# Deaths in April 1997
## Contents

* 1
* 2
* 3
* 4
* 5
* 6
* 7
* 8
* 9
* 10
* 11
* 12
* 13
* 14
* 15
* 16
* 17
* 18
* 19
* 20
* 21
* 22
* 23
* 24
* 25
* 26
* 27
* 28
* 29
* 30
The following is a list of notable deaths in April 1997.
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 (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.

## April 1997
### 1

* Milton Brunson, 67, American gospel musician and pastor.
* Evsey Domar, 82, Russian American economist.
* Jolie Gabor, 100, Hungarian-American socialite.
* Makar Honcharenko, 84, Soviet-Ukrainian football player and coach.
* Jerry Pacht, 75, American judge, cerebral hemorrhage.

### 2

* Zaki Badr, 71, Egyptian general and politician.
* Al Blanche, 87, American baseball player.
* Anthony Bushell, 92, English film actor and director.
* Craig D. Button, 32, United States Air Force pilot, suicide by plane crash.
* Zsolt Durkó, 62, Hungarian composer.
* Reg Lewis, 77, English football player.
* Yulii Meitus, 94, Ukrainian composer.
* David Shahar, 70, Israeli fiction writer, translator, and editor.
* Tomoyuki Tanaka, 86, Japanese film producer, stroke.

### 3

* Thomas Barthel, 74, German ethnologist and epigrapher.
* Jerome Cosentino, 65, American politician.
* Sergei Filatov, 70, Soviet and Russian equestrian.
* Dan Swartz, 62, American basketball player.
* John Ugelstad, 76, Norwegian chemical engineer and inventor.
* Robert W. Ward, 67, American businessman and politician, cancer.
* Henriette Wyeth, 79, American artist.

### 4

* Lawrence A. Appley, 93, American organizational theorist.
* Herta Ehlert, 92, German nazi camp guard during World War II.
* Sugimura Haruko, 88, Japanese actress.
* Leo Picard, 96, Israeli geologist.
* Mike Raven, 72, British radio disc jockey, actor and sculptor.
* Vladimir Soloukhin, 72, Russian poet and writer.
* Shoichiro Takenaka, 84, Japanese long-distance runner and Olympian.
* Alparslan Türkeş, 79, Turkish politician, heart attack.
* Rudolf Ulrich, 75, German film actor.

### 5

* Ignazio Buttitta, 97, Italian poet.
* Heberto Castillo, 58, Mexican political activist.
* Richard Clifton-Dey, 66, British artist.
* Paul W. Cronin, 59, American politician, brain cancer.
* Paul de Bruyn, 89, German athlete.
* Stoney Edwards, 67, American country singer, stomach cancer.
* Allen Ginsberg, 70, American poet and writer, liver cancer.
* Warren Godfrey, 66, Canadian ice hockey player.
* August Heckscher II, 83, American public intellectual and writer, heart failure.
* Aklilu Lemma, 61, Ethiopian scientist.
* John R. McKinney, 76, American soldier and recipient of the Medal of Honor.
* Riley Morris, 62-63, American football player (Oakland Raiders, Boston/New Bedford Sweepers).

### 6

* Max Alvarado, 68, Filipino actor, heart failure.
* Bernard Chevallier, 84, French equestrian and Olympic champion.
* Jack Kent Cooke, 84, Canadian-American businessman, cardiac arrest, heart attack.
* Stephan Hermlin, 81, German author.
* Peter Jeffrey, 83, Royal Australian Air Force officer and flying ace.
* David Keith-Lucas, 86, British aeronautical engineer.
* Barbara Yu Ling, Singapore-British actress.
* Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger, 73, American physicist.
* Rosita Serrano, 84, Chilean singer, chronic bronchitis.
* Pierre-Henri Teitgen, 88, French lawyer, professor and politician.

### 7

* Luis Aloma, 73, Cuban baseball player.
* Aaron Kramer, 75, American poet and social activist.
* Sam Parks, Jr., 87, American golfer.
* Georgy Shonin, 61, Soviet cosmonaut, heart attack.

