Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, David Bjerklie, Laura Fitzpatrick, Joe Lertola, Meg Massey, Carolyn Sayre, Kate Stinchfield

DIED

Most rock climbers get enough adrenaline from the challenge of ascending a cliff with just a harness and rope in case of a fall. Michael Reardon, a global star in the extreme sport of "free solo" climbing, donned only sticky-soled shoes and a bag of chalk to keep his hands dry, saying gear interfered with the "purity of the experience." ("Climbing is all about going until you get too scared to go any farther, like when you were a kid climbing trees," he explained.) The Californian's most famous feat came in 2005, with his first-ever solo ascent of Romantic Warrior, a storied 1,000-ft. (about 300 m) route in the U.S. Sierras. He finished the perilous trek, which took fully outfitted climbers a day, in two hours. Reardon was killed after completing a climb off the coast of Ireland. A wave swept him into the ocean as he stood on a ledge 15 ft. (41/2 m) above the water waiting for the ocean to calm. He was 42.

In the 1980's she was a caricature--the garish, bejeweled wife of wealthy televangelist Jim Bakker and the co-host of the Jim and Tammy Show. Yet by the '90s, as her husband was disgraced by his marital infidelities and served a prison sentence for defrauding followers, Tammy Faye Messner began to look more spiritual. She stuck with Bakker as their multimillion-dollar PTL (Praise the Lord) empire crumbled, finally divorcing him in 1992. She promoted her faith, made fun of herself on Roseanne and other sitcoms and supported gay rights. ("We're all just people made of the same old dirt," she said.) After learning she had colon cancer in 1996, the 4-ft. 11-in. (1.5 m) evangelist, who married Roe Messner in 1993, tried to demystify cancer by speaking about it on TV and film and writing the 2003 memoir I Will Survive ... And You Will Too! Messner was 65.

When Russian tanks stormed Budapest in 1956 to quash the revolution, award-winning cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs grabbed a 35-mm camera from his film school and secretly documented the violence. Kovacs, who fled to the U.S. in 1957 (CBS aired his footage in a 1961 documentary), went on to international acclaim for sweeping photography in more than 70 movies, including Five Easy Pieces, the black-and-white Paper Moon and Shampoo. He was credited with helping change the mostly studiobound look of features with the 1969 breakthrough film Easy Rider, in which he celebrated the landscape, making it, in his words, "this third person--a character." He was 74.

For many of us, clergy are inextricably linked to religious teachings. But Rabbi Sherwin Wine, who in 1963 founded Humanistic Judaism, insisted that by studying Jewish history, culture and ethics, one could be moral and Jewish without believing in God. Wine's movement, lambasted as a fad by some Jewish leaders, is still strong, with 40,000 followers. He was killed in a taxi crash while on vacation in Morocco. He was 79.

He took over as King of Afghanistan when he was just 19, forced into the role by the 1933 assassination of his father. Though Mohammed Zahir Shah, left, the country's last monarch, was not exactly dynamic--he ceded power to his uncles in the early part of his 40-year rule--he presided over an era of relative peace and is now regarded as the "father of the nation." Among the reforms he introduced before being ousted in a 1973 coup: mandated primary education for all children and voting rights for women. He was 92.

In his famous Friday-night therapy workshops on Manhattan's Upper East Side, influential psychoanalyst Albert Ellis, above, a founder of the now widely practiced cognitive behavioral therapy, shouted obscenities, sang and offered blunt guidance for patients: Forget "god- awful pasts," face fears and change actions. In this way the rebellious author of more than 70 books, including the best-selling Sex Without Guilt, planned to "cure every screwball in New York, one at a time." Starting in the 1960s, when Freudian therapy was the rage, critics attacked Ellis' rational, short-term approach as superficial. Still, the treatment has been shown to be effective for many in tackling depression, anxiety and other ailments. Ellis was 93.