Personal : Death : Illness/ Disease

David Thornburg Robbins (August 14, 1923 – September 23, 2005) was an American-Canadian trombonist, composer, arranger, and teacher.

David Katz (June 28, 1924 – 1987) was an American conductor who founded the Queens Symphony Orchestra (QSO) in 1953, which he conducted until he died of cancer in 1987.

Richard Dean Grove (December 18, 1927 – December 26, 1998) was an American musician, composer, arranger, and educator. He is best known as the founder of the Dick Grove School of Music. Its students include Michael Jackson, Linda Ronstadt, and Barry Manilow, and its teachers Henry Mancini, Bill Conti, and Lalo Schifrin.

Meredith Irwin Flory, known professionally as Med Flory (August 27, 1926 – March 12, 2014), was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and actor.

Joe Dowell (January 23, 1940 – February 4, 2016) was an American pop singer.

Alan Abel (December 6, 1928 – April 25, 2020) was an American percussionist, music educator, and inventor of musical instruments. He was the associate principal percussionist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1959 until his retirement in 1997. He is widely regarded as one of the most important percussion educators of the second half of the twentieth century, having taught at Temple University beginning in 1972. Abel's inventions include several unique and ubiquitous triangles and a bass drum stand that allowed the instrument to be suspended with the use of rubber bands.

Captain Robert C. Truax (USN) (September 3, 1917 – September 17, 2010) was an American rocket engineer in the United States Navy, and companies such as Aerojet and Truax Engineering, which he founded. Truax was a proponent of low-cost rocket engine and vehicle designs.

Edward "Corky" Cornelius (December 3, 1914 – August 3, 1943) was an American jazz trumpeter.
Cornelius's father was a drummer who worked regionally in dance bands in Texas. He was born in Indiana and raised in Binghamton, New York, and began his career in the early 1930s, playing with Les Brown, Buddy Rogers, and Frank Dailey. He joined Benny Goodman's band early in 1939, and went with Gene Krupa when the drummer split off to form his own group.
While there, Cornelius met singer Irene Daye, whom he married soon after. He played with the Casa Loma Orchestra from 1941 until 1943, when he died suddenly of kidney failure. His widow, Daye, married Charlie Spivak, in 1950.

Robert "Bob" Wasserman (January 12, 1934 – December 29, 2011) was an American politician and retired police chief, who served as the Mayor of Fremont, California, from 2004 to 2011. He has been credited with integrating Fremont's economy and workforce into the larger Silicon Valley during his tenures as mayor and a city councilman.

Robert William Kearns (March 10, 1927 – February 9, 2005) was an American mechanical engineer, educator and inventor who invented the most common intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present. His first patent for the invention was filed on December 1, 1964, after a few previous designs by other inventors had failed to gain any traction in manufacturing.
Kearns won one of the best known patent infringement cases against Ford Motor Company (1978–1990) and a case against Chrysler Corporation (1982–1992). Having invented and patented the intermittent windshield wiper mechanism, which was useful in light rain or mist, he tried to interest the "Big Three" auto makers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) in licensing the technology. Each rejected his proposal, yet began to install electronic intermittent wipers based on Kearns's design in their cars, beginning in 1969, when Ford rolled out the feature to its Mercury line.
Kearns's legal battle against Ford to protect his invention and patent was the subject of a 1993 article in The New Yorker magazine, which became the basis for a full-length biographical feature film titled Flash of Genius in 2008. Kearns was played by actor Greg Kinnear. Kearns had six children with his wife Phyllis, although they separated, supposedly as a result of the stress from the legal battle. He died of brain cancer at the age of 77.