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FELIX DE WELDON, 96, an Austrian-born sculptor best known for his statue of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, died Tuesday, family members said.
RENE THEODORE, 62, the former head of Haiti's Communist Party, died June 1 in Miami of lung cancer. Mr. Theodore, who began his 47-year career of political activism in high school, performed his last political act in December by co-signing an opposition declaration calling for the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was forced into exile in 1967 while Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and then his son, Jean-Claude, ruled.
JAMES T. McCAIN, 83, who was a field secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality from 1957 to 1966 and responsible for several Southeastern states, died Thursday in Columbia, S.C.
MEIR VILNER, 84, the last living signatory of Israel's Declaration of Independence, died Thursday in Jerusalem. After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, he served as a lawmaker until 1990. He was secretary-general of Israel's Communist Party from 1965 to 1988.
KENNETH KATZNER, 72, one of the United States' most distinguished authorities on the Russian language, died May 25 in Washington, D.C., of congestive heart failure due to cancer. Katzner compiled a popular English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary and wrote The Languages of the World and a Russian Review Text.
ELIZABETH FOWLER, 95, who wrote a harrowing book about being the only woman among 35 passengers on a lifeboat in the Atlantic Ocean for 10 days during World War II, died on May 30 in West Orange, N.J.
DAVID CHRISTOPHER GUNSTONE, 41, a popular rock climbing enthusiast and guide book writer, died May 31 in a fall from a cliff in British Columbia. The laid-off Boeing Co. electrical engineer fell about 100 feet while descending Exasperator on the Grand Wall, part of a formation north of Vancouver known as the Squamish Chief.
RETIRED GEN. MOHAMED ABDEL GHANI AL-GAMASY, 81, who served as Egypt's army chief of operations during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and led his country's delegation to the truce table, died May 31.
FRED BERGER, 94, a film and television editor who earned an Emmy Award in 1975 for his work on TV's M*A*S*H, died May 23 in Los Angeles. Among his other credits were editing the first four years of Gunsmoke, 11 years on Death Valley Days and M*A*S*H from 1972 to 1976. He also edited 104 episodes of Dallas, including his last work, the TV movie Dallas: J.R. Returns in 1996.
ALBERT SENDREY, 91, a composer who contributed music to 170 films, including Easter Parade and Guys and Dolls, died May 18 in California. Mr. Sendrey, whose work was sometimes uncredited, wrote the music for Fred Astaire's classic ceiling dance in Royal Wedding, said fellow composer and friend Scott Harper.
AGUSTIN DE MELLO, whose desire to see his son as the youngest U.S. university graduate ignited a national debate in the 1980s over parents pushing children toward academic achievement, died May 30 in Santa Clara, Calif. He had bladder cancer. He was believed to be 73. A karate master and former weightlifting champion, he was best known as the father who vigorously mentored his son, Adragon De Mello, to become the youngest U.S. university graduate at the time. Adragon was 11 when he graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in computational mathematics in 1988.
ANIL BISWAS, 89, a composer credited with introducing orchestral music to India's popular song-and-dance films, died May 31. By the time he retired from composing in 1965 to become director of the national orchestra on All India Radio, he had written songs for more than 100 movies.
ERNEST FERRIN WALLENGREN, 50, a television writer whose credits range from The Waltons to Baywatch, died May 27 in Salt Lake City.
- Area obituaries and the Suncoast Deaths list appear in local sections.