Ed Cray, a journalist and educator who explored a broad spectrum of Americana with well-regarded biographies of Woody Guthrie, Chief Justice Earl Warren, the California serial killer Juan Corona, George C. Marshall and the bluejeans maker Levi Strauss, died on Oct. 8 in Palo Alto, California. He was 86.
Hildegard Bachert, who fled the Nazis as a teenager and joined a New York art gallery where, over a 78-year career, she helped introduce and popularize the works of German and Austrian expressionists and the folk art of Grandma Moses, died Oct. 17 in Brattleboro, Vermont. She was 98.
Michael F. Armstrong, whose dogged pursuit and exposure of crooked cops as chief counsel to the Knapp Commission in the early 1970s was credited with smothering an ingrained culture of corruption in the New York City Police Department, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
Leyna Gabriele, a lyric coloratura soprano who became a fan-club idol for playing the title role in the first production of the tragic rags-to-riches-to-rags opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” died Oct. 14 in Tarrytown, New York. She was 95.
Samuel Hynes, a self-described Midwestern yokel who soared as a heroic fighter pilot in World War II and returned, sobered by combat, to flourish as a scholar, teacher, literary critic and popular author, died on Oct. 9 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 94.
Robert G. Goelet, a civic leader, naturalist and philanthropist whose marriage merged two families that date to 17th-century New Amsterdam and made the couple stewards of Gardiners Island, a storied sanctuary off the tip of Long Island, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 96.
Michael D. Coe, a Yale anthropologist who devoted his career to proving that the ancient Maya incubated an elaborate written language that had previously been undervalued by many scholars, died on Sept 25 in a hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. He was 90.
Martin Weitzman, an inventive economist who argued that governments would see climate change as a more urgent matter to address if they took more seriously the small but real risks of the most catastrophic of outcomes, died Aug. 27 in Newton, Massachusetts. He was 77.
Werner H. Kramarsky, who as a public official helped expand the delivery of health care in New York City and the scope of human rights protections statewide, and who in private life was a patron of artists and a prodigious collector of drawings, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.
In the late 1950s, just as the doll Barbie was making her debut as a teenager with unrealistic physical dimensions, Neil Estern invented Patti Playpal.
Mark A.R. Kleiman, a prominent drug policy apostate who favored what he viewed as a sensible middle ground on marijuana — eliminate criminal sanctions for selling and using it but preclude full-blown commercial legalization — died Sunday in Manhattan. He was 68.
Mortimer Caplin, who as Internal Revenue commissioner in the early 1960s was credited with making taxpaying more tolerable for the majority of Americans who do so voluntarily and tougher for the rest to avoid or evade, died Monday at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was 103.
Luis G. Alvarez, a former New York City detective who pleaded with Congress this month to extend health benefits to police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died Saturday in a hospice in Rockville Centre, New York. He was 53.
In a series of appointments from 1976 to 1995, Levitas oversaw The Times’ metropolitan coverage and edited The Week in Review section, The New York Times Book Review, the weekend edition of the paper and the Op-Ed page.
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