The week’s passages

Marlene Sanders, 84, one of the first women to break into television journalism, where she compiled a stellar résumé as a reporter in the field and an Emmy-winning writer and producer of documentaries, died of cancer Tuesday in New York City.

Satoru Iwata, 55, the Nintendo president who led the Japanese game-maker back to ascendancy in the early 2000s with the Wii console and who had oversight of the Redmond-based Nintendo of America subsidiary, died of bile-duct cancer July 11 in Kyoto, Japan.

Claudia Alexander, 56, a brilliant, pioneering scientist who helped direct NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter and the international Rosetta space-exploration project, died of breast cancer July 11. No location was announced.

Wan Li, 98, the last of the Chinese Communist Party’s revolutionary elders known as the “Eight Immortals,” who joined the party in 1936 and rose to chairman of the National People’s Congress, died Wednesday in Beijing.

Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, 65, a Tibetan lama who was 13 years into a Chinese prison sentence for what rights groups say were trumped-up charges that he was involved in a bombing in a park, has died, his relatives were informed last Sunday. He died of cardiac arrest.

Helen F. Holt, 101, who led the federal government’s effort to establish and standardize modern long-term-care facilities for the elderly in the pre-Medicare era, then served in the field through seven administrations (she helped create what are known as assisted-living facilities), died July 11 in Boca Raton, Fla.

Yoichiro Nambu, 94, a particle physicist at the University of Chicago whose mathematical description of the phenomenon known as spontaneous symmetry breaking helped explain the interaction of subatomic particles, contributed to the prediction of the Higgs boson, or “God particle,” and earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in 2008, died July 5 in Osaka, Japan.

Hans H. Angermueller, 90, a Citicorp executive who in the 1980s helped devise a secret financial deal to free U.S. hostages in Iran — using Iran’s frozen bank deposits in European banks to pay off the country’s creditors — died July 11 in Westerly, R.I.

Joan Sebastian, 64, (his first name is pronounced Juan) long a beloved ballad singer in Mexico, who won four Grammys and seven Latin Grammys, died June 10 in Teacalco, Mexico, of cancer.

Michael Masser, 74, a composer who wrote and produced some of Whitney Houston’s biggest hits, and who also wrote hits for Diana Ross, Natalie Cole and Roberta Flack, died July 9 in Rancho Mirage, Calif., of complications of a stroke he suffered three years ago.

D’Army Bailey, 73, a lawyer, judge and lifelong civil-rights crusader who successfully campaigned to transform the motel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 into a civil-rights museum, died of cancer July 12 in Memphis, Tenn.

Bill Arnsparger, 88, the Miami assistant coach who directed the “No-Name Defense” that helped the Dolphins win Super Bowl titles in 1973 and 1974, died Friday in Athens, Ala no cause was announced.

Alcides Edgardo Ghiggia, 88, the Uruguayan soccer great who scored the late winning goal in a stunning 2-1 victory over Brazil in the final game of the 1950 World Cup, died Thursday of a heart attack.

Chenjerai Hove, 59, an award-winning Zimbabwean poet and novelist whose work portrayed the struggles of his country’s powerless, and whose newspaper columns had been sharply critical of its government, died July 12 in exile in Norway. No cause was announced. He left Zimbabwe in 2001, the height of its political tumult.