Betty Ballantine (September 25, 1919-February 12, 2019) and her husband, Ian, who met while attending school in England, used a $500 wedding gift from Betty's father to start a business importing Penguin paperbacks from England. The Ballantines took advantage of new technology in production and distribution (and of a clause in copyright law that waived fees on British books), and helped invent the modern paperback, through two enduring imprints they founded: Bantam Books and Ballantine Books (both now part of Penguin Random House).

Charging as little as a quarter, they published everything from reprints of Mark Twain and John Steinbeck, to paperbacks of contemporary bestsellers. The Ballantines also vastly expanded the market for science fiction and other genres through such blockbusters as J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings," and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Other authors in the Ballantine roster included Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick and Anthony Burgess, and among its re-printed titles, H.P. Lovecraft and H. Rider Haggard.

After selling Ballantine Books, Betty edited Shirley MacLaine's bestselling "Out on a Limb" and wrote a fantasy novel, "The Secret Oceans" (1994). The Ballantines' Rufus Publications also produced art and fantasy books, including Frank McCarthy's "The Old West" and Brian Froud's "Faeries."

"We really, truly wanted and did publish books that mattered," Ballantine told the science fiction-fantasy magazine Locus in 2002. "And science fiction matters, because it's of the mind, it predicts, it thinks, it says, 'Look at what's happening here. If that's what's happening here and now, what's it going to look like 10 years from now, 50 years from now, or 2,000 years from now?' It's a form of magic. Not abracadabra or wizardry. It is the minds of humankind that make this magic."

He became an international sensation playing the bawdy rake "Tom Jones," and the philandering protagonist of the British "kitchen sink" drama "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." But over a six-decade career Albert Finney (May 9, 1936-February 8, 2019) brought a remarkable breadth and tenderness to his roles, even to the violent crime boss he played in the Coen Brothers' "Miller's Crossing" (pictured). His characters ranged from the historic (Winston Churchill and Pope John Paul II) to the comic strip (Daddy Warbucks in "Annie").

Finney would earn five Academy Award nominations for his performances, in "Tom Jones"; as Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in "Murder on the Orient Express"; a Shakespearean actor in ''The Dresser"; an alcoholic in ''Under the Volcano"; and an attorney in "Erin Brockovich."

The son of a bookmaker, Finney grew up outside Manchester in northern England. He took to the stage at an early age, doing a number of school plays and, despite a lack of connections and his working-class roots, earning a place at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. But he did not pursue conventional Hollywood stardom, nor the trappings of fame. After the success of "Tom Jones" (which made him comfortably well-off), he skipped work and traveled the world for a year. He famously turned down the title role in "Lawrence of Arabia," and, later, a knighthood.

Finney would alternate between the stage (starring in "Billy Liar," "Luther," and "A Day in the Life of Joe Egg") and movies, which ranged from "Two for the Road" (with Audrey Hepburn), "Scrooge" (a musical version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"), and the marital drama "Shoot the Moon," to the horror flick "Wolfen." He also owned a production company that produced the cult classics "If…" and "O Lucky Man." Recently he shared the screen with Daniel Craig and Judi Dench in the James Bond thriller "Skyfall."

In a 1982 interview in The Guardian, Finney said, "The most elusive thing in film is that you try to give it the breath of life in a sense. That's the thing you very rarely get, I think. And when you see a film after you've finished it, out of the ninety minutes, there are probably about 40 of 50 seconds scattered – well, 10 or 20 seconds scattered here and there – where you think, 'Ah, yes'."

The groundbreaking observations of oceanographer Walter Munk (October 19, 1917-February 8, 2019) would have ripple effects across generations, bettering our understanding of the physical phenomena of waves, currents and tides. Born in Austria to a family of bankers, Munk was sent to New York City to pursue studies in finance, but instead would get degrees in physics and geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. He followed a girl to La Jolla, where he took a summer job at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Though he would enlist in the U.S. Army's ski troops at the outbreak of World War II, he worked instead at Scripps training Navy and Air Force weather officers on when to conduct or cancel amphibious landing operations based on tides and waves – invaluable for Allied actions on the coast of Northern Africa, in the Pacific, and on the beaches of Normandy.

