on the TV series Touched by an Angel.

Thomas Eisner

81, March 25 | Cornell biologist who studied insects and other bugs to observe their mating and feeding patterns, and to learn about the built-in chemical repellants and other survival strategies they use to defend themselves, all told notably in For the Love of Insects (2003).

Samuel Ericsson

66, Jan. 21 | Lawyer who directed the 4,500-member Christian Legal Society in the 1980s and later founded and headed Advocates International, a large global network of lawyers championing religious freedom. He was lead counsel in the landmark California Supreme Court case in 1988 that closed the door to "clergy malpractice" claims, and was a key architect of the federal Equal Access Act of 1984.

Robert Ettinger

92, July 23 | Physics teacher and science fiction writer who founded the cryonics movement, whose advocates believe if a body is quick frozen, it can be restored to life by future advances in medical science; who, after his second wife died in 2000, told the Detroit News, "If both of my wives are revived, that will be a high class problem."

Robert P. Evans

93, July 28 | Navy chaplain wounded in World War II, evangelist and early leader in Youth for Christ, and founder and long-time director of Paris-based Greater Europe Mission, also an organizer of Billy Graham's historic 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin.

Peter Falk

83, June 23 | Four-time Emmy Award-winning actor loved by millions as TV's rumpled, raspy-voiced, one-eyed (for real) homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo, who chomped on cigars, drove an old beat-up car, showed up everywhere wearing his worn-out fabric raincoat, but whose appearance and "Oh, just one more question" took criminals unaware. The Columbo TV movies and series spanned some 35 years.

Geraldine Ferraro

75, March 26 | Democrat from New York elected to Congress in 1978, a feminist and abortion supporter who served three terms and became the first woman nominated as vice president on a major party ticket in 1984, then defeated by Reagan-Bush.

Mary Fickett

83, Sept. 8 | Emmy-winning actress who for nearly 30 years played nurse Ruth Martin on the ABC daytime drama All My Children.

Betty Ford

93, July 8 | Wife of former President Gerald Ford who had a mastectomy weeks after moving into the White House and went public with it to create greater awareness of breast cancer, and who in 1982 co-founded a California-based rehab clinic, the Betty Ford Center, following victory in her own struggle with alcohol and addiction to pills.

"Smokin' Joe" Frazier

67, Nov. 7 | Heavyweight boxing champion who in "the fight of the century" in 1971 pummeled opponent Muhammad Ali in the 15th round-Ali's first loss-but lost the title to George Foreman in 1973, and lost the next two bouts with Ali, though ending with only four losses in 37 professional fights.

George Gallup Jr.

81, Nov. 21 | Evangelical Episcopalian who led the well-known opinion polling research company his father founded, expanding it to include sampling and appraising Americans' views on religion and the level of commitment to their faith.

Robert W. Galvin

89, Oct. 11 | Entrepreneur who in 1959 took the helm of Motorola, a family business founded by his father that originated car radios and walkie-talkies, and quickly grew it from $290 million in sales to a global electronics giant and pioneer in cellular phone technology with $10.8 billion in annual sales when he stepped down in 1990.

Betty Garrett

91, Feb. 12 | Actress best known as the flirty girl in love with the shy Frank Sinatra in the 1949 MGM musicals, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and On the Town, and as a regular on the TV series All in the Family and Laverne & Shirley.

Edwin Gaustad

87, March 25 | Influential church historian, leading expert on religion in colonial America, and author (The Great Awakening in New England, Religious History of America, and works on theologian Roger Williams). He was a lifelong Baptist who took a strict approach to separation of church and state.

Peter J. Gomes

68, Feb. 28 | Thundering theologically liberal black Baptist preacher, Harvard Divinity School professor of Christian morals, minister of Harvard University's campus church, and self-identified "celibate gay" who attacked religious fundamentalism and literal interpretations of the Bible.

Bruce Gordon

94, Jan. 20 | Actor most memorably known for playing Chicago mob boss Frank Nitti on The Untouchables television series (1959-1963).

Michael Gough

94, March 17 | British actor in more than 150 films, most famous for playing Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth.

William M. Greathouse

91, March 24 | Scholarly giant of the Wesleyan holiness movement who served as a Church of the Nazarene pastor, university and seminary president, and the denomination's general superintendent 1976-1989.

Elliot Handler

95, July 21 | Pioneering toy designer of miniature music boxes, co-founder with his wife in 1945 of Mattel, creating the Barbie doll and Hot Wheels, among many others toys.