### 8

* Kwame Baah, 58, Ghanaian soldier and politician.
* Bob Cain, 72, American baseball player, cancer.
* Charles Hayes, 79, American politician, lung cancer.
* Laura Nyro, 49, American songwriter, singer, and pianist, ovarian cancer.
* Homer Peel, 94, American baseball player and manager.
* Alejo Peralta, 80, Mexican baseball executive.

### 9

* Mae Boren Axton, 82, American songwriter and music promoter.
* Joe Coleman, 74, American baseball player.
* Helene Hanff, 80, American writer, peritonitis, diabetes.
* Geoffrey Hardy-Roberts, 89, British Army officer, politician and courtier.
* Yank Rachell, 94, American country blues musician.
* Stevo Teodosievski, 72, Macedonian artist and humanist.
* Wu Zuoren, 88, Chinese painter.

### 10

* Erik Blumenfeld, 82, German politician.
* Michael Dorris, 52, American novelist and scholar, suicide.
* Fred Emery, 71, Australian psychologist.
* Andrew Joseph Galambos, 72, Hungarian astrophysicist and philosopher.
* Alan Gibson, 73, English journalist, writer and radio broadcaster.
* Gösta Johansson, 68, Swedish ice hockey player, liver cancer.
* Marcel Maes, 52, Belgian cyclist.
* Toshiro Mayuzumi, 68, Japanese composer.
* Mehtab, 78, Indian actress.
* Martin Schwarzschild, 84, German-American astrophysicist.
* Francis Walder, 90, Belgian writer and soldier.
* Glanville Williams, 86, Welsh legal scholar.

### 11

* Castor de Andrade, 71, Brazilian mobster and bicheiro.
* Muriel McQueen Fergusson, 97, Canadian activist, judge and politician.
* Rajko Kojić, 40, Serbian/Yugoslav guitarist.
* Milt Smith, 68, American baseball player.
* Radovan Stojičić, 46, Serbian police general, leader of the Public Security Service and acting Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia.
* Wang Xiaobo, 44, Chinese novelist and essayist, heart attack.
* Junzō Yoshimura, 88, Japanese architect.

### 12

* Kevin Belcher, 35, American football player.
* Ivar Eriksson, 87, Swedish football defender.
* Nechama Leibowitz, 91, Israeli bible scholar and commentator.
* Moro Lorenzo, Filipino basketball player and executive.
* Dorothy Norman, 92, American photographer, writer, and arts patron.
* Eric Pearce, 92, Australian broadcaster.
* James Ross, 85, Scottish surgeon.
* George Wald, 90, American scientist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

### 13

* Mustafa Amin or Mostafa Amin, 83, Egyptian columnist and journalist.
* Madhava Ashish, 77, British-Indian spiritualist, mystic, writer and agriculturist.
* Dorothy Frooks, 101, American author, lawyer, and suffragist.
* David McCord, 99, American poet.
* Shuhei Nishida, 86, Japanese Olympic pole vaulter, heart failure.
* Harry Rosenberg, 88, American baseball player.
* Voldemar Väli, 94, EstonianGreco-Roman wrestler and Olympic medalist.

### 14

* Gerda Christian, 83, German private secretary of Adolf Hitler during World War II, cancer.
* Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, 93, New Zealand poet, polemicist and pretender to the Polish throne.
* Kit Denton, 68, Australian writer and broadcaster.
* Gus Dugas, 90, Canadian-born baseball outfielder.
* John Jennings, 94, English footballer.
* Michael Stroka, 58, American television actor, kidney cancer.
* Walter Taylor, 84, American anthropologist and archaeologist.
* Finn Wold, 69, Norwegian-American biochemist, cancer.

### 15

* Don Bexley, 87, American actor and comedian, heart and kidney failure.
* L. Brent Bozell, Jr., 71, American conservative activist and Roman Catholic writer.
* David Dockendorf, 73, American sound engineer.
* Zdeněk Mlynář, 66, Czech politic writer, political analyst and lawyer.
* Sam Moskowitz, 76, American writer, critic, and science fiction historian.
* Harry Nicholas, 92, British trade unionist.
* Kō Nishimura, 74, Japanese actor.
* Sipan Shiraz, 29, Armenian poet, sculptor and painter.
* Carlos Enrique Taboada, 67, Mexican screenwriter and director.
* Richard Tousey, 88, American astronomer, pneumonia.

