Deaths in May 2007

The following is a list of notable deaths in May 2007.

May 2007

1

• Mathilde Octavie Tafna, 112, Guadeloupean oldest living person of a French possession. [1]

2

• Phillip Carter, 44, British businessman, honorary VP of Chelsea F.C., helicopter crash. [2] [3] [4]
• Brad McGann, 43, New Zealand film director (In My Father's Den), cancer. [5]

3

• Alex Agase, 85, Iranian-born American football coach. [6]
• J. Robert Bradley, 87, American gospel singer, diabetes. [7]
• Leonard Eron, 87, American psychologist, congestive heart failure. [8]
• Abdul Sabur Farid Kohistani, 54/55, Afghan legislator and Prime Minister (1992), assassination by gunshot. [9]
• Pat O'Shea, 74, Irish writer. [10]
• Wally Schirra, 84, American Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut, heart attack. [11]
• Rose Tombe, Sudanese celebrity goat, asphyxiation. [12]
• Knock Yokoyama, 75, Japanese comedian and politician, throat cancer. [13]

4

• Russell W. Kruse, 85, American auctioneer, stroke. [14]
• Jeremias Nguenha, Mozambican political musician who sang in Shangaan. [15] (Portuguese)
• Mamadou Zaré, 45, Ivorian soccer player and coach. [16]

5

• Prince Abdul-Majid bin Abdul-Aziz, c.64, Saudi politician, governor of Mecca. [17]
• José Aponte de la Torre, 65, Puerto Rican mayor, respiratory complications. [18] (Spanish)
• Tom Hutchinson, 65, American football wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns 1964 NFL champions. [19]
• Theodore Maiman, 79, American physicist who built the first laser, systemic mastocytosis. [20]
• Edwin H. Simmons, 85, American Marine Corps historian. [21]
• Gusti Wolf, 95, Austrian actress. [22] (German)

6

• Alvin Batiste, 74, American jazz musician, heart attack. [23]
• Carey Bell, 70, American blues harmonica player, heart failure. [24]
• Lesley Blanch, 102, British writer and fashion editor. [25]
• Enéas Carneiro, 68, Brazilian politician, leukemia. [26]
• Tamás Gábor, 75, Hungarian Olympic fencer. [27]
• Curtis Harrington, 80, American film director. [28]
• Đorđe Novković, 63, Croatian songwriter. [29][30] (Croatian)
• Lord Weatherill, 86, Speaker of the British House of Commons (1983–1992), after short illness. [31]

7

• Isabella Blow, 48, British fashion journalist and stylist, suicide by poisoning. [32] [33] [34]
• Quentin Brooks, 86, American Olympic shooter. [35]
• Diego Corrales, 29, American boxer, motorcycle accident. [36]
• George Dawson, 45, British politician, Northern Ireland Assembly member, cancer. [37] [38]
• Donald Ginsberg, 73, American physicist, melanoma. [39]
• Tomasi Kulimoetoke II, 88, King of Wallis ('Uvea). [40]
• Raffi Lavie, 70, Israeli artist, pancreatic cancer. [41]
• Emma Lehmer, 100, Russian-born American mathematician. [42]
• Sonny Myers, 83, American professional wrestler. [43]
• Octavian Paler, 81, Romanian writer and journalist, heart attack. [44]
• Nicholas Worth, 69, American character actor, heart failure. [45]
• Yahweh ben Yahweh, 71, American religious cult leader (Nation of Yahweh) and convicted felon, prostate cancer. [46] [47]

8

• Philip Craig, 74, American mystery writer. [48]
• Velma Dunn, 88, American diver who competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics, stroke. [49]
• Abdullah al Faisal, 85, Saudi prince, writer and businessman, after long illness. [50]
• David Farquhar, 79, New Zealand composer. [51]
• John Henry, 68, British toxicologist, haemorrhage. [52]
• Jagdish Narain Sapru, 74, Indian former chairman of ITC Limited and BOC India. [53]
• Carson Whitsett, 62, American composer, musician and record producer, brain tumor. [54]

9

• Donald Alexander, 79, Scottish medical researcher. [55]
• Charley Ane, 76, American football player (Detroit Lions), pneumonia. [56]
• Alfred Chandler, 88, American economic historian. [57]
• Gino Pariani, 79, American footballer (1950 World Cup), bone cancer. [58]
• George Seddon, 80, Australian environmental scholar. [59]
• Dwight Wilson, 106, Canadian centenarian, second-to-last surviving World War I veteran. [60]
• Philip Workman, 53, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection. [61]

