Milestones

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, Janice M. Horowitz, Lisa McLaughlin and Rebecca Winters

DIED. C. DOUGLAS DILLON, 93, well-connected Wall Street financier, diplomat and lifelong Republican who served as Treasury Secretary under two Democratic Presidents (Kennedy and Johnson) and ambassador to France under a Republican (Eisenhower); in New York City. Dillon was an Under Secretary of State when he was tapped to lend bipartisan heft to J.F.K.'s Cabinet. At Treasury he advocated successfully for free trade and tax cuts and spearheaded Kennedy's economic-development program in Latin America. Although he was born to wealth and influence (he was the scion of the international banking house Dillon, Read & Co. and enjoyed close ties to the Rockefellers), his family name was Lapowski before his Polish-born grandfather took his mother's maiden name, Dillon. That name would ultimately be printed on millions of U.S. dollar bills. Having acquired a taste for art from his years in France, he amassed a collection of Impressionist paintings, much of which he later donated to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

DETENTION UPHELD. In the case of YASER ESAM HAMDI, 22, a Louisiana-born man captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan and now held in a Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.; by an appeals court in Richmond. The court ruled that the government can detain a U.S. citizen captured in an overseas battle indefinitely if the military declares him an "enemy combatant."

DIED. THOMAS H. WYMAN, 73, head of CBS for three years; after surgery for an abdominal infection; in Boston. Wyman, a former Polaroid and Pillsbury executive who rose to the top of CBS before being ousted by founder William Paley in 1986 for allegedly suggesting that the network be sold to Coca-Cola, recently made news when he quit the Augusta National Golf Club to protest its males-only membership policy.

DIED. F. WILLIAM FREE, 74, advertising executive known for his "I'm Cheryl--Fly me" ad campaign; of complications from lung cancer; in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The suggestive 1970s ads brought National Airlines both passengers and protesters, including angry women who stood outside his office with placards reading I'M BILL--FIRE ME.

DIED. CONRAD HALL, 76, cinematographer who won an Academy Award for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969 and another three decades later for American Beauty; of complications from bladder cancer; in Los Angeles. His rich, naturalistic camera style was most recently on view in last year's Road to Perdition.

DIED. JEAN KERR, 80, witty, self-deprecating writer; of pneumonia; in White Plains, N.Y. The widow of New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr, with whom she wrote several plays, Kerr had her greatest solo hit with Please Don't Eat the Daisies, a best-selling collection of vignettes about domestic life that became a movie starring Doris Day. Kerr said she did most of her writing while waiting in the car for her six children. "There is nothing to do but write after I get the glove compartment tidied up," she said.

CDIED. SARAH MCCLENDON, 92, tenacious White House reporter; of pneumonia; in Washington. A single mother who wrote for small Texas papers, McClendon has pestered every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the 1990s, she still rose at 4:30 a.m. to check the White House information line for overnight updates.