Deaths in April 1997

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.

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 pilot.
 * 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.
 * Kenneth Edward Gentry, 36, American criminal, execution by lethal injection.
 * 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 accident.
 * 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.