### 16

* Doris Angleton, 46, American socialite and murder victim, shot.
* Jan Bruins, 56, Dutch motorcycle road racer.
* Esmeralda Arboleda Cadavid, 76, Colombian activist, politician and diplomat, kidney failure.
* Thaddeus Golas, 72, American writer.
* Doug McMahon, 79, Canadian soccer player.
* Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, 66, Mexican newspaper publisher, pancreatic cancer.
* Roland Topor, 59, French graphic artist, author and actor, cerebral hemorrhage.
* Claude Tresmontant, 71, French philosopher, hellenist and theologian.

### 17

* Mitsu Arakawa, 69, American professional wrestler, heart failure.
* Dale Burnett, 88, American gridiron football player.
* Tom Franckhauser, 59, American gridiron football player, heart attack.
* Allan Francovich, 56, American film maker, heart attack.
* Chaim Herzog, 78, Israeli politician, general, and author.
* Henry George Lang, 78, New Zealand economist, university professor and company director.
* Gérard Lecomte, 70, French arabist.
* Biju Patnaik, 81, Indian politician, aviator and businessman.
* Mary French Rockefeller, 86, American heiress, socialite and philanthropist.
* Hena Rodríguez, 81, Colombian sculptor.

### 18

* Rolf Andersson, 67, Swedish football player.
* Edward Barker, 46, English cartoonist.
* Bob Carpenter, 79, American basketball player.
* Herbert Czaja, 82, German politician.
* Jeanne Hoban, 72, British Trotskyist, Alzheimer's disease.
* Francis Johnson, 86, American basketball player.
* Don Pietromonaco, 61, American actor and radio personality, complications from emphysema.
* Eddie Quigley, 75, English football player and manager.
* Juan Félix Sánchez, 95, Venezuelan folk artist.

### 19

* Walter Gordon, 77, United States Army soldier during World War II.
* Eldon Hoke, 39, American musician, railroad accident.
* Carl Walter Liner, 82, Swiss painter.
* Alexander Slawik, 96, German nazi cryptographer and Japanese ethnologist.
* Maria Wittek, 97, Polish officer during World War II.

### 20

* Eva Blanco, 16, Spanish girl and murder victim, stabbed.
* Pai Hsiao-yen, 16, Taiwanese girl and murder victim, murdered.
* Jean Louis, 89, French-American costume designer.
* Henry Mucci, 88, United States Army Rangers colonel, stroke.
* Sun Ma Sze Tsang, 80, Cantonese opera singer and actor in Hong Kong.
* Henri Vilbert, 93, French actor.

### 21

* Alfred Bailey, 92, Canadian poet, anthropologist and ethno-historian.
* Diosdado Macapagal, 86, President of the Philippines and poet, heart failure and pneumonia.
* Thomas H. D. Mahoney, 83, American professor and politician.
* Sayed Mekawy, 69, Egyptian singer and composer.
* József Mészáros, 74, Hungarian football player and football manager.
* Andrés Rodríguez, 73, President of Paraguay (1989–1993), cancer.
* Magda Staudinger, 94, Latvian biologist and botanist.
* Aníbal Tarabini, 55, Argentine football player, traffic collision.
* Nicolas Eugene Walsh, 80, American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church.
* Herbert Zipper, 92, Austrian-American composer, conductor, and Dachau concentration camp inmate.

### 22

* Jean Carlu, 96, French graphic designer.
* Néstor Cerpa Cartolini, 43, Peruvian communist and revolutionary, killed in action.
* Moelwyn Merchant, 83, Welsh academic, novelist, sculptor, poet and Anglican priest.
* Elliott Merrick, 91, American author.
* Pete Petrow, 72, Canadian football player.

