Don Edgren died of a hemorrhagic stroke on December 28 in Los Angeles. Born in 1923, Edgren joined the Army Air Forces in 1942 and flew combat missions. He returned home in 1945 and married his high school sweetheart. Edgren began his 33-year relationship with Disney in 1954 when the engineering firm he was employed at was hired to ready Disneyland for its opening the following year. Disney hired Edgren in 1961. He lead the engineering team that completed New Orleans Square in 1966 and transformed Pirates of the Caribbean from a walk-through attraction into a boat ride in 1967. As chief of field engineering for Walt Disney World in Florida, Edgren led the team that built the first Space Mountain in 1975, followed by a stint as director of engineering for Tokyo Disneyland. He was 83.

Sources: Associated Press, disneyparks.disney.go.com

Lilly Rodriguez died on January 13 at UCLA Medical Center of complications following surgery. Rodriguez, whose father was a boxer and whose mother was a professional wrestler, kickboxed in the 1970s and '80s, and was notable for taking on opponents much larger than herself. She was one of the first women to fight on the all-women boxing card in California on July 13, 1979. Her skill and determination would eventually earn her the women's featherweight championship. She was #2 World Featherweight Division 1981-1983 and #3 World Featherweight Division 1984. Following her retirement from the ring, she operated the Heart of Champions gym with her husband, former men's kickboxing champion William "Blinky" Rodriguez, and, in 2003, was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum's Hall of Fame. She was 59.

Sources: ourdailydead.com, Associated Press, womenboxing.com

James Hillier died of a stroke at University Medical Center in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 15. Hillier was a student at the University of Toronto in 1938 when he and fellow graduate student Albert Prebus furthered the work of German engineers Ernst Ruska and Reinhold Rudenberg to produce the first commercially successful electron microscope for use in medical research. The device magnified objects three times more than existing optical microscopes. By the end of the 1940s, the magnification power had jumped to 200,000 times. Hillier graduated with a doctorate in physics in 1941 and became the director of RCA's Princeton research laboratories in 1958, the company he pitched his prototype to in 1940. His tenure at RCA lasted until 1977, during which he oversaw the development of lasers, transistors, and liquid crystal displays. In 1997, he was decorated with the Order of Canada, among that country's highest honors. Hillier, who became an American citizen in 1945, was 91.

Sources: Yahoo News, LATimes.com

Betty Trezza, a shortstop for seven seasons for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, died Tuesday, January 16 of a heart attack. Trezza was 17 years old when she was recruited in 1944 and assigned to the Minneapolis Millerettes. The Millerettes were replaced in 1945 by the Fort Wayne Daisies. Trezza split the season between the Daisies and the South Bend Blue Sox. In 1946, she went to the Racine Belles, a team depicted in the 1992 Penny Marshall film A League of Their Own, starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, and Madonna. Lavonne Davis, who played with Trezza on the Belles, told The New York Times she believes Trezza was the inspiration for the movie character Betty Spaghetti, played by Marshall's daughter, Tracy Reiner. Trezza's single in Game 6 of the 1946 championship series drove in the winning run, earning the Belles the title. Trezza was 81.

Sources: Associated Press, IMDB, NYTimes.com, Wikipedia, aagpbl.org

Lester F. Borchardt Sr. died in Minneapolis on Sunday, January 22 following a lengthy retirement from a productive career at General Mills. Borchardt was a student at the University of Minnesota in 1933 when a professor tapped him to assist General Mills in evaluating research being done in Chicago on the fortification of milk with Vitamin D. Borchardt turned the method into a viable process and spent the next 36 years working for the breakfast cereal company, developing technologies that turned grain into cereals such as Cheerios, Chex, Wheaties, Lucky Charms, and Trix. Borchardt also developed a device to measure the moisture content of wheat kernels and a new way of closing cereal bags. He retired in 1969 as vice president and director of research. In 1987, he received a University of MN Alumni Association Wall of Honor award and an honorary PhD from the U of M, Teaching Fellow in Physics. Borchardt was 99.

