John "Burch" Ault, educator, 1926-2008

A former president of Burlington Industrial Fabrics Co., Ault and his wife, Joan (nicknamed Pony), moved to Santa Fe in 1970 where Ault worked at St. John's College, first as a part-time tutor, then as vice president of the Santa Fe campus from 1970 to 1980. He was provost of both campuses between 1980 and 1985. Ault was also one of the founders of the Santa Fe Community Foundation.

Joan Wilcox Boliek, Ghost Ranch registrar, 1928-2008

For more than two decades, Boliek, who worked as the registrar and assistant to the director at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center, greeted guests by hugging them and then saying, "Welcome home." She moved to Ghost Ranch in 1972 with her husband, Chad, a Presbyterian minister. They raised their three children on the ranch. When a guest forgot his or her alarm clock, Joan would loan one from her family's home.

Chris Calloway, jazz diva, 1945-2008

Calloway, daughter of famous Cotton Club bandleader Cab Calloway, sang with her father's Hi-De-Ho Orchestra for two decades until his death in 1995. She then became a bandleader in her own right, putting together a new version of the band. In 2001, she took the group on a 55-city tour. A resident of Santa Fe since 1991, she sang at La Posada de Santa Fe Resort & Spa for two years and presented a performance series at Espiritu Canyon Road, which was captured on her compact disc Live at Espiritu. In 2001, Santa Fe Stages produced Calloway's one-woman show, Clouds of Joy: The Spiritual Journey of Blanche Calloway, about her Aunt Blanche, who was a pioneering bandleader in the 1930s.

Richard Canon, owner of Packard's on the Plaza, 1940-2008

Canon moved his family to Santa Fe in 1974 and bought Packard's Indian Trading Co. from Al Packard and his mother, Marie. For 30 years, the Canons welcomed tens of thousands of guests to their store and counseled, advised and supported hundreds of artists and vendors. Canon served on the board of First National Bank of Santa Fe and was a past president of the board of directors of the School of American Research. He also served on the board of Santa Fe Preparatory School and was president of the Orchestra of Santa Fe during its formative years.

Erik Darling, folk music legend, 1933-2008

A folk musician who performed with The Tarriers, The Weavers and The Rooftop Singers, Darling's family wanted him to join its paint-store business. His life changed after he moved to New York City in the late 1940s. He began playing folk music on his guitar and landed his first professional gig as a member of the Musical Americana traveling troupe early in 1954. In the mid-1950s, he formed The Tarriers (initially called The Tunetellers) with other folk musicians, including Bob Carey and Clark Carlton. Actor Alan Arkin (now a Santa Fe resident) joined the group shortly thereafter, and the ensemble enjoyed its first major success with its version of the Jamaican folk tune "The Banana Boat Song," released late in 1956. Darling's biggest hit may have been his 1962 recording, with The Rooftop Singers, of "Walk Right In." He moved to Santa Fe in 1986 and lived here for nearly 20 years.

Virginia Dooley, Taos gallery manager, 1943-2008

Dooley was a dedicated protector, publicist, promoter and friend to artist RC Gorman for more than 30 years. No one could get close to Gorman (who died in 2005) without first passing inspection by Dooley. It was after she took a job teaching music to Taos schoolchildren that she met Gorman, who at the time was known as a promising but unknown artist. She posed for some of Gorman's early drawings and paintings and became both a close friend and early promoter of his work. She launched an early publicity campaign of posters and bumper stickers with the legend "Who Is R. C. Gorman?" and a silhouette of Gorman's profile — an image that became his signature logo. For more than three decades, they worked together, establishing an artistic legacy that continues to this day. She won a national baking contest for her recipe for turquoise margarita pie and collaborated with Gorman on a series of books called Nudes and Foods, which feature his drawings and recipes she collected or created.

A. Clark Duncan, scenery designer, 1934-2008

Duncan taught and worked at the College of Santa Fe as a scenic designer from 1986 to 2006 before retiring to Wayne, Pa., not far from his birthplace of Bryn Mawr. After studying scenic design at Yale University, Duncan worked in professional theater for more than 20 years before joining the college's faculty. He was a regular fixture in his office in the Greer Garson Theatre on the college campus, which he shared for years with his beloved dog, known as Wheels or Wheelies. Among his designing credits at the college were The Diary of Anne Frank, Dracula and The Time of Your Life, and his last, Urinetown, in the spring of 2006.

Glenn W. Ferguson, college president, 1929-2008

Ferguson was president of the University of Connecticut from 1973 to 1978 and left the job to become chief executive officer of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. From 1961 to 1969, he held various posts in the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, including U.S. ambassador to Kenya from 1966 to 1969 and positions with both the Peace Corps and Volunteers in Service to America. Ferguson was chancellor of Long Island University in 1969 and president of Clark University from 1970 to 1973. He moved to Santa Fe in 1998.

