MILESTONES

HOSPITALIZED. BILLY GRAHAM, 76, silver-maned Christian evangelist; for flu symptoms and a bleeding colon, after slumping to the podium in mid-sermon; in Toronto.

CONVALESCING. CHRISTOPHER REEVE, 42, screen and stage actor; from surgery to fuse the neck vertebrae he shattered in a fall from a horse; in Charlottesville, Virginia. The operation allowed Reeve to be elevated to a sitting position, but with the exception of some movement in his shoulders, he remains paralyzed and unable to breathe without a respirator.

RETURNING. MONICA SELES, 21, ex-tennis star; from a two-year hiatus following a knifing by a crazed Steffi Graf fan. Seles' comeback will begin with an exhibition against Martina Navratilova next month in Paris.

DIED. J. PRESPER ECKERT, 76, co-inventor of the first fully electronic digital computer; in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In 1943 Eckert and the late John W. Maulchy created the eniac (electronic numerical integrator and computer), a 30-ton leviathan that was 1,000 times as speedy as the standard calculators of its day, making it invaluable for plotting the trajectory of artillery shells-and for designing the first atom bomb.

DIED. JEROME ZIPKIN, 80, social moth; in Manhattan. Loyal, insulting -- often to the same people -- Jerry Zipkin served for half a century as party guest, escort and confidant of socially prominent, financially comfortable women (Betsy Bloomingdale, Pat Buckley). In the '30s his friend Somerset Maugham modeled the snobbish Elliot Templeton of The Razor's Edge on the fashion-obsessed real estate heir. But Zipkin's greatest coup was his relationship with Nancy Reagan. He was with the First Family on the night they captured that title; in the following years, Mrs. Reagan dished and danced with Zipkin so regularly that he became known as "the other man in her life."