2008 deaths

Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography.

Bernard William Rogers (July 16, 1921 – October 27, 2008) was a United States Army general who served as the 28th Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and later as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and Commander in Chief, United States European Command.
Besides the Distinguished Service Cross, Rogers' decorations included the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, four awards of the Legion of Merit and three awards of the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, racing driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953.
Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Color of Money (1986). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also starred in such films as Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). He also voiced Doc Hudson in Cars (2006).
Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of 2020, these donations have totaled over US$570 million.
Newman continued to found such charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006. Newman was married twice and fathered six children. He was the husband of the actress Joanne Woodward until his death.

Tad Mosel (May 1, 1922 – August 24, 2008) was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s. He received the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play All the Way Home.

William Joseph Whalen (January 1, 1926 – March 25, 2008) was a nationally known US non-fiction writer and an expert on comparative religion.

K.R.H. Sonderborg (1923–2008) was a German painter, graphic artist, university professor, and from 1980 prorector of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart for several years.
He was born in Sønderborg/Als, Denmark. Starting in 1953, he became a member of the group Zen 49, and studied at the Atelier 17 in St. W. Hayter in Paris. In the years 1953-1965, he spent time working in London, New York City, Tokyo, Chicago, Osaka, Cornwall, Ascona, Rome and Paris.
In 1951, the artist Kurt Rudolf Hoffmann called himself K.R.H. Sonderborg, after the town he was born in. Sonderborg went to school in Hamburg and completed a merchant's apprenticeship in 1939. He became a private student of the painter Ewald Becker-Carus in Hamburg in 1946. From 1947 to 1949 he studied painting, graphic art, and textile design at the State Art School in Hamburg under Willem Grimm and Maria May. In 1953 he joined the artists group Zen 49. He went to Paris the same year where he received training in engraving from Stanley William Hayter in the Atelier 17. Paris is also the place where he first encountered Tachism. In the following years, the artist went on longer journeys and worked for some time in London, Cornwall, New York, Ascona, Rome, and Paris again. In New York K.R.H. Sonderborg came into contact with Action Painting.
His own style became abstract, painting in swift broad strokes, that reveal the painting process, with spontaneous color application. Black and white contrasts are an important feature, later he added colors such as cadmium red. K.R.H. Sonderborg took part in the 1958 Biennale in Venice. He was awarded the Prize for Graphic Art at the Biennale in Tokyo in 1960 and the Great International Prize for Drawing at the 1963 Biennale in São Paulo. The artist showed works at the Documenta in Kassel in both 1959 and 1964. From 1965 to 1990 he held a post as Professor for Painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. In 1969/70 he was a guest lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1986. Along with artists such as Karl Otto Götz, and Bernhard Schulze, K.R.H. Sonderborg is one of the most important and most impressive representatives of German Informal Art.
K.R.H. Sonderborg died in Hamburg on 18 February 2008, aged 84.

Fernando Monteiro Torres (14 November 1927 – 4 September 2008) was a Brazilian actor and voice-over artist, as well as a television, film and theater director and producer. Torres' career in Brazilian film, stage and television spanned over five decades. He was best known to international movie audiences for his supporting role as Americo in the 1985 film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, which won several awards.He was born in Guaçuí, Espírito Santo, Brazil, on November 14, 1927. Torres was married to Academy Award-nominated Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro from 1953 until his death. The couple had two children together, film director Cláudio Torres (pt) and actress Fernanda Torres. Torres founded the Teatro dos Sete in 1959.
Fernando Torres died in his home in Rio de Janeiro of pulmonary emphysema on September 4, 2008, at the age of 80.

Louisa Fleetwood Horton (September 20, 1920 – January 25, 2008) was an American film, television and stage actress, who used her given name, Louisa Horton, professionally. She was the former wife of the late The Sting director, George Roy Hill, with whom she had four children.

Clyde Cook (June 1, 1935 – April 11, 2008) served as president of Biola University in La Mirada, California, from 1982 to 2007.

Christopher Hallowell Phillips (December 6, 1920 – January 10, 2008) was an American diplomat and politician who served as United States Ambassador to Brunei and was a member of the Massachusetts Senate.