As Queer Reclaiming priest & elder Donald Engstrom said, "An Ancestor is any of the dead whose life and work has allowed you to live your own life."

My only regret is that I know there are many more I should remember, but their names have simply slipped my mind.

First and foremost, whether you support or decry the War on Iraq, there is still the mounting death toll of both Americans and Iraqis in the War on Iraq.

In addition to my own Ancestors of Blood, my Ancient Pagan Ancestors, and those Ancient Ancestors back beyond Homo sapiens, I remember Ancestors of Heart.

Those Who Helped Educate Me

• Aunt Joan
• Mrs. Neece
• Dr. Sharp
• Fr. West

Friends Who Have Died

• Yvette
• Steven
• Kelli

A Personal and Idiosyncratic List of Memorials

• Victor Anderson, founder of the Feri Tradition
• Dylan Blight/"Dylan Ap Thuin", founding Archdruid, Insular Order of Druids; tattoo artist, piercer
• Tom Delong/"Gwydion Pendderwen", Neopagan Bard of most blessèd memory
• Dorothy Donegan, classically trained Jazz virtuosa
  
• Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song
  
• Mohandas K. Gandhi
• Alison Harlow, activist & priestess
• Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins
• Barbara Jordan, African-American US Representative D-TX who also happened to be Lesbian
• Audre Lorde, activist & writer
• Ross Nichols of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids
• Ann Richards, former Governor of, and one of the last good things to come out of Texas in a long time.
• Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States
• Rosa Parks, civil rights activist
  
• Gene Barnes, performance artist, pornographer, publisher, CEO of Film@11
• James Broughton, poet and film-maker
• Bill Callahan, founder & publisher of BROS 'zine
• Timothy Cowan-Powers, founding HP of the SFGMOWC
• Barry Miner Cundiff aka "Daddy Bear Rings"
• Paul Cadmus, artist
• Scott Cunningham, Pagan Elder, author, and Gay man
  
• Alain Daniélou, musician extraordinaire, man of letters, world educator, and Shaivite Hindu
• Michel Foucault, French philosopher
• Alan Ginsberg, Beat poet, Judæo-Buddhist, writer
• Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society and Radical Faerie philosopher
• Charles Kerbs aka MATT, erotic artist (who did the icons I have of the Old Irish Gods)
• "Purusha" Larkin, author "The Divine Androgyne"
• Richard Locke, porn star, AIDS activist, Billy, and philanthropist
  
• Dr. Leo Louis Martello, witch and activist
• Peter McWilliams, author, activist, and martyr
  
• Harvey Milk, politiician and martyr
  
• Scott O'Hara, porn star, pornographer, publisher, traveler, & Radical Faerie
• Andrew Robert Okun aka "Al Parker", porn star and pornographer, first to insist on condom use and safe sex in his films at Surge Studios.
• Lord Oz (Norman Siekirk)
• John Preston, author
• Dr. Francis Israel Regardie, chiropractor, author, and Ceremonial Magician
• Bayard Rustin, civil rights activist
• Herman Slater, author, owner of the Magickal Childe in NYC
• The Stonewall Queens & all the others who have fought back against oppression
• Dr. Alan Turing, Father of modern computer science, and martyr
• Dr. Tom Waddell, founder of the Gay Games
• Walt Whitman, poet
• Oscar Wilde, writer and æsthete
• and countless hundreds of thousands more artists, writers, thinkers, and culture-makers
  

I would recommend that you look over the list of Deaths since last Samhain Deaths 2007 at Wikipedia for the Jazz musicians, civil rights activists, scholars, entertainers, and many others who enriched the world by their lives and whose deaths represent the ends of entire eras.