MILESTONES

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, MELISSA AUGUST, CHRISTIANE BIRKNER, CHRISTINE GORMAN, LINA LOFARO, MICHAEL QUINN, ALAIN SANDERS AND SRIBALA SUBRAMANIAN

DIED. LI ZHISUI, 75, Mao Zedong's former physician; in Chicago. He was Mao's loyal confidant from 1954 to the Chinese leader's death in '76-an experience Li recounted in his 682-page The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Propelled by Li's attend-and-tell tales of Mao's keen sexual appetites and grotesque personal hygiene, the book shot up the best-seller list last fall. DIED. L.C. GRAVES, 76, police detective; in Kaufman, Texas. It is an enduring image: Lee Harvey Oswald walking through the basement of the Dallas police building, his upper arm gripped by a black-hatted Graves, and inches away, Jack Ruby's snub-nose pistol. An instant later, as Oswald collapsed, fatally wounded, Graves grabbed Ruby's gun, preventing him from getting off a second shot. Graves left the Dallas police force in 1970; for the rest of his career he worked as a fraud investigator for a bank and resisted efforts to cash in on his link to the bitter events of November 1963.

DIED. U NU, 87, former Prime Minister of Burma (now Myanmar); in Rangoon. U Nu was named the country's first Prime Minister in 1947, a year before independence. A popular politician, he promoted nonalignment abroad and democracy at home-but discord within his government led General Ne Win to seize power in 1962. U Nu proclaimed himself Prime Minister of a "parallel government" when pro-democracy activity pushed aside Ne Win in 1988, but the military quickly placed U Nu under house arrest. Released in 1992, he spent his last years in seclusion.

DIED. NAT HOLMAN, 98, basketball coach; in New York City. Master of the "New York game," with its asphalt-playground emphasis on defense, passing and team strategy, Holman engineered City College of New York's unique twin National Invitation Tournament and ncaa championships in the 1949-50 season. A year later, the triumph was tarnished by the arrest of several of Holman's players in a point-shaving scandal.