Notable deaths in 2005
Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Sept. 3
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a one-time maverick who built a precarious conservative majority on cases touching everything from schools to the presidency, fought his final struggle away from the public square. Ravaged by thyroid cancer disclosed nearly a year ago, Rehnquist labored over months of declining health to stay at his job, gaunt yet stoic as the disease progressed. He died on Sept. 3 at age 80, surrounded by his grown children in his Virginia home. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Notable deaths in 2005
Ex-V.P. candidate James Stockdale, July 5
Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, who ran for vice president as Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, died July 5 at the age of 81. Stockdale, who endured 7 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison and earned the Medal of Honor for valor, had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, the Navy said, but it did not provide a cause of death. (AFP/Getty Images/J. David Ake)
Paul Winchell, ventriloquist and voice of Tigger, dead at 82
Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children’s television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, died on Friday, June 24, 2005, at his home in Moorpark, Calif. He was 82. Something of a renaissance man, Winchell was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an early artificial heart he built in 1963 and then donated to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other University of Utah researchers later became well-known for the Jarvik-7, which was implanted into patients after 1982. Among Winchell’s other inventions were an early disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter, an invisible garter belt and an indicator to show when frozen food had gone bad after a power outage. Here, Paul Winchell, right, and Ruth Buzzi are seen on the set of the television show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in, in this 1969 photo. Dressed in a dress is dummy Jerry Mahoney. (AP/ Los Angeles Times, file)
