Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Sean Gregory and Julie Rawe

SENTENCED. DAVID WESTERFIELD, 50, convicted of last year's kidnapping and murder of Danielle van Dam, 7, in which he snatched her from her bedroom; to death by lethal injection; in San Diego.

KILLED. MARTHA MYERS, 57, WILLIAM KOEHN, 60, and KATHLEEN GARIETY, 53, U.S. doctor and administrators, respectively, who ran a Baptist mission hospital in a tiny town 100 miles south of Yemen's capital, Sana'a; by a lone gunman described by Yemeni officials as an "Islamic extremist"; in Jibla, Yemen. Myers, a revered figure in the town, and her staff treated some 40,000 patients a year.

DIED. LUCY GREALY, 39, whose harrowing 1994 memoir, Autobiography of a Face, recounted her repeated surgeries, starting in childhood, to repair severe facial disfigurement resulting from cancer; of undisclosed causes; in New York City. In her book, which became a staple of many college and high school syllabuses, Grealy detailed how her flawed appearance radically altered her sense of self.

DIED. HERB RITTS, 50, sweetly easygoing celebrity photographer whose ability to make famous subjects comfortable helped him capture and define the high-octane glamour and narcissism of the 1980s; of complications from pneumonia; in Los Angeles. A onetime furniture salesman who made his name with an impromptu late-1970s photo shoot of his not-yet-known friend Richard Gere, Ritts produced memorable photos of Elizabeth Taylor revealing her brain-surgery scar, Madonna grabbing her crotch, and singer k.d. lang, in drag, being shaved by Cindy Crawford.

DIED. JOE STRUMMER, 50, punk rock's godfather, born John Mellor, who co-founded the seminal band the Clash, which took punk to adventurous new heights; of a heart attack; in Broomfield, Britain. Unlike fellow punk pioneers the Sex Pistols, whose nihilistic motto was No Future, the Clash, in its Latin-, reggae-and soul-infused songs, including London Calling, White Riot and The Call Up, urged action against social injustice and pretentious poseurs. Though the Clash split up in 1986, Strummer later found new popularity with the band the Mescaleros.

DIED. GEORGE ROY HILL, 81, Oscar-winning director who brought a breezy touch to old-fashioned storytelling in some of Hollywood's most popular big-star entertainments of the 1960s and '70s; after a battle with Parkinson's disease; in New York City. A stickler for quality who made just 14 movies in a three-decade career, he popularized the duo of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973) and made acclaimed film versions of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and John Irving's The World According to Garp.

DIED. JOE FOSS, 87, Medal of Honor--winning World War II pilot, Governor of South Dakota, commissioner of the American Football League and head of the National Rifle Association; at a hospital near his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Dubbed "America's No. 1 Ace" on the cover of LIFE magazine for shooting down 26 fighters and bombers in the battle for guadalcanal, he later drew controversy as a gun supporter. in 1990 he told TIME, "All guns are good guns."

DIED. SID GILLMAN, 91, inventive Hall of Fame football coach for the Los Angeles Rams, the Houston Oilers and the San Diego Chargers; in Los Angeles. Among the first to analyze game film to improve his players, Gillman helped create the West Coast offense--a pass-heavy strategy later used by top NFL teams.

DIED. MARY BRIAN, 96, popular contract starlet whose 82-film career bridged the silent and talking eras; in Del Mar, Calif. She co-starred in such silents as Beau Geste and Knockout Reilly, and played opposite Gary Cooper in one of the earliest western talkies, 1929's The Virginian.