Bonnie Aikman; feature writer and columnist, June 20, 2011

Bonnie E. Aikman, a feature writer and columnist in the Washington Evening Star's entertainment section, died June 20. She was 77.

Bonnie interviewed many Broadway and Hollywood stars for the newspaper, and innocently "fell in love with several," she often said. Through her column "DC Studios" she got to know such local radio and TV pioneers as "The Joy Boys" and "Cousin Cupcake."

After graduating from American University in 1955, she began her newspaper career as an assistant to famed theater critic Jay Carmody and pioneering TV critic Bernie Harrison.

Tom Breen; journalist, professor, June 22, 2011 at 65

Longtime journalist Tom Breen, who headed FLORIDA TODAYs Space Team coverage from 2000 to 2002, died suddenly at his home earlier this week, June 22, 2011, in Indian Harbour Beach, Fl, of cardiac arrest. He was 65, with a vigor and insatiable curiosity about life that led him back to school to pursue a late-in-life masters degree from Rollins College in Winter Park in 2005, and then a doctorate in liberal studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., which he still was pursuing. He completed "all but the dissertation," an academic saying that used to annoy him greatly. But for the past five years, he used his newfound academic credentials to teach as an adjunct professor of humanities at Brevard Community College on both the Palm Bay and Melbourne campuses. He also recently became a member of the Brevard County Historic Commission.