In Year Two of the coronavirus pandemic, we continue to grapple with a virus that shapes life — and our sense of death — in profound ways. Covid–19 has claimed more than 770,000 lives in the United States alone, more this year than last and with the vast majority of victims everyday Americans dying out of the public eye. All the while, we remain fascinated by the deaths of those in the public arena, whether from covid-19 or other causes. Some of those people we perhaps regarded as immortal — a reflection of their larger-than-life qualities and also our desire to capture a memory of them in amber, forever in their prime. We recall the distinctive voices (broadly defined) of Larry King, Stephen Sondheim, DMX, Roger Mudd and Rush Limbaugh; the athletic prowess of Hank Aaron, Eddie Robinson and Lee Elder; the literary pleasures derived from Beverly Cleary, Larry McMurtry and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; the divergent political impact of Walter F. Mondale, Sheldon Adelson, Frances “Sissy” Farenthold and F.W. de Klerk; and the show-business vitality of Christopher Plummer, Cicely Tyson, Cloris Leachman, Jane Powell, Ed Asner, Michael K. Williams, Ned Beatty, Willard Scott and Anna Halprin. These are people who shaped not just our world, but us personally. Their loss continues to resonate because they connected intensely with us in life, provoking laughter, excitement, reflection and sometimes rage. The following obituaries seek to capture their attainments and shortcomings — the elements that make them sentient human beings, not celebrities at arm’s length. In other words, the human qualities that remind us of ourselves.