Obituary: Leo Dillon dies at 79; award-winning book illustrator

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The onetime headmistress of an elite girls’ school fatally shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, her lover and the creator of the famous “Scarsdale Diet.” The killing generated front-page headlines and national debates about whether she was a feminist martyr or vengeful murderer. She was 89. Full obituary
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Often called “Stormin’ Norman” for his legendary temper, the former four-star general is best known as the commander of 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, which quickly drove an invading Iraq out of Kuwait. He reminded America what it was like to win a war and defined the nation’s renewed sense of military pride. He was 78. Full obituary

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Bork was the conservative legal champion whose bitter defeat for a Supreme Court seat in 1987 politicized the confirmation process and changed the court’s direction for decades. He was 85. Full obituary | Photos
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The Hawaii Democrat was the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his World War II combat heroics. He was 88. Full obituary
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Shankar was already revered as a master of the sitar in 1966 when he met George Harrison, the Beatle who became his most famous disciple and gave the Indian musician-composer unexpected pop-culture cachet. He was 92. Full obituary | Photos
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Rivera defied the limits of genre and used her personal struggles in her songs, becoming a hero among Latin women in the U.S. and Mexico and a powerful player in a field dominated by machismo. She was 43. Full obituary | Photos
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Niemeyer, who loved curves in design and disliked right angles, shared architecture’s Pritzker Prize in 1988. He designed the major buildings that form the heart of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. He was 104. Full obituary | Photos

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Though already a television star for his role on 1960s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie,” Hagman is best known for playing villainous patriarch J.R. Ewing in the TV soap “Dallas.” In 1980, an estimated 300 million viewers in 57 countries saw J.R. get shot. Hagman was 81. Full obituary
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Former boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho fought a who’s who of legendary opponents stretching from Ray Mancini to Oscar De La Hoya. Known for flamboyance in the ring, he showed he understood the importance of selling a fight and employing some mental warfare. He was 50. Full obituary
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Writer of the bestselling 1962 book “Sex and the Single Girl,” Brown broke ground by discussing the sex life of single women. The book led to led to a syndicated newspaper column, a movie of the same name and, in 1965, to Brown’s role as editor of Cosmopolitan. She was 90. Full obituary

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A rare author and screenwriter whose works appealed to highbrow readers and mainstream movie-goers, Ephron wrote fiction that was distinguished by characters who seemed simultaneously normal and extraordinary. Her hit movies include “Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally...” and “Julie & Julia.” She was 71. Full obituary

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Dubbed “one of the true powerhouses of the pop music business” by Fortune magazine in 1986, the year she became BMI’s president and chief executive, Frances Williams Preston was a key figure in Nashville’s growth as a major music center, and nurtured the careers of numerous songwriters. She was 83. Full obituary

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With more than 27 novels and 600 short stories, the sci-fi writer’s vividly rendered space-scapes provided the world with one of the most enduring speculative blueprints for the future. In “The Martian Chronicles” and other works, the L.A.-based Bradbury mixed small-town familiarity with otherworldly settings. He was 91. Full obituary

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By Associated Press

June 4, 2012 12 AM PT

Leo Dillon, an illustrator who collaborated with his wife, Diane, on dozens of books for children and adults and became the first black to receive the Caldecott Medal for children’s books, has died. He was 79.

A longtime Brooklyn resident, Dillon died May 26 at New York’s Long Island College Hospital from complications after lung surgery, publisher Scholastic Inc. announced.

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, a close friend, posted a note on his website that said: “Half my soul for 50 years went with him.”

Leo and Diane Dillon met in 1953 at the Parsons School of Design in New York, where they were artistic rivals, and married four years later. An interracial couple, they worked on a wide range of children’s projects, mastering a bold, colorful style that helped introduce kids to stories of black people worldwide. They won the Caldecott Medal for best illustration in 1976 for “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears: A West African Folktale” and another the following year for “Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.” No one else has been awarded the Caldecott in successive years.

The Dillons received awards as diverse as their books, including a Hugo Award for science fiction illustration and an NAACP Image Award.

“People often comment on the ‘Dillon style,’ ” Leo Dillon said in 2000 during an interview with Locus magazine. “I think that someplace, the two of us made a pact with each other. We both decided that we would give up the essence of ourselves, that part that made the art each of us did our own. And I think that in doing that we opened the door to everything.”

Born Lionel John Dillon in Brooklyn, N.Y., on March 2, 1933, he served in the Navy in the early 1950s before enrolling in art school. He and his wife worked as commercial artists before they began collaborating on book covers and story illustrations.

Their credits included book cover designs for Ellison, Ray Bradbury and other science fiction and fantasy writers and illustrations for books by Margaret Wise Brown, Madeleine L’Engle, Virginia Hamilton and Verna Aardema, author of the two Caldecott winners.

They wrote and illustrated the picture books “Rap a Tap Tap” and “Jazz on a Saturday Night” and collaborated with their son Lee Dillon, also an artist, on “Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch.”

A new work by Leo and Diane Dillon, “If Kids Ran the World,” is scheduled for 2014.

Dillon is survived by his wife and his son.

news.obits@latimes.com