Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Gilbert Cruz, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Tiffany Sharples, Alexandra Silver, Kate Stinchfield

DIED

Lots of little boys love fighter planes. But New York City--born Donald Lopez became so obsessed after watching the Oscar-winning 1927 silent film Wings that he took his first plane ride--in an open cockpit--at age 7. He went on to become a U.S. Air Force test pilot and World War II ace, part of the team that was the successor to the storied Flying Tigers fighters. Later, as a director of the Smithsonian, Lopez collaborated with Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins to plan and build the National Air and Space Museum. He was 84.

Music fans knew him as Hurricane Smith, whose song Oh, Babe, What Would You Say? hit Billboard's Top 10 in 1973. But to industry types, Norman Smith was better known as the longtime engineer, or technician in chief, for the Beatles. Smith, nicknamed "Normal" by John Lennon, worked with producer George Martin on every Beatles recording through 1965's Rubber Soul. Later, as a producer, Smith helped usher in the psychedelic era by discovering and signing Pink Floyd after watching their trippy act at London's UFO club. He was 85.

The London tabloids liked to call Francis Pym the "thorn in Margaret Thatcher's side"--a politely British way of saying he was detested by the then Prime Minister. In 1979 Thatcher appointed him Defense Secretary, and he became Foreign Secretary during the Falklands war. Pym worked closely with Britain's U.S. and European allies, and was for a time her likeliest potential challenger. But his private battles with Thatcher over his criticism of her economic policies exploded in 1983, when he publicly said he hoped the Tories would not win the election by an overwhelming majority. Thatcher fired him. He died at age 86.

As KGB chief, first in Ukraine and then in Russia, the beefy Vitaly Fedorchuk was known as a thug. Thought to be behind kidnappings and murders as the "Butcher of Ukraine," he later persecuted Russians who had too much contact with foreigners before finally becoming highly visible as the Soviet Union's top cop in the '80s. His efforts at first seemed to foreshadow perestroika-like reforms: he exposed official corruption and condemned drunkenness. But Western analysts called his heavy-handed tactics "neo-Stalinist." In the late '80s Mikhail Gorbachev sidelined him. Fedorchuk was 89.

Imagine a world without CSI, NYPD Blue and Law & Order. That void was pop culture before Brooklynite screenwriter Malvin Wald conceived and co-wrote The Naked City, the noirish black-and-white 1948 film detailing a police investigation into a model's murder. (Famous last lines: "There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.") Set on the piers and streets of New York City, the movie broke with depictions of cops as inept bumblers--and private eyes as heroic crime solvers--and set the stage for the now teeming genre of gritty police dramas. Wald, who was nominated for an Oscar for the film, was 90.

On the night of Sept. 22, 1943, Pearl Cornioley--now hailed as one of Britain's greatest wartime secret agents--parachuted into France after a few months of training with Britain's Special Operations Executive, a group that welcomed women as potentially less suspect than men. Once there, Cornioley posed as a cosmetics saleswoman and helped arm and organize the Resistance. She commanded soldiers who damaged German communications and presided over the surrender of 18,000 German troops. Nominated for a Military Cross medal after the war, she could not receive it because she was female. She later won honors, including the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was 93.

Few journalists covering prerevolutionary China can claim to be familiar with communist rebel life in the trenches. But veteran AP reporter and China watcher John Roderick was there. For months, he shared the cave Mao Zedong and other rebels used as headquarters after the Japanese flattened the city of Yan'an, the end point of the communists' Long March. Roderick went on to cover the country from its ensuing civil war through the economic reforms of the 1980s, and in 1979 reopened the AP bureau in Beijing. "Keep learning," he advised colleagues. "If you ever think you understand China completely, it's time to go home." Roderick was 93.