Notable Women Who Died in 2006

August 5: Susan Butcher

Susan Howlet Butcher won the Alaskan dog-sled race, the Iditarod, four years out of five. She was also an environmentalist and educator.

• Susan Butcher Profile - Academy of Achievement

August 6: Dorothy Healey

Union leader and activist in the American Communist Party, she came to oppose the Soviet model of communism and broke ties with the USSR. She continued her activism as an "elder stateswoman" of the New Left in the New American Movement.

August 11: Alice Ilchman

President of Sarah Lawrence College (1981-1998), she was Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs during President Jimmy Carter's administration.

August 15: Dame Te Atairangikaahu

Maori Queen, she supported political rights for aboriginal peoples.

August 27: Vashti McCollum

In 1945, Vashti McCollum took legal measures to protest the inclusion of religious instruction during the public school day. The resulting Supreme Court decision in 1948 is a landmark in the history of church-state separation in America.

• Vashti McCollum Dies
• McCollum v. Board of Education, School District 71 (1948)