It is easy for newspapers to pen dry remembrances of significant people who died in the past year, but it is harder and more important to identify those whose lives and work we should honor or emulate.

From wide-ranging fields, let us pay special homage to the following Americans for contributions to the common culture, with extra weight for some who advanced ideals generally described, in modern parlance, as conservative and, thus, in our view, more modest, historically literate, and conducive to happiness.