Remember Them Well

Estelle Getty, 84 Everybody loves—and loathes—a Jewish mother, even if she's Italian. Which is why Getty hit a nerve on "The Golden Girls." She was younger than Bea Arthur (who played her daughter), but her crotchety Sophia Petrillo was the scariest character in comedy. She used her age like a guilt machine and her tongue like a blunt instrument. Your mother isn't like that? Don't worry—she will be.

Odetta, 77 She never considered herself a folk singer--she preferred the term "musical historian," going so far as to smash rocks with a sledgehammer to understand what a chain-gang convict might sing the blues about. She inspired Dylan to try acoustic guitar; Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte and Janis Joplin owed her debts, too, as did everyone who heard her at the 1963 March on Washington. She had planned to sing at Obama's Inauguration from her wheelchair. She'll still be there, in spirit.

Steve Fossett, 63 It took more than a year after he disappeared to find the disintegrated plane fuselage, the faded driver's license and two large bones--remains that finally confirmed millionaire adventurer Fossett's death. The wreckage in the craggy Sierra Nevada also put to rest a terrific rumor: that he'd faked his own death. Fossett may have held more than 100 world records, in hot-air ballooning, speed-sailing, even cross-country skiing, but that was one stunt he'd never attempt.

Paul Weyrich, 66 Weyrich coined the phrase "moral majority" and helped found the Heritage Foundation, the country's most influential conservative think tank, and the Christian Coalition. He softened his conservative views somewhat over time— he opposed both the Patriot Act and the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program. But during the culture-war years he was a five-star general, and he always fought from the far-right flank.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 89 His unblinking depictions of the gulag ultimately helped bring down Soviet communism. He was a small-town science teacher in 1962 when he published his groundbreaking novella "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," based on the eight years he spent in a labor camp for criticizing Stalin. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn shunned the ceremony out of fear that the Soviets wouldn't let him back in the country. But it was his eye-opening exposé "The Gulag Archipelago," first published in the West in 1973, that finally got him exiled. His citizenship restored in 1994, he returned to Russia, where he continued to criticize his homeland right up to the end.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 91 You don't get much groovier than Maharishi. He founded Transcendental Meditation—or TM, if you're really hip—which became one of the most celebrated spirituality techniques of the 1950s and '60s. Even more celebrated were his followers, especially the Beatles, who wrote most of the "White Album" while taking one of his courses in India.

Edmund Hillary, 88 The lean, ruggedly handsome Kiwi was the first man to scale Everest—if you don't count Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who led the way. A 29,035-foot climb—plus side jaunts to both poles—will get you a knighthood, 13 book deals and lifelong hero status, but Hillary remained a modest guy. Even after the climb, he called himself foremost a "professional beekeeper."

Anthony Minghella, 54 The British filmmaker knew how to translate eloquence from the page to the screen. He won a best-director Oscar in 1996 for his intelligent and stunning adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel "The English Patient." In "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and the Civil War epic "Cold Mountain," Minghella flaunted his emotional range, demonstrating a keen ability to bring clarity to complex interior dialogues. And his underappreciated first film, "Truly, Madly, Deeply," was a funny, poignant look at the ravages of grief. This time, the loss is ours.

Osborn Elliott, 83 It's fair to say that if it weren't for Oz, there would be no one here to write his obituary. In the 1960s, he transformed NEWSWEEK from an also-ran to a pre-eminent magazine by adding voice and depth to its pages, most notably in its searing coverage of the civil-rights and antiwar movements. "He made a difference," said Richard Holbrooke, the former U.N. am-bassador. For a jour-nalist, there is no higher praise.

George Carlin, 71 Like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, Carlin understood just how dangerous a funnyman with a microphone can be. The New York native relished dissecting the little games people play with the English language. Which is why, though so much other comedy from Carlin's heyday in the 1970s now seems tame, plenty of his still scalds. In his best-known routine, he enumerated, to hilarious effect, the seven words you can't say on television. Thirty-six years later, we still won't print them.

Bo Diddley, 79 Albert Einstein had E=mc2, William Shakespeare had "To be or not to be," and Bo Diddley had bomp-ba-domp-ba-domp, ba-domp-domp. With his homemade guitar, his huge stage persona and one of the most infectious riffs in rock and roll--a genre he did as much as nearly anybody to invent--Diddley was one of the pioneers of American pop music. Hits like "Who Do You Love?" and "Bo Diddley" inspired the British invasion bands, punk bands and countless acts who followed.

Isaac Hayes, 65 As a young sideman (for Otis Redding) and songwriter (for Sam and Dave, among others), he helped create Memphis R&B. He later became the first black composer to win an Oscar, for the theme song to "Shaft." He even thrived in TV, playing the wise Chef on "South Park" until the show's mockery of Scientology drove him out. Will we ever see a soul legend like him again? Shut your mouth.

Bettie Page, 85 In the pre-Playboy years, she used her jet-black bangs, bad-girl grin and, most of all, barely covered legs, and turned the wholesome notion of the American pinup queen into something naughty—and successful. Latter-day fans and countless wanna-Betties paid homage to her retro glamour and lack of inhibition in movies and comic books, but she ultimately renounced fetish modeling, found Jesus and spent a decade in a mental hospital for threatening her landlady with a knife.

Robert Rauschenberg, 82 When his uncle died, his mother cut the back off the suit he was buried in—no one sees the corpse's back lying in a coffin!—and made herself a skirt. The transformation of scraps informed his abstract-expressionist sculptures, often made of refuse he found on the street. To Robert (who transformed himself, changing his name from Milton), discarded cans, boards and pieces of metal weren't junk. They were the stuff of art.

Ollie Johnston, 95 Johnston once said that he was "acting with a pencil," and he was right. He was a member—the last surviving one—of Disney's Nine Old Men, the band of animators that influenced just about every American born in the past 80 years. Johnston helped create the "Cinderella" stepsisters, Baloo from "The Jungle Book," the "101 Dalmations" dogs and the darkest moment in anyone's childhood: the death of Bambi's mom.