December 19, 2011. Copyright 2011, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Review 2011: Last Farewells
By Julie Mullins

LONDON, December 19, Graphic News:  Captions accompany photomontage GN28730

1. Amy Winehouse, British singer-songwriter known for her powerful contralto vocals, and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz, was found dead at her London home on July 23, aged 27. Her problems with drug and alcohol abuse were well documented and an inquest later revealed that she died from alcohol poisoning. In an all-too-short career she sold five million records and won five Grammys, all for her second album, Back to Black.

2. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan on May 02. Following a firefight, troops descended on a compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, where bin Laden was shot dead after he reportedly refused to surrender. America’s most wanted terrorist was believed to have ordered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.

3. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for almost 42 years, was killed on October 20 when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his home town of Sirte. He had taken refuge in the city, the last major bastion of resistance in the country two months after the overthrow of his brutal regime by a NATO-backed rebel force in a civil war inspired by Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

4. Severiano Ballesteros, generally regarded as the greatest Spanish golfer of all time, died from brain cancer on May 07, aged 54. “Seve” won five major championships between 1979 and 1988, the British Open three times, and the U.S. Masters twice. He was also successful in the Ryder Cup, helping the European team to five wins both as a player and captain, and won the World Match Play Championship a record-tying five times.

5. Steve Jobs, visionary co-founder of Apple, died at the age of 56 on October 05 after an eight year battle with pancreatic cancer. Widely recognised as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution, he also had a major impact on the development of computer-generated animation, and an enormous influence on the way we listen to music, watch movies, and use mobile communications in the digital age.

6. American film actress Jane Russell, one of Hollywood’s leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s, died on February 28 at age 89. She made her name in Howard Hughes’ provocative film The Outlaw (1943), while other prominent movies included The Paleface (1948), with Bob Hope, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), with Marilyn Monroe.

7. U.S. actor Peter Falk, best known for his role as scruffy TV detective Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo, died on June 23 at the age of 83. The character won him four Emmy Awards. He was also twice nominated for an Academy Award, for Murder, Inc. in 1960, and Pocketful of Miracles in 1961.

8. Former world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier died at age 67 on November 07 following a brief battle with liver cancer. Frazier, known as Smokin’ Joe, won an Olympic gold medal in 1964 and held the world title between 1970 and 1973, but was best remembered for his three fights with Muhammad Ali, including the epic “Thriller in Manila” in 1975.

9. Kim Jong-il, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea’s totalitarian regime, died from a suspected heart attack. Kim, who was either 69 or 70 years of age, had been in poor health for some years but his death came sooner than expected. He had led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, and was one of the world's most reclusive and enigmatic leaders, presiding over a secretive and internationally isolated nation.

10. Burhanuddin Rabbani, chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, was assassinated at his home in Kabul on September 20 by a suicide attacker who had concealed a bomb in his turban. The attacker claimed to be a Taliban commander who had come to discuss peace. Rabbani was a former president of Afghanistan and also led the main political opposition in the country.

11. Lucian Freud, OM, CH, widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time, died on July 20, aged 88. In May 2008, his 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold at auction in New York for $33.6 million, a world record for a painting by a living artist. Freud, a grandson of eminent psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin and moved with his family to London in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British citizen in 1939.

12. Former Brazil football captain Socrates died in a Sao Paulo hospital on December 04, at the age of 57. The 6ft 4in tall Socrates, regarded as one of the world’s greatest midfielders, played in two World Cups and won 60 caps for his country between 1979 and 1986. He was also a noted intellectual who espoused left-wing causes, and a doctor of both medicine and philosophy.

13. Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who led Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution and was one of the fathers of the east European pro-democracy movement that led to the collapse of communism, died on December 18, aged 75. As Czechoslovakia's first post-communist president, he presided over the country’s transition to democracy and a free-market economy, and oversaw its peaceful split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.

14. Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmental and political activist, died from ovarian cancer on September 25, aged 71. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”.

15. Actress Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23 at the age of 79, after many years of ill health. One of the great screen stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, she won two Oscars and was famously married eight times, including twice to Richard Burton, her co-star in the 1963 epic, Cleopatra.

16. English film director Ken Russell, Oscar-nominated for his 1969 film Women In Love, died on November 27 at the age of 84. Other highly regarded films included the infamous religious drama The Devils (1971) and The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, in 1975. He also made several biopics of various composers, notably Elgar, Delius, Liszt and Mahler.

17. Jack Kevorkian, American pathologist and euthanasia activist who publicly championed the right of the terminally ill to die via physician-assisted suicide, died on June 03 at age 83. Commonly known as “Dr. Death” he claimed he have helped at least 130 patients to end their lives. In 1998 he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10-25 years in jail. He was paroled in 2007 on condition he would restrict himself to campaigning for a change in the law on mercy killings.

18. Norio Ohga, former president and chairman of Sony Corporation who was credited with driving the development of the compact disc, died on April 23, aged 81.

19. Claude Choules, the world’s last First World War combat veteran, died on May 05 in Perth, Australia, at the age of 110. Born in England in March 1901, he joined the Royal Navy in 1915 after lying about his age and, as well as being the last serving seaman from the First World War, he was the last military witness to the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919.