10

• John Lattimer, 92, American urologist who developed a cure for renal tuberculosis. [62]
• Sir Oliver Millar, 84, British Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures (1972–1988) and Director of the Royal Collection (1987–1988). [63]
• Robert Oelman, 97, American chief executive of NCR Corporation (1962–1973), co-founder of Wright State University. [64]
• Chuck Riley, 66, American voice actor [65]

11

• Norman Frank, 82, American producer and political strategist. [66]
• Bernard Gordon, 88, American screenwriter, named on the Hollywood blacklist, cancer. [67]
• Stanley Holden, 79, British ballet dancer, complications from heart problems and colon cancer. [68] [69]
• Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, 71, Nigerian Igbo highlife musician. [70]
• Malietoa Tanumafili II, 94, Samoan politician, head of state. [71]

12

• Mullah Dadullah, 41, Afghan militant, Taliban military commander, shot. [72]
• Kai Johansen, 66, Danish (Greenock Morton F.C. and Rangers), cancer. [73]
• Edy Vásquez, 23, Honduran footballer, car accident. [74]

13

• Alexander Buchanan Campbell, 92, Scottish architect. [75]
• Chen Xiaoxu, 41, Chinese actress (Dream of the Red Mansion) and Buddhist nun, breast cancer. [76]
• Mendel Jackson Davis, 64, American politician, U.S. Representative from South Carolina (1971–1981), emphysema. [77]
• Gomer Hodge, 63, American baseball player (Cleveland Indians), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. [78]
• Luis María Mendía, 82, Argentine naval officer. [79]
• Kate Webb, 64, New Zealand journalist and foreign correspondent, bowel cancer. [80]

14

• Orlando Bobo, 33, American-born Canadian football player (Winnipeg Blue Bombers), heart and liver failure. [81]
• Ülo Jõgi, 86, Estonian anti-communist. [82] (Estonian)
• Sir Edward Jones, 70, British Army general, Black Rod (1996–2001), heart attack. [83]
• Nancy McDonald, 72, American politician, member of the Texas House of Representatives (1984–1995), ovarian cancer. [84]
• Aaron McMillan, 30, Australian classical pianist, bone cancer. [85]
• Jean Saubert, 65, American dual medalist in slalom (1964 Winter Olympics), breast cancer. [86]
• Sir Colin St John Wilson, 85, British architect, designer of the British Library. [87]

15

• Giorgio Cavaglieri, 95, Italian-born American architect, founder of New York City's urban preservation movement. [88]
• Jerry Falwell, 73, American minister, television evangelist, and politician activist, founder of the Moral Majority, cardiac arrhythmia. [89]
• Karen Hess, 88, American culinary historian and author, stroke. [90]
• Yolanda King, 51, American activist and actress, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. [91]
• Duncan Macrae, 92, British rugby football player, (Scotland Rugby Union Team). [92]
• Angus McBride, 76, British illustrator. [93]

16

• Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin, 91, American creole accordionist. [94]
• Dame Mary Douglas, 86, British social anthropologist. [95]
• Gohar Gasparyan, 83, Armenian soprano opera singer. [96]
• Allan Hird, Sr., 88, Australian footballer and academic, President of Essendon Football Club (1969–1975), Victorian Director-general of Education. [97]
• Peter Marner, 71, British cricketer, youngest player to represent the Lancashire County Cricket Club. [98]
• Terry Ryan, 60, American writer (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio), cancer. [99]
• Lauren Terrazzano, 39, American journalist, chronicled her battle with cancer, lung cancer. [100] [101]

17

• Lloyd Alexander, 83, American fantasy author, including The Chronicles of Prydain, cancer. [102]
• Petro Balabuyev, 76, Ukrainian aircraft designer, including world's largest aeroplane, the An-225. [103]
• Don Burton, 87, Australian politician, member of the New South Wales Legislative Council (1976–1984). [104]
• John Gonzaga, 74, American football player with the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos. [105]
• Kawika Kapahulehua, 76, American captain of the Hokulea's first voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti. [106]
• Sir John Nicholls, 80, British air marshal. [107]
• Eugen Weber, 82, Romanian-born American historian, pancreatic cancer. [108]
• Bill Wight, 85, American MLB pitcher and scout. [109]
• Wiktor Zin, 82, Polish architect and graphic artist. [110] (Polish)

18

• Roy De Forest, 77, American artist and professor at University of California, Davis. [111]
• Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, 74, French physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1991. [112]
• Saud Memon, 44, Pakistani businessman implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, tuberculosis and meningitis. [113]
• Les Schwab, 89, American tire tycoon. [114]
• Mika Špiljak, 90, Chairman of the Collective Presidency of Yugoslavia (1983–1984). [115] [116] (Croatian)
• Yoyoy Villame, 69, Filipino musician and comedian, heart attack. [117]

