Cancer In New

Jack Cofield, who along with his father photographed novelist William Faulkner, died Monday after an extended illness in Oxford, Miss. He was 63. His book, "William Faulkner: The Cofield Collection," included his internationally celebrated photographs that chronicled the life of the reclusive, Nobel Prize-winning author. Mr. Cofield's father, "Colonel" J. R. Cofield, took some of the photographs. Much of the collection was reprinted from scrapbooks and contained personalized captions by J. R. Cofield.

Friedl Pfeifer, 83, a founder of the ski industry in Aspen, Colo., died of colon cancer Sunday in Paradise Valley, Ariz. A three-time U.S. slalom champion, he helped organize construction of the first chairlift on Aspen Mountain in 1947. The native of Austria also started the Aspen Ski School and the Aspen Ski Club. He was inducted into the Aspen Hall of Fame in 1987.Dr. Joseph Wortis, 80, who introduced insulin shock treatment for schizophrenia in the United States, died Feb. 22 of prostate cancer in New York.

Abraham W. GellerN.Y. architectAbraham W. Geller, an architect known as much for his steadfast commitment to modernism as for the buildings he designed, died Monday of pancreatic cancer in New York City. He was 83.Mr. Geller's small office, established in New York in 1946, produced the designs for several prominent New York City projects, including one of the first multiplex movie theaters in the country -- Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 on Third Avenue -- and Davis Hall, a performing arts auditorium at City College.

Cora Mae Daniels Basnight,88, who starred for 25 years in the outdoor drama "The Lost Colony," died Monday in Manteo, N.C. Mrs. Basnight played the love-struck Indian maid Agona in Paul Green's symphonic play from 1957 to 1982, one of the longest runs in U.S. stage history.Walter Kendrick,51, an authority on Victorian literature, an author and a literary critic, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer in New York.Albert Washington,59, a blues guitarist who was prominent in the 1960s and 1970s, died Friday in Cincinnati of diabetes.

Walter Frehm, 89, who drew the syndicated Ripley's Believe It Or Not cartoon feature for 30 years, died June 2 in Boca Raton, Fla. He and his brother, Paul, drew the feature, which chronicled the unusual and the bizarre, and is considered one of the most successful cartoons in history. It appears in 175 newspapers in 42 countries.Brig. Gen. Wesley Hamilton, 96, the nation's oldest general, died Monday in Seattle, five years after being debilitated by a stroke. In 1917, he enlisted in Tacoma, Wash.

J. MAX BOND JR., 73 Sept. 11 memorial museum architect J. Max Bond Jr., the architect who designed the Sept. 11 memorial museum in Manhattan and the site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb, died of cancer Wednesday in New York, said a partner at his firm, Davis Brody Bond Aedas. Mr. Bond, one of the nation's leading black architects, was an associate architect for the memorial to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and principal designer of the below-grade museum under construction at Ground Zero.

Jack Weston,71, the rotund, balding character actor who played an uptight dentist in "The Four Seasons," a stalker in "Wait Until Dark" and the resort manager in "Dirty Dancing," died of cancer Friday in New York.In a 40-year career that spanned Broadway, television and movies, he played everyone from sleazy villains to terrifying killers to clumsy comics. On Broadway, he received a Tony nomination for his work in 1981's "The Floating Lightbulb."Ai Qing,86, one of modern China's most famous poets, died yesterday of undisclosed causes at a Beijing hospital.

Eugene Fodor, 85, whose travel guides have been carried by tourists to the far corners of the world for more than half a century, died of a brain tumor last night at the Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, Conn. He lived in Litchfield, Conn. Mr. Fodor's approach to travel writing was set forth in his first book, "1936 . . . On the Continent," a guide to Europe for British travelers that he published in London. The joy of travel, he wrote, should not be derived solely from seeing "the sights," but from mingling with "peoples whose customs, habits and general outlook are different from your own."

James Velez, 25, who became the focus of an ambitious effort to attain an independent life for a disabled person, died Wednesday from an infection of the blood and spine.Institutionalized from the age of 7, Mr. Velez longed for a more normal life. In 1996, Job Path, a social service agency, succeeded, gaining his release and moving Mr. Velez into his own Queens, N.Y., apartment.The improvement of Mr. Velez's life, documented in articles in The New York Times, drove others to ask for similar assistance for disabled children.

Jay Monahan, 42, a lawyer and legal analyst for NBC News and the husband of "Today" show host Katie Couric, died of cancer yesterday in New York. Mr. Monahan -- who had worked for the network for two years, often appearing on MSNBC -- underwent surgery for colon cancer June 6. The couple married in 1989 and have two daughters, Elinor, 6 1/2 , and Caroline, 2.Maj. Gen. Ralph Corbett Smith, 104, the Army's oldest surviving general officer, died Wednesday in Palo Alto, Calif. General Smith -- who served under Gen. John J. Pershing in a punitive expedition against Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa -- was a combat veteran of both world wars.