Deaths in May 2001
The following is a list of notable deaths in May 2001.
Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:
- Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship, reason for notability, cause of death, and reference.
May 2001
1
- Happy Hairston, 58, American basketball player, prostate cancer.
- Waldemar Kikolski, 33, Polish paralympic athlete, road accident.
- Ernie Pomfret, 60, British middle-distance runner.
- Elsa Prawitz, 69, Swedish film and stage actress.
- Ernie Wheelwright, 61, American football player.
2
- Enrico Bovone, 55, Italian basketball player, suicide by gunshot.
- Poul Dalsager, 72, Danish politician.
- Georges Dard, 82, French football player.
- Vlasta Foltová, 88, Czech gymnast and Olympic silver medalist.
- Dick Jamieson, 63, American football player and coach.
- Howard Kahane, 73, American professor of philosophy.
- Gina Mastrogiacomo, 39, American actress, myocarditis.
- Abdul Sattar Khan Niazi, 85, Pakistani religious and political leader.
- Ted Rogers, 65, British comedian, complications after open-heart surgery.
- Theodore Roosevelt III, 86, American banker and government official.
- Klement Steinmetz, 86, Austrian football player.
3
- Philip George Houthem Gell, 86, British immunologist.
- Jim Godman, 55, American professional bowler.
- Billy Higgins, 64, American jazz drummer, hepatitis.
- Karel Kalaš, 90, Czech operatic bass and actor.
- Princess Rosemary of Salm-Salm, 97, German noblewoman.
- Robert Millner Shackleton, 91, British field geologist.
- Hank Schmulbach, 76, American baseball player.
4
- Anne Anastasi, 92, American psychologist.
- Bonny Lee Bakley, 44, American socialite, shot.
- Gene Grabosky, 64, American professional football player.
- Vaska Ilieva, 78, Macedonian folk singer from Yugoslavia and North Macedonia.
- Arne Sucksdorff, 84, Swedish film director, pneumonia.
- Stan Newsham, 69, English footballer,
5
- Charles Black, 85, American constitutional scholar.
- Boozoo Chavis, 70, American accordion player, singer, songwriter and bandleader.
- Morris Graves, 90, American expressionist painter, stroke.
- Cliff Hillegass, 83, American creator of CliffsNotes, stroke.
- Bill Homeier, 82, American racecar driver.
- David Jamieson, 80, British Army officer, recipient of the Victoria Cross.
- Aleksandr Petrov, 61, Soviet/Russian basketball player.
- Hans Rampf, 70, German ice hockey player.
- Terry Ryan, 78, American screenwriter, congestive heart failure.
- Wang Yinglai, 93, Chinese biochemist.
6
- René Bondoux, 95, French fencer and Olympic champion.
- Mike Hazlewood, 59, English singer, composer and songwriter, heart attack.
- Karl Wilhelm Krause, 90, German Waffen-SS officer during World War II.
- Zoltán Nemere, 59, Hungarian fencer, traffic collision.
- Cecil Price, 63, American deputy sheriff and Ku Klux Klan member, fall.
7
- Malati Bedekar, 96, Indian writer.
- Jacques de Bourbon-Busset, 89, French novelist, essayist and politician.
- Prem Dhawan, 77, Indian lyricist, music composer, and actor of Bollywood, cardiac arrest.
- Edwin Finckel, 83, American jazz pianist, composer and music educator.
- Joseph Greenberg, 85, American linguist, pancreatic cancer.
- Dick Kimble, 85, American baseball player.
- Margaretha Krook, 75, Swedish actress, lung cancer.
- Boris Ryzhy, 26, Russian poet and geologist, suicide by hanging.
- Simon Slåttvik, 83, Norwegian Olympic skier.
- Al Tucker, 58, American basketball player.
- Arthur Christopher Watson, 74, British diplomat.
8
- Larry Hornung, 55, Canadian ice hockey player, cancer.
- John McMahon, 83, Australian-English cricket player.
- Piero Natoli, 53, Italian actor and film director, intracranial aneurysm.
- Dera Natung, 36, Indian politician, member of the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly, helicopter crash.
- Luis Rijo, 73, Uruguayan football player.
- Clay King Smith, 30, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.
9
- Marie Cardinal, 72, French novelist.
- Antoinette Downing, 96, American architectural historian and preservationist.
- Saul Elkins, 93, American film producer, writer and director.
- Andrés Framini, 86, Argentine labor leader and politician.
- Miroslav Kárný, 81, Czech historian and writer.
- Nikos Sampson, 65, Cypriot politician, de facto President of Cyprus, cancer.
- Werner Schuster, 62, German politician.
- William T. Stearn, 90, British botanist.
- Kauko Wahlsten, 77, Finnish rower and Olympic medalist.
- Smokey Yunick, 77, American mechanic and car designer, leukemia.
10
- Turi Ferro, 80, Italian actor, heart attack.
- James E. Myers, 81, American songwriter, actor and director.
- Sudhakarrao Naik, 66, Indian politician.
- M. Krishnan Nair, 74, Indian film director.
- Frank Newby, 75, English structural engineer.
- Arthur Tange, 86, Australian public servant.
- Dorothy Burr Thompson, 100, American classical archaeologist and art historian.
- Deborah Walley, 59, American actress and voice-over artist, esophageal cancer.
11
- Douglas Adams, 49, British author, heart attack.
