Milestones

By Tam Martinides Gray, Jodie Morse, Michele Orecklin and Alain L. Sanders

STEPPING ASIDE. ANDREW GROVE, 61, as CEO of Intel Corp.; in Santa Clara, Calif. Under Grove, TIME's 1997 Man of the Year, Intel became the world's leading chipmaker. He remains chairman; Craig Barrett, 58, is his well-groomed successor.

CHARGED. RICHARD ASHBY, 31; JOSEPH SCHWEITZER, 30; WILLIAM RANEY II, 26; and CHANDLER SEAGRAVES, 28, the Marine captains whose jet severed a gondola cable in Italy, killing 20 people; with negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter; in Norfolk, Va.

DIED. KARSTEN PRAGER, 61, worldly wise TIME foreign correspondent who broadly expanded the reach and scope of TIME's international editions; after undergoing treatment for lymphoma; in Richmond, Va. German by birth, Prager was schooled in America and got his journalistic start in Asia. He joined TIME in 1965, and was a correspondent in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Beirut and Madrid, among other locales. Following his return to New York, he eventually became managing editor of TIME International.

DIED. ARTHUR S. LINK, 77, former Princeton University historian and Woodrow Wilson scholar, who authored the meticulous five-volume biography of Wilson and amassed the comprehensive collection of his papers; in Advance, N.C.

DIED. DAVE POWERS, 85, constant companion and amiable aide-de-camp of John F. Kennedy; in Arlington, Mass. Powers joined congressional candidate Kennedy in 1946 and stayed with him all the way to the White House and beyond. Powers was riding in the presidential motorcade the day Kennedy was shot, and he accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy on the flight of Air Force One back to Washington. At one point she turned to him and said, "Oh, Dave, you've been with him all these years. What will you do now?" The answer was to continue to serve, as a companion to the young Kennedy children and as curator of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

DIED. CARL G. SONTHEIMER, 83, portly engineer cum epicure, who brought the Cuisinart to America; in Greenwich, Conn. It was in France that Sontheimer, in his 50s and "retired," first spotted a newfangled blender that sliced, diced, ground, grated and chopped, all in one. After some fine-tuning, the Cadillac of cookware was born. Though he sold the company in 1988, Sontheimer never lost his taste for fine cuisine, and just before entering the hospital, he served up a final feast of rack of lamb.

DIED. FERDINAND PORSCHE, 88, who helped his father engineer the Volkswagen Beetle (at Hitler's behest) and later created the wildly popular and profitable German sports car that bears his name; in Zell am See, Austria.

DIED. BETSEY CUSHING ROOSEVELT WHITNEY, 89, grande dame of society; in Manhasset, N.Y. The middle child of the three glamorous Cushing sisters (the oldest married Vincent Astor, the youngest was the legendary society figure Babe Paley), she wrote the book on marrying money. The first wife of F.D.R.'s oldest son, James Roosevelt (when mother-in-law Eleanor was away, Betsey played White House hostess), she was the widow of tycoon John Hay ("Jock") Whitney.

TIME CAPSULE

The dimensions of his problem were very different, but RICHARD NIXON, like Bill Clinton, was happy to change the subject with a foreign trip. TIME's June 24, 1974, report:

From the moment Richard Nixon set foot on Egyptian soil, beginning his historic, seven-day trip to four Arab nations and Israel, the huzzas and hosannas fell like sweet rain. For the President, coming out of the parched Watergate wasteland of Washington, the praise and the cheers of multitudes were welcome indeed, particularly since each stop, each spectacle, was beamed in living color back to [U.S.] living rooms...[H]ome was never like this, and the President's aides were convinced that the accolades abroad would strengthen Nixon's hand in his battle to stave off impeachment. The hegira to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel and Jordan had, of course, far broader purposes. It constituted not only what some Nixon critics scorned as "impeachment diplomacy" but also sound foreign policy. His trip, said Nixon, was "another journey for peace," like his earlier trips to Moscow and Peking...[After all, trust in the Mideast still rests] largely in the power of the U.S., which Nixon, for all his difficulties at home, still embodies.