Monday, Sep. 08, 1997
MILESTONES
By KATHLEEN ADAMS, JANICE M. HOROWITZ, AISHA LABI, NADYA LABI, LINA LOFARO, ALAIN L. SANDERS, GABRIEL SNYDER AND JOEL STEIN
DIVORCING. GEENA DAVIS, 40, Amazonian Oscar winner; and RENNY HARLIN, 38, Finnish filmmaker who directed her in such flops as Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight; in Los Angeles.
SENTENCED. EGON KRENZ, 60, East Germany's last communist leader; to 6 1/2 years in prison, for responsibility in the shooting death of people trying to cross the Berlin Wall; in Berlin.
DIED. BRANDON TARTIKOFF, 48, NBC's programming wunderkind who gave the peacock network reason to strut; of Hodgkin's disease; in Los Angeles. Only 31 when he became NBC's entertainment president in 1980, Tartikoff turned the struggling network into The Place To Be with such hits as The Cosby Show and Hill Street Blues. (See Eulogy below.)
DIED. JANET GOOD, 73, Dr. Jack Kevorkian's aide who championed the right to die and started Michigan's Hemlock Society; in an apparent suicide, while suffering from cancer; in Farmington Hills, Mich.
DIED. SIR ERIC GAIRY, 75, brutal and bizarre Premier of Grenada from 1967 to 1979; in Grand Anse, Grenada. A grass-roots labor leader who came to power by flouting the colonial plantocracy, Gairy ruled by caprice. He terrorized his opponents with his henchmen, the Mongoose Gang; traveled to the U.N. to expound on UFOs; and once visited London to judge a Miss World contest (the winner, no surprise, was Miss Grenada).
DIED. FOREGO, 27, one of racing's hardiest geldings; by lethal injection after fracturing his right hind leg; in Lexington, Ky. Enormous at 17 hands high, Forego raced like a runaway freight train--and his trainers complained that he carried about as much weight. He won 34 of 57 races, most memorably the 1976 Marlboro Cup. Lugging the top weight of 137 lbs., Forego thundered past Honest Pleasure in a come-from-behind victory, below, that helped earn him his third title as Horse of the Year.