Milestones

DIED Six weeks after a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Irish journalist and author Nuala O'Faolain confessed that life, for her, had lost its beauty. "There is an absolute difference between knowing that you are likely to die--let's say, within the next year--and not knowing when you are going to die," she said during a tearful radio interview. Ever unflinching in her writing, O'Faolain explored the struggle of growing up poor in mid-20th century Ireland in her first memoir, Are You Somebody?, before penning the novel My Dream of You, also set in her homeland. She struggled to find meaning in her final days, but for her fans and devoted readers of her Irish Times column, O'Faolain's words endure. She was 68.

o Though she began her acting career onstage in New York City and with a notable portrayal of Honey in the original 1964 London production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Beverlee McKinsey was best known for her work on the small screen. She earned four Daytime Emmy nominations during her nine-year tenure as the conniving Iris Carrington on the soap opera Another World and captivated audiences as the matriarch on the popular series Guiding Light, which she starred in from 1984 to 1992. She was 72.

o Acclaimed gospel singer Dottie Rambo was one of her genre's most prolific songwriters, composing more than 2,500 works. She performed her songs across the country, but much of what she wrote was recorded by other musicians--among them, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Whitney Houston. One of her best-loved recent songs, Stand by the River, was recorded as a duet with Dolly Parton on Rambo's 71st album. She was killed in a tour-bus accident while traveling to perform in Texas. She was 74.

o Known as "La Diva Turca" throughout her more than 70 roles at Italy's La Scala opera house, Turkish soprano Leyla Gencer won a reputation for both her beautiful voice and her imperious personality. Critics were wowed by her inspired performances in everything from Madame Butterfly to Don Giovanni. Offstage, Gencer was unabashed about her domineering manner, explaining simply, "I say what I think." She was 79.

o With his mixture of pop and traditional country-music styles, guitarist and singer Eddy Arnold earned induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966 and a spot on the Top 10 charts alongside the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in 1965. Raised on a Tennessee sharecropper's farm, Arnold never lost touch with his roots. Even as he gained an increasingly cosmopolitan following with crossover hits like Make the World Go Away, he continued to refer to himself as the "Tennessee Plowboy," at one point even crediting his success to hard work on the farm. "That's why I wanted to play the guitar," he said in 1947. "So I wouldn't have to keep plowin' all my life." He was 89.

o Some 2,500 Jewish children in Warsaw were spared death at the hands of the Nazis from 1940 to 1943 thanks to the efforts of Polish social worker Irena Sendlerowa. Through a variety of means--smuggling children through sewers, hiding them in suitcases or even in her clothing--Sendlerowa brought young Jews to safety while German forces razed the Warsaw ghetto. Later, when captured and tortured, she never gave up their names. Though honored by her country and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Sendlerowa did not consider herself a hero. She was 98.

DECLARED DEAD With a track record that reads like a movie script, American swindler Robert Vesco successfully evaded the U.S. justice system for more than 25 years. Perhaps most infamous for allegedly scamming investors out of more than $200 million during the 1970s, Vesco fled the U.S. in 1972, on the run from charges ranging from looting to drug trafficking. His fraud finally caught up with him when a Cuban court sentenced him to prison for more than a decade for marketing a bogus pill to cure cancer and AIDS. A recently discovered burial record confirmed his death in November 2007. He was 71.

With reporting by Briefing section written by Alex Altman, Harriet Barovick, Gilbert Cruz, Kate Pickert, Elisabeth Salemme, Tiffany Sharples, M.J. Stephey