Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Ellin Martens

RESIGNED. Ted Haggard, 50, as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals; amid allegations that he paid a male prostitute for sex and bought methamphetamine; in Colorado Springs, Colo. Escort Michael Jones told a Denver radio station that he had had a three-year relationship with Haggard--who last year was named one of America's 25 most influential Evangelicals by TIME--saying he wanted to expose the "hypocrisy" of the pastor, who has led the battle against gay marriage in Colorado. Haggard first claimed he did not know Jones. Then he admitted buying a massage and methamphetamine from him, but said he did not take the drugs. He staunchly denied he had had sex with Jones--who in turn denied selling the pastor drugs--and insisted he had been "steady with my wife." But an investigation by the board of Haggard's 14,000-member New Life Church found him guilty of "sexually immoral conduct" and forced his resignation as senior pastor.

DIED. Joe Niekro, 61, right-handed pitcher whose deadly knuckleball helped him to a career 221 wins in 22 seasons and who, with his knuckleball-hurling brother Phil, famously won more games than any other pair of brothers in major league baseball history; of a brain aneurysm; in Tampa, Fla. In 1976 the longtime Houston Astro hit his only career home run--against Phil, then pitching for the Atlanta Braves.

DIED. Buddy Killen, 73, powerful Nashville music publisher and songwriter who launched the careers of Dolly Parton and Whisperin' Bill Anderson and turned Tree International, the company he ran with Grand Ole Opry manager Jack Stapp, into a music-publishing titan; of liver and pancreatic cancer; in Nashville. Killen's songs became hits for performers like Conway Twitty (I May Never Get to Heaven) and the Little Dippers (Forever). In 1989, in a deal that marked a new high for country music, he sold Tree International to CBS for more than $30 million.

DIED. Robert Anderson, 85, automotive engineer turned chairman of Rockwell International, who expanded the firm into an aerospace giant that built space shuttles and the much maligned, hugely expensive B-1 long-range bomber; in Los Angeles. Known for his bluntness--"A bomber is a baby killer; people don't like bombers," he once said--Anderson successfully lobbied Ronald Reagan's aides to resurrect the controversial B-1, which could carry nuclear weapons and had little risk of radar detection, after it had been abandoned during the Carter Administration. He also helped devise the 426 hemi engine with which NASCAR champion Richard Petty won his first Daytona 500 race in 1964.

DIED. Mose Tolliver, believed to be in his 80s, factory worker turned folk artist known as Mose T who became one of the leading figures in the Outsider Art, or self-taught, movement; in Montgomery, Ala. Tolliver began painting compulsively in the 1960s after an accident at a furniture factory left his legs crushed. His lyrical pieces, which he made with house paint and hung in his front yard using dental floss, first drew curious buyers, then eager galleries. The paintings--of bold, bright, sometimes grotesque women, birds, flowers, snakes and trees--are now in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Smithsonian and New York City's American Folk Art Museum.

DIED. P.W. Botha, 90, apartheid- era South African President whose rigid defense of racial separation overshadowed his secret 1989 talks with jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela; in Wilderness, South Africa. Known as the "Old Crocodile" for his fearsome temper, Botha made some reforms, giving Asians and mixed-race citizens--but not blacks--a limited voice in government. But he also oversaw the detention of tens of thousands of antiapartheid activists. Despite global pressure, he would not free Mandela, who was finally released in 1990, a year after F.W. de Klerk replaced Botha. And he refused to appear before the postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, saying, "I am not prepared to apologize." Still, he was remembered kindly last week by Mandela (above, with Botha in 1995), who noted the "steps he took to pave the way" for a free South Africa.

DIED. William Styron, 81, writer of morally provocative epics--including Lie Down in Darkness and The Confessions of Nat Turner--that explore, in agonizing detail, the human capacity for evil; on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. A descendant of slave owners, Styron became obsessed as a boy with the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner, which began not far from his childhood home in Newport News, Va. Confessions, written in the first person, drew bitter criticism from black leaders, who called it presumptuous, but won Styron a Pulitzer Prize. Along with Sophie's Choice, the harrowing tale of an Auschwitz survivor that became an Oscar-winning 1982 movie starring Meryl Streep, it cemented his reputation as a literary giant. But his success did not come easily. In 1990 he chronicled his struggle with depression in the memoir Darkness Visible. And in reference to his work, which he produced on a legal pad at a painstaking pace of no more than a page and a half per day, he said, "A great book should leave you with many experiences--and slightly exhausted."