### 23

* Thomas Carr, 89, American actor and film director.
* Denis Compton, 78, English cricketer, sepsis.
* Esther Schiff Goldfrank, 100-101, American anthropologist.
* Dorothy Hill, 89, Australian geologist and palaeontologist.
* Camillo Ripamonti, 77, Italian politician and engineer.
* Beatrice Seear, Baroness Seear, 83, British social scientist and politician.
* Inge Viermetz, 89, Nazi Germany official.

### 24

* Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, 88, Soviet/Chechen historian and writer.
* John A. Brown Jr., 35, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.
* Robert Erickson, 80, American composer and author, polymyositis.
* Felice Ippolito, 81, Italian geologist and politician.
* Bill McArthur, 78, American football player and coach.
* Hubert McLean, 89, New Zealand rugby player.
* Eugene Stoner, 74, American firearms designer, cancer.

### 25

* Aleksejs Auziņš, 86, Latvian football and ice hockey player.
* Nicholas Baker, 58, British politician and minister.
* Lidia Istrati, 55, Moldovan writer and politician.
* Frank Joyner, 78, Scottish football player and manager.
* Brian May, 62, Australian film composer (Mad Max) and conductor, heart attack.
* Pat Paulsen, 69, American comedian and satirist, complications of pneumonia and kidney failure.
* Gino Pernice, 69, Italian actor.
* Dudley Pope, 71, British writer .
* Andreas Rett, 73, Austrian neurologist and author.
* Bernard Vonnegut, 82, American atmospheric scientist, cancer.
* Joan Yarde-Buller, 89, English socialite.
* Nikolai Yegorov, 45, Russian politician, lung cancer.
* Chia-Shun Yih, 78, Chinese-American engineer and physicist, heart failure.

### 26

* John Beal, 87, American actor, stroke.
* J. J. Colledge, 89, British naval historian and author.
* Wilhelm Crinius, 76, German Luftwaffe flying ace during World War II.
* Joey Faye, American comedian and actor.
* Hideo Fujimoto, 78, Japanese baseball pitcher, heart attack.
* Valery Obodzinsky, 55, Soviet and Russian tenor, heart attack.
* Howard Ensign Simmons, Jr., 67, American chemist.
* Peng Zhen, 94, Chinese politician and chairman of the NPCSC (1983–1988).

### 27

* Lew Dietz, 90, American writer.
* Gabriel Figueroa, 90, Mexican cinematographer.
* Paul Lambert, 74, American actor.
* Dulce María Loynaz, 94, Cuban poet, and is, cancer.
* Bunny Roger, 85, English couturier and socialite.
* Piotr Skrzynecki, 66, Polish choreographer, director and cabaret impresario, cancer.
* Peter Winch, 71, British philosopher.

### 28

* Peter Tali Coleman, 77, Samoan Governor of American Samoa (1956–1961; 1978–1985; 1989–1993), liver cancer.
* Steve Conte, 77, Italian-American actor, Alzheimer's disease.
* Ashley Harvey-Walker, 52, English cricketer (Derbyshire County Cricket Club), murdered.
* Una Johnson, 91, American curator and art historian.
* Ann Petry, 88, American children's author, novelist and journalist.
* William Percy Rogers, 82, Australian zoologist.
* John P. Snyder, 71, American cartographer.
* Peter Taylor, Baron Taylor of Gosforth, 66, British Lord Chief Justice of England (1992–1996), cancer.
* Doc Urich, 68, American football player and coach, heart attack.

### 29

* Keith Ferguson, 50, American bass guitarist, liver failure.
* Georgy Klimov, 68, Russian linguist.
* Günther Laukien, 72, German physicist and entrepreneur.
* R. N. Malhotra, 71, Indian banker.
* Mike Royko, 64, American newspaper columnist, brain aneurysm.

### 30

* Miklós Fodor, 88, Hungarian field handball player and Olympian.
* Michael Harbottle, 80, British Army officer.
* Josiah Lincoln Lowe, 92, American mycologist.
* Jorge Mondragón, 93, Mexican actor.
* Henry Gilford Picard, 90, American golfer.
* Roohangiz Saminejad, 80, Iranian actress.
* Wolfgang Späte, 85, German Luftwaffe flying ace during World War II.
* Vladimir Sukharev, 72, Soviet sprinter and Olympian.