19

• Derek Cooper, 94, British army officer and refugee campaigner. [118]
• Miroslav Deronjić, 52, Bosnian Serb politician and convicted war criminal, natural causes. [119]
• Jack Findlay, 72, Australian Grand Prix motorcycle racer. [120]
• Frank Guida, 84, Italian-born American record producer. [121]
• Ron Hall, 43, American football player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. [122]
• Marian Radke-Yarrow, 89, American researcher in child psychology, leukemia. [123]
• Scott Thorkelson, 49, Canadian member of the House of Commons (1988–1993), heart attack. [124]
• Michel Visi, 52, Vanuatuan Catholic bishop. [125]
• Hans Wollschläger, 72, German author and translator. [126] (German)
• Carl Wright, 75, American dancer, comedian and actor, cancer. [127]

20

• Bobby Ash, 82, British-born Canadian television host (The Uncle Bobby Show), heart attack. [128]
• Dame Jean Herbison, 83 or 84, New Zealand academic, first N.Z. female chancellor (University of Canterbury, 1979–1984). [129]
• Baruch Kimmerling, 67, Israeli sociologist and historian. [130]
• Valentina Leontyeva, 84, Russian television presenter, one of the first television presenters in the Soviet Union. [131]
• Sir George Macfarlane, 91, British scientist and engineer. [132]
• Tod H. Mikuriya, 73, American psychiatrist and medical marijuana advocate, cancer. [133]
• Stanley Miller, 77, American chemist and biologist, known for the Miller–Urey experiment into the origins of life, heart failure. [134]
• William Peters, 85, American journalist and documentarian of race issues, Alzheimer's disease. [135]
• Guram Sharadze, 66, Georgian philologist and politician, shot. [136]
• Norman Von Nida, 93, Australian golfer. [137]
• Ben Weisman, 85, American musician and songwriter, wrote nearly 60 songs for singer Elvis Presley, stroke. [138]
• Edwin H. Whitehead, 82, American lawyer and politician. [139]

21

• Clark Adams, 37, American secular humanist leader and activist. [140]
• Frank Gay, 86, American businessman, senior corporate aide to Howard Hughes. [141]
• Peter Hayes, 54, Australian lawyer. [142]
• María Hortensia de Herrera de Lacalle, 98, Uruguayan politician, mother of ex-President Luis Alberto Lacalle. [143] (Spanish)
• Bruno Mattei, 75, Italian film director. [144]
• Kenneth Sokoloff, 54, American economist who examined factor endowment, liver cancer. [145]
• Sakorn Yang-keawsot, 85, Thai puppeteer, lung illness. [146]

22

• Fannie Lee Chaney, 84, American civil rights activist. [147]
• Robert Comer, 50, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection. [148]
• Frank E. Maestrone, 84, American diplomat, ambassador to Kuwait (1976–1979), infection. [149]
• Jef Planckaert, 73, Belgian cyclist. [150] [151] (French)
• Pemba Doma Sherpa, 36, Nepali mountaineer, two-time summiter of Mt. Everest, fall from Lhotse. [152]
• Art Stevens, 92, American animation director, animator, and writer (The Fox and the Hound), heart attack. [153]

23

• Clyde Robert Bulla, 93, American children's author. [154]
• Kei Kumai, 76, Japanese film director, brain hemorrhage [155] [156]
• Tron Øgrim, 59, Norwegian author and politician. [157] (Norwegian)

24

• Buddy Childers, 81, American jazz trumpeter, cancer. [158]
• Les Harmer, 86, New Zealand cricket umpire. [159]
• Bill Johnston, 85, Australian cricketer, member of the 1948 Invincibles. [160]
• Philip Mayer Kaiser, 93, American diplomat, ambassador to Senegal and Mauritania, Hungary, and Austria, pneumonia. [161]
• Norm Maleng, 68, American prosecutor (King County, Washington), cardiac arrest. [162]
• Christopher Newton, 37, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection. [163]
• Minako Oba, 77, Japanese author. [164] (Japanese)
• David Renton, Baron Renton, 98, British politician and aristocrat, oldest peer in the House of Lords. [165]