Daniel Freedman, psychologist, 1927-2008

As a University of Chicago psychologist, Daniel Freedman explored why children smile and why men grow beards. He retired to Ribera, a village between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, N.M., in 1995 to join his wife, Jane Gorman, who began teaching social work at New Mexico Highlands University in 1993. He fell in love with the area decades ago when he came to study New Mexico culture. Freedman provided foster care for scores of homeless puppies from his home in Ribera.

Harold Gans, voice of Zozobra, 1922-2008

For 40 years, the Santa Fe native moaned Zozobra's death throes and worked tirelessly to maintain the monster's mystique and popularity. Gans was a friend of artist Will Shuster, who created Zozobra for the 1924 Fiesta de Santa Fe. Gans had helped build Zozobra starting in 1938, including crafting its head and became the main voice of Zozobra in 1951 by moaning and howling through a microphone. The Gans family owned Santa Fe Arts and Crafts, a downtown business, for many years. Harold Gans took over the store after his parents died.

Richard Halford, architect, 1924-2008

Halford designed numerous buildings around Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico, including the former Bank of Santa Fe Building (now Wells Fargo) at Paseo de Peralta and Washington Avenue, Taos High School, Cochiti Elementary School and the Tesuque Fire Station. He also designed the multistory La Esquina building on the southwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Marcy Street, now undergoing remodeling.

Douglas Kent Hall, photographer, 1938-2008

With photographic wizardry and insightful writing, Hall illuminated subjects ranging from rock stars, bodybuilders and flamenco dancers to prisoners, cowboys and the Southwestern landscape. Photography came to Hall almost by accident, as he noted in a 2007 Pasatiempo interview about his 24th book, In New Mexico Light, a collection of photographs and essays, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press. Hall had a job teaching creative writing at a university in Oregon, but didn't like teaching all that much, borrowed a camera from his brother-in-law and "just started earnestly working on photographs." He moved to New Mexico in 1977 because "It's too beautiful not to be here." Hall won the 2005 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for photography. His other books include Rodeo (Ballantine, 1975), Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (Simon & Schuster, 1979), The Border: Life on the Line (Abbeville Press, 1988) and New Mexico: Voices in an Ancient Landscape (Henry Holt, 1995).

Kingsley Hammett, writer and civic activist, 1944-2008

Former business editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican, Hammett was publisher of DESIGNER/builder, a magazine he co-founded with his wife, Jerilou. He wrote three books on New Mexico furniture, including one published by Red Crane Books and two with his own Fleetwood Press, which were distributed by The University of New Mexico Press. Two other books, Santa Fe: A Walk Through Time and The Essence of Santa Fe, were widely admired.

Cary Herz, photographer, 1947-2008

Herz first gained national attention in the 1970s when she recorded the early days of the women's movement for Ms. Magazine. Her work appeared in publications including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek and People. She also became known for her documentation of female athletes, who were gaining a prominent presence in media of the day. A former New York Times photo correspondent, her work was regularly distributed by The Associated Press. As a volunteer, she photographed children in Guatemala before and after cleft palate surgery and took pictures of AIDS victims in Thailand to help raise awareness of the disease's global reach. Her most recent book, New Mexico's Crypto-Jews: Image and Memory, was published by UNM Press in 2007 and won the Best Nonfiction Book (Religion) award for 2008 from the National Federation of Press Women. It was the culmination of a decadeslong journey that began when Herz was photographing the Congregation Montefiore Cemetery in Las Vegas, N.M., in 1985.

Tony Hillerman, writer, 1925-2008

Hillerman started his writing career as a journalist and moved to Santa Fe in 1954 to work as a reporter for the wire service United Press International. He later became editor of The New Mexican and won numerous awards for his news stories and editorials. In 1970, Hillerman published The Blessing Way, the first of 17 novels that tracked tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee through the wide-open Navajo landscape. The series was among more than 30 books he wrote.

Wilson Hurley, painter, 1924-2008

One of America's premier landscape painters, the Oklahoma-born Hurley has paintings hanging in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma State Capitol, the Albuquerque Museum, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Texas, the Whitney Museum in Wyoming and galleries in Santa Fe, to name a few places. A West Point graduate, Hurley also was an attorney, engineer, fighter pilot and bank founder. But through it all, since childhood, he was a painter.

Alice King, former first lady of New Mexico, 1930-2008

King was the wife of former three-time governor Bruce King. A major supporter of the Carrie Tingley Children's Hospital, she was also chairwoman of the New Mexico Children's Trust Fund and is credited with creating the state's Children, Youth and Families Department.

Lobsang Lhalungpa, Tibetan scholar, 1924-2008

Lhalungpa became a monk at age 5. He studied with the Dalai Lama's tutors and in 1947 became director for Tibetan and Buddhist studies in the Indian Himalayan towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. When many were called back home by the Chinese, he stayed behind in exile and began teaching foreign historians, scholars and anthropologists. In 1956, he started a Tibetan radio program to inform his people about conditions in India and the rest of the world, and ran the program for 15 years. In 1970, Lhalungpa moved with his family to Canada, where he taught at the University of British Columbia. He and his wife retired to Santa Fe in 1989 where, in addition to conducting meditation groups, he worked on translations of sacred texts such as Mahamudra: The Moonlight — Quintessence of Mind and Meditation.

