MILESTONES

RECOVERING. BARRY GOLDWATER, 87, former Senator; from a "very minor" stroke; in Phoenix, Arizona.

DIVORCING. VIC DAMONE, 68, entertainer, and DIAHANN CARROLL, 61, actress; in Los Angeles; after four years of marriage and five of separation.

DIVORCING. RONALD PERELMAN, 53, acquisitive Revlon cosmetics billionaire, and PATRICIA DUFF, 42, Democratic Party fund raiser; in New York City; after 21 months of marriage. DIED. JULIET PROWSE, 59, leggy redheaded dancer who achieved fame in the 1960 movie musical Can-Can; of pancreatic cancer; in Holmby Hills, California. Raised in South Africa and trained as a ballerina, Prowse made worldwide headlines when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the Hollywood set of Can-Can and denounced the dancing as indecent. After her film career petered out, she went on to star in a series of TV specials.

DIED. JOANNE DRU, 74, actress; of respiratory illness; in Beverly Hills, California. Dru starred in the classic westerns Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Wagon Master; in the early 1960s she played a New Yorker running a New Mexico dude ranch in the short-lived TV series Guestward Ho!

DIED. BILL MONROE, 84, singer, mandolin virtuoso and father of bluegrass music; in Springfield, Tennessee. Distinguished by the mutton-chop sideburns and chiseled demeanor that gave him the aura of a patriarch from another century, Monroe was one of those rare artists who sired a musical genre. In 1938 he formed his first band, calling it the Blue Grass Boys after his home state, Kentucky. The group soon took on the bluegrass configuration of mandolin, fiddle, guitar, bass and banjo, paired with the near-falsetto harmonies that Monroe called his "high, lonesome sound." Bluegrass lives on across the country, including at his own Bean Blossom festival in Indiana.