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JOHN van HENGEL, 83, credited as the founder of food banking in 1967 with Phoenix-based St. Mary's Food Bank, died Wednesday in Phoenix. After proving successful in gleaning food from the food industry and distributing it to agencies for people in need, he worked as a consultant to cities starting food banks. His efforts led to the founding of America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest charitable hunger-relief organization.
CAPT. GEORGE C. WATKINS, 84, a record-setting Navy test pilot in the 1950s who later served as a White House social aide to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, died Sept. 18 in Lompoc, Calif. As a test pilot, he set a speed record of 1,220 miles per hour and an unofficial altitude record of 73,500 feet on a single day in 1956.
ROBERT HANSON, 85, the last surviving crew member of the famed Memphis Belle B-17 bomber that flew 25 combat missions over Germany and France during World War II, died Oct. 1 in Albuquerque, N.M. He was the radio operator on the Memphis Belle, which escaped some close calls.
JERRY JUHL, 67, an Emmy Award-winning head writer for the Muppets who also co-wrote most of the Muppet films, died Sept. 27 in San Francisco. He was head writer and creative producer on the award-winning Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson's 1983-87 TV series.
DR. M. SCOTT PECK, 69, a psychiatrist and author who wrote the best-seller The Road Less Traveled and other self-helps, died Sept. 25 in Warren, Conn. He had pancreatic and liver duct cancer. The 1978 self-help book that begins, "Life is difficult," and its later companion volumes, Further Along the Road Less Traveled (1993) and The Road Less Traveled and Beyond (1997), have sold more than 5-million copies in North America.
LEO STERNBACH, 97, a chemist who invented a revolutionary new class of tranquilizers that included Valium, died Sept. 28 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Valium was the country's most prescribed drug from 1969 to 1982.