Sources: PioneerPress, generalmills.com, StarTribune

Former CIA officer and White House secret agent E. Howard Hunt died of pneumonia at North Shore Medical Center in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, January 23. Hunt was born in Hamburg, N.Y., on Oct. 9, 1918, and graduated from Brown University. He entered the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman in February 1941. Hunt joined the CIA in 1949 and was assigned to Mexico City with another rookie, future conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. In 1954, he helped plan the successful overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. In 1961, he organizer and executed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. He retired from the CIA in 1970 and was enlisted by the Nixon White House the following year as a political consultant. Hunt planned the botched break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel to bug the telephone lines. The burglars were arrested on the night of June 17, 1972, and Hunt spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge. His memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, will be published next month with a foreward by William F. Buckley Jr. Hunt was 88.

Sources: NYTimes.com, Associated Press, ehowardhunt.com

Singer and songwriter Thornton James "Pookie" Hudson of the doo-wop group the Spaniels died Tuesday, January 16, of complications from thymus cancer at his home in Capitol Heights, Maryland. Hudson was born June 11, 1934 in Des Moines, Iowa, but was raised in Gary, Indiana, where he sang in church choirs. The Spaniels were formed by Hudson and fellow students at Roosevelt High School. The Spaniels's hit song "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" was a million-selling Top 5 R&B hit in 1954. It reached No. 24 on the pop chart. At the time, only black radio stations played the song. Soon after, The McGuire Sisters recorded a version of the song which sold more copies than the original. Hudson fell on hard times after going solo, spending part of the 1960s and 70s homeless. Hudson began singing again in the 1980s and started receiving royalties for "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" in the 1990s. In 1991, the Spaniels were honored with an award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and recorded an album, "40th Anniversary." Hudson was 72.

Sources: LATimes.com, destinationdoowop.com, Associated Press, Legacy.com

Rene Riffaud died Tuesday, January 16, leaving just three known French survivors of World War I. Riffaud was born on December 12, 1898, in Tunisia. He joined a colonial artillery unit in April 1917, and was guarding a bridge in a village in eastern France when an officer arrived to announce the armistice had been signed, ending the war on Nov. 11, 1918. "We went to town to celebrate, to eat bread that wasn't blackened, and we amused ourselves by watching the flights of geese taking off to go and bathe in the Rhine," Riffaud told the Associated Press. After the war he owned an electric repairs company and was married to his wife, Lucie, from 1930 until her death in 1979. Riffaud was 108.

Sources: Associated Press, LATimes.com

Dora E. McDonald, secretary for Martin Luther King Jr., died on Saturday, January 13, of complications from cancer at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. McDonald began working for Dr. King in 1960 after a stint assisting the president of Morehouse College, first at Ebenezer Baptist Church and later at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. McDonald typed Dr. King's speeches and manuscripts and would care for his family when he was in jail or traveling. It was Dora McDonald who told Coretta Scott King that her husband had been assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. The New York Times quotes McDonald from her memoir: "After I got into my job and what I was doing—what we were doing—and what the movement meant, I never wanted to be doing anything else... I was a part of something momentous; it was a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week position." Following Dr. King's assassination, McDonald worked for civil rights leader and politician Andrew Young, and assisted Mrs. King prior to her death in 2006. McDonald was 81.

Sources: The King Center, Associated Press, NYTimes.com, Wikipedia

Jane Bolin died Monday, January 8. She was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, the daughter of a successful lawyer, Gaius Bolin, the first African-American graduate of Williams College. Bolin pursued a degree in law despite being dissuaded by a Wellesley College advisor and became the first black female to graduate from Yale Law School in 1931. Bolin was a clerk in her father's law office until she passed the New York State bar exam in 1932. In 1937, she became an assistant corporation counsel and in 1939 New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia swore in Bolin as the first black female judge at the New York World's Fair. She was appointed for a ten year term to the Domestic Relations (now Family) Court and fought racial discrimination from her post. Bolin worked to end the assignment of probation officers based on race or religion. She also helped create a racially-integrated treatment center for delinquent boys, and established the requirement that private child-care agencies that received public funds had to accept children without regard to ethnic background. The city's mayors renewed her appointment three times, until the law required her to retire at age 70. Bolin was 98.

Judge of Domestic Relations Court of the City of New York.
Student of social and economic conditions.
Able to discern misfortune and exploitation from crime and sin.
Has translated her knowledge and understanding into useful public service.
Gentleness personified with the weak and unhappy.
Stern and unrelenting with the wicked and wrongdoer.
Her talents and good heart are devoted entirely to the public good.

—Fiorello H. LaGuardia

Sources: Associated Press, Wellesley.edu, the National Portrait Gallery