Deaths from dementia in California

Jacklyn DeVon Taylor (June 29, 1925 – May 5, 2014), professionally known as Jackie Lynn Taylor, was an American child actress.

William Horace Marshall (August 19, 1924 – June 11, 2003) was an American actor, director and opera singer. He played the title role in the 1972 blaxploitation classic Blacula and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream (1973), and appeared as the King of Cartoons on the 1980s television show Pee-wee's Playhouse and as Dr. Richard Daystrom on the Star Trek television series. He was 6‘5” (1.96 m) tall and was known for his bass voice.

Thomas Leo "Duke" Simpson (September 15, 1927 – February 7, 2021) was an American professional baseball player. A right-handed pitcher, Simpson had a seven-year (1948–1954) career, which included a full, 1953 season in Major League Baseball for the Chicago Cubs. He stood 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m) tall and weighed 190 pounds (86 kg).

Leonard E. Nathan, (November 8 1924 – June 3, 2007) was an American poet, critic, and professor emeritus of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley where he retired in 1991.
Born in El Monte, California, Nathan earned a bachelor's degree in English at UC Berkeley in 1950, a master's degree in English in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1961. He was then hired as a lecturer in UC Berkeley's Department of Speech, and was promoted to associate professor in 1965 and to professor in 1968.
Among other honors, he received the National Institute of Arts and Letters prize for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Phelan Award for Narrative Poetry, and three silver medals from the Commonwealth Club of California, including one for The Potato Eaters. His poems were also published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New England Review and The Georgia Review, among other publications.

Robert Alan Bechtle (May 14, 1932 – September 24, 2020) was an American painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His paintings are in a Photorealist style and often depict automobiles.

Jacob Henry "Buddy" Baer (June 11, 1915 – July 18, 1986) was an American boxer and later an actor with parts in seventeen films, as well as roles on multiple television series in the 1950s and 1960s.In 1941, he came extremely close to boxing stardom at Washington's Griffith Stadium, when in the opinion of most ringside officials, Joe Louis gave him a disqualifying late sixth-round hit in a title match that should have made Baer the world heavyweight champion. He lost to Louis in a rematch for the title the following year but remained solidly ranked among the top heavyweights in the early 1940s. In 2003, Baer was chosen for The Ring magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. He was the younger brother of boxing heavyweight champion and actor Max Baer, and the uncle of actor Max Baer Jr.

Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar (; December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction. Brought up in the province of Ontario, Canada, Macdonald eventually settled in the state of California, where he died in 1983.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that:"... it is the sheer beauty of Macdonald’s laconic style—with its seductive rhythms and elegant plainness—that holds us spellbound. 'Hard-boiled,' 'noir,' 'mystery,' it doesn’t matter what you call it. Macdonald, with insolent grace, blows past the barrier constructed by Dorothy Sayers between 'the literature of escape' and 'the literature of expression.' These novels, triumphs of his literary alchemy, dare to be both."