Murray Handwerker

89, May 14 | Son who transformed his parents' "Nathan's Famous" single hot dog stand in Brooklyn's Coney Island (where frankfurters went for a nickel) into a popular national fast-food chain.

Philip Hannan

98, Sept. 29 | Catholic archbishop of New Orleans for 23 years, staunch anti-communist, leader of U.S. Catholic bishops, an Army chaplain during WWII in Europe, and during years in the Washington archdiocese, a confidante to President Kennedy, whose funeral sermon he preached.

Nancy Hardesty

69, April 8 | A former Eternity and Christian Century editor, Clemson religion professor, co-author of the influential evangelical feminism book All We're Meant to Be, and co-founder of what is now called the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus.

Sidney Harman

92, April 12 | Energetic industrialist and philanthropist who with colleague Bernard Kardon in 1953 invented the first integrated high-fidelity audio receiver, and grew Harman Industries into a successful global electronics manufacturer.

Mark Hatfield

89, Aug. 7 | Two-term Oregon governor and Republican U.S. Senator 1967-1997; known for his opposition to the Vietnam War and promotion of federal spending on healthcare; an ardent evangelical, pro-life Baptist active in Washington's prayer breakfast movement.

Florence Parry Heide

92, Oct. 23 | Storyteller, poet, and writer of popular illustrated children's books (The Shrinking of Treehorn, Some Things Are Scary).

Arthur F. Holmes

87, Oct. 8 | Influential and sometimes controversial Wheaton College philosophy professor and author (All Truth Is God's Truth) who countered the anti-intellectualism he perceived in the American church, pressing for integration of faith and learning.

Ray H. Hughes

87, April 4 | Former general overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) and president of the denomination's Lee College (now University), who also served terms as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, and the Pentecostal World Conference.

Brian Jacques

71, Feb. 5 | British blue-collar worker who in 1986 authored Redwall, his first book in an international best-selling 22-volume children's fantasy series. The final volume, The Rogue Crew, was published after he died.

Steve Jobs

56, Oct. 5 | Co-founder and marketing genius of Apple who over the years introduced a succession of innovative products (the Macintosh computer in 1984, which launched the desktop publishing revolution, the iBook in 1999, the iPod and iTunes store in 2001, the iPhone in 2007), changing the way people interact with technology and making Apple a pop-culture phenomenon as well as one of the world's most valuable companies.

John Henry Johnson

81, June 3 | Pro Football Hall of Fame great who starred as both an agile runner and powerful blocker and played in four Pro Bowls during 11 seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Houston Oilers.

Leo Kahn

94, May 11 | Co-founder in 1986 of the discount office superstore chain Staples, an empire that has grown to $25 billion in annual sales, with 91,000 employees in 26 countries; he went on to start health food chains Fresh Fields and Nation's Heartland, both of which he sold to Whole Foods.

Frank Kameny

86, Oct. 11 | An early and outspoken leading figure in the gay-rights movement, fired from the Army Map Service in 1957, for which the federal government issued a formal apology in 2009.

Bil Keane

89, Nov. 8 | Father of five and an artist who in 1960 created "Family Circus," a single-panel cartoon in a circle featuring traditional values and subtle humor as a mommy, daddy, and their four kids live out the warmth and joys of everyday family life. Son Jeff is continuing the hugely popular cartoon, syndicated in some 1,500 newspapers.

Glen Kehrein

63, Nov. 12 | White leader of Circle Urban Ministry in Chicago who lived and worked in a black neighborhood for three decades, transforming relationships and leading Circle to become a national leader in urban community ministry (he also helped to establish Christian Community Development Association), and with Raleigh Washington wrote the influential tell-all and how-to book, Breaking Down Walls.

Tom Keith

64, Oct. 30 | The live on-stage radio voice actor and sound-effects genius who for more than 30 years used homemade props, grocery packages, and his own vocal cords to mimic the sounds of everything from crunching snow and falling trees to clucking chickens and elk calls for Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion.

Jack Kevorkian

83, June 3 | Pathologist and assisted-suicide advocate for the terminally ill, known as "Dr. Death," imprisoned for eight years and arrested frequently for helping more than 130 patients commit suicide from 1990 to 2000.

Harmon Killebrew

74, May 17 | Baseball Hall of Fame home-run slugger-573 homers in 22 seasons between 1959 and 1975 for the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins and one year with the Kansas City Royals, a record second only to Babe Ruth in the American League when he retired.

