Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, John Cooper, Lina Lofaro, Michele Orecklin and Flora Tartakovsky

ENGAGED. POPEYE, hard-bodied spinach aficionado; to his sweetheart of 70 years, OLIVE OYL. The heretofore noncommittal couple will wed next month in a special comic book called The Wedding of Popeye and Olive. Bluto has been invited.

DIVORCING. ANDREW BLEILER, 33, who carried on an adulterous affair with Monica Lewinsky; and his wife KATHLYN; in Portland, Ore. A staff member at Beverly Hills High School when he met Lewinsky, Bleiler called off the five-year affair in 1996, then blabbed it to the world last January.

RESIGNING. JOHN THOMPSON, 57, venerated longtime Georgetown University basketball coach; for personal reasons; in Washington. Under Thompson's 27-year tutelage, the Hoyas spawned Patrick Ewing, reached the NCAA tournament 20 times and won a championship.

DIED. JERRY QUARRY, 53, Hall of Fame boxer; of pneumonia; in Templeton, Calif. Though he never won the heavyweight title, the popular pugilist, whom opponent Joe Frazier called the "good-looking Irish kid with a nice smile," put up decent fights against many of the greats, including Floyd Patterson and Muhammad Ali. In recent years he was incapacitated by dementia and a loss of motor skills resulting from repeated blows to the head during his three-decade career.

DIED. IRON EYES CODY, 94, icon of environmentalism; in Los Angeles. The Cree-Cherokee actor and activist, who appeared in 100 films, struggled for decades before achieving celebrity with a role in a historic 1971 public-service spot for Keep America Beautiful. (Later he made a sequel.) As the American Indian who sheds a tear at the sight of a landscape littered with garbage and polluted by smoke, Cody brought the nonprofit group unprecedented attention and support. In 1996 a New Orleans newspaper alleged he was of Italian descent--a charge Cody vigorously denied.