Milestone

DIED

VACLAV HAVEL, former President of the Czech Republic, called him a "Maoist, a Trotskyist ... a phenomenon unto himself." Starting in the 1950s, rebel philosopher-poet Egon Bondy drew followers with his surreal fiction--published and distributed covertly--which offered veiled, witty critiques of his country's Stalinist government. But the weirdest and most influential role the vocal Marxist played was as the inspiration and lyricist for a seminal Czech underground rock band, the Plastic People of the Universe. The arrest of the Plastics at a 1976 rally sparked Charter 77, the Havel-led protest movement that in 1989 toppled the communist regime. He was 77.

WHETHER HE was playing a snobbish lawyer masterly deflating bigot Archie Bunker or performing Shakespeare on the New York City stage, Emmy-winning actor Roscoe Lee Browne emanated sophistication. Despite a few racist critics (his reply to one who said he sounded white: "I had a white maid"), the man with the tuneful baritone and restrained style crafted a reputation as an expert character actor in such diverse roles as a spy in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz, a gay police informant in the 1968 film Up Tight!, the erudite butler on TV's Soap and the eloquent narrator of the 1995 hit film Babe. He was 81.

IF HE HAD BEEN 25 YEARS younger, he would have been the quintessential 1960s hippie. Instead, the sweet-souled, world-weary, darkly funny Kurt Vonnegut became the avuncular, rumpled hero of the counterculture generation. In books like Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the satirist, who struggled with depression, repeatedly explored the harmful effects of industry on human beings' collective morality. After laboring in obscurity for decades, he shot to global fame in 1969 with Slaughterhouse-Five, a fictionalized account of his experiences as a POW and "corpse miner" in Dresden after the Allies bombed the city in 1945--a book he said took 25 years to complete. At times dismissed as too accessible, Vonnegut once said his goal was to "poison [readers'] minds with humanity." Through his protagonist Eliot Rosewater, he famously echoed the dominant theme of his personal and professional life: "Goddamn it," says the wealthy but disillusioned philanthropist. "You've got to be kind." He was 84.

IN 1961, WHEN HE WAS AN unknown foreign policy wonk in the Kennedy Administration, Warren Wiggins wrote an impassioned treatise on the promise of Kennedy's still nascent Peace Corps, urging its leaders to fight to make it more than just a small agency to generate good publicity. On reading it, Sargent Shriver, the Corps's first director, who was then trying to define the agency, distributed the memo to his staff and fired off a 3 a.m. telegram demanding that Wiggins meet with him the next morning. Within four weeks, an Executive Order gave birth to the Peace Corps. Wiggins was 84.

IN RECENT YEARS SHE SHONE brightly as a National Medal of Arts honoree and elegant, tireless philanthropist. But the long career of effervescent singer-actress Kitty Carlisle Hart spanned media from film (the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, Woody Allen's Radio Days) to stage (On Your Toes) to opera (Die Fledermaus, her 1966 debut at the Met). Hart, whose husband was playwright Moss Hart, was best known for her 1956-67 stint as a lively celebrity panelist on TV's To Tell the Truth. She was 96.

AWARDED

BEFORE TURNING 2, champion swimmer Jessica Long, 15, born without bones in her legs, was a double amputee. Following a 2006 season in which she won nine gold medals in world competition, she became the first Paralympian to win the Sullivan Award, given annually since 1930 to the nation's top amateur athlete. The recreational rock climber said, "To represent all the other Paralympic athletes ... is so cool."

LAST WORDS

At an April 17 convocation on the Virginia Tech campus, George W. Bush, noting the "day of sadness for our entire nation," offered condolences to the families and friends of the 32 who died in the massacre:

'In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over the country are thinking about you and asking God to provide comfort.'

RETROSPECTIVE

With his laid-back baritone and signature hit, Tiny Bubbles, crooner Don Ho, who died of heart failure at 76, personified the breezy charm of his native Hawaii. For decades, he drew crowds to clubs in Waikiki, where he sang just two days before his death. "We still like to swing," he said recently. "We just do it earlier now."

With reporting by Camille Agon, Harriet Barovick, David Bjerklie, Jamil Hamad, Reynolds Holding, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Joe Lertola, Tim McGirk, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre