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.

April 1997

1

• Milton Brunson, 67, American gospel musician and pastor.
• Evsey Domar, 82, Russian American economist.^[1]
• Jolie Gabor, 100, Hungarian-American socialite.^[2]
• Makar Honcharenko, 84, Soviet-Ukrainian football player and coach.
• Jerry Pacht, 75, American judge, cerebral hemorrhage.^[3]

2

• Zaki Badr, 71, Egyptian general and politician.
• Al Blanche, 87, American baseball player.^[4]
• Anthony Bushell, 92, English film actor and director.^[5]
• Craig D. Button, 32, United States Air Force pilot, suicide by pilot.^[6]
• Zsolt Durkó, 62, Hungarian composer.^[7]
• Reg Lewis, 77, English football player.
• Yulii Meitus, 94, Ukrainian composer.^[8]
• David Shahar, 70, Israeli fiction writer, translator, and editor.^[9]
• Tomoyuki Tanaka, 86, Japanese film producer, stroke.^[10]

3

• Thomas Barthel, 74, German ethnologist and epigrapher.^[11]
• Jerome Cosentino, 65, American politician.^[12]
• Sergei Filatov, 70, Soviet and Russian equestrian.^[13]
• Dan Swartz, 62, American basketball player.^[14]
• John Ugelstad, 76, Norwegian chemical engineer and inventor.
• Robert W. Ward, 67, American businessman and politician, cancer.
• Henriette Wyeth, 79, American artist.^[15]

4

• Lawrence A. Appley, 93, American organizational theorist.^[16]
• Herta Ehlert, 92, German nazi camp guard during World War II.
• Sugimura Haruko, 88, Japanese actress.^[17]
• Leo Picard, 96, Israeli geologist.
• Mike Raven, 72, British radio disc jockey, actor and sculptor.
• Vladimir Soloukhin, 72, Russian poet and writer.^[18]
• Shoichiro Takenaka, 84, Japanese long-distance runner and Olympian.^[19]
• Alparslan Türkeş, 79, Turkish politician, heart attack.^[20]
• Rudolf Ulrich, 75, German film actor.^[21]

5

• Ignazio Buttitta, 97, Italian poet.^[22]
• Heberto Castillo, 58, Mexican political activist.^[23]
• Richard Clifton-Dey, 66, British artist.^[24]
• Paul W. Cronin, 59, American politician, brain cancer.
• Paul de Bruyn, 89, German athlete.^[25]
• Stoney Edwards, 67, American country singer, stomach cancer.^[26]
• Allen Ginsberg, 70, American poet and writer, liver cancer.^[27]
• Warren Godfrey, 66, Canadian ice hockey player.
• August Heckscher II, 83, American public intellectual and writer, heart failure.^[28]
• 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).^[29]

6

• Max Alvarado, 68, Filipino actor, heart failure.
• Bernard Chevallier, 84, French equestrian and Olympic champion.^[30]
• Jack Kent Cooke, 84, Canadian-American businessman, cardiac arrest, heart attack.^[31]
• Stephan Hermlin, 81, German author.^[32]
• Peter Jeffrey, 83, Royal Australian Air Force officer and flying ace.^[33]
• David Keith-Lucas, 86, British aeronautical engineer.^[34]
• Barbara Yu Ling, Singapore-British actress.
• Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger, 73, American physicist.
• Rosita Serrano, 84, Chilean singer, chronic bronchitis.^[35]
• Pierre-Henri Teitgen, 88, French lawyer, professor and politician.^[36]

7

• Luis Aloma, 73, Cuban baseball player.^[37]
• Aaron Kramer, 75, American poet and social activist.^[38]
• 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.^[39]
• Charles Hayes, 79, American politician, lung cancer.^[40]
• Laura Nyro, 49, American songwriter, singer, and pianist, ovarian cancer.^[41]
• Homer Peel, 94, American baseball player and manager.^[42]
• Alejo Peralta, 80, Mexican baseball executive.

