Ted Sampley, 62, a Vietnam War veteran and former member of the Green Berets who was a persistent activist for American prisoners of war and missing servicemen, and who later led smear campaigns against presidential candidates, died May 12 in Durham, N.C., of complications from heart surgery.
Sampley, who had an uncanny talent for capturing public attention, was a founder of Rolling Thunder, the annual motorcycle caravan that raises money for POW/MIA causes.
Last year, he used his website to denounce "Sen. Barack Hussein Obama Jr." and his father's Muslim heritage. But Sampley reserved his most venomous attacks for John McCain, a Navy pilot and fellow Vietnam veteran who spent five years as a prisoner of war. Sampley believed many missing soldiers and airmen were still alive and was upset that McCain did not champion an effort to bring them home.
Honore Sharrer, 88, who after achieving much acclaim in 1951 for her five-panel painting, "Tribute to the American Working People," removed herself from the art scene, died April 17 in Washington from complications of dementia.
The work, which is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution, includes four small paintings surrounded by one large one of a factory worker and incorporates more than 70 other blue-collar figures among scenes of American life. It was rendered with 200 tiny "double zero" brushes and took the artist five years to finish.
Although she continued to paint, Sharrer was nonexistent on the art scene.
Monica Bleibtreu, 65, an actress well-known in the German-speaking world for a prolific range of cinema, television and theater roles, died Thursday in Hamburg after a long battle with cancer.
She made her cinema debut in "Ludwig -- Requiem for a Virgin King" in 1972. Later roles included appearances in Tom Tykwer's "Run Lola Run," which also starred her son, German actor Moritz Bleibtreu.
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