Robert O. Cromwell, age undisclosed, was a WWII Navy veteran and Tacoma native who came to Seattle in the early 1950s. Since 1956 he and his wife Louise owned the legendary Athenian Inn in the Pike Place Market. It originally opened in 1909 as a bakery and luncheonette; in 1933 it was one of Seattle's first restaurants to get a post-Prohibition liquor license. Cromwell kept it an honest place for honest people, a place (as his Seattle Times paid obit noted) "where visiting dignitaries, theater troupes, and rock stars mingled with thousands of tourists and local customers." The restaurant-review website CuisineNet called it "one of the last true old-time Market joints, holding out bravely against the push to make every place cute... hipsters, tourists and old timers coexist amidst the stools, classic wood booths and hodgepodge decor culled from various decades." Cromwell, from all accounts, was particularly proud that the Athenian became a set for Sleepless in Seattle. He also donated the use of the Athenian's kitchen four times a year to the Veterans Service Foundation of Washington's Homeless Meal Program. Cromwell died July 8 of unspecified causes.

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.

obits@thestranger.com