Notable deaths in 2006
Dale Bumpers, a former governor and U.S. senator died on Jan. 1. He was 90. Bumpers earned the nickname “giant killer” for his record of defeating incumbents. Bumpers, a Democrat, served as governor of Arkansas 1971-75 and as U.S. senator from 1975 to 1999. After he left Congress, Bumpers, a lawyer by training, defended President Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial in the Senate.
David Bowie, singer, songwriter, actor and painter died on Jan. 10 in New York City. He was 69 years old.
Alan Rickman, 69, died on Jan. 14. The English actor played a wide range of roles on stage and screen, notably as Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films.
Dan Haggerty, American actor best known for his role as Grizzly Adams shown in 1979. Haggerty died on Jan. 15 at age 74.
Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, died in Boston on Jan. 24 at age 88. Minsky spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he co-founded the MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Minsky believed that intelligence can derive from the interplay of unintelligent parts, such as machines. He was interested in cryonics and it is believed that his body may be frozen.
Buddy Cianci, former mayor of Providence, died on Jan. 28. He was 74. Cianci, a Rhode Island attorney, served as mayor 1974–1984 and 1991–2002. In 1984 he was forced to resign after receiving a suspended sentence for assault charges (to which he had pleaded no contest). He worked as a radio talk show host until 1991 when he began his second stint as mayor. Cianci promoted Providence as being arts-friendly and the city underwent a renaissance. However, Cianci was found guilty of racketeering in 2002 during his re-election bid. He served five years in a federal prison. He ran once more for mayor of Providence, in 2014, but lost the election.
Bob Elliott, half of the comedy team Bob and Ray, died on Feb. 2 in Cundy's Harbor. He was 92. Elliott is shown in this 1952 TV publicity photo with (the torso of) his partner Ray Goulding. They broadcast on radio "approximately from coast-to-coast" beginning in 1946. They continued to work together for 40 years.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at age 79 during the night of Feb. 12-13. Prior to his appointment to the high court, Scalia was law school professor and an assistant attorney general in the Nixon administration. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian diplomat and former of secretary-general the United Nations, died in Cairo on Feb. 16 at age 93. As an Egyptian minister of state, Boutros-Ghali played a major role in the 1979 Camp David Accords. He became U.N. secretary-general in 1992. His five-year tenure in the post was marked by genocides both in the Balkans and, in 1994, in Rwanda. He was opposed for reappointment by the Clinton administration making him the only U.N. secretary-general to serve a single term.
Novelist Harper Lee, 89, died on Feb. 19 in Montville, Ala. In 1960, "To Kill a Mockingbird," Lee’s first published (and for many years her only) book was an immediate success. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and endures as an American classic and bestseller. In the 1960s Lee assisted her childhood friend, Truman Capote, in his research for what later became "In Cold Blood." Although she kept writing, she published nothing until "Go Set a Watchman," a Mockingbird prequel or sequel that appeared in 2015. Famously private, Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 by George W. Bush and the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2010.
Pat Conroy, writer of multiple bestsellers died at age 70 on March 4. Conroy may be best known for "The Great Santini" and "Prince of Tides," both of which were made into movies.
Nancy Reagan, former first lady, died on March 6. She was 94.
George Martin, the man known as the "Fifth Beatle," died on March 8. He was 90. Martin produced all the Beatles' records from their first hit "Love Me Do" in 1962.
Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, 46, died on March 23. Ford, a Toronto city councillor, was elected mayor in 2010. Ford gained international notoriety when a video surfaced in 2013 showing him smoking crack cocaine. Ford refused to resign as mayor and the City Council moved some mayoral powers to the deputy mayor. Ford was at the beginning of his reelection campaign in 2014 when he discovered he had cancer and he withdrew from the race.
Actress Patty Duke, 69, died on March 29. Duke is shown here accepting her Oscar for supporting actress for "The Miracle Worker" in 1963. She was 16.
Country music star Merle Haggard died on April 6. He was 79.
Prince, one of the best-selling vocal artists in history, died on April 21 at age 57.
Daniel Berrigan, Catholic priest and peace activist, April 30. Berrigan, along with his brother Philip and others, was arrested in 1968 in Catonsville, Md. after burning draft records. He was charged, found guilty and sentenced but evaded incarceration until he was eventually captured. He was released from prison in 1972. Berrigan was a priest and a lifelong activist. Asked when he would stop protesting, he famously replied "The day after I’m embalmed."
Detroit Red Wings hockey player Gordie Howe died May 10 at 88. Howe, a Canadian, joined the Detroit Red Wings in 1946. Widely acknowledged to be one of the best professional hockey players in history, Howe is unmatched in longevity, having played in six decades.
Susannah Mushatt Jones died on May 12 in Brooklyn, N.Y. She was 116 years and 311 days old. When Jones died, she was the oldest person in the world and the last American living who was born in the 1800s.
