Monday, Apr. 18, 2005

Milestones

MARRIAGE REVEALED. Diana Ross, 41, sleek singer and actress (Lady Sings the Blues); and Arne Naess Jr., 47, Norwegian shipping tycoon and mountaineer; both for the second time; in New York; on Oct. 23. The two met last May in the Bahamas, where Naess was vacationing after leading an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest.

DIED. Pelle Lindbergh, 26, last season's top goaltender in the National Hockey League, most valuable player for the Philadelphia Flyers and member of the 1980 Swedish Olympic hockey team; from severe brain and spinal-cord injuries suffered in an automobile accident; in Stratford, N.J. After celebrating a Flyers' victory at a bar with teammates, Lindbergh, legally drunk, hit a concrete wall on the way home in his Porsche. Said Flyers Coach Mike Keenan, after Lindbergh's family agreed to donate their son's organs for transplant: "It's appropriate. He died making one more save."

DIED. Anthony Mandia, 44, recreation director who was the first human to receive Penn State's total artificial heart last month and ten days later was given a human heart transplant; of organ system failure and infection; in Hershey, Pa. Said Transplant Surgeon John Pennock of Mandia: "He was an extraordinary person to work with. His will to live was as strong as you can get."

DIED. William Pereira, 76, master architect and planner who designed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco's Transamerica Corp. pyramid and the city of Irvine in Orange County, Calif.; of heart disease; in Los Angeles. Pereira, who tried to encourage style and balance in sprawling Southern California, once said, "We have come to accept with enthusiasm the unprofessional, unappreciative, unskillful butchery of the land that goes under the name of planning."

DIED. V.K. (for Vi-Kyun) Wellington Koo, 97, China-born, Columbia-educated politician and diplomat who served the Republic of China as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister (1926-27), Ambassador to the U.S. (1946-56) and vice president of the International Court of Justice at the Hague (1964-67); in New York City. The suave, elegant Koo represented his country at both the Paris peace talks that ended World War I and the 1945 San Francisco conference, where the United Nations was born.