Milestones

NATURALIZED. MONICA SELES, 20, professional tennis player; as a U.S. citizen; in Miami, Florida. The highly regarded Yugoslavia-born athlete, who toppled from her No. 1 ranking after a knife attack by a crazed Steffi Graf fan, called her citizenship date "a happy day for me. I am proud to be a United States citizen, and look forward to continuing our lives here."

RETIRING. CHARLES KURALT, 59, TV journalist; as CBS News Sunday Morning commentator; in New York City. The rumpled visage and rumbling voice of Charles Kuralt took the Sunday Morning helm in January 1979; he had already won acclaim for his "On the Road" segments on CBS's Evening News, in which he examined the small-town Americana that many journalists ignore. (He recapitulated many of the reports in a best-selling book in 1990.) As of May 1, Kuralt will be devoting his time to a book on his dozen most beloved locations in America. Said he: "I would like to explore some side roads in life while I am still in good health and good spirits."

DIED. ERIC SHOW, 37, former major league baseball pitcher; of unknown causes; in San Diego. The erstwhile star of the San Diego Padres, whose wicked slider mystified batters and whose extreme John Birch-style politics alienated many teammates, was found dead in a drug-rehab center. In recent years, Show apparently struggled with drugs and emotional problems, in dramatic contrast to his status a decade ago as the winningest pitcher the Padres had ever known; he led his team to their only National League pennant in 1984, and held the club strikeout record. The public may remember him best as the hurler who gave up Pete Rose's record 4,192nd career hit in 1985. In his typically offbeat way, Show simply sat down on the pitcher's mound while the crowd went wild.

DIED. SALLY BELFRAGE, 57, author; of cancer; in London. Born in Los Angeles to English parents, Belfrage made her first journalistic foray in 1959 with A Room in Moscow, a report on daily life in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. She went on to join the fabled freedom riders in the early 1960s, registering blacks to vote and recording her feelings of terror and triumph in the 1965 book Freedom Summer. Her other works include Living with War, based on a year in the urban battleground of Belfast in Northern Ireland, and an autobiography to be published later this year.

DIED. LUCIUS AMERSON, 60, one of the Deep South's first black sheriffs; of complications related to a stroke; in Tuskegee, Alabama. A pioneer in the resurgence of black participation in Southern civic life, Amerson served as Macon County sheriff from 1967 to 1987, well into the era of the New South.

DIED. AURELIA SCHOBER PLATH, 87, educator and editor; in Needham, Massachusetts. The Boston-born mother of poet Sylvia Plath, Aurelia Plath compiled Letters Home, a collection of her daughter's correspondence from 1950 until Sylvia's suicide in 1963. Published in 1975, Letters Home revealed a writer torn by insecurity, ambition -- and a heartbreaking need to please her mother. The book was eventually adapted for the stage.

DIED. EVELYN NIGHTINGALE, 90, first wife of acid-penned novelist Evelyn Waugh; in London. Within a year of their 1928 marriage, "She-Evelyn" revealed to + "He-Evelyn" her affair with the man who became her next husband. Waugh's revenge became a part of literary history: the adulterous Lady Brenda Last in A Handful of Dust was modeled after his unfaithful wife, as were two other characters in later works.