Milestones

By David Bjerklie, Tam Martinides Gray, Daniel S. Levy, Belinda Luscombe and Alain L. Sanders

EMANCIPATED. DOMINIQUE MOCEANU, 17, Olympic gold-medal gymnast; by a Texas state judge; in Houston. The 1996 champion was declared a legal adult in a settlement with her parents, whom she accused of squandering her earnings. The decision lets her seek a past accounting and make her own future deals.

DIED. ANTHONY CELEBREZZE, 88, former Cleveland, Ohio, mayor who, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from 1962 to 1965, helped turn the slogans of the New Frontier and the Great Society into laws; of cancer; in Cleveland.

DIED. TED HUGHES, 68, British poet laureate whose reputation both waned and waxed as a result of his stormy marriage to tormented American poet Sylvia Plath; after an 18-month fight with cancer; in London. Blamed by many for Plath's 1963 suicide, Hughes earlier this year published Birthday Letters, a collection of intense poems that described his relationship with Plath. It helped clear the air and won him a torrent of praise. Acclaimed for his unsentimental poetry filled with violent images of nature, Hughes also wrote a number of poems and stories for children.

DIED. JAMES GOLDMAN, 71, history-focused playwright and screenwriter best known for his gripping The Lion in Winter; of a heart attack; in New York City. Though his Broadway version quickly folded, his 1968 screen version of the 12th century battle-of-the-sexes succession fight between Henry II (Peter O'Toole) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) earned him an Oscar. Goldman also wrote the book for the Sondheim musical Follies.

DIED. WINNIE JUDD, 93, who as a young secretary got off a train with two dead bodies stuffed in her luggage, triggering the sensational 1930s trial that dubbed her the "trunk murderess"; in Phoenix, Ariz. A sanity hearing spared her the death penalty and sent her packing to an Arizona hospital for three decades. Later judged sane, she went to prison, and was released in 1971.