Journalist Morley Safer died on May 19. He was 84. Safer, a Canadian, began his career with the CBC but soon moved to CBS. He was a war correspondent, covering conflicts in the 1960s, most notably the Vietnam War. He joined "60 Minutes" in 1970, and stayed for 46 years.
Bill Cunningham, longtime fashion photographer for The New York Times, died June 25, He was 87 and still working. Cunningham, who began his working life as a milliner (after dropping out of Harvard), was known for taking pictures of everyday people on the streets in New York and for getting around the city on his bike.
Muhammad Ali shown here during his first-round knockout of Sonny Liston in 1965 in Lewiston, died at the age of 74 on June 3.
Bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, 89, died on June 23.
Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in Division I college basketball history who uplifted the women's game from obscurity to national prominence, died on June 28. The longtime coach of the Tennessee Volunteers was 64.
Actor and director Gene Wilder died on Aug. 29. He was 83. Wilder's first screen appearance was as a hostage in "Bonnie and Clyde." He became known for his comic roles in Mel Brooks movies, as well as his star role in "Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."
Lawyer and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, 92, died on Sept. 5. Schlafly, shown left in 1976, was the national chair of Stop ERA, an organization that worked to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.
Playwright Edward Albee died on September 16. He was 88. He is probably best known for writing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Arnold Palmer, who made golf popular for the masses with his hard-charging style, incomparable charisma and a personal touch that made him known throughout the golf world as "The King," died Sept. 25. He was 87.
Israeli politician Shimon Peres, 93, died Sept. 27. Peres served as prime minister and president of Israel over his long career. In 1994, he received the Nobel peace prize with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin for their work in negotiating the Oslo Accords.
Donn Fendler, whose experiences as a 12-year-old lost on Mount Katahdin were recounted in a classic children's book, died on Oct. 9. He was 93. Fendler was beloved in Maine because of his stirring survival story and his kindness to children: He spoke to many of them and answered every letter any child wrote him.
Political activist and, later, politician Tom Hayden died Oct. 23. He was 76. Hayden was one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society and one of the "Chicago Seven," who went on trial, charged with inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He married another vocal critic of the Vietnam War, actress Jane Fonda. Hayden served in the California State Legislature and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles and for the U.S. Senate.
Leonard Cohen, Canadian singer-songwriter, novelist and poet, died at age 82 on Nov. 11.
Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general (1993-2001) and the epicenter of several political storms during the Clinton administration, died Nov. 11. She was 78.
Actor Robert Vaughn, best known for "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," died on Nov. 11. He was 83. Vaughn’s face and voice are well-known to Mainers. For more than 15 years he appeared in local TV commercials for the Maine-based law offices of Joe Bornstein.
Gwen Ifill, 61, died on Nov. 14. Ifill was a journalist who began her career working for newspapers. In 1994 she left the New York Times where she covered the White House and moved to NBC. She began working for PBS in 1999 as moderator of "Washington Week in Review." She was a senior correspondent for "The News Hour" and became its co-host
Melvin Laird, politician and defense secretary, died Nov. 16. He was 94. Laird served in the Wisconsin legislature and eight terms in the U.S. House. He was Nixon's secretary of defense between 1969 and 1973 at the height of the Vietnam War.
Heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley, 96, died on Nov.18. In 1969 Cooley implanted the first artificial heart. The patient, Haskell Karp, lived for 65 hours.
Fidel Castro, revolutionary and president of Cuba 1961-2011, died on Nov. 11. He was 90 years old.
Cuban-born Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident on Nov. 25. He was 24.
Actress Florence Henderson, 82, died on Nov. 28. Henderson began her career as a musical theater actress but is best known for her role as Carol Brady, mother of the Brady Bunch.
German-born English actor Andrew Sachs died on Dec. 1. He was 86. Sachs gained international fame for the role of the waiter, Manuel, in Fawlty Towers.
John Glenn died on Dec. 12. He was 95 years old. Glenn was a fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut, U.S. senator and, at the age of 77, payload specialist on the Space Shuttle "Discovery." In 1962, he became the first American to orbit the earth. He also holds the record for the oldest person to go into space.
Zsa Zsa Gabor, the much-married Hungarian-American actress, died Dec. 18. She was 99.
English author Richard Adams died Dec. 24. He was 96. Adams, a civil servant who amused his daughters with stories about rabbits, wrote the unexpected best seller and classic, 'Watership Down' in 1972.
George Michael performs at the Concert of Hope to mark World AIDS Day at London's Wembley Arena in 1993. The singer who started out with the 80s group Wham! died Dec. 25 at age 53.
Carrie Fisher, who found fame in the role of Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" movies, died Dec. 27 at age 60. Fisher is survived by her mother, the actress Debbie Reynolds.
Debbie Reynolds appears at Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremonies in 1984 in Los Angeles. Reynolds, star of the 1952 classic "Singin' in the Rain" died Dec. 28, one day after her daughter, actress and author Carrie Fisher. Reynolds was 84.
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