Cory Fulton Lidle (March 22, 1972 – October 11, 2006) was an American professional baseball player. A right-handed pitcher, Lidle played in Major League Baseball with the New York Mets, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees from 1997 to 2006. Lidle was killed when the small aircraft he owned crashed into a residential building in New York City.
Susan Howlet Butcher (December 26, 1954 – August 5, 2006) was an American dog musher, noteworthy as the second woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1986, the second four-time winner in 1990, and the first to win four out of five sequential years. She is commemorated in Alaska by the Susan Butcher Day.
Gianmario Roveraro (24 May 1936 - 5 July 2006) was an Italian high jumper, who was the first Italian athlete to jump over 2 metres barrier, and a banker, who founded Akros Finanziaria.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( JERR-əld; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He previously served as the leader of the Republican Party in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1973, and as the 40th vice president under President Richard Nixon from 1973 to 1974. Ford succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned in 1974, but was defeated for election to a full term in 1976. Ford is the only person to become U.S. president without winning an election for president or vice president.
Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the school's football team before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after Spiro Agnew's resignation, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession. In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the president. Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the collapse of South Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War essentially ended. In the 1976 Republican presidential primary, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic challenger, Jimmy Carter.
Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party, but his moderate views on various social issues increasingly put him at odds with conservative members of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter following the 1976 election and the two former presidents developed a close friendship. After experiencing a series of health problems, he died in Rancho Mirage, California in 2006. Surveys of historians and political scientists have ranked Ford as a below-average president, though retrospective public polls on his time in office were more positive.
Robert Bruce Mathias (November 17, 1930 – September 2, 2006) was an American decathlete, politician, and actor. Representing the United States, he won two Olympic gold medals in the Decathlon, at the 1948 and the 1952 Summer Games. As a Republican, he served in the US House of Representatives for California's 18th congressional district, for four terms from 1967 to 1975.
Donald Arld Veller (May 20, 1912 – November 10, 2006) was an American football player and coach of football and golf. He served as the head football coach at Hanover College in 1946 and at Florida State University from 1948 to 1952, compiling a career college football record of 35–15–1. Veller died at the age of 94 on November 10, 2006, in Tallahassee, Florida.
Winston Thomas Siegfried (December 2, 1916 – January 26, 2006) was an American football coach. He was the 24th head football coach at The Apprentice School in Newport News, Virginia and he held that position for two seasons, from 1969 until 1970. His coaching record at Apprentice was 5–10.
Mason Cooke Andrews (April 19, 1919, in Norfolk, Virginia – October 13, 2006, in Norfolk, Virginia) was a Virginia politician and physician, known for delivering America's first in vitro baby. A president of the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society, Andrews also served on the Norfolk City Council for 26 years and was mayor from 1992-1994.
Ervin John Ryczek (September 20, 1909 – March 18, 2006) was an American politician and funeral director.
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Ryczek graduated from Marquette University High School and then went to Spencerian Business College. He was an assistant funeral director and a member of the Catholic Order of Foresters and the Society of the Holy Name. From 1941 to 1959, Ryczek served in the Wisconsin State Assembly and was a Democrat.
Jessie Valentine (née Anderson) (18 March 1915 – 6 April 2006) was a Scottish amateur golfer who won the British Ladies Amateur in 1937, 1955 and 1958. In 1937, after winning the British Ladies title at Turnberry she was the world number one ranking ladies golfer. Valentine was one of the dominant figures in women's golf for a period which spanned two decades from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. In 1959, she was the first woman golfer to be appointed as an MBE for services to golf and she was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2003. She was considered one of Perthshire's greatest sporting personalities of all time and was known locally as "Wee Jessie" and the "Queen of Golf".