Milestones

By Mitch Frank; Unmesh Kher; Nadia Mustafa; Kate Novack

BORN. TO LATE-NIGHT HOST DAVID LETTERMAN, 56, and his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko, 42; a son, Harry Joseph Letterman; in New York City. His first night back on the air, Letterman showed a picture and said he had named his first child after his late father, who died at the age of 57.

CONSECRATED. V. GENE ROBINSON, 56, as bishop of New Hampshire and the first openly gay prelate in the Episcopal Church; in Durham, N.H. Conservative Anglican church leaders around the globe declared a state of "impaired communion" with the American church but stopped short--for now--of a threatened official break. After receiving a standing ovation from a crowd of more than 3,000 gathered for the consecration, Robinson said: "It's not about me; it's about so many other people who find themselves at the margins."

PLEADED GUILTY. GARY RIDGWAY, 54, truck painter and longtime suspect in the notorious Green River killings; to strangling 48 women to death in the Seattle area in the 1980s, making him the deadliest convicted serial killer in U.S. history and ending a two-decade investigation by police; in Seattle. In exchange for his confession and information leading police to the remains of some of his victims, Ridgway was spared the death penalty and instead will be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

DIED. BOBBY HATFIELD, 63, the tenor half of the "blue-eyed soul" duo the Righteous Brothers; of undetermined causes; in Kalamazoo, Mich., shortly before a scheduled performance at Western Michigan University. Born Robert Lee Hatfield, he (below, right) and Righteous Brothers partner Bill Medley, singing bass, helped transform white pop by bringing an emotional freedom to their music that was previously the province of African-American singers. The pair's breakout hit, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', topped the charts in 1965 and went on to become one of the most popular songs in radio history.

DIED. ROBERT GUENETTE, 68, documentarian; of brain cancer; in Los Angeles. He pioneered the use of re-enactments that appeared to be shot by on-the-scene news crews in such films as his 1971 Emmy winner They've Killed President Lincoln. His 1974 Monsters! Mysteries or Myths?, about the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot, is the highest-rated documentary in TV history.

DIED. RICHARD NEUSTADT, 84, leading presidential scholar, adviser to Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson and Harvard University professor; of complications from a fall; in Hertfordshire, England. His seminal work, Presidential Power, in which he argued that "Presidential power is the power to persuade"--first published in 1960 and updated several times since--has been a mainstay of political-science classrooms for more than four decades.