Notable Deaths in 2025

A look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan. The Associated Press contributed to this gallery. The works of the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and humorist Jules Feiffer (Jan. 26, 1929-Jan. 17, 2025) included a long-running comic strip, plays, screenplays and children's books in which he chronicled childhood, urban angst, politics, sexism, war, and other topics. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political quandaries that colored 20th century life. In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker (Jan. 26, 1934-Jan. 16, 2025) played for four teams, with a career batting average of .200. But for a half-century as a play-by-play announcer, the Milwaukee native was a mascot for his city, and for the sport at which he never quite excelled, his enthusiasm and humor earning him the nickname "Mr. Baseball." Writer, director and painter David Lynch (Jan. 20, 1946-Jan. 15, 2025) was a remarkable cinematic visionary, whose films "Blue Velvet," "Mulholland Drive," "Lost Highway," and the TV series "Twin Peaks" were highly stylized dream states, evoking lost innocence, eroticism, and the roiling mysteries that exist underneath placid, peaceful exteriors. His films' interior logic would invariably prompt more questions than answers, but the imagery and sonic sensations he mastered would generate a tremendous devotion from his fellow filmmakers and audiences. In the 1960s, Sam Moore (Oct. 12, 1935-Jan. 10, 2025) was one half of soul music's most explosive duo, Sam & Dave, who were known as "double dynamite" and "the sultans of sweat." Their string of 10 straight Top 20 R&B hits included two soul masterpieces, "Hold On, I'm Comin'," "and "Soul Man."

As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority." Hired by the Milwaukee Brewers as a scout, Uecker demonstrated his lack of ability in that department. But then, the team's owner moved him to the broadcast booth, where Uecker stayed for 54 years. A Montana native, Lynch studied at the American Film Institute and turned his thesis project into his first feature, "Eraserhead," a black-and-white experimental film about parenthood. Its exceptional photography and sound design made it a cult favorite. On the basis of "Eraserhead," Lynch was hired by Mel Brooks' production company to write and direct his first Hollywood feature, "The Elephant Man." Lynch earned two Oscar nominations. Moore developed his pleading tenor voice while singing in church (he initially wanted to become a preacher). In 1957, he was set to travel to Chicago to replace the great Sam Cooke in a gospel group, The Soul Stirrers. But then, he told "Sunday Morning" in 2014, he attended a Jackie Wilson concert: "He was singing and winking and blinking and gyrating the body. ... I saw men screaming, women, and I said, I want to do that!" laughed Moore. He ended up hiding from the gospel group, who left for Chicago without him. "They had to, because they couldn't find me!" he laughed.