Notable deaths last week

• It is hard to imagine a classier hockey player, on and off the ice, than Jean Beliveau.

A supremely skilled center who spent 20 seasons with the Montreal Canadiens during his Hall of Fame career, Beliveau died Tuesday at 83.

One of the most beloved players in Canadiens history, Beliveau also was a popular ambassador for the sport. He scored 507 goals, won 10 Stanley Cup championships and was captain for 10 seasons before his retirement in 1971. After that, he moved seamlessly into an executive position with the club.

Beliveau was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972. He won two NHL MVP awards and has his name engraved on the Cup a record 17 times, counting the seven titles Montreal won while he was in the front office.

• Queen Fabiola, who was inseparable from her husband, the late King Baudouin, and popular across much of Belgium, has died at 86.

Spanish-born Fabiola was very close with King Baudouin, and they shared a deep belief in Roman Catholic values. The couple were reclusive and remained childless following several miscarriages.

• Prominent Indianapolis businessman and black community leader William Mays has died at age 69.

Mays was an Evansville native who graduated from Indiana University. He established Mays Chemical Co. in Indianapolis in 1980 and also owned radio and television stations and commercial and residential properties.

• William Heath, an award-winning journalist and former bureau chief for The Associated Press who oversaw news coverage during some of Latin America's most turbulent times, has died. He was 78.

• A songwriter and producer who wrote hits for pop and country artists from Buddy Holly to Eddy Arnold has died.

Montgomery died Thursday in Lee's Summit, Missouri, after a struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 77.

He initially teamed up with Holly as a rockabilly duo in the 1950s, but then focused on songwriting for Holly and the Crickets. In the late 1960s, he moved to Nashville, where he started House of Gold Music. It became a major publishing house, scoring hits for country stars including Alabama, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Dottie West and the Judds.

• Bryan Burwell, a longtime sports columnist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has died after a short battle with cancer. He was 59.

• Claudia Emerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, has died at age 57 after a long battle with cancer.

Emerson, a native of Chatham, Virginia, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book "Late Wife," a collection of handwritten letters reflecting on her failed marriage of 19 years and her blossoming relationship with her second husband, Kent Ippolito.

• Jeremy Thorpe, an influential British politician who helped revive the Liberal Party before his career was cut short by scandal, has died at 85.

Widely admired as a speaker and organizer, Thorpe had enjoyed a successful career that was cut short by scandal after he was accused of conspiracy and incitement to murder former male model Norman Scott.

• L. Stephen Coles spent his career studying the reasons why supercentenarians - or those who live to 110 or more - survived as long as they did.

He wanted to learn how to slow "and ultimately reverse" human aging within 20 years, as the website for the Gerontology Research Group, which he founded, states.

Coles died in Scottsdale of complications arising from pancreatic cancer. He was 73 years old, according to two colleagues.

• Jim Swink, a star TCU running back and College Football Hall of Fame inductee who bypassed a professional football career to become a doctor, has died at 78.

• Herman Badillo, a Bronx politician who became the first person born in Puerto Rico to become a U.S. congressman, has died at 85.

• Pete Rodriquez, one of the first Hispanic coaches in pro football, has died. He was 75.

Rodriguez worked for the Raiders, Cardinals, Redskins, Seahawks and Jaguars, as well as for two USFL and one CFL team.

• Rolling Stones collaborator and Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan has died at 69.

McLagan was a member of the British pop group Small Faces in the 1960s. The band changed its name to Faces when Rod Stewart and Ron Wood joined in 1969.

McLagan went onto record and perform with the Rolling Stones, playing on the band's 1978 album "Some Girls," including the organ solo on the hit single "Miss You." He released several solo albums, including a tribute to his Small Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane in 2008. McLagan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

• Renowned Mexican author, playwright and journalist Vicente Lenero has died. He was 81.

His credits also included a stage adaptation of "The Children of Sanchez" and the screenplay for "The Alley of Miracles" (1995), starring Salma Hayek.

• Luke Somers, 33, an American who was killed during a rescue attempt against his al-Qaida captors in Yemen, had been working as a freelance photographer and editor in that country.

"Through his photographs we can see the humanity through conflicts, the familiar in a turbulent tribal region," his sister Lucy Somers said.

• Marvin "Whitey" Helling, the football coach who helped build the University of North Dakota into a Division II power, has died. He was 91.

• Fargo, North Dakota, Mayor Dennis Walaker, the man known as the "flood mayor" for leading the state's largest city through several successful fights against the Red River, has died at 73.

• Longtime Minnesota radio and television personality Rodger Kent, who announced professional wrestling and hosted a fishing and hunting show, has died at age 90.

• Saxophonist Bobby Keys, a lifelong rock 'n' roller who toured with Buddy Holly, played on recordings by John Lennon and laid down one of the all-time blowout solos on the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," has died. He was 70.

Keys had been on tour with the Stones earlier this year before his health prevented him from performing.

• Corinne Pulliam Quayle, the mother of former vice president Dan Quayle and a newspaper owner and publisher, has died. She was 92.

• Martin Litton, a bold whitewater navigator and even bolder advocate for preserving the wildlands of the American West, has died at age 97.

• Anthony Marshall's trial was a lens on the lives of the famous and monied, featuring testimony from the likes of Barbara Walters and Henry Kissinger.

And it was a window into a sordid tale of greed and intergenerational strife: the son of an elderly philanthropist being accused of taking advantage of her failing mental state.

Marshall, who died at age 90, saw his aristocratic life unravel as he was convicted in 2009 of raiding the fortune of his socialite mother, Brooke Astor.

• Acclaimed Egyptian novelist and educator Radwa Ashour, who used her often deeply personal writing style to champion human rights issues, has died after a long battle with cancer. She was 68.

She chronicled her fight against cancer in her novel "Heavier than Radwa," set against the turbulent days of Egypt's revolution. She wrote more than fifteen books, the best-known of which is the "Granada" trilogy, which chronicles the rise and fall of Arab civilization in Spain.

• South African conservationist Ian Player, the brother of golfer Gary Player and a key figure in building the region's rhino population from a perilously small number half a century ago, has died at age 87.

• Writer Kent Haruf, who authored "Plainsong" and several other novels set in small town Colorado, has died at age 71.

"The Tie That Binds," his first novel, was published in 1984, winning a Whiting Writers' Prize and finishing as a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award for first fiction. His next book, "Where You Once Belonged," came ou

• Mark Strand, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate widely praised for his concentrated, elegiac verse, has died. He was 80.