9

• Mae Boren Axton, 82, American songwriter and music promoter.^[43]
• Joe Coleman, 74, American baseball player.^[44]
• Helene Hanff, 80, American writer, peritonitis, diabetes.^[45]
• Geoffrey Hardy-Roberts, 89, British Army officer, politician and courtier.
• Yank Rachell, 94, American country blues musician.^[46]
• 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.^[47]
• Fred Emery, 71, Australian psychologist.^[48]
• 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.^[49]
• Marcel Maes, 52, Belgian cyclist.^[50]
• Toshiro Mayuzumi, 68, Japanese composer.^[51]
• Mehtab, 78, Indian actress.
• Martin Schwarzschild, 84, German-American astrophysicist.^[52]
• Francis Walder, 90, Belgian writer and soldier.
• Glanville Williams, 86, Welsh legal scholar.^[53]

11

• Castor de Andrade, 71, Brazilian mobster and bicheiro.
• Muriel McQueen Fergusson, 97, Canadian activist, judge and politician.^[54]
• Rajko Kojić, 40, Serbian/Yugoslav guitarist.
• Milt Smith, 68, American baseball player.^[55]
• 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.^[56]
• Junzō Yoshimura, 88, Japanese architect.

12

• Kevin Belcher, 35, American football player.^[57]
• Ivar Eriksson, 87, Swedish football defender.^[58]
• Nechama Leibowitz, 91, Israeli bible scholar and commentator.^[59]
• Moro Lorenzo, Filipino basketball player and executive.
• Dorothy Norman, 92, American photographer, writer, and arts patron.^[60]
• Eric Pearce, 92, Australian broadcaster.
• James Ross, 85, Scottish surgeon.^[61]
• George Wald, 90, American scientist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.^[62]

13

• Mustafa Amin or Mostafa Amin, 83, Egyptian columnist and journalist.^[63]
• Madhava Ashish, 77, British-Indian spiritualist, mystic, writer and agriculturist.
• Dorothy Frooks, 101, American author, lawyer, and suffragist.^[64]
• David McCord, 99, American poet.^[65]
• Shuhei Nishida, 86, Japanese Olympic pole vaulter, heart failure.^[66]
• Harry Rosenberg, 88, American baseball player.^[67]
• Voldemar Väli, 94, EstonianGreco-Roman wrestler and Olympic medalist.^[68]

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.^[69]
• Kit Denton, 68, Australian writer and broadcaster.
• Gus Dugas, 90, Canadian-born baseball outfielder.^[70]
• 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.^[71]

15

• Don Bexley, 87, American actor and comedian, heart and kidney failure.
• L. Brent Bozell, Jr., 71, American conservative activist and Roman Catholic writer.^[72]
• David Dockendorf, 73, American sound engineer.
• Zdeněk Mlynář, 66, Czech politic writer, political analyst and lawyer.^[73]
• Sam Moskowitz, 76, American writer, critic, and science fiction historian.^[74]
• Harry Nicholas, 92, British trade unionist.
• Kō Nishimura, 74, Japanese actor.^[75]
• Sipan Shiraz, 29, Armenian poet, sculptor and painter.
• Carlos Enrique Taboada, 67, Mexican screenwriter and director.
• Richard Tousey, 88, American astronomer, pneumonia.^[76]

16

• Doris Angleton, 46, American socialite and murder victim, shot.^[77]
• 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.^[78]
• Roland Topor, 59, French graphic artist, author and actor, cerebral hemorrhage.^[79]
• Claude Tresmontant, 71, French philosopher, hellenist and theologian.^[80]

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.^[81]
• Allan Francovich, 56, American film maker, heart attack.^[82]
• Chaim Herzog, 78, Israeli politician, general, and author.^[83]
• 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.^[84]
• Mary French Rockefeller, 86, American heiress, socialite and philanthropist.
• Hena Rodríguez, 81, Colombian sculptor.