His oceanographic work (in such fields as ocean circulation and acoustic tomography) assisted in the areas of anti-submarine warfare, atomic testing in the Pacific, and the study of ocean temperatures and climate change, while he also aided the expansion of the Scripps campus and the University of California's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. Munk was a Pentagon advisor, a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, and Secretary of the Navy Chair in Oceanography. In addition, he and his second wife, Judith, served as science ambassadors on visits to China and the Soviet Union during the 1970s. He received the President's National Medal of Science in 1983.

"I am very concerned that not much is being done about the heating of the oceans," he told CBS Affiliate KFMB in 2009. "Two-thirds of the heat that's been added in the last 50 years has gone into the ocean, and only one-third in the atmosphere. If there wasn't available ocean on this planet for heat storage, the warming of the atmosphere would have been three times as big."

Former U.S. Rep. John Dingell (July 8, 1926-February 7, 2019) was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, and a master of legislative deal-making who was fiercely protective of Detroit's auto industry. The imposing 6'3" Democrat won a special election in 1955 to succeed his father, a "New Deal" Democrat who died in office, and served in the House for 59 years, before retiring in 2014.

He was no stranger to the Capitol; Dingell was a page on the House floor when President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan on Dec. 8, 1941, and during college he supervised the building's elevator operators.

As a Congressman he was a longtime supporter of universal health care. He had introduced a universal health care coverage bill in each of his terms, and proudly sat next to President Obama in 2010 when the $938 billion health care overhaul was signed into law. Dingell had a front-row seat for the passage of landmark legislation he supported, including Medicare, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, but also for the Clean Air Act (which he was accused of stalling to help auto interests). He also was known as a dogged pursuer of government waste and fraud, and even helped take down two top Reagan-era presidential aides while leading the investigative arm of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he chaired for 14 years.

"I've gotten more death threats around here than I can remember," Dingell told The Associated Press in a 1995 interview. "It used to bother my wife, but oversight was something we did uniquely well."

Even after his retirement from office, and while recuperating from a heart attack, he continued to dispense his dry wit on Twitter to his quarter-million followers. An example was advice he tweeted to freshmen of the new Congress last month: "For the next six months you're going to wonder how the hell you got here. Then one day you'll come on to the House floor, look around, and wonder how in the hell all the other fools got here."

Hall of Famer and two-time Most Valuable Player Frank Robinson (August 31, 1935-February 7, 2019) had a remarkable career on the field. The slugger, who was the only player to be named MVP in both the American and National Leagues, won the Triple Crown as he led the Baltimore Orioles to their first World Series championship, in 1966. An All-Star outfielder in 12 seasons and a first-ballot selection to Cooperstown, Robinson also was a Rookie of the Year, and had 204 stolen bases. With 586 home runs, he was fourth on the all-time list (behind Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays) when he retired.

But Robinson cemented his legacy when he became manager of the Cleveland Indians in 1975 – the first African American manager in major league baseball. He also managed in San Francisco, Baltimore and Montreal, and became the first manager of the Washington Nationals after the franchise moved from Montreal for the 2005 season.

Robinson later spent several years working as a league executive and for a time oversaw the annual Civil Rights Game. He advocated for more minorities throughout baseball, and worked with former Commissioner Bud Selig to develop the Selig Rule (directing teams to interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a new manager).

For all he did on and off the field, Robinson was presented the Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2005.

Robinson played the game with grace, yet was known as a fierce competitor who combined hard work with natural talent. He crowded the plate, yielding to no pitcher, and didn't seem to care about being brushed back or getting hit by a pitch 198 times. "Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down," Robinson said. "It made me more determined. I wouldn't let that pitcher get me out."

A pioneer in the application of developmental psychology to social policy, Yale professor Edward Zigler (March 1, 1930-February 7, 2019) helped create the Head Start program for disadvantaged preschoolers, which has served more than 32 million children since 1965, earning him the title "Father of Head Start."

In addition to his groundbreaking work during the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty," Zigler created the U.S. Office of Child Care during the Nixon administration; served as chair of the Vietnamese Children's Resettlement Advisory Group under President Ford; helped to construct the Family and Medical Leave Act; and founded the Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy at Yale (since renamed the Edward Zigler Center for Child Development and Social Policy). He also helped advance the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential for early childhood educators.

"Where are our priorities? We keep saying you have to invest in human capital," Zigler told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. "Investing in human capital means good health for our young children, [and] it means preschool education for all our children."

