1984 deaths

Richard Attlesey (May 10, 1929 – October 14, 1984) was an American sprinter who mostly competed in the 110-meter hurdles. He set world records for the event twice in 1950 with times of 13.6 and 13.5 seconds.Attlesey won the 110 m hurdles event at the 1950 Amateur Athletic Union Championships and repeated the feat the year after. He won the hurdles gold medal at the first edition of Pan American Games in 1951. He competed collegiately for the University of Southern California and won the NCAA title in 1950. After an almost two-year winning streak, injuries curtailed his career in 1952.

Laurence Michael Foust (June 24, 1928 – October 27, 1984) was an American basketball player who spent 12 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), most notably with the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers, and was a two-time All-NBA Team member and an eight-time All-Star.

François Roland Truffaut (UK: TROO-foh, TRUU-, US: troo-FOH; French: [fʁɑ̃swa ʁɔlɑ̃ tʁyfo]; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.
Truffaut's film The 400 Blows (1959) is a defining film of the French New Wave movement, and has four sequels: Antoine et Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut's 1973 film Day for Night earned him critical acclaim and several awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Soft Skin (1964), The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), The Last Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981). He played one of the main roles in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Truffaut wrote the book Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966), based on his interviews with film director Alfred Hitchcock during the 1960s.

Walter Emmons Alston (December 1, 1911 – October 1, 1984), nicknamed "Smokey", was an American baseball manager in Major League Baseball who managed the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers from 1954 through 1976, signing 23 one-year contracts with the team. Regarded as one of the greatest managers in baseball history, Alston was known for his calm, reticent demeanor, for which he was sometimes referred to as "the Quiet Man."
Born and raised in rural Ohio, Alston lettered in baseball and basketball at Miami University in Oxford. A journeyman whose MLB playing career consisted of only one game–two innings played, and one at-bat with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1936–Alston spent 19 years in the minor leagues as a player, player-manager and non-playing manager. His service included a stint as manager of the 1946 Nashua Dodgers, the first U.S.-based integrated professional team in modern baseball. After six successful seasons as manager of Brooklyn's Triple-A teams, the St. Paul Saints and Montreal Royals, Alston was promoted to manage the Dodgers in 1954.
As a major league manager, Alston led Dodger teams to seven National League (NL) pennants and four World Series titles, including the only championship title won while the club was still in Brooklyn. After 23 seasons, Alston retired with over 2,000 career wins and had been selected as Manager of the Year six times. He also managed NL All-Star teams to seven victories. Alston's number 24 was retired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1977. In 1983, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame but was unable to attend his induction ceremony after suffering a heart attack that year and being hospitalized for a month. He never fully recovered and died in Oxford, Ohio, on October 1, 1984.

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Hans Mathiesen Lunding (25 February 1899 – 5 April 1984) was a Danish officer, eventing rider, resistance fighter and director of military intelligence in Denmark.

François de Vial (October 4, 1904 – May 16, 1984) was a diplomat and a Minister Plenipotentiary of France.

Richard Hempstead Donald (November 3, 1922 in Johannesburg, South Africa – March 12, 1984) was an American diplomat. He was the son of George Kenneth Donald, U.S. Consul General at Windsor, Ontario, and married Jean Randolph Plass in 1944. He graduated from Yale University in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946.He served as acting Consul General to the Republic of Singapore from the summer of 1965, when the embassy opened, until April 1966. He was named chargé d'affaires on April 4, 1966, serving in that position until September 1966.

Rose Repetto (10 August 1907 – 11 March 1982) was an Italian-born French business owner and shoe designer. In 1947, she established the Repetto ballet shoe company.

Jimmy Wilburn (November 25, 1908 - August 26, 1984) was an American racecar driver from Los Angeles. He won a non-points Championship Car race at Lakewood Speedway in March 1946 which is the first known Champ Car race to be held after the end of World War II. Later that year he drove in the 1946 Indianapolis 500 driving an Alfa Romeo and started 16th and retired after 52 laps with engine trouble, credited with the 19th finishing position.