Milestones

By Kathleen Adams, M.M. Buechner, Daniel Eisenberg, Tam Gray, Michael Krantz, Jodie Morse, Michele Orecklin, Alain Sanders, Susan Veitch

DIED. LINDA EASTMAN MCCARTNEY, 56, fetching photographer of '60s rockers who trounced the hopes of teenyboppers when she wed one of her dreamiest subjects, Beatle Paul; after battling breast cancer; in Tucson, Ariz. Their enduring union was the rule-proving exception to short-lived celebrity marriages, with the devoted couple spending just one voluntary night apart in their 29 years together. Linda became Paul's muse (the lovely, long-haired lady of his post-Beatles love ballads) and his sometime singing partner in the soft-rock group Wings. Her passions ranged far beyond the musical: she continued to take pictures, and she became a tireless champion of animal rights as well as vegetarianism.

DIED. JAMES EARL RAY, 70, criminal who confessed to killing Martin Luther King Jr.; of liver failure caused by chronic hepatitis; in Nashville, Tenn. After an international manhunt following the assassination, Ray was captured in England. Three days after pleading guilty to the killing, Ray performed one of criminology's most famous about-faces, protesting his innocence for the remainder of his 99-year sentence. His prison term was marked by botched jailbreaks and his steady insistence that he had only been the fall guy in a larger conspiracy to slay King, a claim that received the unlikely backing of the King family, who joined his bid for a new trial.

DIED. OCTAVIO PAZ, 84, Mexico's prolific man of letters who plumbed the mythic depths of his country's psyche in more than 40 volumes of poems and essays; of undisclosed causes; in Mexico City. Using his hybrid heritage (part Spanish, part Indian) as his starting point, Paz wrote The Labyrinth of Solitude, considered the seminal book on the Mexican mind-set. His starkly haunting metaphors of apathy and isolation made enemies among his countrymen but moved readers and, eventually, won him the Nobel Prize.

DIED. CONSTANTINE KARAMANLIS, 91, patriarchal former President and Prime Minister of Greece, nicknamed "God" by his countrymen and credited with restoring the country's democracy in 1974 after seven years of military rule and his own 11-year self-imposed exile; in Athens. A pragmatic autocrat, Karamanlis inspired impassioned devotion; his 60 years in public office were marked by his efforts to align Greece with Europe, resulting in the country's acceptance into the European Union in 1981.