Hailing from Cornwall, British writer Rosamunde Pilcher (September 22, 1924-February 6, 2019) began her literary career in the 1940s, conjuring romance novels under the name Jane Fraser. The first novel published under her own name, "A Secret to Tell," came out in 1955. She would score her biggest success more than three decades later, when she was 63, with the international bestseller "The Shell Seekers" (1988), which told the story of a bohemian family from World War II to the present. The novel was twice adapted for television, while dozens of Pilcher's other stories have been filmed for German TV.

In addition to short story collections, her other novels of messy but relatable family life included "September," ''Coming Home" and "Winter Solstice."

"Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion … It's a job you have to do," Pilcher told The New York Times in 2000.  "And once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them."

Actor Kristoff St. John (July 15, 1966-February 3, 2019) began his career as a child on sitcoms like "That's My Mama," "Happy Days," "The Bad News Bears," "The Cosby Show" and "Charlie & Co.," and in the miniseries "Roots: The Next Generations." He appeared in the daytime soap "Generations," before beginning a 27-year-run on CBS' daytime drama "The Young and the Restless." St. John won two Daytime Emmys and several NAACP Image Awards for his portrayal of Neil Winters, a cosmetics company executive who is something of an over-achiever, who wrestles with alcoholism; divorces and then remarries his wife; and becomes a foster parent.

Born of a biracial couple, St. John wrote for CBSNews.com in 2014 about the hate mail he received early in his "Y&R" tenure when his character started a romance with a white character: "It actually came to my home address. Wedged in between the gas bill [and] my mortgage bill were startling letters of hate and discontent. It affected me deeply. … I wasn't quite clear as to why this was occurring, other than the fact that I wasn't ignorant to racism in this country."

The hate mail was turned over to the FBI, and the letters stopped coming. "That only told me that people who watch the show – doesn't matter what color they are – that are sitting at home that don't believe that black and white should coexist, are not my friends."

In 2015 St. John spoke with "Entertainment Tonight" about the death of his 24-year-old son, Julian, who died by suicide at a mental health facility. "That call was the worst call I've ever had in my life," St. John said. He and his ex-wife later settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the facility out of court.

The last update to St. John's Twitter account was a retweet January 21 that read, "Grieving the loss of a child is a process. It begins on the day your child passes, and ends the day the parent joins them."

Actress Julie Adams (October 17, 1926-February 3, 2019) starred in approximately 150 films and TV shows, appearing opposite such Hollywood legends as Elvis Presley (in "Tickle Me"), Jimmy Stewart ("Bend in the River"), Tyrone Power ("Mississippi Gambler"), Dennis Hopper ("The Last Movie") and John Wayne ("McQ"). But it was her starring role in the 1954 horror film "Creature From the Black Lagoon" that is her most memorable, playing a scientist who encounters a monster from the depths of an Amazonian river.

Adams didn't get to do the actual swimming (despite having "perfectly symmetrical" legs that the studio had insured for $125,000), but she definitely left an impression, and not just for her swimsuit attire. She told Nick Thomas in 2014, as published in USA Today: "Some told me they became zoologists or paleontologists because of the film. And I met a little girl who was named after my character.

"Some projects just take on a life of their own. The Creature still walks among us," she said.

Her TV work straddled the 20th and 21st centuries, from "Perry Mason," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Rawhide," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Jimmy Stewart Show," "Murder, She Wrote," "Code Red," and "Beverly Hills, 90210,"  to "Lost," "CSI: NY" and "Cold Case." But fans keep coming back to her underwater "Beauty and the Beast" tale. "It's just a darn good movie," Adams said at a 2012 screening of the film as part of "Universal's Legacy of Horror."

Dick Miller (December 25, 1928-January 30, 2019) made the most of his first meeting with B-movie director Roger Corman, whose finances were so scrimped he was sharing a desk. As he told The A/V Club in 2012, "We get to talking, and he says, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'New York.' He says, 'Uhh, so what do you do?' I say, 'I'm a writer.' He says, 'Ah, I don't need writers, I need actors.' I said, 'I'm an actor!' Just blurted it out like that, and that's how it started."

What started was a career as one of Hollywood's most dependable character actors, who rose from the zero-budget films of Corman ("Not of This Earth," "Little Shop of Horrors") to work with such directors as James Cameron ("The Terminator"), Steven Spielberg ("1941"), and Martin Scorsese ("New York, New York," "After Hours"). He was definitely a good luck charm for Joe Dante, who featured Miller in every feature film he made, from "Pirahna" and "Gremlins" to "The Burbs."

