Coy Bacon, 66, fierce pass rusher who spent 14 years in the NFL with Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Washington; Dec. 22, in Ironton, Ohio.
Valentin Berlinsky, 83, cellist of the Borodin Quartet for six decades; Dec. 15, in Moscow.
Rev. James Bevel, 72, top lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr. and a force behind civil rights campaigns of the 1960s whose erratic behavior and conviction on incest charges tarnished his legacy; Dec. 19, in Springfield, Va., of pancreatic cancer.
Alvah Chapman Jr., 87, third-generation newspaperman and former Miami Herald president and chief executive; Dec. 25, in Coconut Grove, Fla., of pneumonia.
Thomas Congdon Jr., 77, book editor behind Russell Baker’s memoir, Peter Benchley’s biggest best-seller and David Halberstam’s mammoth tome about the auto industry, who eventually founded his own publishing house; Dec. 23, in Nantucket, Mass., of Parkinson’s disease and congestive heart failure.
Lesana Conte, 74, dictator of the African nation of Guinea for 24 years; Dec. 22, in Conakry, Guinea, after a long illness.
Sir Bernard Crick, 79, political theorist who also wrote the first complete biography of George Orwell; Dec. 19, in Edinburgh, Scotland, of cancer.
Dock Ellis, 63, eccentric baseball pitcher who once threw a no-hitter while high on LSD and who later counseled athletes and prisoners on the dangers of drugs; Dec. 19, in Los Angeles, after fighting cirrhosis of the liver.
Joe Fahy, 54, award-winning reporter who worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Indianapolis Star; Dec. 23, in Pittsburgh, of cancer.
Ibrahim Ibrahim, 75, scholar of Middle Eastern history and public policy who was director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University; Nov. 30, in Washington, of cancer.
William Kaufmann, 90, close adviser to seven defense secretaries and a major proponent of a shift away from the early Cold War strategy of mass nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union; Dec. 14, in Woburn, Mass., of Alzheimer’s disease.
Eartha Kitt, 81, sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality; Dec. 25, in Connecticut, of colon cancer.
A. Carl Kotchian, 94, former head of Lockheed Aircraft Corp. who admitted in the 1970s to paying millions in bribes in an international scandal that brought down Japan’s prime minister; Dec. 14, in Redwood City, Calif.
Olga Lepeshinskaya, 92, a leading ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1940s and ’50s; Dec. 20, in Moscow, in her sleep.
Rev. Robert Marshall, 90, former president of the Lutheran Church of America and the denomination’s Illinois synod; Dec. 22, in Allentown, Pa.
Geraldine McCullough, 91, Oak Park sculptor and art teacher at what is now Dominican University; Dec. 15, in Oak Park, of heart failure.
Adrian Mitchell, 76, poet whose passionate works about nuclear war, Vietnam and racism were often sung at left-wing rallies; Dec. 20, in London, of a suspected heart attack.
Robert Mulligan, 83, director nominated for an Academy Award for directing 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”; Dec. 20, in Lyme, Conn., of heart disease.
Harold Pinter, 78, British Nobel laureate who produced some of his generation’s most influential dramas and later became a staunch critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq; Dec. 24, in London, of cancer.
Carlos Manuel Santiago, 82, star Negro League infielder during the 1940s; Dec. 21, in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
Jane Belon Shaw, 77, former Lisle Library District director; Dec. 17, in Naperville, of heart failure.
Dale Wasserman, 94, playwright best known for writing the book for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha” and the stage version of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; Dec. 21, in Paradise Valley, Ariz., of congestive heart failure.
