Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Carolina A. Miranda, Logan Orlando, Julie Rawe, Patrick Stack

AILING. PETER JENNINGS, 66, well-traveled TV journalist and sole anchor since 1983 of ABC's World News Tonight; with lung cancer; in New York City. His voice hoarse during his characteristic matter-of-fact delivery, Jennings, who was conspicuously absent during the network's on-site coverage of the tsunami in South Asia and the death of Pope John Paul II, revealed his illness to viewers in a taped message at the end of a broadcast last week. He will continue to anchor the news while undergoing chemotherapy, starting this week.

SENTENCED. MATTHEW HALE, 33, white supremacist convicted last year of plotting to kill Chicago federal judge Joan Lefkow because of her ruling in a trademark dispute concerning the name of his church; to the maximum sentence of 40 years in prison; in Chicago. His case made headlines again in February when Lefkow's husband and mother were murdered by a deranged ex-plaintiff, who, despite early suspicions, had no connection to Hale.

DIED. FRANK CONROY, 69, who laid the groundwork for modern confessional memoirs with his acclaimed 1967 debut Stop-Time, an unsentimental chronicle of his painfully nomadic, picaresque childhood; of colon cancer; in Iowa City. The sometime jazz pianist mentored scores of young writers, many of whom became successful novelists, during 18 years as head of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the country's most prestigious creative-writing program.

DIED. GREG GARRISON, 81, early TV director and producer of some of the most popular variety shows of the 1950s and '60s, including Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Dean Martin Show and Martin's popular Celebrity Roasts; in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

DIED. PRINCE RAINIER III, 81, Europe's longest-reigning monarch, who, as ruler of Monaco for 56 years, transformed his tiny, nearly bankrupt principalitya longtime gambling playground for Europe's wealthy eliteinto a tourist-friendly international business center; after a month-long hospitalization for heart, lung and kidney ailments; in Monaco. With the help of his 1956 fairy-tale marriage to Hollywood royal Grace Kelly, Rainier modernized a community once called a "sunny place for shady people," building affordable hotels to draw middle-class visitors to its famed Monte Carlo casino and popularizing the mini-state, which has no income tax, as a tax haven for foreign businesses. After Kelly's death in a car crash in 1982, he withdrew, enduring declining health and regular tabloid accounts of the indiscretions of his rebellious daughters Caroline and Stephanie. He is succeeded by his as-yet-unmarried son Prince Albert II.

DIED. SAUL BELLOW, 89, Nobel-prizewinning American novelist, in Brookline, Mass. (See page 146.)

DIED. DALE MESSICK, 98, one of the first female comic-strip artists, who in 1940 introduced readers to Brenda Starr, Reporter, an intrepid, curvy and impeccably clad journalist who talked her way into exotic assignments, dated hunks and abided no nonsense from her editor; in Sonoma County, Calif. Though criticized by some for being unrealistic ("Authenticity is something I always try to avoid," said Messick), her spy-chasing, shark-battling redhead inspired legions of young women headed for professional careers.

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Carolina A. Miranda, Logan Orlando, Julie Rawe and Patrick Stack