Milestones
DIED Over a 22-year career, sculptor Tina Allen crafted more than a dozen sculptures, busts and bas-reliefs of black activists and leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, George Washington Carver and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps her best-known creation was a 13-ft. (4 m) bronze sculpture of Alex Haley, author of the 1976 novel Roots. Allen's art, displayed in public spaces across the country, continues to honor African-American leaders. She was 58.
Honky-tonk singer Charlie Walker's most popular tune was the 1958 recording of Pick Me Up on Your Way Down by Harlan Howard, which hovered at No. 2 on country-music charts for a month. While he had a handful of other country hits, many of Walker's fans got to know the Tennessee native's voice when he became a popular DJ for the Texas radio station KMAC. His years as a broadcaster earned him induction into the Country Music DJ and Radio Hall of Fame in 1981. Four years later, he portrayed a country singer in Sweet Dreams, a film about the life of legendary crooner Patsy Cline. Walker died of colon cancer at age 81.
For the better part of five decades, former Laotian President Nouhak Phoumsavanh held the second highest position in what is now Laos' ruling communist organization, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. He first became involved with the group in 1945, when Laos was still under French rule, and later represented a Laotian communist organization at the 1954 conference in Geneva that ultimately resulted in independence for his homeland. Toward the end of his long tenure in government, he succeeded President Kaysone Phomvihan when he died in 1992. Nouhak, who was President through 1998, died at 98.