Even his characters' names served as an in-joke for film buffs; Miller repeatedly played someone named Walter Paisley, from a murderous beatnik sculptor (in "A Bucket of Blood"), to a cop ("Shake, Rattle and Rock!"), to a rabbi (in the upcoming horror film "Hanukkah").  

Miller took pride in the fact that he was always working. "I really never got excited about the size of a part. I didn't realize the staying power of stars, when you got top billing, and then you've got to go a little lower, [then] a little lower. But maybe that's why I've been around so long."

Grammy-winning R&B singer James Ingram (February 16, 1952-January 29, 2019) recorded ballads and pop songs with a soulful voice that sounded like whisky. His recordings of "Just Once" and "One Hundred Way" on the 1981 Quincy Jones album, "The Dude," earned him three Grammy nominations (including Best New Artist), and an award for Best R&B Male Vocal Performance. He later appeared in Jones' "The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite)."

Ingram's other hits included the Grammy-winning "Yah Mo B There"; "How Do You Keep The Music Playing"; "Baby, Come to Me" (a duet with Patti Austin); and "I Don't Have the Heart," which hit #1 on the Billboard chart in 1990. He also teamed up with Donna Summer ("Mystery of Love"), Linda Ronstadt ("Somewhere Out There," from the animated film "An American Tail"), and Dolly Parton ("The Day I Fall in Love," from the film "Beethoven's 2nd").

As a songwriter, he co-wrote Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)," and earned two Oscar nominations for Best Song.

PLAY EXCERPT: "Just Once"

PLAY EXCERPT: "Baby, Come to Me"

In 1991, Ingram told the Associated Press, "When people ask me, I say I studied at the University of Ray Charles, and went to learn with the master, Quincy."

He won the first of his three Academy Awards for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" (from 1968's "The Thomas Crown Affair"). He won the first of his five Grammys for the theme from "Summer of '42." But Michel Legrand (February 24, 1932 - January 26, 2019), who scored more than 200 films, is best known for the French musical romance, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," with its hit song, "I Will Wait For You."

PLAY EXCERPT: "I Will Wait For You"

PLAY EXCERPT: "The Windmills of Your Mind"

He worked with such musical luminaries as Maurice Chevalier, Jacques Brel, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Miles Davis, Nana Mouskouri, Barbara Streisand, Yves Montand and Sting.

Legrand played an outsized role on the French musical scene, and was touring into his 80s, evidently living out his youthful ambitions. As he told The Guardian last year, "When I finished at the Paris Conservatoire, I was 20 and I felt I could do everything. I could write symphonies. I could be a virtuoso classical pianist … I could be a jazz pianist – I liked that very much, because you're free and I know how to improvise. I could be a singer. I could be a conductor. So I said, my dream in my life is to do it all."

"Yesterday, at about 10pm, the General Howze pulled into the Hudson River. We stood on the deck and we stared. 1,352 Displaced Persons stared at America. All the wartime, post-war DP miseries, desperations and hopelessness, and then suddenly you are faced with a dream. You have to see New York at night, from the Hudson, like this, to see its incredible beauty."

Lithuanian-born Jonas Mekas (December 24, 1922 - January 23, 2019) encompassed many hyphenates – poet, critic, diarist, filmmaker and arts patron were just a sampling. After surviving a Nazi labor camp and spending years as a refugee, Mekas ventured to postwar America, joining the avant-garde art movement in New York and befriending such celebrities as Jacqueline Kennedy, Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Andy Warhol.

He filmed the Kennedy children in his intimate documentary "This Side of Paradise," just one example of his many films that documented life in New York City in the mid- to late-20th century, and shot some of the earliest known footage of rock's prototypical punk/avant-garde band, the Velvet Underground.

His first full-length release, the 1961 documentary "Guns of the Tree," featured narration by Beat poet Allen Ginsburg. Other works included his adaptation of a play about life in a military prison, "The Brig," which won the Grand Prize at the 1963 Venice Film Festival; "Walden," a 3-hour documentary about the New York art scene; "Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania"; and "Lost, Lost, Lost," reflections on his early years in New York.

He also published poetry and memoirs, wrote an influential column for the Village Voice, published Film Culture magazine, and helped found Anthology Film Archives, an indispensible site for independent and avant-garde cinema. Mekas became a mentor to generations of rising filmmakers, from Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch to James Franco. He grew more prolific with age; in 2007, when he turned 85, he posted a new short film online for every day of the year.

