Dave Frishberg, the jazz songwriter whose melodic cleverness as a composer placed him in the top echelon of this craft, died Nov. 17 in Portland, OR. He was 88.

Mr. Frishberg, who played piano and sang, managed to outrun the eras of rock, soul, disco punk and hip-hop by writing hyper-literate songs that harkened back to Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer by way of Stephen Sondheim.

His songwriting wit was for grown-ups, yet he reached his widest audience with sharpshooting ditties for kids as a regular musical contributor to ABC-TVs long-running Saturday morning animated show, “Schoolhouse Rock!”

Isabel Marcus, a University of Buffalo law professor and women’s rights advocate, who met with students in China’s Tiananmen Square and confronted Operation Rescue protesters closer to home, died Oct. 31 in Los Angeles. She was 83.

Marcus spent most of her five decades in academia at the University of Buffalo, where she co-founded the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender, served as director of graduate and international programs at the law school, and was twice a Fulbright Scholar.

As the Cold War came to an end, Marcus turned her attention to developing a legal framework for women’s rights in Central and Eastern Europe. Her seminal work, Dark Numbers, explored the lack of official accountability for domestic violence.

Bettina Plevan, a top litigator who made her name defending employers in sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases, and who helped pave the way for women to advance in the legal profession, died Oct. 29 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 75.

In nearly 50 years at Proskauer Rose, where she was the first woman to be named partner in the litigation department, Ms. Plevan specialized in labor and employment law. Her clients included well-known companies in the areas of banking, publishing and entertainment. She was also president of the New York City Bar Association, the second woman to hold that position. Over the years, she made multiple lists of the best lawyers in America.

In spite of her 14-month battle with leukemia, she practiced until the week she died, her firm said.

Jay Sandrich, 89, a prolific sitcom director who won Emmy Awards for the two series he worked on most often, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Cosby Show,” died Sept. 29 at his home in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sandrich did not think of himself as funny, but he knew how to guide a cast of comic actors through half-hour episodes. He understood the mechanics of directing (move the cameras, not the actors), and he knew how to make scenes work, The New York Times said.

Mr. Sandrich also directed “Rhoda,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Phyllis” and “Lou Grant” — all under the banner of Ms. Moore’s company, MTM Enterprises. Mr. Sandrich worked with Michael Douglas,

Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Jack Nicholson, Diana Ross, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

He was one of a number of people who claimed credit for originating the slogan, “I Love New York.”

He also promoted his own birthplace, transforming John Behrendt’s true-crime book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) into a tourism magnet for Savannah.

Marcia Freedman, who was the first American-born woman to serve in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), and who helped lead the feminist movement in Israel in the 1970s, died Sept. 21 at her home in South Berkeley, CA. She was 83.

Ms. Freedman had been pursuing her doctorate in philosophy at Stanford when, in 1967, she received an offer to spend a year in Israel teaching at Haifa University. She became part of Israel’s nascent feminist movement and ended up staying 14 years.

As an active feminist, Ms. Freedman caught the attention of Shulait Aloni, a left-wing champion of civil liberties, and her Ratz party, known as the Civil Rights Movement. Ms. Aloni asked Ms. Freedman to join her party’s slate and, in 1973, the party won three seats, one of which went to Ms. Freedman. She served through 1977. Ms. Freedman made her name by raising issues like domestic violence, breast cancer, rape, incest and teenage prostitution.

Starting in the early 1980s, Ms. Freedman divided her time between Israel and the San Francisco Bay area. In the U.S., she was the founding president of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, established in 2002. It organized American Jews on behalf of a two-state negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace and, in 2010, merged with the advocacy group J Street, which has carried on that mission.

Marilyn Golden was a college student on a summer backpacking trip in Switzerland when she fell from a tree after a rotting limb snapped. Her back was broken. She spent two years of rehabilitation at Houston Medical Center and had used a wheelchair ever since.

Ms. Golden would devote the rest of her life to championing civil rights for people with disabilities, all the while rejecting as “ridiculousity” the notion that people like her with disabilities deserved pity.

As policy analyst for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a leading national organization in the field, Ms. Golden played an important role in the drafting, passage and implementation of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.

Ms. Golden died at age 67 on Sept. 21 at her home in Berkeley, CA.

David H. Komansky, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, who helped build the company into a global financial behemoth, died Sept. 27 at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. He was 82.

A postal worker’s son who grew up in the Bronx and later dropped out of college, Mr. Komansky brought worldwide ambitions to his tenure as chief executive of the firm from 1996 to 2003. He bought businesses in the United Kingdom and invested in operations in Europe, Asia and Australia. In 1995, as Merrill’s president, he negotiated the $810 million acquisition of Britain’s largest independent stockbroker, Smith New Court. In 1997, Mr. Komansky oversaw Merrill Lynch’s acquisition of Mercury Asset Management of Britain, one of Europe’s largest investment firms, for about $5.3 billion. He also struck a deal with HSBC to provide online banking and investment services, which have since become an everyday offering from banks.

“When I would visit him in the office, I always loved coming down to the lobby with him,” Mr. Komansky’s daughter Elyssa Williams wrote to The New York Times in an email. “He knew who every single person in the building was, and would call them by name.”