Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, David Robinson, Heather Won Tesoriero and Rebecca Winters

FOUND. PT 109, sunken World War II torpedo boat commanded by Navy Lieut. John F. Kennedy; by explorer Robert Ballard of the National Geographic Society, who also located the Titanic; 1,300 ft. deep in the South Pacific. The Navy said it is "likely" the find is the famous boat from which Kennedy lost two men but helped 10 others swim to shore.

CONVICTED. SIDNEY DORSEY, 62, ex-sheriff of DeKalb County, Ga.; of masterminding the December 2000 murder of his elected successor, Derwin Brown; in Albany, Ga. Prosecutors said the defeated Dorsey, who was also charged with racketeering, wanted to be reinstated and thus hired hit men to gun down Brown, who had promised to clean up department corruption (see TIME, Feb. 5, 2001). Dorsey faces a mandatory life sentence.

SENTENCED. JOSEPH MESA JR., 22, former Gallaudet University student convicted in May of the brutal murder of two of his fellow students, Eric Plunkett and Benjamin Varner, in their dorm rooms in September 2000 and February 2001 (see TIME, June 25, 2001); to six life-without-parole terms in prison; in Washington. Mesa testified that in a vision a pair of "black hands" directed him to kill.

DIED. KENNETH KOCH, 77, effervescent founding member, with John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, of the 1950s' New York school of poets; of leukemia; in New York City. Famous for his boisterous, erudite and often erotic verse, Koch rejected the somber literariness of predecessors such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He infused his 20 volumes with lyrical improvisations and exuberant homages to such items as business letterheads, furniture, lipstick and fudge.

DIED. LORE NOTO, 79, theater producer who discovered, acted in and tirelessly promoted The Fantasticks, the sweetly simple love story that became the world's longest-running musical; of cancer; in New York City.

CDIED. WARD KIMBALL, 88, irreverent, pioneering Disney animator--one of the elite early group called the Nine Old Men--who directed animation on such films as Fantasia, Dumbo and Cinderella; in Arcadia, Calif. Kimball gave a makeover to Mickey Mouse and created Jiminy Cricket, the wisecracking, top-hatted character in Pinocchio. He won an Oscar for his 1969 animated short It's Tough to Be a Bird.

DIED. YOUSUF KARSH, 93, portrait photographer who gained international acclaim for his 1941 picture of a defiant Winston Churchill; in Boston.