Milestones

DIED

REBEL COUNTRY musicians have not had an easy time of it (see the Dixie Chicks), but their path to acceptance was eased immeasurably by radio pioneer Laura Ellen Hopper. In 1975 Hopper co-founded the cultish, eclectic, now defunct California station KFAT, still widely revered for its rejection of the conservative country establishment and its support of quirky artists from John Prine to Jerry Jeff Walker. Those and newer stars like Iris DeMent got a bigger push at her more successful second home, KPIG, where as founder and program director she promoted and popularized the alternative country sound of Americana. She was 57 and had lung cancer.

IN A FITTINGLY WONKY remark by one of the world's leading philosophers, Richard Rorty described his 50-year career as a search to find out "what, if anything, philosophy was good for." A lover of politics and literature, Rorty rejected such traditional analytic questions as, What is the meaning of life? Instead he caused a stir--and irked critics, who called him a "moral relativist"--with books like Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which advocated pragmatism, the view that real-life interactions and consequences define truth and meaning. He was 75 and had pancreatic cancer.

MORE THAN MANY, HE WAS the squinting, ugly face of violent racism in the Jim Crow South. With his billy club, cattle prod and NEVER button--a reference to his view on black-voter registration--the beefy, sadistic former Alabama sheriff Jim Clark ironically galvanized the civil rights movement. After a stunning televised 1965 confrontation in Selma in which Clark joined in beating and teargassing peaceful protesters, public opinion shifted. "Bloody Sunday," which Lyndon Johnson called "an American tragedy," is widely believed to have expedited the President's signing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. Clark was 84.

AWARD-winning Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene -- considered the father of African cinema for his 1965 movie Black Girl, the first African feature film--was more influential than most politicians. His warm, internationally acclaimed films included Xala and Moolaade, the story of a woman who tries to shield a group of girls from genital mutilation. A former dockworker and novelist, he turned to film at age 40 to reach Africa's largely illiterate masses and co-founded the biannual FESPACO film festival, called the Cannes of Africa. He was 84.

HOWDY DOODY WAS FINE, BUT for legions of future scientists of the '50s and '60s, Mr. Wizard was the man. On TV's weekly Watch Mr. Wizard, the infectiously curious former actor Don Herbert intrigued kids by respecting their intelligence, employing them as assistants, and conducting cool experiments--with paper plates, straws and teapots--that illuminated such mysteries as how rain is made and why birds fly. The Peabody Award--winning show, which ran from 1951 to 1965, spawned thousands of Mr. Wizard clubs across the country, and in the '60s and '70s was cited by half the applicants to Rockefeller University, the renowned biomedical institute, as a reason for their early interest in science. Herbert was 89.

IF ANYONE EVER seemed destined for the nickname "the Big Cheese," it was chemist and food researcher Edwin Traisman. In the '50s, Traisman led the team at Kraft Foods that developed sliced cheese and the distinctly American spreadable snack Cheez Whiz. After leaving his post as Kraft's cheese-division director, he invented the freezing method for McDonald's French fries. He was 91.

A MAJOR EMBARRASSMENT IN U.S. rocket research occurred in October 1957 when Russia beat the U.S. in the cold war space race by launching the satellite Sputnik. Thanks to the frantic efforts of U.S. officials to match that feat, aerospace engineer and longtime Caltech professor Homer Stewart was hired to help develop a similarly impressive craft. With guidance from Stewart-- who later worked on early planning for the Apollo mission--the U.S. sent into orbit its first successful satellite, Explorer I, in January 1958. Stewart was 91.

RETIRED

NOT LONG after her debut with the WNBA's Washington Mystics in 1999, six-time All-Star forward Chamique Holdsclaw, 29, was dubbed the "female Michael Jordan." The Olympic gold medalist, who plays for the Los Angeles Sparks, jolted teammates by announcing she was retiring, effective immediately. "I'm not depressed or anything," she said. "I just want to kind of kick back."

With reporting by Camille Agon, Harriet Barovick, David Bjerklie, Jackson Dykman, Jumana Farouky, Andrea Glaessner, Joe Lertola, Brendan Lowe, Meg Massey, Alice Park, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Kate Stinchfield