18

• Rolf Andersson, 67, Swedish football player.^[85]
• Edward Barker, 46, English cartoonist.^[86]
• Bob Carpenter, 79, American basketball player.^[87]
• Herbert Czaja, 82, German politician.
• Jeanne Hoban, 72, British Trotskyist, Alzheimer's disease.
• Francis Johnson, 86, American basketball player.^[88]
• Don Pietromonaco, 61, American actor and radio personality, complications from emphysema.^[89]
• Eddie Quigley, 75, English football player and manager.^[90]
• 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.^[91]
• Carl Walter Liner, 82, Swiss painter.^[92]
• 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.^[93]
• Henry Mucci, 88, United States Army Rangers colonel, stroke.^[94]
• 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.^[95]
• Diosdado Macapagal, 86, President of the Philippines and poet, heart failure and pneumonia.^[96]
• Thomas H. D. Mahoney, 83, American professor and politician.^[97]
• 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.^[98]
• 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.^[99]

22

• Jean Carlu, 96, French graphic designer.^[100]
• Néstor Cerpa Cartolini, 43, Peruvian communist and revolutionary, killed in action.
• Moelwyn Merchant, 83, Welsh academic, novelist, sculptor, poet and Anglican priest.^[101]
• Elliott Merrick, 91, American author.^[102]
• Pete Petrow, 72, Canadian football player.

23

• Thomas Carr, 89, American actor and film director.^[103]
• Denis Compton, 78, English cricketer, sepsis.^[104]
• Esther Schiff Goldfrank, 100-101, American anthropologist.^[105]
• Dorothy Hill, 89, Australian geologist and palaeontologist.^[106]
• 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.^[107]
• John A. Brown Jr., 35, American convicted murderer, execution by lethal injection.
• Robert Erickson, 80, American composer and author, polymyositis.^[108]
• Felice Ippolito, 81, Italian geologist and politician.^[109]
• Bill McArthur, 78, American football player and coach.^[110]
• Hubert McLean, 89, New Zealand rugby player.
• Eugene Stoner, 74, American firearms designer, cancer.^[111]

25

• Aleksejs Auziņš, 86, Latvian football and ice hockey player.^[112]
• Nicholas Baker, 58, British politician and minister.^[113]
• 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.^[114]
• Pat Paulsen, 69, American comedian and satirist, complications of pneumonia and kidney failure.^[115]
• Gino Pernice, 69, Italian actor.^[116]
• Dudley Pope, 71, British writer .^[117]
• Andreas Rett, 73, Austrian neurologist and author.
• Bernard Vonnegut, 82, American atmospheric scientist, cancer.^[118]
• Joan Yarde-Buller, 89, English socialite.
• Nikolai Yegorov, 45, Russian politician, lung cancer.
• Chia-Shun Yih, 78, Chinese-American engineer and physicist, heart failure.^[119]

26

• John Beal, 87, American actor, stroke.^[120]
• 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.^[121]
• Hideo Fujimoto, 78, Japanese baseball pitcher, heart attack.^[122]
• Valery Obodzinsky, 55, Soviet and Russian tenor, heart attack.
• Howard Ensign Simmons, Jr., 67, American chemist.^[123]
• Peng Zhen, 94, Chinese politician and chairman of the NPCSC (1983–1988).^[124]

27

• Lew Dietz, 90, American writer.^[125]
• Gabriel Figueroa, 90, Mexican cinematographer.^[126]
• Paul Lambert, 74, American actor.^[127]
• Dulce María Loynaz, 94, Cuban poet, and is, cancer.^[128]
• Bunny Roger, 85, English couturier and socialite.
• Piotr Skrzynecki, 66, Polish choreographer, director and cabaret impresario, cancer.^[129]
• 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.^[130]
• Ann Petry, 88, American children's author, novelist and journalist.^[131]
• William Percy Rogers, 82, Australian zoologist.^[132]
• John P. Snyder, 71, American cartographer.^[133]
• 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.^[134]

29

• Keith Ferguson, 50, American bass guitarist, liver failure.^[135]
• 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.^[136]

30

• Miklós Fodor, 88, Hungarian field handball player and Olympian.^[137]
• Michael Harbottle, 80, British Army officer.^[138]
• Josiah Lincoln Lowe, 92, American mycologist.
• Jorge Mondragón, 93, Mexican actor.
• Henry Gilford Picard, 90, American golfer.^[139]
• Roohangiz Saminejad, 80, Iranian actress.
• Wolfgang Späte, 85, German Luftwaffe flying ace during World War II.
• Vladimir Sukharev, 72, Soviet sprinter and Olympian.^[140]