In an interview with The New York Times published in January, Mekas calmly ruminated about death: "It's a very normal transition," he said. "What's beyond that line, it's where the mystery begins, where it becomes interesting. There are glimpses in the messages that come from there, some of the old Scriptures. Indications are there, and I believe it all. I believe it much more than anything that's written since the 12th century."

A boisterous comedian and singer who appeared on Broadway and in nightclubs from New York to Las Vegas, Kaye Ballard (November 20, 1925 - January 21, 2019) starred for two seasons in the 1960s sitcom "The Mothers-in-Law" opposite Eve Arden. It marked a high point in a career that began when Ballard was 12. A singer at service clubs in Cleveland during the war, she worked at a burlesque theater after high school, not as a stripper but as straight woman in comedy sketches.

Ballard's first real break came when she was singing in The Bowery, a Detroit nightclub. Comedy bandleader Spike Jones dropped in one night and quickly drafted the exuberant young singer into his musical contingent. For a year she toured with Jones' troupe, singing, playing the flute and tuba, and engaging in the band's antics. She also sang with the bands of Vaughn Monroe and Stan Kenton.

She moved to New York in 1945 and appeared on Broadway and in summer stock. She also began working on TV, becoming an in-demand performer on network variety programs headlined by Mel Torme, Ed Sullivan and Perry Como. She played one of Julie Andrews' step-sisters in the TV premiere of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "Cinderella."

Her high-octane personality hit it big on stage as a madcap Helen of Troy in 1954's "The Golden Apple," and she won critical praise for her role in 1961's "Carnival!"

Ballard made few film appearances, including "The Girl Most Likely," "A House Is Not a Home," "Which Way to the Front?," "The Ritz" and "Freaky Friday." Following "The Mothers-in-Law," she was a regular on "The Doris Day Show" in the 1970s, and on "Due South" in the 1990s, as well as making guest spots on "The Love Boat," "Alice," "Fantasy Island" and others. In the early 2000s, Ballard toured in the musical comedy "Nunsense," joined the touring company of the Broadway musical "The Full Monty," starred in "Quartet," and performed in the revue "Doin' It For Love."

As she told Broadway World in 2012, "If you are not on television, they think you are dead. I've never stopped working, and I'm 86!"

A genial but sharp-witted writer, Russell Baker (August 14, 1925 - January 21, 2019) enjoyed a decades-long career as a reporter, columnist, critic and on-air personality. He won Pulitzers in 1979 for his New York Times column, "Observer," which he wrote for 35 years, and for "Growing Up," his moving 1983 autobiography recalling his impoverished Baltimore childhood.

After training to be a pilot during World War II, he began his career as a reporter in 1947 and rose to become a national New York Times reporter in Washington in 1954. He covered Congress, the military and State Department during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations before tiring, he would recall, of waiting for politicians to come out of meeting rooms and lie to him.

He drew upon those experiences for his column, writing as a curious and wide-eyed outsider who could leave an adversary buried under the weight of common sense. Later, Baker hosted public television's "Masterpiece Theatre," succeeding Alistair Cooke.

As recounted recently by Adrienne Lafrance in The Atlantic, Baker discounted writing that was too easy: "If you haven't sweated over it, it's probably not worth it. So it's always been work. But it's the kind of work you enjoy having done. The doing of it is hard work. People don't usually realize what it takes out of you. They just see you sitting there, staring at the wall, and they don't know that you're looking for the perfect word to describe a shade of light."

Baker didn't ask to be called a humorist. During a 1994 speech in Hartford, Connecticut, he said his goal for the "Observer" was to render the federal government, politics and diplomacy accessible through plain, easy-to-read language. "Well, as I soon discovered, in those days if you wrote short sentences and plain English in the Times, everybody naturally assumed you were being funny," he said.

Living in Colorado, where he attended university and worked for Martin Marietta's missile program, Tony Mendez (November 15, 1940 - January 19, 2019) was recruited by the CIA in Denver through a blind ad, joining the agency in 1965. He spent his 25-year career as a specialist in covert operations, working undercover in Cold War battlegrounds, including the Soviet Union, helping secret agents remain secret through creating false documents and disguises.

In 1997 Mendez talked with CBS News' David Martin, describing his reputation as a "master of disguise": "You develop a mentality in our business where you consider success to be the fact that nobody knew. Nobody would ever know."