Virginia Leipzig, poet and writer, 1931-2008

An award-winning poet and nonfiction writer Leipzig taught at Santa Fe Community College, Northern New Mexico College and Highlands University after moving to Santa Fe about 20 years ago. She also taught poetry at Adelphi University and participated in writing workshops in London, New York, Taos and Santa Fe. Among her awards were the William Cullen Bryant Poetry Award, the C.W. Post College Annual Poetry Prize, the U.S. Constitution Bicentennial Essay Award, New Mexico State Poetry Prize and the New Mexico Pen Travel Writing Prize.

L.E. Meyer, contractor, 1916-2008

In 1951, Meyer established the L.E. Meyer Co., a mechanical contracting firm based in Santa Fe that worked on large government projects. The company assisted in the construction and renovation of St. Vincent Hospital when it was on Palace Avenue, Santa Fe High School when it was on Marcy Street (now City Hall), the College of Santa Fe and the Elks Lodge. Meyer's firm installed all the piping for the half-mile-long beam accelerator at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Meyer and his partners in a 20,000-acre cattle ranch that became Rancho Viejo donated land near the development for the campus of Santa Fe Community College.

Neil Murphy, fourth-generation candymaker, 1922-2008

In 1972, Murphy and his wife bought the Santa Fe Candy Kitchen, then located on West San Francisco Street near the Lensic Theatre. Murphy changed the name of the business to Señor Murphy, Candymaker and began making bolitas, brittles and pecan tortugas. "He was a serious chocolate fanatic before his time," said his daughter, Sally Murphy.

Emilio Naranjo, longtime political leader, 1916-2008

Naranjo's political résumé included some 50 years as chairman of the Rio Arriba County Democratic Party and stints as sheriff, federal marshal, county manager and state senator.

Jacob J. Olivas, Brother Luke to St. Michael's students, 1911-2008

Olivas, known as Brother Luke to generations of students at St. Michael's High School, was born on Delgado Street in Santa Fe, one of 11 children of Ciriaco Olivas and Maria Martinez. He took the name Luke when he joined the Christian Brotherhood at age 12. After his training, Brother Luke was sent to Lafayette, La., to teach French, Latin, English, physics, mathematics, science and religion, and coach football and basketball. In the 1960s, he transferred to St. Michael's High School.

Lala Ortiz, head of Governor's Office, 1909-2008

There was a time when Lala Ortiz was one of the most influential women in New Mexico. From 1937 to 1951, she was the executive secretary for four Democratic state governors: Clyde Tingley, John Miles, John Dempsey and Thomas Mabry. She was the person in charge of the Governor's Office. So if you wanted to meet with the governor, you talked to her first. She was known as a consummate professional who single-handedly ran the day-to-day operations within the Governor's Office.

Art Sanchez, former city councilor, 1930-2008

In the 1990s, Sanchez doggedly worked to have the city take over ownership of the Sangre de Cristo Water Co., which was owned by the Public Service Company of New Mexico. Sanchez saw the 1995 purchase as a way to control costs and give the city greater control over development. Sanchez was a councilor from 1984 to 1988 and again from 1992 to 2000, when Miguel Chavez defeated him. He also worked for the city of Española as city manager and for Santa Fe County as a finance manager and acting county manager.

Larry Wilson, sprayed-foam pioneer, 1938-2008

Wilson gained national attention in 2001 when he stuffed an effigy of Osama bin Laden in the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus rex sculpture outside his spray-foam insulation shop east of Interstate 25 and the Cerrillos Road exit. Wilson, who founded Thermal Coatings & Insulation in 1977, began to build his own small Jurassic Park in the late 1980s. Using welded rebar covered with screen-door wire, he created the skeletons, then fashioned the musculature with the same polyurethane foam that his company used to insulate roofs and walls. The foam dinos — a 14-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex being roped by a cowboy, a brontosaurus that is 52 feet long, a stegosaurus in a livestock pen and a winged pterodactyl — became a wintertime hobby and an advertisement for his business.

Lucille Webb, friend of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1906-2008

Webb and her husband, Todd, a photographer, moved to Santa Fe in 1961 at the urging of artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Lucille ran a bookshop and gallery on Canyon Road while her husband taught photography here. In 1946, Todd Webb had been trusted by O'Keeffe with taking the installation photos of her exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and during that time, he was a regular at her home. O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, was a mentor to him. The Webbs visited O'Keeffe frequently in Abiquiú, and once they moved here, they continued to spend time with her and her circle of friends. Lucille Webb died at her home in Auburn, Maine.