Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Val Castronovo, Matthew Cooper, Mitch Frank, Daniel Levy, Michele Orecklin, Alice Park, Desa Philadelphia, Hope Reeves and Owen Thomas

AILING. CHARLES SCHULZ, 77, Peanuts cartoonist and creator of Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and Snoopy; with colon cancer; in a hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif. Doctors discovered the cancer after operating last week to repair a blocked abdominal artery.

DECLARED INCAPACITATED. FRANJO TUDJMAN, 77, critically ill President of Croatia; by the Constitutional Court in Zagreb. His powers were temporarily transferred to Parliament Speaker Vlatko Pavletic, 69.

ARRESTED. RAE CARRUTH, 25, wide receiver and first-round draft choice for the NFL's Carolina Panthers; for the attempted murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams; in Charlotte, N.C. Adams' son was delivered prematurely after she was shot two weeks ago and left in critical condition.

DIED. CHARLES THOMAS, 64, jazz pianist who played with Duke Ellington and Tony Bennett; of prostate cancer; in Little Rock, Ark. Thomas turned down an offer to fill in for the Duke permanently after his death, in favor of playing small clubs in his home state of Arkansas.

DIED. GENE LEVITT, 79, Brooklyn-born TV writer-director who created the 1970s series Fantasy Island; of prostate cancer; in Los Angeles. Levitt produced cop shows like Barnaby Jones and Hawaii Five-0, but it was his success with the Ricardo Montalban-Herve Villechaize vehicle Fantasy Island ("Da plane! Da plane!") that allowed him to take a few years off to live on his sailboat in Hawaii.

DIED. DAISY TAN, 83, mother of author Amy Tan and the inspiration for The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife; in San Francisco. Tan left an abusive husband in Shanghai to come to America in 1949.

DIED. QUENTIN CRISP, 90, witty, flamboyantly effeminate author of The Naked Civil Servant; in Manchester, England. In his autobiography, famous for its lack of self-pity, the self-described "mother superior of homosexuality" chronicled youthful torment at the hands of homophobes (see Eulogy).