Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, conductor who performed with leading orchestras, dies at 80

Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, 80, a Spanish conductor known for his frequent guest appearances with the world's foremost symphony orchestras, died of cancer Wednesday in Pamplona, Spain. He was heard over the years as a guest conductor with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, and orchestras in Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati and Detroit, among many others. He drew admiring notices to the end of his life.

Karen DeCrow, 76, president of the National Organization for Women during the transformative 1970s, when she championed the national movement for the Equal Rights Amendment and for greater opportunities for women and girls in sports, died of melanoma June 6 in Jamesville, N.Y.

Glenn Britt, 65, the longtime chief executive of Time Warner Cable, whose career encompassed the shift from televisions with rabbit ears to streaming video, died of melanoma Wednesday in New York. Time Warner Cable's revenues had grown to $22 billion from $6 billion in 2001, when he was named chief executive of the company.

Gabriel Kolko, 81, an influential left-leaning historian who argued that American domestic and international policies have long been driven more by the interests of big business than by the interests of the people, died May 19 in Amsterdam. He wrote a series of books on turning points in American history, carving a distinct and sometimes groundbreaking path.

Isaac Patch, 101, a Cold Warrior who led a CIA-financed book distribution program that smuggled hundreds of thousands of banned or hard-to-find texts into the Soviet Union, died of complications from dementia May 31 in St. Johnsbury, Vt. Scholar Alfred Reisch wrote in Hot Books in the Cold War that sending books into the Soviet sphere of influence "played a decisive role, by contributing … to the West's ideological victory."

Jimmy Scott, 88, a jazz singer whose distinctively plaintive delivery and unusually high-pitched voice earned him a loyal following and, late in life, a taste of real stardom, died of cardiac arrest Thursday in Las Vegas.

Richard Rockefeller, 65, a physician and a son of the billionaire philanthropist David Rockefeller, was killed Friday when the small plane he was piloting crashed shortly after takeoff at Westchester County Airport in New York.