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.