Catherine Clark Kroeger

85, Feb. 14 | New Testament scholar and teacher at Gordon Conwell seminary, author and editor (The IVP Women's Bible Commentary), evangelical Presbyterian, and founder of Christians for Biblical Equality who advocated equality of roles for men and women in ministry and church leadership.

Jack LaLanne

96, Jan. 23 | Exercise and diet practitioner and promoter, gym equipment designer, and muscle-bulging TV show host widely acknowledged as founder of the modern physical fitness movement.

J. Harold Lane

82, June 6 | Southern Gospel Hall of Fame singer (with the Gospel Harmony Boys and The Speer Family) and songwriter ("I'm Standing on the Solid Rock" and "Touring That City").

Milton Levine

97, Jan. 16 | Creator in 1956 of "Uncle Milton's Ant Farm," a $1.98 6-by-9-inch farmhouse for ants for childhood education and enjoyment, with more than 20 million sold (today at $10.99 each).

Leonard Lomell

91, March 1 | Highly decorated WWII hero, a thrice-wounded U.S. Army Ranger, known best for finding and disabling five German 155-mm guns with a 12-mile range hidden in an orchard on the Normandy coast in the early hours of D-Day; recognized as the single individual-other than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower-most responsible for the success of D-Day.

Charlie Louvin

83, Jan. 26 | Country Hall of Fame singer, half of the legendary Louvin Brothers (his brother died in a 1965 auto accident), a Grand Ole Opry favorite with nearly 20 solo albums.

"Easy Ed" Macauley

83, Nov. 8 | An early NBA great who starred for the Boston Celtics and at age 32 became the youngest player elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame-a distinction that still holds-who went on to be a TV sportscaster, and, as a Catholic deacon, co-authored a book on how to write sermons.

John Mackey

69, July 6 | Big but speedy tight end, he starred for the Baltimore Colts 1963-1971 , became president of the league's players union, and was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992.

Hugh Martin

96, March 11 | Broadway and film songwriter who composed three classics introduced by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis: "The Trolley Song," "The Boy Next Door," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Max Mathews

84, May 21 | Known as the "father of computer music," the Bell Laboratories software engineer in 1957 wrote "Music," a program that allowed an IBM 704 mainframe computer to play a 17-second composition-the first digitized music.

Ollie Matson

80, Feb. 19 | U.S. Olympic medal-winning sprinter, an All American on the University of San Francisco football team, and a top all-around All-Pro star during 14 seasons with five mostly terrible teams in the NFL 1952-1966; inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972.

Ellen McCormack

84, March 27 | Anti-abortion activist who ran as a Democrat for president in 1976, winning 200,000 votes in 18 state primaries; she ran in 1980 on the Right-to-Life Party ticket, garnering about 32,000 votes in three primaries.

Harry Morgan

96, Dec. 7 | Emmy-winning actor best known as "Colonel Potter" in the long-running television sitcom M*A*S*H.

Joseph E. Mortimer Jr.

80, July 1 | Catholic founder and publisher of Voices for the Unborn newspaper who proclaimed the message in billboards and other media that "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart."

Bernard Nathanson

84, Feb. 21 | Former Manhattan obstetrician who presided over an estimated 75,000 abortions (including his own child's), then denounced the practice in 1979, authored the best-seller Aborting America, directed and narrated the pro-life films The Silent Scream and Eclipse of Reason, and as a former atheist found "peace" after converting to Catholicism in 1996.

David Nelson

74, Jan. 11 | Son who starred on his parents' popular television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

Eugene Nida

96, Aug. 25 | Internationally famed linguist, global trainer of missionary translators, and overseer of hundreds of Bible translations as long-time director of translations for the American Bible Society.

Arthur C. Nielsen Jr.

92, Oct. 3 | Household synonym for television ratings who transformed his father's once-obscure Chicago market research firm into a global survey and measurement giant.

Lana Peters

85, Nov. 22 | Born Svetlana Stalina, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter and last surviving child, who defected to the West in Cold War 1967 and wrote two best-selling autobiographies.

Paul Picerni

88, Jan. 12 | Actor best known as Eliot Ness' righthand man, Lee Hobson, in the 1960s TV series The Untouchables.

Robert Pierpoint

86, Oct. 22 | CBS News radio and TV correspondent for more than four decades who covered the Korean War, the White House under six presidents-from Eisenhower to Carter-including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Muammar Qaddafi

69, Oct. 20 | Eccentric, unstable, and brutal dictator who ruled Libya for 42 years; long-time sponsor of global terrorist organizations who allegedly ordered the 1988 bombing that downed Pan Am flight 103, killing 270; brutally slain in the uprising that toppled his government.

