2008 deaths

Joe Feeney (August 15, 1931 – April 16, 2008) was an American tenor singer who was a member of The Lawrence Welk Show television program.

Janet Ray Michie, Baroness Michie of Gallanach (née Bannerman; 4 February 1934 – 6 May 2008) was a Scottish speech therapist and Liberal Democrat politician. She served as the Member of Parliament for Argyll and Bute for fourteen years, from 1987-2001, and then became a life peer in the House of Lords. She was the first peer to pledge the oath of allegiance in the House of Lords in Gaelic.

Luiz Pacheco (May 7, 1925 in Lisbon – January 5, 2008 in Montijo) was a writer, publisher, polemicist and literary critic (mainly of Portuguese literature). He was proudest of his work as a publisher. The publishing house Contraponto, his creation, released works by many previously unpublished Portuguese writers (Herberto Helder, Natália Correia, Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos, Vergílio Ferreira, António Maria Lisboa), and introduced Sade to the Portuguese readers.

Herbert John Cecil Kouts (December 18, 1919 – January 7, 2008) was an American nuclear physicist and engineer, a pioneer in nuclear safety, director of nuclear reactor safety research at the Atomic Energy Commission.
Kouts was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 "for contributions in nuclear engineering, especially physical principles and safety of nuclear power reactors and nuclear materials safeguards".
Kouts received the Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1963.Born in Bisbee, Arizona, Kouts attended Ball High School in Galveston, Texas from 1933 to 1935 and graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport, Louisiana in June 1936. He then attended Louisiana State University, earning a B.A. degree in mathematics in June 1941 and continuing graduate studies until January 1942. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1942 and then served as an airborne radar specialist in the Army Air Forces until 1945. After World War II, Kouts returned to Louisiana State in September 1945 and completed an M.S. degree in physics in June 1946. He then attended Princeton University, receiving a Ph.D. degree in physics in January 1952. His doctoral thesis was entitled An investigation into certain features of the motion of a rigid charge distribution.Kouts died at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital in East Patchogue, New York from congestive heart failure and complications from a fall.

Pascal Sevran (16 October 1945 – 9 May 2008) was a French TV presenter and author.

Delia Juanita Warrick (September 25, 1942 – October 18, 2008), known professionally as Dee Dee Warwick, was an American soul singer. Born in Newark, New Jersey, she was the sister of singer Dionne Warwick, the niece of Cissy Houston, and a first cousin of singers Whitney Houston and Leontyne Price.

Guillaume Jean Maxime Antoine Depardieu (7 April 1971 – 13 October 2008) was a French actor, winner of a César Award, and the oldest child of Gérard Depardieu.

Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso GCIH (19 September 1930 – 24 June 2008) was a Brazilian anthropologist and a member of the faculty of philosophy, letters and human sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP). She was the wife of 34th president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and First Lady of her country between 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2002. She too was a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of São Paulo.
As professor and researcher Cardoso taught at the Latin American College of Social Sciences (Flacso/Unesco), University of Chile (Santiago), Maison des Sciences de L'Homme (Paris), University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University (New York City). She was an associate member of the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge. With her husband, the sociologist and former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, she founded and later directed the research institute Cebrap (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento – Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning), which continues to be a leading site of social science research in Brazil.Dr. Cardoso's academic reputation rests primarily on a series of highly influential articles and book chapters on popular movements and political participation that she published in the 1980s and 1990s. Under Dr. Cardoso, Cebrap created Brazil's first research group on social movements, helping to legitimate formal academic study of the "new" (non-class) social movements that had emerged in the 1970s. At the same time, she was careful to stress the limits of identity-based and popular movements for political transformation, noting the divisions among them and their frequent dependency on clientelistic relations with the state and political parties.
Unlike many academics, Dr. Cardoso also had the opportunity to put some of her theories into practice after her husband was elected president. She transformed the traditional charity approach of other first ladies with her Comunidade Solidária (Solidary Community) programs that stressed the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in state-society partnerships. In addition to executing concrete social programs, Comunidade Solidária also facilitated broad discussions of important social topics, from agrarian reform to the legal status of NGOs, publishing the results of these dialogues. Anthony Hall of the London School of Economics told the BBC after her death that she was instrumental in developing the plan to bundle various social programs together in the way that has become characteristic of the successful Bolsa Familia social program. She published a book about these experiences, Comunidade Solidaria: Fortalecendo a Sociedade, Promovendo O Desenvolvimento (Comunitas, 2002). She transformed the Comunidade Solidaria into an NGO, Comunitas, after her husband left office.

She died in São Paulo on 24 June 2008, after suffering a cardiac arrest. She had been discharged from the Sírio-Libanês Hospital the previous day, 23 June 2008, having previously been admitted with chest pains.

Samuel John Bottoms (October 17, 1955 – December 16, 2008) was an American actor and producer.

William Hamilton McWhorter Jordan () (September 21, 1944 – May 20, 2008) was an American politician who served as Chief of Staff to President of the United States Jimmy Carter.