Milestones

By Jimmy Buffett, Melissa August, Harriet Barovick

HONORED. Jason Dunham, 22, Marine corporal who died in April 2004 after diving on a grenade to save fellow Marines; with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the U.S.'s highest military award; by President Bush at the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va. The medal for Dunham was just the second Congress has bestowed during the 31/2-year Iraq war.

SETTLED by Bill Cosby, 69, actor and funnyman; a lawsuit filed by a former employee of Temple University (where Cosby is a trustee), who alleged that the comedian sexually assaulted her in 2004 in his Cheltenham, Pa., mansion; under confidential terms. The woman, who called Cosby a onetime friend and mentor, said she took three pills he gave her and awoke to find her bra undone and her clothes in disarray. Cosby's lawyers said that after a dinner with the woman, he gave her Benadryl when she complained of stress and sleeping problems.

DIED. Samuel Bowers, 82, who was the Imperial Wizard of the militant White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during the 1960s, when the Klan instigated a campaign of anti-Semitic and antiblack intimidation and violence; in a prison near Jackson, Miss., where he was serving a life sentence for the 1966 bombing of the home of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer. Each of Bowers' first four trials for the Dahmer murder ended in a mistrial. He was finally convicted in 1998, but Ellie Dahmer, the victim's widow, was unappeased. "He lived a lot longer than Vernon Dahmer did," she said.

DIED. Markus Wolf, 83, suave spymaster known as the "man without a face" for his ability to elude photographers during most of his 34-year reign over the foreign-intelligence division of the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police; in Berlin. Rumored to be the model for John le Carre's shadowy Karla (a suggestion the author has denied), Wolf placed his 4,000 spies in such enemy territory as NATO headquarters, cannily converted West German agents to his team, and famously touted the "Romeo method"--the wooing of lonely government secretaries to gain access to confidential files. Among his best-known feats: placing an operative in the inner circle of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who retired in 1974 after the aide's allegiance was revealed.

DIED. Johnny Sain, 89, right-handed pitcher for the Boston Braves immortalized in a rhyme turned national catchphrase; in Downers Grove, Ill. Sain, the last pitcher to face Babe Ruth, and Braves left-hander Warren Spahn were deemed so crucial to the team's successful campaign for the 1948 National League pennant that a lyric was born: "Spahn and Sain, pray for rain." Sain later became a visionary teacher, stressing the mental side of pitching and inspiring accolades from players like Jim Bouton, who dubbed him "the greatest pitching coach who ever lived."

DIED. Sid Davis, 90, educational filmmaker of the 1950s and '60s whose dark, cautionary tales terrified baby boomers; in Palm Desert, Calif. A onetime stand-in for John Wayne, Davis made nearly 200 gems, now considered high camp, detailing the perils of marijuana smoking (The Terrible Truth) and sex (Girls, Beware).

DIED. Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, 98, co-author, with her brother Frank Gilbreth Jr., of the wry best seller Cheaper by the Dozen, an affectionate account of growing up in a family with 12 children; in Fresno, Calif. Warmly received for the homage it pays to the eccentric Gilbreth parents--who ran a charmingly chaotic household that felt like a "newspaper on election night"--the book spawned a 1950 film and a 2003 remake starring Steve Martin.