But the big operation which we DID come to know about was his successful rescue of American diplomats from Iran in 1980, in hiding from revolutionaries who had overthrown the Shah. Mendez helped devise the plan under which six diplomats, hidden in the Canadian Embassy, would be disguised as a Canadian film crew so they could board a flight and escape the country. Mendez took on the persona of a film producer doing location scouting in the country for a science fiction film named "Argo" (one of many "Star Wars" knockoffs being produced at the time). Before traveling to Iran, he placed ads in the trades and created a Hollywood office, and then managed to get the diplomats out of the country before the Iranians knew they had been in hiding. "It's like robbing a bank, except in our case we had to make it look like the money was still there!" Mendez said.

It was a feat later dramatized in Ben Affleck's 2012 film "Argo," which liberally embellished the story for the big screen. For example, the six Americans' passage through Tehran's airport and onto a plane was uneventful, while the movie portrayed a white-knuckle takeoff, with Iranian assault teams racing behind the jet down the runway.

Mendez was in attendance at the Academy Awards when the movie was named Best Picture. He told Martin he'd been trembling with nerves: "Yeah, isn't that crazy?"

Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 - January 17, 2019) was a native of Maple Heights in suburban Cleveland, and endured what she called a "dysfunctional" family in part by writing poems and building huts of sticks and grass in the nearby woods. Edna St. Vincent Millay was an early influence and, while in high school, Oliver wrote to the late poet's sister, Norma, asking if she could visit Millay's house in Austerlitz, New York. Norma Millay agreed and Oliver ended up spending several years there, organizing Edna St. Vincent Millay's papers.

Oliver would become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose rapturous odes to nature and animal life brought her critical acclaim and popular affection. The author of more than 15 poetry and essay collections, she wrote brief, direct pieces that sang of her worship of the outdoors and disdain for greed,  despoilment and other human crimes. One of her favorite adjectives was "perfect," and rarely did she apply it to people. Her muses were owls and butterflies, frogs and geese, the changes of the seasons, the sun and the stars.

"In my outward appearance and life habits I hardly change - there's never been a day that my friends haven't been able to say, and at a distance, 'There's Oliver, still standing around in the weeds. There she is, still scribbling in her notebook,'" Oliver wrote in "Long Life," a book of essays published in 2004. "But, at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel."

Like her hero Walt Whitman, whom she would call the brother she never had, Oliver didn't only observe mushrooms growing in a rainstorm or an owl calling from a black branch; she longed to know and become one with what she saw. She might be awed by the singing of goldfinches or, as in the poem "White Flowers," overcome by a long nap in a field. 

Never in my life
had I felt myself so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers
began

Her poetry books included "White Pine," ''West Wind" and the anthology "Devotions," which came out in 2017. She won the Pulitzer in 1984 for "American Primitive" and the National Book Award in 1992 for "New and Selected Poems."

She wrote often of mortality, but with a spirit of gratitude and completion. In "Circles," she pronounced herself "content" not to live forever, having been "filled" by what she saw and believed. In "When Death Comes," she hoped that at the end of life she could look back and see herself as a "bride married to amazement."

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

When you perform a role more than 5,000 times, people might forget you ever did anything else. The daughter of a newspaper editor, Carol Channing (January 31, 1921-January 15, 2019) knew by age seven she wanted to act on stage. She would star on Broadway in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (with "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" becoming her signature song), "The Vamp," "Wonderful Town," "Show Girl," "Lorelei," and "Sugar Babies." On screen she starred in "The First Traveling Saleslady" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (for which she copped an Oscar nomination as the widow Muzzy Van Hossmere). But it was as the irrepressible matchmaker Dolly Levi, in the musical "Hello, Dolly!," that she became synonymous with a single role.

Channing was not the immediate choice to play Dolly; producer David Merrick told her, "I don't want that silly grin with all those teeth that go back to your ears." And director Gower Champion (with whom she'd worked on her first Broadway hit, "Lend an Ear") had his doubts. But the effervescent Channing wowed them in an audition and was hired on the spot.

On opening night on January 16, 1964, when Channing made her appearance, the New York audience went crazy – and critics followed suit. "Hello, Dolly!" won 10 Tony Awards, including one for Channing as Best Actress in a Musical.

Over more than three decades she headlined six Broadway and touring productions of "Hello, Dolly!," hardly ever missing a performance, even while undergoing cobalt and chemotherapy treatments for ovarian cancer. "I kept doing the shows for selfish reasons," she said. "You feel nothing. You feel no pain." Channing considered the character to be "a role as deep as Lady Macbeth," but added that "the essence of her character was her unquenchable thirst for life."

