Milestones

By Melissa August

KILLED. Shamil Basayev, 41, Chechen terrorist who masterminded numerous large-scale attacks on Russian civilians, including a siege of a school in the town of Beslan that killed 331 people, most of them children, and a 2002 attack on a theater in Moscow leaving 171 people dead; when a bomb in his car exploded in the republic of Ingushetia, bordering Chechnya. While Basayev's supporters said the explosion was accidental, Russian forces said they killed Basayev as part of a long-planned sting operation.

DIED. Syd Barrett, 60, brilliant, troubled recluse who was the original leader of the seminal psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd and wrote almost all its early music; of undisclosed causes; in Cambridge, England. In 1968, a year after the release of Pink Floyd's acclaimed debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Barrett--who named the group after blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council--left the band after a breakdown that was caused, in part, by heavy LSD use. An icon to musicians from David Bowie to Robyn Hitchcock, Barrett, who lived in obscurity at his mother's house in Cambridge from 1970 until his death, was saluted by his former bandmates in the songs Wish You Were Here and Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

DIED. Catherine Leroy, 60, fearless, diminutive, French-born war photographer whose raw, intimate glimpses of atrocities during the Vietnam War--among them Corpsman in Anguish, a well-known 1967 photo of a Navy corpsman hunched over his friend's dead body--appeared in LIFE, Look and other publications and won her the prestigious George Polk Award; of cancer; in Santa Monica, Calif.

DIED. John Money, 84, pioneering Johns Hopkins University sex researcher and psychologist who, during the 1960s, when any form of sexual ambiguity was deemed freakish, helped establish and legitimize the study of sexual identity; in Towson, Md. Stressing the psychological effects of gender issues, he consulted on the first sex-change operation at Hopkins and coined the terms gender identity and gender role.

DIED. June Allyson, 88, wholesome, gravel-voiced actress dubbed the "girl next door" for her frequent turns in the '40s and '50s as the loyal, adoring girlfriend or wife in such films as Two Girls and a Sailor, with Van Johnson, and The Glenn Miller Story, opposite Jimmy Stewart; in Ojai, Calif. Allyson was upbeat about her Hollywood reputation, but it doomed her efforts to take on grittier roles. The Shrike (1955), in which she played a harsh wife who drives her husband mad, was a flop. But she claimed she couldn't live up to the hype. "In real life," she joked, "I'm a poor dressmaker and a terrible cook." More recently, Allyson became known to younger viewers as the spokeswoman for Depend adult-incontinence products.

DIED. Barnard Hughes, 90, intuitive character actor who portrayed warm, often flawed father figures; in New York City. His filmography includes movies as varied as Midnight Cowboy and Sister Act 2, and he made memorable guest appearances on hit TV shows of the '70s (a Roman Catholic priest on All in the Family; an eccentric judge on Lou Grant, for which he won an Emmy). But he was best known for his stage work, in particular his moving turn as a poor gardener who, having just died, haunts his foster son in the 1978 Broadway hit Da. The role won him a Tony and a rare rave from notoriously cranky critic John Simon, who compared him to the "Gielguds, Oliviers and Richardsons."

DIED. Red Buttons, 87, impish funnyman who emerged from burlesque to forge an acclaimed acting career spanning more than 30 films, including They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and The Poseidon Adventure, and stints on TV's Roseanne and ER; in Los Angeles. He was born Aaron Chwatt, but some patrons at an early gig renamed him for his red hair and the brass buttons on his uniform. Buttons became a sudden star in 1952 with his CBS variety show, on which he danced goofily to a trademark lyric, "Hoho-hehe-haha. Strange things are happening!" That became a national catchphrase, but his show was soon dropped. He rebounded in 1957 with the film Sayonara, playing a U.S. airman in an ill-fated romance with a Japanese woman--for which he won an Oscar. "I'm a little guy," he once said,"and that's what I play all the time--a little guy and his troubles."

With reporting by Harriet Barovick, Theunis Bates, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Ellin Martens, Clayton Neuman, Kate Stinchfield