Celebrity Deaths

Vern Gosdin (August 5, 1934 - April 28, 2009) was an American country music singer. He idolized The Louvin Brothers and The Blue Sky Boys as a young man and sang in a gospel quartet called The Gosdin Brothers. Nicknamed "The Voice," an inheritor of the soulful honky tonk style of Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard rose to the top of the business and notched hit after barroom hit. Some of these scored hits in the 1970s and 1980s, included "Chiseled in Stone," "Set 'em Up Joe," "I'm Still Crazy," "That Just About Does It," "If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right)," "Today My World Slipped Away," "Slow Burning Memory," "This Ain't My First Rodeo," "Way Down Deep" and "I Can Tell By The Way You Dance (You're Gonna Love Me Tonight)."

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Ekaterina Sergeevna Maximova (b. 1 February 1939, Moscow, Soviet Union - d. 28 April 2009, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian ballerina.

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Beatrice “Bea” Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009) was an American comedian, actress and singer. In a career spanning seven decades, Arthur achieved success as the title character, Maude Findlay, on the 1970s sitcom Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls. Arthur won an Emmy for both roles.

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Ken Annakin, OBE (August 10, 1914 – April 22, 2009) was an English film director. His career in films followed his work experience in documentaries. He made his directing debut in 1947 at the Rank Organisation, although the following year he moved to Gainsborough Pictures to helm three films about the Huggetts, a working class family living in suburban England. Annakin became known for a series of Walt Disney adventures including The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), The Sword and the Rose (1953) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960).

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Thomas Wardell Braden (February 22, 1917 – April 3, 2009) was an American journalist. He was best known as the author of Eight is Enough, which spawned a popular television program and as the co-host of the CNN show Crossfire.

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Mark Steven "The Bird" Fidrych (August 14, 1954 – April 13, 2009), was a Major League Baseball player for the Detroit Tigers from 1976-1980. He was reported dead by the Worcester District Attorney's office on Monday, April 13, 2009 in a reported accident while working on his 10 wheel dump truck at his home in Massachusetts.

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