Monday, May. 06, 1996

MILESTONES

AWARDED. To JOSE RAFAEL MONEO, 58, architect; the Pritzker prize in architecture. His work includes Spain's National Museum of Roman Art.

MARRIED. NADIA COMANECI, 34, first Olympic gymnast to score a perfect 10; and BART CONNER, 38, U.S. 1984 Olympic gold medalist; in Romania.

DIED. STEPHEN Z. MEYERS, 53, co-founder of Jacoby & Meyers, the mass-market law offices; in a car accident; in New Fairfield, Connecticut.

DIED. ERMA BOMBECK, 69, humorist; following a kidney transplant; in San Francisco. The titles of her books spoke volumes about her view of motherhood, housewifery and life: I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression; The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank. Starting at $3 a column in 1964, she composed ruefully real depictions of domestic America that found a national audience among women who saw little of themselves in June Cleaver. Bombeck eventually appeared in 600 papers, but still lived the unpretentious life she wrote of, laughing through travail.

DIED. SAUL BASS, 75, graphic designer who turned opening-credit sequences in movies into brilliant minimalist films; of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; in Los Angeles.

DIED. JIMMY ("The Greek") SNYDER, 76, odds maker and garrulous gridiron gossip on television's The N.F.L. Today benched in 1988 for attributing black athletic excellence to slave breeding; in Las Vegas, Nevada.

DIED. STIRLING SILLIPHANT, 78, TV and film writer; in Bangkok. His screenplays ranged from the socially conscious Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night to the haunting fable Charly to the flat-out thriller The Poseidon Adventure.