- Jesús Aguirre, 66, Spanish intellectual, Jesuit priest, and aristocrat, pulmonary embolism.
- Michael J. Bird, 72, British writer.
- Guy Carlton, 47, American Olympic weightlifter, suicide by gunshot.
- Alan William James Cousins, 97, South African astronomer.
- Nick Lalich, 85, Serbian American basketball player, esophageal cancer.
- Emmett Watson, 82, American newspaper columnist.
- Wolfgang Winkler, 60, West German luger and Olympic medalist.
12
- John Cliff, 82, American film and television actor.
- Ollie Cline, 75, American gridiron football player.
- Perry Como, 88, American singer, actor and television personality, Alzheimer's disease.
- Didi, 72, Brazilian footballer, pneumonia.
- Willy Gysi, 83, Swiss field handball player.
- Norman Kay, 72, British composer and writer, ALS.
- Paul Morgan, 52, British engineer, co-founder of Ilmor, plane crash.
- Jonathan Niva, 58, Kenyan football player.
- Mel Payton, 74, American basketball player.
- Fritz Pfenninger, 66, Swiss cyclist.
- Simon Raven, 73, British writer.
- Eleanor Sayre, 85, American curator and art historian.
- Alexei Tupolev, 75, Soviet aircraft designer.
- Georgie Woodgate, 77, British tennis player.
- Corissa Yasen, 27, American basketball player, suicide by drug overdose.
13
- Sergey Afanasyev, 82, Russian engineer and politician.
- Eddra Gale, 79, American actress.
- Salvador Garmendia Graterón, 72, Venezuelan author.
- Frank Millar, 76, Northern Irish unionist politician.
- Jason Miller, 62, American actor and playwright, Tony winner, heart attack.
- Harold Minter, 98, American film editor.
- R. K. Narayan, 94, Indian writer.
- Ray Straw, 67, English footballer.
- Ralph Tabakin, 79, American actor.
- Susumu Takahashi, 80, Japanese Olympic middle-distance runner.
14
- Mauro Bolognini, 78, Italian film and stage director.
- Eric Bradbury, 80, British comic artist.
- Paul Bénichou, 92, French-Algerian writer, intellectual, and literary historian.
- Alex Glasgow, 65, English singer-songwriter.
- Gil Langley, 81, Australian cricketer and politician.
- Elisabeth Lennartz, 98, German stage actress.
- Loften Mitchell, 82, American playwright and theatre historian.
- Armando Nannuzzi, 75, Italian cinematographer and camera operator.
- Ettore Puricelli, 84, Uruguayan-Italian football player and manager.
- Juan Verdaguer, 85, Uruguayan actor, cardiovascular disease.
15
- Jean-Philippe Lauer, 99, French architect and Egyptologist.
- Juracy Magalhães, 95, Brazilian military officer and politician.
- Ralph Miller, 82, American college basketball coach.
- Bobby Murdoch, 56, Scottish footballer, stroke.
- William Oates, 71, English first-class cricketer.
- Georgy Shakhnazarov, 76, Soviet-Armenian politician and political scientist.
- Sacha Vierny, 81, French cinematographer.
16
- Antonio Flores, 77, Mexican football player.
- Prince Ital Joe, 38, Dominican-American reggae artist, car accident.
- Brian Pendleton, 57, British guitarist, lung cancer.
- Witold Stachurski, 54, Polish boxer.
17
- Robert Elton Brooker, 95, American business executive at Sears, Roebuck & Co.
- Ike Brown, 59, American baseball player, cancer.
- Gerd Buchdahl, 86, German-English philosopher of science.
- Rahman Dadman, 44-45, Iranian politician, minister of roads and transportation, plane crash.
- Ikuma Dan, 77, Japanese composer.
- Enid Hattersley, 96, English politician and Lord Mayor of Sheffield.
- Robert Knapp, 77, American actor.
- Jacques-Louis Lions, 73, French mathematician.
- Murray Murdoch, 96, Canadian ice hockey player and coach.
- Frank G. Slaughter, 93, American novelist and physician.
18
- Rosa Beddington, 45, British biologist, cancer.
- Ralph Enckell, 88, Finnish diplomat.
- Irene Hunt, 98, American children's writer.
- Alexey Maresyev, 84, Russian military pilot, infarction.
- Stella Mary Newton, 100, British fashion designer and dress historian.
- Maurice Noble, 90, American animation artist and designer.
- Seán Mac Stíofáin, 73, English-Irish chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, stroke.
- Robert F. Woodward, 92, American diplomat.
19
- Fred Derby, 61, Surinamese politician and trade unionist.
- John Joseph Egan, 84, American Roman Catholic priest and social activist.
- Joe Graydon, 82, American big band vocalist, television host, personal manager and concert producer.
- Josef Haunzwickel, 86, Austrian Olympic athlete.
- Patricia Hilliard, 85, British stage and film actress.
- Vidkunn Hveding, 80, Norwegian politician.
- Joe Lovitto, 50, American baseball player, cancer.
- Hans Mayer, 94, German literary scholar.
- Susannah McCorkle, 55, American jazz singer, suicide by jumping.
- Mike Sammes, 73, English musician and vocal session arranger.
- Pat Falken Smith, 75, American television writer.
- Bob Tinning, 75, Australian rower.
- John Warner, 78, British actor.