Norman F. Ramsey

96, Nov. 4 | MIT and Harvard physicist whose work with atoms, molecules, and electromagnetic radiation led to the development of the atomic clock-and a 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics-and laid the groundwork for magnetic resonance imaging and GPS applications.

Peggy Rea

89, Feb. 5 | Prolific character actress known for her roles in television, including as Lulu, wife of Boss Hogg and sister of Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard, as Cousin Bertha on All in the Family, and Jean Kelly on Grace Under Fire.

Andy Rooney

92, Nov. 4 | The rumpled, often frowning, bushy-eyebrowed critic of human and corporate behavior who made grouchy teasing a signature art form for a few minutes every week for 32 years as a commentator on 60 Minutes.

William Rusher

87, April 16 | A leading strategist in the postwar rise of political conservatism, seen in the nominations of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan for president and the rise of the Republican right; he was an author, syndicated columnist, and publisher of National Review.

Jane Russell

89, Feb. 28 | Hollywood sex symbol in the 1940s and 1950s (The Outlaw, Calamity Jane in The Paleface, showgirl in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) who in later life turned to Christianity and organized Bible study groups in Hollywood.

R. Sargent Shriver

95, Jan. 18 | John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law, founder of the Peace Corps, architect of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," and George McGovern's running mate in 1972.

Fred Shuttlesworth

89, Oct. 5 | Alabama Baptist pastor and early leader in the Civil Rights movement, co-founder with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 who became a confrontational activist during violent 1963 Birmingham protests.

Duke Snider

84, Feb. 27 | Baseball Hall of Fame center-fielder and home run hitter during the Brooklyn Dodgers' glory years 1949-1957 (40 or more HRs in five consecutive seasons, and the only player to hit four home runs twice in a World Series).

John Stott

90, July 27 | London-based Anglican preacher, writer, and one of the most influential figures in the formation of the evangelical movement in the 20th century, whose unwavering commitment to the authority of Scripture and scholarly approach to expositing its message won the respect of generations of Christian university students across the globe, many of them nurtured by his best-known book, Basic Christianity.

William Stuntz

52, March 15 | Respected Harvard criminal law professor, author of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, an evangelical and influential conservative legal scholar known for his teaching of Christian legal theory.

Salmaan Taseer

65, Jan. 4 | Pakistan provincial governor and human-rights advocate assassinated in Islamabad by his security guard opposed to his defense of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death.

Clarice Taylor

93, May 30 | Actress known best as "Grandmother Huxtable" on The Cosby Show and as Harriet on Sesame Street.

Elizabeth Taylor

79, March 23 | Academy Award-winning actress who appeared in more than 50 films over 70 years in front of a camera (National Velvet, A Place in the Sun, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

Donald Tyson

80, Jan. 6 | College dropout who became one of the world's richest men by building his father's Arkansas chicken business over 43 years into Tyson Foods.

Margaret Whiting

86, Jan. 10 | Pop singer whose voice and career spanned seven decades on film, stage, television, and cabarets with more than 700 recordings ("That Old Black Magic," "Far Away Places," "Wedding Bells").

David Wilkerson

79, April 27 | Pentecostal evangelist who in 1959 in Brooklyn founded the well-known ministry to troubled teens Teen Challenge, author of the mega bestseller The Cross and the Switchblade (1963), and founder in 1987 of Times Square Church in Manhattan, where he was senior pastor, preaching to 5,000 on Sundays until retirement in 2010.

Roger Williams

87, Oct. 8 | Popular and versatile pianist who played for nine U.S. presidents and for Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral; his 1955 "Autumn Leaves" was the only piano instrumental to reach No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts, and remains the best-selling piano record of all time, with more than 2 million sold.

Tom Wilson Sr.

80, Sept. 16 | Syndicated cartoonist who created Ziggy, a hard-luck character who has been a mainstay on the comics page of hundreds of newspapers for more than 40 years.

Dick Winters

92, Jan. 2 | Decorated Army officer and hero whose World War II service was recounted in the best-selling book by historian Stephen E. Ambrose and HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.

Paul Youngdahl

73, June 20 | Leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and long-time pastor of 13,000-member Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, the ELCA's largest congregation.

Norma Zimmer

87, May 10 | Endearing lead singer known as the "Champagne Lady" of ABC's The Lawrence Welk Show from 1960 to 1982; a dedicated Christian since high school, she also often sang at Billy Graham crusades.

Listen to a report on notable deaths in 2011 on WORLD's radio news magazine The World and Everything in It.