AUGUSTA (AP) – Maine lost a generous patron whose gifts touched thousands of lives across the state when shoe business founder Harold Alfond died Nov. 16.

His foundation had given more than $100 million charitable causes including the University of Maine, college and community athletic centers, and a cancer treatment center in Augusta that bears his name.

Less than a month after Alfond’s death at age 93, his foundation was still giving, offering every child born in Maine a $500 college-savings nest egg.

The philanthropist is notable on the list of Mainers and others who had close association with the state who died in 2007.

Maine Lighthouse Museum founder Kenneth Black, known as “Mr. Lighthouse” to enthusiasts, died Jan. 28 in Rockport at age 82. Black was widely credited with being one of the founders of the lighthouse preservation movement in the United States while he was serving in the Coast Guard.

Phyllis Ames Cox, the 93-year-old widow of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor fired by President Nixon for refusing to curtail his Watergate investigation, died Feb. 6 at her South Brooksville home.

Businessman and civic leader Paul D. “P.D.” Merrill, 62, longtime trustee of the University of New England who in 1982 developed one of the only privately owned cargo terminals on the East Coast, died Feb. 11 after suffering a heart attack. Merrill lived in Yarmouth.

Jim Veno, one of the great golfers in Maine history, died Feb. 21 from a heart attack in Portland. Veno, who was 64, was one of only four golfers to have won both the Maine Amateur and the Maine Open golf tournaments, and was the only one to have won the Maine Amateur, the Maine Open and the Maine schoolboy title in the same year, 1962.

Musician Bill Chinnock, 59, a founding member of what became Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, died March 7 at his Yarmouth home after suffering from Lyme disease. Chinnock made 13 albums and in 1987 won an Emmy for his song, “Somewhere in the Night.”

Barbara Guild McKernan, mother of former Gov. John McKernan and a former president of the Maine Municipal Association, died March 14 from complications from emphysema. McKernan, of Bangor, was 86.

Gerald Duffy, 77, who coached basketball for 31 years in northern Maine and led Caribou High School to the 1969 state title on an improbable shot, died in Portland on March 16 after suffering pancreatic cancer.

World War II bomber pilot Jay Zeamer Jr., 88, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his wartime heroics, died March 22 in Boothbay Harbor, where he retired in 1968.

Courtland D. Perry II, 70, longtime Augusta district court judge who went blind when he was a teenager, died April 6 in Florida, where he and his wife lived during winters.

First-term state Rep. Abigail Holman, 45, of Fayette, long a familiar figure in the State House who also had been a gubernatorial aide and forest industry representative, died in a skiing accident April 7.

Mary Lee Bird Hathaway, 87, wife of former U.S. Sen. William Hathaway, D-Maine, died April 4 of congestive heart failure in Virginia.

Robert Drake Sr., 92, of Vassalboro, retired editor and assistant general manager of the Morning Sentinel of Waterville, died April 13.

Political strategist Greg Stevens, 58, who produced the TV attack ad showing Michael Dukakis riding in a tank for the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush and produced the advertising for Arizona Sen. John McCain leading up to his victory in the 2000 New Hampshire presidential primary, died April 16 at home in Yarmouth after battling brain cancer.

Charles Merrill, a former chief photographer for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, died April 24 in South Portland at age 79.

Deborah S. Pulliam, whose family owned The Indianapolis Star for more than 50 years, died of cancer May 21 in her Castine, Maine, home. Pulliam, 54, was former editor of the Castine Patriot weekly.

Former professional bowler Christo Anton, 75, who served during the 1970s as the first director of the Maine State Lottery, died at home in Scarborough on May 22.

Former newsman Verdi Tripp, who served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1994 to 2000, died of cancer at age 66 on May 23. Tripp was 66.

Philip Booth, a longtime Syracuse University professor whose poetry focused mainly on his native New England, died July 2. Booth, a prominent member of a literary circle in Castine, was 81.

State Rep. Earl Richardson, 80, of Greenville, died Aug. 8. after a battle with cancer.

Retired poultry farmer Jerome Emerson of Corinna, whose 15 years of service in the Maine House and Senate coincided with the administrations of four governors, died Aug. 21 at age 91.

Cancer claimed another sitting lawmaker, Rep. Deane Jones of Mount Vernon. Jones, who succeeded Holman, died Sept. 4 at age 69 after being treated for cancer. Jones held the central Maine House seat for less than three months.

Actress and comedian Brett Somers, who grew up in Portland and later amused game show fans with her quips on the “Match Game” in the 1970s, died of cancer Sept. 15 in Westport, Conn. Somers was 83.

Linda McRea, 57, a reporter, editor and columnist for Maine newspapers, died Sept. 26 after a brief illness at her home. She was 57.

Bennett Katz of Augusta, a former Maine Senate leader who was instrumental in establishing a state university campus in Augusta, died Nov. 1. A bomber pilot during World War II, Katz became owner of a jewelry business in Augusta and served as a Republican state senator in the 1960s and ’70s.

Willard Sweetser, a retired Navy rear admiral who commanded destroyers in combat in World War II, died Dec. 1 at the Maine Veterans’ Home in Paris at age 105. Sweetser, who grew up in Gray, enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1922 and became its oldest living alumnus.

Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits “Leader of the Band” and “Same Old Lang Syne” helped define the soft-rock era, died Dec. 16 at his coastal Maine home after battling prostate cancer. Fogelberg was 56.

A day later, renowned journalist Douglas Kneeland, who reported on Vietnam War protests, the Kent State killings, Watergate and the Charles Manson trial for the New York Times, died after a battle with lung cancer. He was 78.

AP-ES-12-30-07 1231EST