MILESTONES

BORN. To RICKI LAKE, 28, actress and talk-show host, and her husband, ROB SUSSMAN, 29, an illustrator: their first child, a son, Milo; in New York City.

NOMINATED. CLAUDIA KENNEDY, 49, U.S. Army major general and member of a panel reviewing policies on sexual harassment; to become the Army's first female three-star general; by President Bill Clinton; in Washington.

APPOINTED. ROBERT PINSKY, 56, poet and author of a 1994 translation of the Inferno that put Dante on U.S. best-seller lists; as the nation's poet laureate; in Washington.

DIED. HAROLD MELVIN, 57, leader of the Blue Notes, the gospel-tinted rhythm-and-blues ensemble best known for its onetime lead singer Teddy Pendergrass and its achingly mournful 1972 hit If You Don't Know Me by Now; probably of a stroke; in Philadelphia.

DIED. RICHARD MARSH, 58, veterinary virologist who in the mid-1980s sounded an early warning that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease, could be spread through feed containing cattle by-products; of cancer; in Middleton, Wisconsin.

DIED. HARRIET ("Patsy") PRATT MORRIS, 66, crusader against capital punishment; of lung cancer; in Atlanta. Morris was a pioneer in showing that the chances of getting a death sentence for murder depended largely on race, the victim's social status and where the crime was committed.

DIED. MARTIN CAIDIN, 69, high-velocity science and adventure writer whose 100-plus books include Cyborg, the novel that spawned TV's The Six Million Dollar Man; of cancer; in Tallahassee, Florida.

DIED. MARIE LAMBERT, 76, Manhattan Surrogate, judge who presided over the estates of the wealthy and famous, including Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman and Johnson & Johnson heir J. Seward Johnson; in New York City.

DIED. ROBERTO SANCHEZ VILELLA, 84, Governor of Puerto Rico from 1964 to 1969, who helped transform the U.S. commonwealth from an agricultural backwater into a modern industrial center; in San Juan.

DIED. LAEL TUCKER WERTENBAKER, 87, war correspondent for TIME and LIFE and author of 16 books, including Death of a Man, a shattering account of her terminally ill husband's suicide, in which she assisted; in Keene, New Hampshire.

DIED. URAL ALEXIS JOHNSON, 88, U.S. diplomat; in Raleigh, North Carolina. Nearly as enduring as the mountain range after which he was named, Johnson's career spanned more than four decades and encompassed ambassadorships to Czechoslovakia, Thailand and Japan, a stint as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs during the Cuban missile crisis and service as chief U.S. negotiator under Nixon at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.