NATIONAL (AP) — They both carved out sterling reputations as military and political leaders over years of public service. But both also saw their legacies tarnished by their actions in the long, bloody war in Iraq. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are among the many noteworthy people who died in 2021.
Also among those who died this year was a man who for years held the title of baseball’s home run king. Hank Aaron, who died in January, endured racist threats on his path to breaking Babe Ruth’s record and is still considered one of the game’s greatest players.
The following is a slideshow celebrating the lives of those greats we lost in 2021:
FILE – Secretary of State Colin Powell looks on as President Bush addresses State Department employees at the State Department in Washington, on Feb. 15, 2001. Powell, who died Oct. 18, 2021, was a trailblazing soldier and diplomat. (AP Photo/Kenneth Lambert, File) 
FILE – Atlanta Braves’ Hank Aaron holds aloft the ball he hit for his 715th career home in Atlanta. Aaron, who endured racist threats with stoic dignity during his pursuit of Babe Ruth but went on to break the career home run record in the pre-steroids era, died early Jan. 22, 2021. He was 86. (AP Photo, File) 
FILE – Cicely Tyson arrives at night two of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Sept. 15, 2019, in Los Angeles. The pioneering Black actor who gained an Oscar nomination for her role as the sharecropper’s wife in “Sounder,” won a Tony Award in 2013 at age 88 and touched TV viewers’ hearts in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” She died Jan. 28, 2021. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) 
FILE – Beverly Cleary signs books at the Monterey Bay Book Festival in Monterey, Calif., April 19, 1998. Cleary, who died March 25, 2021, channeled memories from her youth in Oregon to created beloved characters such as Ramona Quimby, her sister Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby and Henry Huggins. (Vern Fisher/Monterey Herald via AP, File) 
FILE – Hank Aaron holds up the ball after throwing the ceremonial last pitch to former Manager Bobby Cox after a baseball game against the Detroit Tigers and the Braves last game at Turner Field, Oct. 2, 2016, in Atlanta. Aaron, who endured racist threats with stoic dignity during his pursuit of Babe Ruth but went on to break the career home run record in the pre-steroids era, died early Jan. 22, 2021. He was 86. (AP Photo/John Amis, File) 
FILE – DMX performs during the BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta on Oct. 1, 2011. The family of rapper DMX says he has died on April 9, 2021, after a career in which he delivered iconic hip-hop songs such as “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem.” (AP Photo/David Goldman, File) 
FILE – Cloris Leachman poses for a photo on June 18, 1974. An Oscar-winner for her portrayal of a lonely housewife in “The Last Picture Show” and a comedic delight as the fearsome Frau Blücher in “Young Frankenstein” and self-absorbed neighbor Phyllis on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” She died Jan. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/George Brich, File) 
FILE – Rush Limbaugh reacts after first Lady Melania Trump presented him with the the Presidential Medal of Freedom as President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Feb. 4, 2020. The talk radio host who ripped into liberals and laid waste to political correctness with a merry brand of malice that made him one of the most powerful voices on the American right died Feb. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) 
FILE – Larry King arrives at Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 1, 2016. King, who interviewed presidents, movie stars and ordinary Joes during a half-century in broadcasting, died at age 87 on Jan. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) 
FILE – Anne Beatts arrives at the premiere of “Live from New York!” in Los Angeles on June 10, 2015. Beatts, a groundbreaking comedy writer who was on the original staff of “Saturday Night Live” and later created the cult sitcom “Square Pegs,” died April 7, 2021, at her home in West Hollywood, Calif., according to her close friend Rona Kennedy. She was 74. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File) 
FILE – Elgin Baylor waves as he is honored along with other members of the 1974 Los Angeles Lakers Championship team, at halftime of an NBA basketball game between the Houston Rockets and the Lakers in Los Angeles, April 6, 2012. Elgin Baylor, the Lakers’ 11-time NBA All-Star, died, March 22, 2021, of natural causes. He was 86. (AP Photo/Gus Ruelas, File) 
FILE – Actress Jane Powell poses for a photo in New York on July 1986. Powell, the bright-eyed, operatic-voiced star of Hollywood’s golden age musicals who sang with Howard Keel in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and danced with Fred Astaire in “Royal Wedding,” died on Sept. 16, 2021. She was 92. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) 
FILE — South African President F.W. de Klerk poses outside his office in Cape Town, South Africa March 18, 1992, while displaying a copy of a local newspaper with banner headlines declaring a “Yes” result in a referendum vote to end apartheid and share power with the black majority for the first time. De Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, died at the age of 85, on Nov, 11, 2021. (AP. Photo, File) 
FILE – Haitian President Jovenel Moise arrives for an interview at his home in Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Feb. 7, 2020. The Haitian president was a former banana producer and political neophyte who ruled for more than four years as the country grew increasingly unstable. He was assassinated at his home on July 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery, File) 
FILE – Famed defense attorney F. Lee Bailey poses in his office in Yarmouth, Maine on May 22, 2014. The celebrity attorney who defended O.J. Simpson, Patricia Hearst and the alleged Boston Strangler, but whose legal career halted when he was disbarred in two states died on June 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File) 
FILE – Actress Olympia Dukakis, a celebrity Grand Marshall for the 41st annual Gay Pride parade, waves to the crowd while being driven past them in San Francisco on June 26, 2011. Olympia Dukakis, the veteran stage and screen actress whose flair for maternal roles helped her win an Oscar as Cher’s mother in the romantic comedy “Moonstruck,” died on May 1, 2021. She was 89. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) 
FILE – In this Nov. 9, 2006, file photo, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asks for another question following his Landon Lecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. The family of Rumsfeld says he died June 29, 2021. He was 88. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner, File) 
FILE — Former South African President F.W. de Klerk arrives for the swearing-in ceremony of newly-elected President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, South Africa, May 25, 2019. De Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, has died at the age of 85 on Nov, 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File) 
FILE – Fashion designer Virgil Abloh gives a thumbs up after the presentation of Off-White Men’s Spring-Summer 2019 collection presented in Paris, Wednesday June 20, 2018. Abloh, a leading fashion executive hailed as the Karl Lagerfeld of his generation, died Nov. 28, 2021, after a private battle with cancer. He was 41. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File) 
FILE – Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, left, and Lt. Gov. John Carney raise their arms in victory as they celebrate winning their respective races Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004, in Wilmington, Del. Ann Minner, a sharecropper’s daughter who became the only woman to serve as Delaware’s governor, died on Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Pat Crowe II, File) 
FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, wave as they leave an afternoon rally in Portland, Ore., Sept. 5, 1984. Mondale, a liberal icon who lost the most lopsided presidential election after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died April 19, 2021. He was 93. (AP Photo/Jack Smith, File) 
FILE – Japanese actor Sonny Chiba arrives for the premiere of the film “Kill Bill: Volume 1” at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on Sept. 29, 2003. Chiba, known in Japan as Shinichi Chiba, who wowed the world with his martial arts skills, acting in more than 100 films, including “Kill Bill,” died Aug. 19, 2021. He was 82. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File) 
FILE – Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, pushes a National Guardsman’s bayonet aside as she moves among a crowd of African Americans to convince them to disperse in Cambridge, Md., on July 21, 1963. Richardson, an influential yet largely unsung civil rights pioneer whose determination not to back down while protesting racial inequality was captured in a photograph as she pushed away the bayonet of a National Guardsman, died July 15, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/File)
