Lee Richardson "Tom" Connors, 64, was a leading Seattle DJ from 1967 to 1976. He worked at KJR-AM, KING-AM, KIXI, Everett's KRKO, and most notably at long-gone rock station KOL. One of Connors's KOL colleagues, Buzz Barr, told the Post-Intelligencer, "Tom's style was not a funny jock, but sincere, fun, always positive, with the greatest laugh in the business. People in the business then and now call him the nicest guy in radio; he was as sweet as a big bunch of cotton candy." After Connors got out of the broadcasting grind, he and his wife Pam ran a real-estate appraisal firm. Connors died July 2 from a sudden heart attack.
Jimmie H. Nakamura, 75, grew up on a family farm in the South Park area of Seattle. That way of life abruptly ended at age 15, when his family was among the 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were interred during WWII. The Nakamuras lived in the Tule Lake and Minidoka camps; Jim got out of the camps by joining the Army later in the war. He then spent his adult working life in the agriculture industry; in 1969 he opened a seed distributorship, Nakamura Sales Co., in Auburn. He was an active member of the Seattle Buddhist Temple, the Hiroshima Club, the Western Washington Horticulture Association, and the Noxious Weed Association of Washington. Nakamura died July 2 from natural causes while vacationing in Hawaii.