25

• Arwon, 33, New Zealand-born racehorse, longest surviving Melbourne Cup winner, euthanasia. [166]
• Laurie Bartram, 49, American actress and ballet dancer, pancreatic cancer. [167]
• Charles Nelson Reilly, 76, American Tony-winning actor and Match Game panelist, complications from pneumonia. [168]
• Sun Yuanliang, 103, Chinese-born General with the Kuomintang, exiled in Taiwan. [169]
• Bartholomew Ulufa'alu, 56, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands (1997–2000), after long illness. [170]

26

• James Beck, 77, American art historian, founder of ArtWatch International, [171].
• Gene Gibson, 82, American basketball player and coach (Texas Tech University), complications from surgery. [172]
• Marek Krejčí, 26, Slovak footballer, car accident. [173]
• Phyllis Sellick, 95, British pianist. [174]
• Aubrey Singer, 80, British television executive, head of BBC Two (1974–1978). [175]
• Khalil al-Zahawi, 60/61, Iraqi calligrapher, shot. [176]

27

• Ron Archer, 73, Australian Test cricketer, lung cancer. [177]
• Edward Behr, 81, British journalist and author. [178]
• Sam Garrison, 65, American lawyer, defended President Richard Nixon in impeachment hearings in 1974, leukemia. [179]
• Marquise Hill, 24, American football player (New England Patriots), drowning. [180]
• Jack Kerr, 96, New Zealand cricket player, Chairman and President of NZ Cricket. [181]
• Wiley Mayne, 90, American politician, U.S. Representative from Iowa (1966–1974), cardiopulmonary incident. [182]
• Howard Porter, 58, American basketball player (Bulls, Knicks, Pistons), injuries sustained from beating. [183]
• Izumi Sakai, 40, Japanese singer (Zard), cerebral contusion. [184]
• Percy Sonn, 57, South African cricket player, President of the International Cricket Council, complications after surgery. [185]
• G. Srinivasan, 48, Indian film producer, brother of director Mani Ratnam, fall into gorge. [186]
• Gretchen Wyler, 75, American actress and animal rights activist, complications of breast cancer. [187]
• Ed Yost, 87, American inventor of the modern hot air balloon. [188].

28

• Barbara Cox Anthony, 84, American heiress, after long illness. [189]
• Harold C. Helgeson, 75, American geochemist, lung cancer. [190]
• Jörg Immendorff, 61, German painter, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. [191]
• David Lane, 68, American white supremacist leader and author. [192]
• John Macquarrie, 87, British theologian, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1970–1986). [193]
• Toshikatsu Matsuoka, 62, Japanese politician, Minister of Agriculture, suicide by hanging. [194]
• Parren Mitchell, 85, American politician, U.S. Representative from Maryland (1971–1987), co-founder of Congressional Black Caucus, pneumonia. [195]
• Ethel Mutharika, 63, First Lady of Malawi, cancer. [196]

29

• Dave Balon, 68, Canadian ice hockey player, multiple sclerosis. [197]
• Tony Bastable, 62, British television presenter (Magpie), DJ and independent producer, pneumonia. [198]
• Dame Lois Browne-Evans, 79, Bermudian politician. [199]
• Donald Johanos, 79, American conductor. [200]
• Norman Kaye, 80, Australian actor and musician, Alzheimer's disease. [201]
• Posteal Laskey, 69, American convicted murderer, commonly believed to be the serial killer called the "Cincinnati Strangler." [202]
• Tahir Mirza, 70, Pakistani journalist and former editor of Dawn, lung cancer. [203]
• Folole Muliaga, 44, Samoan–NZ teacher whose oxygen machine failed after power cut for unpaid account, heart and lung disease. [204]
• Michael Seaton, 84, British astronomer and physicist. [205]
• Wallace Seawell, 90, American photographer and filmmaker, age-related causes. [206]

30

• Jean-Claude Brialy, 74, French actor and director, cancer. [207]
• Mark Harris, 84, American author (Bang the Drum Slowly), Alzheimer's disease. [208]
• Preston Martin, 83, American banker, Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (1982–1986), cancer. [209][210]
• William Morris Meredith, Jr., 88, American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. [211]
• Yevgeni Mishakov, 66, Russian ice hockey player. [212]

31

• Norman Fletcher, 89, American architect. [213]
• Clifford Scott Green, 84, American jurist, Federal Court judge. [214]
• David J. Lawson, 77, American minister, bishop of the United Methodist Church, after long illness. [215]
• Fathia Nkrumah, c75, Egyptian–born Ghanaian First Lady, after long illness. [216]
• Charles Remington, 85, American zoologist, known for studies of butterflies and moths. [217]
• Alexander Tubelsky, 66, Russian academic, President of Association of Democratic Schools, stroke. [218]
• Jim Williams, 92, American basketball coach (Colorado State University). [219]