She told the Associated Press in 2002 that only once did she bow out of playing Dolly, in Kalamazoo, because of food poisoning. A friend advised her: "If you have to miss the show, Kalamazoo is a good place to do it."

After working in NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs, electrical engineer Alan R. Pearlman (June 7, 1925-January 5, 2019) lent his name, or rather initials, to his company, ARP Instruments, which produced trailblazing synthesizers. Originally intended as educational tools, machines such as ARP's 2600 and the Odyssey became popular with scores of musicians, from Brian Eno, David Bowie and Pete Townshend, to Stevie Wonder and Prince.

Play Excerpt: 1980s "Doctor Who" Theme

Play Excerpt: Jean Michel Jarre's "Equinoxe"

Play Excerpt: "New Order's "Age of Consent"

"I naïvely assumed that because sex discrimination was wrong, it must be, therefore, illegal. It was not," wrote Bernice Sandler (March 3, 1928-January 5, 2019) in 2017. 

From a very young age Sandler became used to the practices of sexism – being told girls were not allowed to do what boys could do. She would later admit that she had been ambivalent about the feminist movement. But while she was teaching at the University of Maryland in the late 1960s, she pushed for equality on behalf of women in higher education, telling the Labor Department that an "industrywide pattern" existed. Armed with data, she filed complaints against more than 250 universities and colleges. Her advocacy would become the basis of Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law that banned sex discrimination by educational institutions receiving federal funds. Over the years, Title IX would work to help even the playing field in athletics, admissions, financial assistance, and protection against sexual harassment. 

Known as the "Godmother of Title IX," Sandler would later serve as director of the Project on the Status and Education of Women at the Association of American Colleges, and assist institutions transitioning to coeducational school bodies.

In 2017 Sandler admitted her early belief that equality between the sexes would come quickly with Title IX was overly-optimistic: "It will take many generations because what we are now talking about is not just increased opportunities for girls and women, but about a social revolution with an impact as large as the Industrial Revolution, for we are changing the roles of women and men, so that they are far closer to equal than they have ever been in the history of the world, and that is not easy to do. We have only taken the very first steps of what will be a very long journey."

A Los Angeles native, Daryl Dragon (August 27, 1942-January 2, 2019) was the son of Oscar-winning composer Carmen Dragon and singer Eloise Dragon. and was himself a classically trained musician at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He played keyboards and wrote arrangements for the Beach Boys and was dubbed "The Captain" because of his fondness for wearing sea captain's caps.

He met singer Toni Tennille in the early 1970s, and the two soon began performing together, as The Captain & Tennille. Their breakthrough came in 1975 when they covered the Neil Sedaka-Howard Greenfield song "Love Will Keep Us Together," topping the charts and winning a Grammy for Record of the Year.

Play excerpt: "Love Will Keep Us Together"

The duo followed that hit with "The Way I Want to Touch You," "Muskrat Love," "Shop Around," "Lonely Night (Angel Face)," and "Do That to Me One More Time," which hit No. 1 in 1980.

They briefly starred in their own TV variety show, before their careers began to fade in the 1980s. The two divorced in 2014 after nearly 40 years of marriage, but remained close.

Comic actor, writer and producer Bob Einstein (November 20, 1942-January 2, 2019) debuted his character "Super Dave" Osborne (a stuntman whose daredevil attempts usually backfire spectacularly) on "The John Byner Comedy Hour" in 1972. His stunt? Riding a rollercoaster at Magic Mountain amusement park, on which he passes out. Super Dave would later graduate to his own TV series and specials, usually inadequately protected by safety equipment that was itself unsafe, while a mannequin (standing in for the unfortunate stunt man) would be put through the most ignominious tribulations. (Pictured: Super Dave's run-in with a wrecking ball.) 

"This character allows me to do anything I want, comedically, and get away with it," he told The Associated Press in 1995.

The brothers of filmmaker Albert Brooks, Einstein won Emmys as a writer for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and for Dick Van Dyke's 1970s variety show, "Van Dyke and Company." He also wrote for Sonny & Cher, Pat Paulsen and the Hudson Brothers. He appeared in "Arrested Development" and "Ocean's Thirteen," and in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Einstein played Marty Funkhouser, the annoying pal of Larry David's equally annoying character.